Happy Birthday, America!

Here’s an article about Frederick Douglass and “The Star Spangled Banner” by The Daily Signal.com:

Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who played a critical role in the abolitionist movement in the mid-19th century, had been a frequent critic of American policy and the existence of the “peculiar institution.” However, he believed that the dearly held principles of the Declaration of Independence, and its unequivocal statement that all men are “created equal,” would eventually lead to slavery’s dissolution.

Douglass pulled no punches in criticizing slavery as a massive contradiction in American life, but he understood the evils of the system would be corrected by embracing the country’s origins rather than rejecting them. He encouraged black Americans to sign up and fight for the Union under the American flag during the Civil War, played a crucial role in recruitment efforts, and convinced many former slaves to serve in the military and embrace the United States as the vessel—not the thwarter—of freedom.

Douglass was known to frequently play “The Star-Spangled Banner” on his violin for his grandchildren in the years after the war. He said in an 1871 speech at Arlington National Cemetery that “if the star-spangled banner floats only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice, liberty, and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish devotion of the noble army.” [read more]

Here is conservative thinker Russell Kirk’s ideas on the Founders:

[The] American revolution and the American restoration of order had been accomplished earlier by experienced public men who had known themselves entitled to the “chartered rights” of Englishmen; who were steeped in knowledge of British constitutionalism, law, and history; whose interest lay in maintaining a political and social continuity. That is one reason why the Constitutional Convention may be called a gathering of friends.
Another reason why it was possible for the delegates to work out a political consensus was their sharing of an inherited literary culture.

Most of the Framers, twenty or thirty years earlier, had been required to study certain enduring books that were intended to develop a sense of order in the person and in the commonwealth. Among the ancients, they studied Cicero, Plutarch, and Vergil especially. They had memorized Cicero’s praise of Roman mores, the high old Roman virtue; their imagination had been roused by the lives of Plutarch’s heroes; they had come to understand Vergil’s labor, pietas, fatum.

The Framers had read attentively Montesquieu (The Spirit of Laws being first published in English translation in 1750), David Hume, Samuel Johnson, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke (whose Annual Register had been for them a principal reliable source of knowledge of events during their own years).

A third influence that made the Constitutional Convention a gathering of friends, rather than an assembly of political fanatics, was the concept of a gentleman. The first article of the Constitution would provide that the United States might grant no title of nobility, and that no office-holder should accept a foreign title without the consent of the Congress; but the delegates at Philadelphia, quite unlike the French constitution makers a few years later, had no intention of putting down gentlemen.

Source: “The Framers: Not Philosophes but Gentlemen.” The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays (2006) by George A. Panichas [editor].

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand. -- Harry S. Truman

The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults. -- Alexis de Tocqueville

I have been with Donald for 18 years, and I have been aware of his love for this country since we first met. He never had a hidden agenda when it comes to his patriotism because, like me, he loves this country so much. -- Melania Trump

Where liberty dwells, there is my country. — Benjamin Franklin

May the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country! — Daniel Webster

Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. — James Madison

America means opportunity, freedom, power. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Public and Private Education
America.. it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time. – Thomas Wolfe

Here are some transcripts of Hillsdale College lectures:

• “All Honor to Jefferson”
• A Man Worth Knowing (John Adams)
• The Character of George Washington
• According to Their Genius: American Politics and the Example of Patrick Henry
• Four Points of the Compass: Restoring America’s Sense of Direction

Finally, here are some links from Hillsdale College’s free Introduction to the Constitution course:

• The Declaration of Independence—Universals and Particulars
• The Declaration of Independence—The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God
• The Declaration of Independence—All Men Are Created