Freedom Heroes

My family, at least parts of it, came to the colonies from England and Wales before the Revolution. One loyal British subject ancestor, one of the original Rangers, the Snowshoe Soldiers, fought in the French and Indian War.

That ancestor fought in the Revolution alongside others who valued liberty above loyalty to the crown. Elected captain by his company, he led other farmers and tradesmen in the fight for liberty. Those are the people who fought, bled and died for our right to vote and everything else guaranteed by our Constitution and the amendments.

The majority of the people who fought in our Revolution were illiterate, poor people who came here to live their dreams, impossible to do where they had come from. In the British Isles and Europe they were constrained by law and custom to live within their caste and not complain. There could be little, if any, upward mobility and surely resistance to crown law was not permitted.

Resistance to crown law wasn't exactly permitted in the colonies but people like my ancestor chose to fight for what they viewed as their rights as Englishmen first, then independence. They bet it all, their lives and their possible futures, they had no fortunes, and lived their honor. These common people overthrew the crown in America and gave us what we have today.

Washington, LaFayette, Koskiusko, von Steuben and others would have had no one to lead if it had not been for the common people, Freedom Heroes, and this would be a far different place today. Other revolutionaries around the world followed in their wake.

Since that time our country's young men have stepped up to serve and fight as needed. Some were active in the Civil Rights battles of the nineteen-sixties and seventies. They have done this because what we have is worth defending.

Today the battle is against those who would take from us what the blood of heroes in the Revolution and Freedom Summer bought for us. This is no time to sit back and let the modern Tories take by guile what those Tories of old could not take by force of arms. It is time once again to wear the three cornered hat of the first Freedom Heroes.

-- submitted by Robert G.