The early years of the explorers to come to the American continent were difficult ones indeed. Those explorers, we now call The Pilgrims, faced harsh weather, unpredictable relations with the natives, disease and other challenges as they carved out homes from the wilderness they found here. Because their earliest homestead were in the northeast, the winters were harsh and their ability to build houses that could keep them warm and to find sufficient food was a constant worry to the men and women trying to raises families in America.

So anytime they received help from the native population, it was viewed as a gift from God and accepted with the greatest of joy and celebration. A Native American chief by the name of Squanto saw the plight of these new neighbors and saw to it his tribe helped these young families to survive. Besides providing food and wisdom about how to build structures that could keep them safe in the winter, Squanto taught them to fish, how to prepare eel and other strange sea creatures they harvested and how to farm.

This act of friendship was the origin of our revered holiday of Thanksgiving. The Virginia Colony established the tradition of holding a day of collective prayers of thanksgiving, and that tradition continues today. Except it is not just a day of thanksgiving for the kindness and generosity of Squanto to our forefathers. We take advantage of this day of reverence and thanksgiving to be grateful for all the good things that God has blessed this nation with.

The foods we use to celebrate Thanksgiving were ones that the pilgrim travelers found native to this country and the foods that, with the help of Native American teachers, they learned to capture, harvest and prepare to feed their families and prosper in their new home. Turkey was a game foul that was in ample supply to the pilgrims once Squanto showed them how to hurt the bird with reliable success.

The vegetables we love to have on our traditional menus also had their origins in the early lives of the pilgrims. Potatoes, cranberries, sweet potatoes, green beans and all the rest were vegetables that the pilgrims had to learn to harvest, farm and prepare from natives of the land. So in many ways, our modern holiday, despite the dominance of football games and the upcoming Christmas holiday, retains the atmosphere of those early celebrations.

And the meaning of the holiday, despite commercialization, has been retained. Americans have much to be thankful for. The abundance of the land, the health of the most prosperous economy on earth and a society that is free and able to encourage freedom in other cultures are just a few of the things we celebrate at this holiday time. But for most of us, it is a time to gather family and friends near and be thankful to God for our health, for the blessings of jobs and for the privilege all Americans share to be able to live in the greatest nation on earth where opportunity is ample that any of us can make it and do well if we work hard at our chosen area of expertise. And these are things truly worthy of giving thanks for.

While not the first words of the Declaration of Independence, these stirring words have that kind of prophetic power that anyone who hears them in immediately inspired by the beauty, the poetry and the deep truths that were so beautifully expressed in that historic document.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This one statement from that famous declaration so beautifully demonstrates some core principles that show why this document has such a deep impact on the American mind and heart. The statement that the truths in this document were indeed truths is a profound statement in its own right. The Declaration of Independence does that suggest that what is being declared in those pages are theories, possibilities, even political ideology. These are truths which puts them on the same value as statements of values as often taught in a religious setting. Truths are eternal values and values that are not changed by circumstances, by whomever or whatever is handling the government of the land or by the whim of lawmakers. These truths exist above those temporal earthly ideas and live on that plain of the eternal.

“Self evident” is a powerful phrase and it reflects on the founder’s belief in what was called natural law. Natural law is the belief system that there are laws that are part of our natural state of existence and that they cannot be taken away (inalienable). These laws are our rights as creations of the almighty and any government system must recognize these laws because they are above government. It is a basic belief system of the American system that ALL people are entitled to these rights and that they cannot be taken away.

The mention of a creator in the declaration of independence is very important because there are those who would maintain that the separation of church and state tells us that the government is at heart a secular institution. Clearly the founders did not lay the foundation of our country on that groundwork. They saw the inheritance we as Americans have in our rights and freedoms to be part of our legacy from God and as such, above the government and something the government must back off and leave alone as well as prettiest and defend.

The Declaration of Independence is truly an amazing document especially when you consider the “primitive” state of the nation when it was written by Thomas Jefferson and signed on July 2, 1776 to become the backbone of our American system of government. It became an often referenced and quoted document, even becoming a part of President Lincoln’s famous inaugural speech when he said with such deep conviction…

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Because these words are such a deep part of our American heritage, American history and the American spirit, they are often a crucial center part of any study of history in the schools in this country. That is why school children in every state are so familiar with these words.

But it would do us all well to take some time once a year or so and take our copy of the Declaration of Independence and read it either as a private moment of reflection nor with our families. What a wonderful fourth of July tradition that would make. Then as you watch the fireworks celebrating the birth of the country and its independence, you will have those words fresh in your heart to remind you that it was our creator that gave us our freedoms and independence and nobody has the right to ever take them away.

It was not long after the Constitution was ratified that the first ten amendments were indeed organized and became law. That those ten amendments have become as central to the American system of government as the Constitution itself. They have come to be known as the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights are so deeply engrained in the American consciousness that they are often referenced in conversations about issues, how Americans work and live together and our relationship with the government. The true genius of the Bill of Rights was the work it did to severely limit the ability of the government of the United States to ever interfere with the fundamental rights of its citizens. This is a stunning achievement at a governmental level when you think in terms of legal systems of governments throughout history and around the world.

These ten amendments assure that the rights of citizens in this country are forever protected from any move by any administration to take those rights and give them to the government itself. As such, the government is forever banned from getting too strong and it relegates the government to a servant role in society which so often is not the case in governmental politics elsewhere in the world.

The ten amendments to the Constitution cover the core rights of Americans including…

1. Freedom of Religion, free speech, freedom of the press and the fundamental right of assembly without fear of harassment from the government. Also, the right to petition the government to seek relief for grievances caused by the government.
2. The right to bear arms.
3. Protection from the forced habitation of troops in civilian homes in a time of conflict.
4. Protection from unreasonable search and seizure as part of a criminal investigation.
5. The right to due process when being accused of a crime.
6. The right to a jury trial, to be allowed to cross examine your accusers and other rights of accused to assure Americans cannot be “railroaded” by the legal system.
7. The right to civil trail by jury
8. Protection against cruel and unusual punishment and the right to bail.
9. Protection of rights not specifically spelled out in these ten amendments
10. Protection of states rights.

Of these rights, the ones listed in the first amendment are most often quoted and most cherished by Americans. The original authorship of the Bill of Rights is credited to James Madison. These basic rules of order for how the government will respect its own citizenry set in place and entitlement of rights by American citizens that has fundamentally shaped this country and how Americans come to expect its government to behave.

It endowed the citizenry of the land with an expectation that the rights of the citizens of the country at a very basic level are more important than the rights of the government and that the government “works for us” which is a phenomenal change to the way societies have been organized throughout history. As such, The Bill of Rights is one of the many reasons that America can be regarded as the most unique country in the world and the country that many citizens of other nations wish their own counties would emulate.

America is proud that it has never had a battle on its native soil. Other than Pearl Harbor and 911, we have never even been attacked on our own soil. So it took a war of brother against brother, American against American to make even the possibility of war within the borders of America even possible.

The war’s statistics are staggering for a relatively short conflict. The war started on April 12. 1861. It was the confederacy that drew first blood attacking Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The battles of the Civil War and legendary. We have come to honor the dead of both sides of this bloody conflict by preserving many of those historic battlefields even to this day.

Throughout the war, the North was at an advantage in preparation, equipment and supplies. But General Lee, who commanded the confederate army, was a brilliant strategist and the battles often resulted in massive casualties on both sides. When the final tally was drawn up, over 970,000 American citizens died from the Civil War. While that may not compare numerically to the huge losses in the two world wars later to come, this figure represented 3% of the American population at the time. And since the huge majority of the war dead were from America’s youth, the hope for her future, the set back this war had on the development of America’s economy was truly remarkable.

In modern times we look back on the Civil War as a titanic battle to bring an end to the horrors of slavery in this country. And to be sure, the Civil War is and will forever remain a central part of black history and the beginning point of the civil rights movement in America. But the causes of the Civil War were complex and diverse which only made negotiation and resolution of the war more difficult in advance of conflict.

Part of the issue that was being fought out was the rights of states for self-determination as balanced with the rights of the federal government to determine affairs in the individual states. On the surface, this may seem trivial compared to ending slavery but put in context, it was a critical relationship to iron out in light of our not very distant memory of our revolution against England for trying to impose unreasonable controls on the colonies.

American’s are fiercely independent people and that independent spirit was born in the battles of the revolutionary war where America stated firmly that they would no longer bow to a king or let the centralized government have such sweeping control over individual lives. The outrage over how England tried to put the colonies under servitude was the foal that caused the explosion known as the Revolutionary War. And much effort was made to assure there was language in the constitution and other critical documents to assure that the federal government would be severely limited from interfering in the lives of its citizens.

Beyond that the preservation of the union as one country was also in contest in the Civil War. But it was the moral issue of slavery that made the Civil War such an emotional issue and one that caused people to fight with such ferociousness to defend their side. In the end, even Abraham Lincoln made slavery the central rational for the war and determined that the end of this barbaric practice would be the legacy of this horrible conflict.

But one thing that also was a legacy of the Civil War was the determination that we, as Americans, would never turn our war machine on our own citizens again. The war tore families apart and literally caused brother to war against brother. Since reconstruction and the union of America, the country has had a bruise in its national psyche over this war and that bruise reminds us that we are one people and we would always be one people devoted to the causes of truth, justice and the American way of life.