Happy Independence Day!

I missed my blog’s fifth anniversary (June 17th), and I missed this past Friday’s “Links and Stuff,” and I don’t remember when the last “Music Monday” was, so I thought I’d better at least acknowledge Independence Day here in the U.S.

As an ex-pat Brit, this might seem like an awkward celebration for me. But it’s not really. For a start, my family heritage is more Scots-Irish and Welsh, and none of them were on good terms with the English Red Coats. And while British blood runs in these veins, I declared my national allegiance over ten years ago when I became a U.S. citizen. This is my home now, and if it wasn’t for those brave souls willing to risk treason by signing a piece of paper in a sweltering room in Philadelphia that summer day in 1776, so much of my life would be very different.

It’s a sobering fact, well brought out in the musical and movie, “1776,” that, if the revolution had failed, each signer of that Declaration of Independence would be liable for a sure death sentence. Those people believed this experiment was worth that much, and that the alternative was that much worse.

So, as a former Brit, I salute those who put their names to a document that changed the world:

• John Hancock (1737 – 1793)
• Samuel Adams (1722 – 1803)
• John Adams (1735 – 1826)
• Robert Treat Paine (1731 – 1814)
• Elbridge Gerry (1744 – 1814)
• Button Gwinnett (1735 – 1777)
• Lyman Hall (1724 – 1790)
• George Walton (1741 – 1804)
• William Hooper (1742 – 1790)
• Joseph Hewes (1730 – 1779)
• John Penn (1740 – 1788)
• Edward Rutledge (1749 – 1800)
• Thomas Heyward, Jr (1746 – 1809)
• Thomas Lynch, Jr. (1749 – 1799)
• Arthur Middleton (1742 – 1787)
• Samuel Chase (1741 – 1811)
• William Paca (1740 – 1799)
• Thomas Stone (1743 – 1787)
• Charles Carroll (1737 – 1832)
• George Wythe (1726 – 1806)
• Richard Henry Lee (1732 – 1794)
• Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826)
• Benjamin Harrison (1726 – 1791)
• Thomas Nelson, Jr. (1738 – 1789)
• Francis Lightfoot Lee (1734 – 1797)
• Carter Braxton (1736 – 1797)
• Robert Morris (1734 – 1806)
• Benjamin Rush (1746 – 1813)
• Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)
• John Morton (1724 – 1777)
• George Clymer (1739 – 1813)
• James Smith (1719 – 1806)
• George Taylor (1716 – 1781)
• James Wilson (1742 – 1798)
• George Ross (1730 – 1779)
• Caesar Rodney (1728 – 1784)
• George Read (1733 – 1798)
• Thomas McKean (1735 – 1817)
• William Floyd (1734 – 1821)
• Philip Livingston (1716 – 1778)
• Francis Lewis (1713 – 1802)
• Lewis Morris (1726 – 1798)
• Richard Stockton (1730 – 1781)
• John Witherspoon (1723 – 1794)
• Francis Hopkinson (1737 – 1791)
• John Hart (1711 – 1779)
• Abraham Clark (1726 – 1794)
• Josiah Bartlett (1729 – 1795)
• William Whipple (1730 – 1785)
• Matthew Thornton (1714 – 1803)
• Stephen Hopkins (1707 – 1785)
• William Ellery (1727 – 1820)
• Roger Sherman (1721 – 1793)
• Samuel Huntington (1731 – 1796)
• William Williams (1731 – 1811)
• Oliver Wolcott (1726 – 1797)