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This is the weekend to celebrate America’s birth certificate, which has been inspiring freedom-loving people all over the world for 249 years. But the events that occurred exactly a year before the publication of the Declaration of Independence are also worth celebrating. We might not have a country without them. It was 250 years ago this weekend that George Washington began to meld men from different colonies into an American army and met the man who would become perhaps his most valuable officer. It was also in that beautiful first week of July 1775 that the Continental Congress explained why
the people of America had no choice but to take up arms to defend their rights. A few weeks after getting hired to lead the brand new Continental Army, Washington issued general orders from his new headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. The orders, dated “July 4th 1775,” included a specific encouragement for the men to think of themselves not as residents of one of 13 colonies but as part of something greater: The Continental Congress having now taken all the Troops of the several Colonies, which have been raised, or which may be hereafter raised, for the support and defence of the Liberties of America; into their Pay and Service: They are now the Troops of the United Provinces of North America; and it is hoped that all Distinctions of Colonies will be laid aside; so that one and the same spirit may animate the whole, and the only Contest be, who shall render, on this great and trying occasion, the most essential service to the great and common cause in which we are all engaged. Writing in the Chicago Tribune in 2005, historian Louis Masur noted that July 4, 1775, was
also the day that Washington met Nathanael Greene, whom Washington would later entrust to manage a brilliant campaign in the South that led to America’s ultimate triumph. Greene did not succeed by winning battles, but rather by ensuring that British victories were so costly and exhausting that the Redcoats lost their will and ability to continue. Mr. Masur noted: Nathanael Greene… offered this assessment of the spirit of the Continental Army: “We fight, get beat, rise and fight again.”
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