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we found that same Spirit again, still alive and well, as we shared in the July 4th celebration with our new friends and neighbors in the Rappahannock community on the lawh by the beautiful pond in Washington. We haven’t missed one for the past six years. Our local celebrations are more like Americans used to enjoy in earlier times than any others we have experienced in our recent memories, including some of those big, loud, crowded ones around the Washington Monument.
But can we even imagine, today, what the Declaration of Independence meant to those courageous visionaries who were willing to pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor so that we could all inherit in blessings of liberty?
Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, had been invited to travel to the nation’s capital so that he could be honored with the other surviving signers as America celebrated the 50th anniversary in 1826. He regretted that his failing health would not permit him to undertake the journey, but he sent a letter dated June 24, 1826, to Roger C. Weightman, the mayor of the city, expressing his gratitude for the invitation — and offering some reflections on the glorious celebration.
“I should, indeed, with peculiar delight have met and exchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day in the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country,
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