Philadelphia in Early July


Ahh, the city of brotherly and sisterly love.
It was in fine fettle Saturday and Sunday, July 7 and 8, 2007.

Saturday afternoon we (wife, mom-in-law, & myself) took an open top double decker bus tour around the city. These are things that look REALLY lame from the ground, but seem to be pretty cool once you give up caring about looking lame. It gave us a decent feeling for getting around in the city (one way streets, parking, museum locations, etc.) and it showed off a couple of very nice sections of the city, like the historic district and Society Hill.

We also checked out the Independence Hall Visitor Center, which had been installed since I was there last to the see Independence Hall in January 1977. Didn't get in to Independence Hall that day, but I did figure out how to get tickets for Sunday.

So Sunday Started early with a 6 block walk from our hotel to the afore mentioned visitor center for 5 tickets to Independence hall for later that afternoon. (My mom & step father joined us.) From there we went directly to the Franklin Institute where we met my mom & step-dad and viewed burial items from Tutankhamun's tomb (and from his contemporaries').

Tut was magnificent. The Pharoahs and their priests really knew how to impress with the jewelery. I enjoyed the presentation of the artifacts, and developed a better understanding of the imagery that was important to the ancient Egyptian pharoah's ability to maintain power.

After Tut we climbed into one car and motored across town to Independence Hall, where attended a public reading of the Declaration of Independence and a couple of brief speeches by actors portraying T. Jefferson and J. Adams.

The reading of the D of I was moving for me. A couple of passages wherein the delegates to the Continental Congress detail their grievances against Geo. III hit pretty close to home for me. For example:
"He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
"For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury.
"For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses.
"He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat [sic] the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation."

I looked over at my wife and said, "You can almost wonder which 'George' they're referring to. This whole thing seems subversive right now."

The Jefferson actor pulled a couple of quotes from Franklin, including the one about people who prefer a little security to freedom deserving neither freedom nor security. The Adams actor followed suit with material about the necessity of an educated and informed population that keeps tabs on its government and shows its displeasure. Both of which heightened my sense that we --the hundreds of us present-- were participating in a subversive act.

After that, lunch and a discussion of the how the reading informed our interpretations of the meaning od the D of I. For me, I realized that the listing of the grievances was perhaps the most important part of the D of I to the average citizen who supported independence. The high falutin' language of the preamble is most important to us here in the 21st century because it literally informed the creation of our form of government 11 years later, but it was not the immediate issue.

After lunch, we strolled back to Independence Hall for the ranger-led tour.

It was a good tour. The ranger was knowledgeable, but I knew as much as he did (Americqn History between about 1680 and 1820 is my specialty and I have an MA in History from Sonoma State University), so I wandered around the inside of beautiful building during the tour.

Actually the ranger did get one small fact wrong. He said that Washington attended the 1775 Continental Congress as a delegate of Virginia in a British officer's uniform. In fact, Washington was never a British officer, and so would not have worn such a uniform. He served as colonel in the Virginia militia during the French and Indian War, and ran a frontier unit for the colony of Virginia afterward. Indeed Washington created his own uniform for the latter post which he wore to meetings of the Congress in Philadelphia before he was elected Commander in Chief of the Continental Army.

The interior was Spartan for important buildings of the era, but fitting for a Quaker dominated colony. No gold leaf, few elaborate carvings, muted paint colors, etc. Mostly the interior consisted of painted wood paneling, Indian head faces above the inside of the front door and the outside of the door to the assembly room, bare wood floors of broadly milled oak, a banister to the upstairs banquet hall in American walnut that had been stripped to the bare wood. I suspect it was originally finished in a reddish stain to simulate mahogany, but that is just a guess. The banister could just as easily have been painted black.

The very chair that John Hancock used as president of the Continental Congress and George Washington had used 11 years later as president of the Constitutional Congress sat in the back of the assembly room as mute testimony to the importance of remembering that we are all participants in the American Experiment.

The desks used by members of the Continental Congress including Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams were small and used by 3 to 4 delegates from each of the new states. They were covered with green cloths and books that the delegates might have read. The occasional walking stick or cane rested on a table or chair.

My hands ached to touch these things. I wanted to feel what Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, or Gouvenor Morris might have felt. I wanted to transport myself into their reality, to feel their trepidation at challenging the world's greatest known military power to subdue their cause and putting their lives and fortunes on the line for a cause that was more likely to fail than to succeed.

These men made decisions that thousands would die to make reality. This speaks volumes about the power of those ideas. But the longevity of those ideas is just as impressive. I think Lincoln put it best, "...From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Posted: Thu - July 19, 2007 at 12:34 PM          

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