(Not a student yet? Enroll for free at www.gwschool.net.)
My love for the Constitution began at a very young age because of the Declaration of Independence and Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities. I began reading very early. At the age of ten I began reading the Bible regularly because my mother told me on my 10th birthday:
"You are now half grown. It is time for you to start reading a chapter in the Bible every day. You will never be educated or even know what great art and literature is all about if you haven't read it, since most great works of art and literature are about Bible stories."
So, I started reading the Bible. Two years later, on December 7, 1941 when I was twelve years old we heard on the radio that Pearl Harbor was bombed and my mother was crying because she knew my brothers would have to go to war.
My question was: "Where's Pearl Harbor?" I was soon hearing how our nation was threatened and how, if we didn't win the war, we would no longer be free and independent. Two months later I turned 13 and I decided to memorize the Declaration it because I was fascinated with the idea that I had a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the dangers of war notwithstanding. Every day that summer I climbed my favorite tree and memorized the Declaration of Independence word by word well enough to recite it from memory for many years at July 4th celebrations.
At the age of 16, I read the Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, which introduced me to the French Revolution. That book prompted me to search other books in the library about the actual history of the French Revolution. I had also studied American history in school and wondered why the French Revolution was so different from the American Revolution. I had learned in school that the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was patterned after our Declaration of Independence.
Yet, in America there was no Reign of Terror as there was in France. Ten years later, two years after the US Constitution was adopted, King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were beheaded by guillotine before a cheering crowd of French citizens[1] during the French Revolution that began in 1789.
If the revolutions were based on the same principles, how could that happen? I knew George Washington could not have defeated British General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown if it had not been for the French fleet sailing into the Chesapeake Bay to keep the British Ships from helping Cornwallis.
If the Americans had not had the help of King Louis XVI [2] of France we would not have won the Revolution. And I knew it was Benjamin Franklin, then ambassador to France, who was able to get money, weapons, military officers, ammunition and military equipment from King Louis XVI. My textbooks told me that the storming of the Bastille in France and the revolution that followed were the beginning of democracy and were patterned after the American Declaration of Independence, revolution and Constitution which had been ratified in America only the year before.
Yet, I could see that two revolutions were very different, even as a teenager. Why would they be so different if they were the result of identical principles?
During the five years of the French Revolution, from 1789 to 1794 an estimated 140,000 people died in France, compared with only 4,435 battle deaths in the eight years of the American Revolution.
At least 17,000 French men, women and even children who were beheaded by the guillotine after "trials" conducted by the revolutionists and 12,000 executed without trial. Uncounted thousands died in jails after being arrested. In the rural area of Vendee in Western France, where both peasants and nobility were mostly faithful Catholics and royalists the anti-Christian revolutionists killed an estimated 100,000 people[3] in what was later called the first ideological genocide in history. The Revolutionists attack on the Vendee people was part of the dechristianisation of France[4] during the French Revolution, which led to deportation or murder of thousands of clergy. They closed, desecrated, burned or vandalized many churches while stealing any gold or silver items they could melt. The government sponsored the "Cult of Reason", outlawing public and private worship and religious education.
Both revolutions occurred after England and France had been vying for the vast new continent discovered when Jacques Cartier, a French navigator, anchored on the Gaspe Peninsula [5]and St. Lawrence River in 1534. In 1749 King George II of England granted the Ohio Company 200,000 acres of land on the upper waters of the Ohio River and by 1753 the French began driving out English traders, capturing and imprisoning surveyors sent by the Ohio Company, and building forts on the Ohio River. The Ohio Company sent 21 year old surveyor and Virginia militia Major George Washington to Ohio territory to tell the French to leave. That started the French and Indian War, which became the Seven Years War that involved England and France and which was fought on three continents. When that war ended in 1763, there were the staggering war debts that prompted the king and parliament in London to pass a series of oppressive tax raising bills that required the Americans to pay.
Those bills included: in 1764 the Sugar Act; in 1765 the stamp Act and the Quartering Act; in 1766 the Declaratory Act; from 1767 to 1770 the five Townshend Acts which so frustrated the colonists that they led to the Boston Massacre. In 1773 the English Parliament passed the Tea Act that allowed the East India Company a monopoly on the sale of tea and that led to the Boston Tea Party and the Intolerable Acts.
In 1774 Parliament passed a series of repressive laws: The Boston Port Act that closed Boston Port; the Massachusetts Government Act, and the Administration of Justice Act which eliminated any self-government by the people of Massachusetts, limited town meetings to one meeting per year when allowed by the Royal governor and set up a Royal Appointment of Governor's Council to govern Massachusetts; the Quartering Act and the Quebec Act which in effect seized lands claimed by Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and Virginia. There were no popular meetings or freedom of the press in that land and a viceroy with dictatorial powers would govern them.
This led to frustration and the Boston Tea Party and the awakening of the voters to concern for their future. George Washington observed in a letter to a friend that while he did not approve of the conduct of the men who destroyed the tea, he and others were "not prepared to be sacrificed by piece meals" with a "cruel and blood thirsty enemy upon our back, the Indians, between whom and our frontier inhabitants many skirmishes have happened, and with whom a general war is inevitable, whilst those from whom we have a right to seek protection from are endeavoring by every piece of art and despotism to fix the shackles of slavery upon us."
Today, some current American voters who have been dubbed "tea partiers" seem to feel much the same way.
On September 4, 1774 delegates to the First Continental Congress wrote and passed The Declaration and Resolves.[6] Many of the principles in that document were later included in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. When the Declaration and Resolves were brought before Parliament and then given to King George III he responded:
"The die is now cast. The colonies must either submit or triumph."
Patrick Henry, a member of the Virginia House of Burgess, responded to the King's comment with his Liberty or Death[7] speech, which he began:
"This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country."
Patrick Henry's speech was only five paragraphs. He mentioned God four times in the speech, ending with:
"Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Thirteen years later on September 17, 1787, with George Washington as president of the Constitutional Convention, the delegates adopted the US Constitution.[8] It was ratified in 1788 and George Washington was unanimously elected the first president of the United States. He served two terms and in 1784 in his Farewell Address[9] he said:
"It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government."
Only two years later, on July 14, 1789 in Paris an angry mob of thousands stormed the Bastille, a state prison that had been built in 1380 and had become a symbol of royalty. The mob killed the guards, released all the prisoners and demolished the building. To this day Bastille Day is celebrated in France and Quebec as the birth of democracy and "proof that power no longer resided in the King or in God, but in the people, in accordance with the theories developed by the philosophies of the eighteenth century. The storming of the Bastille symbolizes, for all citizens in France, liberty, democracy and the struggle against all forms of oppression." [10]
The leaders of the French Revolution who wrote the first Constitution in France were followers of enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote:
"True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not mind; this short life counts for too little in their eyes"
The French Revolutionists tried to abolish Christianity. They demolished churches, killed priests, guillotined thousands of priests, drove thousands more priests, nuns, and others of France and wrote a constitution that tried to abolish the Christian religion altogether, even writing a new calendar that had no Sundays or religious holidays. American Revolutionists and authors of the US Constitution believed strongly in Christianity and wrote a document that protects Christianity and other religions.
Today, we face similar trials. Will Americans follow the path of our founding fathers or that of France's revolutionists who denied God's hand in all things?
I love the United States Constitution because it took me many years of being a humanist doubter, skeptic and researcher before I found faith in Jesus Christ . Without the freedom guaranteed to me by God and protected by the United States Constitution, I would not have had the opportunity, the time, resources or ability to study and to search for Truth and be able to recognize it when I found it.
(Not a student yet? Enroll for free at www.gwschool.net.)
Mary Mostert has written articles on political and social issues for more than 60 years, including a weekly newspaper column for Gannett Newspapers. She has written four books, including books on the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution. Her e-mail is mary@bannerofliberty.com and website is http://www.bannerofliberty.com
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XVI_of_France#The_imprisonment_and_execution_of_Louis.2C_1792_-_1793 - Execution of Louis XVI
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_in_the_Vend%C3%A9e - Vendée Genocide
6 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/resolves.asp - Declaration and Resolves
7 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/patrick.asp - Patrick Henry's Liberty or Death Speech
[2]http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/l3_world_france.html - Franklin - Minister to France
10 http://www.franceway.com/w3/Facts&Figures/politics/republiquesymbols.html - Bastille Day, symbol of Democracy
| The George Washington School of Freedom, Inc. 2975 W. Executive Pkwy, Suite 183 Lehi, UT 84043 www.gwschool.net |  |
No comments:
Post a Comment