The sun of the new day rises on fields of flowers strewn with the bodies of dead mothers and babes. As the night falls, terror-stricken refugees creep across the dark sands of the beach, enter the little boats and push off from their beloved motherland for the long exile, their saddened faces turned westward.
The sea is wide but not so wide that the English King’s hand cannot reach the throats of exiles and their children. By royal command Captain Preston orders his soldiers to shoot the people down in the streets of Boston on the night of March 5, 1770. Unarmed men shout defiance and the troops are withdrawn to hush the turmoil.
The frontiersmen of the wilderness of North Carolina are not so easily tamed. They seize their muskets and give the first armed resistance to the might of kings the New World has dared. The Royal Governor defeats the rebels in the Battle of Alamance on May 16, 1771, and hangs six of their leaders. As young James Pough stands with his arms pinioned behind his back he turns to his executioners and shouts: “My blood will be seed sown on good ground!”
Our fathers in Boston hear the shout and when the King attempts to enforce his stamp act they board his ship and throw the cargo into the sea.
The Colonies are at war with the King. The big bell in Philadelphia is calling all to unite in common defense and Thomas Jefferson reads his immortal Declaration of Independence to the assembled leaders. His voice rings with a strange prophetic elation:
“_We hold these truths to be self evident--that all men are created equal!_”
The startled kings of the earth hear the new heresy in sullen wrath and join hands to crush the rebels. The German rulers hire to George III more than thirty thousand Teutonic soldiers with which to stamp out the threatening conflagration. The Hessians land on our shores and join hands with the scarlet ranks of the King of England.
To mock their shame a noble Prussian, trained in the school of Frederick the Great, offers his sword to Washington and becomes the Inspector General of our ragged half-starved army.
Steuben stands beside Lafayette and Rochambeau while Lord Cornwallis surrenders the British army at Yorktown.
Through ten years of defeat and anguish, of blood and suffering God leads the American Colonies at last into the sunlight of victory. George Washington, first president of the established union of free sovereign democratic States, delivers his inaugural address. A free nation rises from blood-red soil to haunt the dream of kings.