The fourth of July is more than fireworks

America held its 241st birthday party, many bringing in the day with picnics, parades, festivals and ending it with a bang: fireworks filling the sky with colorful lights and the sound of explosions echoing over the countryside.

Truly, July 4th is a day to celebrate.

When the Second Continental Congress gathered in Philadelphia to adopt the final draft of the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming the United States of America to be free from the rule of Great Britain, it didn’t come without rigorous struggle.

Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, but it went through 47 revisions before passing.

That document went to Congress on July 2, but needed further revision and correcting. Two days later after three paragraphs were added and some mistakes corrected the Declaration of Independence was signed by our founding fathers and printed by John Dunlap, a Philadelphia printer. George Washington took his copy of the “Dunlap Broadside” as the text came to be called, and had it read to the American army assembled in New York.

It isn’t a perfect document. The men drafting it weren’t perfect. Some owned slaves, some didn’t believe in women’s rights. Some believed the land was theirs and took it from those who lived here eons ago. But its words ring true, and give us a template to govern, to correct those previous mistakes and move on. Here is some of it.

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness…”