To the editor:

As we celebrate the Fourth of July it is important to remember that, before the sales and the fireworks, it was in a time of uncertainty and some fear that it came about.

In 1761, a lawyer named James Otis argued that the Bill of Rights, Magna Carta, and the Common Law prohibited the agents of the crown from using writs of assistance (general warrants) to search whomever, wherever and whatever they chose. He did not prevail in that case for the subjects living in Massachusetts. Rather he started a period of petition and civil disobedience among the subjects which culminated in armed rebellion in April of 1775.

In July of 1776, a group gathered in Philadelphia and signed the most significant paper in the history of the united colonies. It began, “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.”

At that point the subjects of His Majesty’s colonies became citizens of States. Seven years of war lay ahead before that citizenship was secured. Those in Philadelphia knew they faced the noose but they signed anyway.

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Citizenship does not grant rights — those come from nature and nature’s god. But citizenship imposes duties to stand up those rights against those who would infringe them and assure that those rights remain for all in the republic and for posterity.