Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 246, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 October 1920 — Americanism [ARTICLE]

Americanism

By LEONARD WOOD

Blandishment* will not fascinate us, nor will threat* of a halter intimidate. For under God we am determined that wheresoever, whensoever or howsoever we shall he called to make our exit, we will die free men.—Josiah Quincy, Jr.t Observations on the Boston Port £ BUI, 1774. JORHIAH QUINCY unquestionably was fighting for posterity as well as for the then present generation of I Americana when he used these words breathing a determination for liberty and an equal determination to keep it even at the hazard of a halter. He used the word "whensoever," a word all inclusive as to time. He spoke to the Americans of his day, of the immediate morrow and of other marrows to come. The fathers believed liberty worth fighting for and dying for- Quincy spoke on the Bouton port bill a year before the farmers at Concord fired the “shot heard round the world.” This promise of a willingness to die free men found its determined echo tn all the battles of the Revolutionary war from Lexington to Yorktown. Ameriranixatlan during those years was being taught on the field of battle and tn the self-denying homes of the people where the sacrifices to- the great cause willingly were made by < the devoted women, the children and the aged. “Whensoever.” The day of Josiah Quincy’s utterance was not a day of liberty except In the spirit of determination to attain.it. Today is liberty’s day in the United States as It has been in full measure since ths hour of the Declaration of independence. There can be no true Americanisation of native born or foreign horn unless the pupils accept the lesson of a willingness to die In order to remain free men. Josiah Quincy was not thinking lightly when he spdke of the threats es the “halter." The colonists who were bent on freedom were accounted /traitors by the government against which they were to revolt They dared much and unless a decadent spirit must be admitted AmeriST today nW w««»g to j Jost as much if the threat comes to