What makes a farmer grab a musket and risk it all?
Before the sun set on April 19, 1775, the rag-tag ruffians couldn’t believe what they had just accomplished. The British, that well-trained army of international fame, had retreated to Boston. Soon, thousands of militiamen from all the New England colonies would surround what John Winthrop had called 145 years earlier “the city on the hill.” The Revolutionary War had begun.
But it wasn’t that simple.
Two-and-a-half centuries ago, if we had remained divided, we would have fallen. The rag-tag ruffians may have won the day in Lexington and Concord, but they could not have sustained an extended military campaign. Our nation’s Founding Fathers knew that winning the Continue Reading “The Flame of Duty: U.S. Army Celebrates 250 Years of Enduring Spirit, Service, and Unity”
How to Declare War
[This Commentary originally appeared in the November 29, 1990 issue of The Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel.]
Constitutional scholars call this juxtaposition the separation of powers. The separation of powers between the three major branches of government creates a very durable system of Continue Reading “How to Declare War”