I exited the train station in Philadelphia and wasted no time. I spent all of five minutes unpacking at my hotel and headed to hallowed ground.
I walked east along Market Street hardly believing in the vision of what was ahead. My metabolism got the best of me, though, and I had to stop at Burger King before I stepped back to a time when another king was much on the minds of the local populace. A double bacon cheeseburger combo and a few blocks later, there it was.
Independence Hall.
I'll be damned.
It does exist in places other than the pages of the history books and the images of my imagination.
After a lifetime fascination with and study of the American Revolution, I approached the historic hall with all the reverence of a person of faith visiting a holy land. A National Park Service ranger opened the door and I lost my breath. Right there, in that very room, I was communing with the great 56 men who overcame bitter political disagreements and put the common good above all else -- just as another group would do on that exact same spot 11 years later. In my mind, I could hear the reading of Richard Henry Lee's resolution of June 7, 1776:
"Resolved: That these united Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."
I saw my beloved John Adams, the Founding Father I am closer to than any other, make a rousing speech on July 2 -- America's true birthday -- that garnered majority support for a Declaration of Independence whose heavily edited drafts longed for approbation. (Unanimity, of course, was the only option, and the congress delayed formal passage until the fourth in order to obtain the votes.) Walking sticks pounded the wooden floor as exclamation points to Adams' gifted oratory. I felt the sweltering heat and frayed nerves of the over-taxed, august body rallying behind him. I picked up the clippety-clop of a horse carrying a rain-soaked delegate arriving at the eleventh hour. I observed Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin taking it all in. I strained to make out a Georgia delegate, Button Gwinnett, whose virtually invisible trail I've chased for the past two years. Perhaps he was a ghost even then.
Standing in Independence Hall in both 2007 and 1776, I was lost in the palpable excitement, fear, uncertainty and bravery of the men committing the treasonous act of disposing a king and giving birth to a new nation. Goosebumps arose as they always do when I think of perhaps their most powerful words:
"We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred honor."
Wow.
Congressional president John Hancock and secretary Charles Thompson signed the hand-written copy and sent it over to the printing shop of John Dunlap, where his crew toiled through the night to reproduce the words ... words that were not given public voice until July 8, when Col. John Nixon of the Philadelphia Committee of Safety read them aloud to the crowd packing the courtyard outside Independence Hall (then known as the State House).
I was completely surprised to realize that the very copy Nixon held in his hands rests in a small room next to the Hall -- in perfect condition 231 years after its debut. My nerves trembled even more a moment later when I saw another American treasure I did not know existed. One of my hobbies is writing letters to special people with a quill feather pen -- my symbolic way of honoring my love for those friendships and and for history. I had no idea I would stumble across the silver Syng inkstand used by the signers of both the Declaration and the Constitution.
Awesome.
Just outside the doors of that hidden gem is the entrance to Congress Hall, home to the U.S. Congress from 1790 to 1800. George Washington took his second oath of office there. I still can't quite get my mind around the enormity of the next great event that unfolded in its confines, when Washington willingly handed the reigns to power to my dear friend Adams.
Said King George III himself of the pending act:
“If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."
Washington and Adams are also present a few stone throws away at a lesser known but equally moving corner of the great city: Washington Square, a former burial ground that nows holds the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution. Words on a wall beside a small statue of our first military commander say what needs to be said:
"Freedom is a light for which men have died in darkness ... Beneath this stone rests a soldier of Washington's Army who died to give you liberty."
Die they did. Thousands of soldiers' coffins were dumped unceremoniously into common pits -- intermingled with sailors, convicts and "the destitute who's remains are walked over."
According to signage at and near the tomb:
"Throughout that winter (1777), disease thinned the ranks of the American army. John Adams, a member of the Continental Congress meeting in Independence Hall, visited the square in April 1777. He spent an hour 'in the congregation of the dead.' The graves of the soldiers, perhaps 2,000 he had been told, 'are enough to make the heart of stone melt away.'"
The tomb is a quiet, solemn place, as it should be, but locals pay it little attention -- and the throngs of tourists just a block away don't seem to care, either ... even though the eternal flame dedicated in 1976 humbly asks for company. I was transfixed by this unexpected site and honored to pay my respects. I stayed there for a long time, almost able to hear the the cries of pain coming from soldiers in their final hour. I wondered what went through their minds as they took their last breaths ... if they thought they were dying for a greater good or a lost cause.
My trance was broken by a bell ringing from the direction of Independence Hall. I hoped the souls of the men buried beneath me could hear the sound -- the same they would have heard upon the signing of the U.S. Constitution a decade later ... a toll letting them know the fledgling nation they gave their lives to creating did in fact survive, and that we are ever-thankful for the sacrifice they made.
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