newstranscript.gmnews.com/news/2008/0702/front_page/019.htmlDeclaration of Independence to be read at borough hall
BY CLARE MARIE CELANO Staff Writer
FREEHOLD - The spirit that helped found the United States of America will be displayed on July Fourth when residents experience the celebration of Independence Day the way the country's forefathers did in days gone by.
At 9 a.m. July Fourth, volunteers will gather to read the Declaration of Independence on the steps of borough hall, West Main Street, Freehold Borough. The names of everyone who signed the document, which declared America to be free of Great Britain's rule will also be read aloud.
Anyone who would like to help read the declaration may come to borough hall at 8:30 a.m. when the parts will be handed out to readers.
Freehold Borough historian Kevin Coyne invited everyone to attend and to participate in the reading ceremony.
"The document means a lot more when you read it aloud. I think people understand it better. Come and try it," he said. "It alters the understanding of the holiday."
This will mark Freehold's fifth anniversary of the July Fourth ceremony.
Coyne said the event is a tribute to Americans and to Samuel Sagotsky, a longtime borough resident who died in 2004. He said Sagotsky had often talked about reviving the tradition of reading the declaration publicly as was done annually for at least 100 years after it was signed in 1776.
Coyne said although Sagotsky did not live to see the ceremony revived in Freehold, he thought the event would be a fitting tribute to Sagotsky.
Nolan Higgins, a former chief of the Freehold Fire Department, will once again appear as Thomas Jefferson.
He will start the ceremony by reading the opening of the Declaration of Independence, which states, "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."
The document lays out the colonies' grievances against the king and concludes with the following passage: "We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, 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; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.
"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."
The declaration did not in and of itself make the United States free; independence came only after the bloody Revolutionary War was fought, in part, throughout New Jersey.
Higgins said the Freehold Fire Department will toll the firehouse bell 13 times in honor of the 13 original colonies. Every colony will be announced and a reader will announce the names of that colony's signers. Firefighters will raise a 13-star flag in honor of the event.
The Bethel AME Church choir, Freehold Township, will perform "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
