Patriot's day celebrates the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington & Concord, the first of the War. Sam spoke on the Cambridge common in celebration of the Holiday.
His Speech Follows:
Patriot’s Day Speech
April 21, 2008
Today is Patriot’s Day. Today we are all Patriots.
Today is the day we remember the men who assembled and fought on this Common, and on greens and Commons throughout eastern Massachusetts, 233 years ago this week.
From that first night on April 18, 1775 when Paul Revere got his signal, two, by sea, from the Old North Church in Boston and set out on his ride north and west from the Charlestown shore while his fellow rider William Dawes came up through Harvard Square … past the Common where we now stand … our new nation, not yet fully conceived, started a remarkable journey whose legacy is still being created today.
You may know that fateful April night so long ago from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who lived right down the street here, in his poem that starts:
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
Longfellow immortalized that moment, and created for America an indelible image of the very birth of our nation. He continued –
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,---
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
Clearly, Longfellow knew what he was doing.
1775 was a heady time. It was a time filled with danger, and it was a time filled with promise.
April 18th sounded the alarm, then in quick succession in the days and weeks that followed a series of events would have huge consequences for their time, and for ours.
The next day on Lexington Green and at the Old North Bridge in Concord, the first battles of the war were fought and “shot heard round the world” was fired.
Two short months later, in June of 1775, the battle of Bunker Hill took place, 3 miles from where we are now.
1 month after that General George Washington took command of the newly formed American Army under that tree over there.
All of these events took place in a short 11 weeks time Lexington and Concord; Bunker Hill; the Creation of the American Army.
And they all happened within 10 miles of where we stand now.
Because of this proximity … our physical closeness to these important events … we here bear a special relationship to this piece of American history.
It is not just that we walk the same streets they did, inhabit the same villages, tread the same paths that they did.
Their footprint of history is here, that is true.
But something more is here too.
What started, as a local rebellion became a credo for a whole nation a nation that has had a profound impact on the whole world.
Our remembrance is not simply to preserve this memory for others, it is also to reaffirm it for ourselves.
And if that is so, then it bears asking then, what makes a patriot?
We know one thing for sure, to be a patriot is to hear the call of your country in a time of need and to respond as best you know how.
Capt. John Parker did that very thing on Lexington Green in 1775. He told his men, “Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here." They did, and that war did begin there. With those words, a Revolution was under way.
But he is not the only one who ever risked in a time of great challenge.
I am always drawn to remember that our first acts of patriotism were acts of defiance, they were acts of dissent, and they were acts of rebellion.
Taken together, they were acts of independence.
Here is another who took great risk in their beliefs, and it is an example I admire –
Jeannette Rankin was the very first woman ever elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. A Republican who was fundamentally opposed to war, she voted against entry into World War I and 24 years later, she stood all by herself, literally alone, voting against the United States entry into World War II, saying “As a woman, I can't go to war and I refuse to send anyone else.”
It ended her career in politics. But she swam against the overwhelming sentiment of her peers and of her times.
It was her act of liberty founded on her own belief of what was best for the nation.
And that gives us the second clue as to what makes a patriot: a strong believer in our freedoms with the tremendous responsibilities that come with its tremendous liberty.
And none is greater than the right to speak our minds.
On this Patriot’s Day, we must take joy in both:
We must take joy in Capt. John Parker who rallied his troops, and those who joined him on that day, and since.
In March this year, Cambridge welcomed back the 181st Infantry of the Massachusetts National Guard, just returned from a tour in Iraq, a unit that can trace its heritage back to Lexington and Concord.
We must take joy in Jeannette Rankin and all those who have joined her ranks, before and since. They stood alone, not to win favor, but because they thought it was right.
That takes courage too.
And we must remember one other thing –
On this Patriots day, filled with festivities like this one and the Boston Marathon, we must also remember that tomorrow is Earth Day and that a whole new century stretches out before us, with a whole new set of challenges.
The example we remember today, laid down over two centuries ago, should tell us all we need to know about courage, and about sacrifice, and about liberty to show us the way.
That is what we can celebrate today. Happy Patriots Day.
