Today is a day in which we celebrate our freedom. Most of us enjoy the freedom from a day of labor and the freedom to gather with friends and family. DaMan and I recently finished watching a documentary on John Adams. Fascinating to be submerged into the world that forged what we know as the Declaration of Independence.

Today we walked around downtown Fredericksburg Maryland with friends and saw patriotic decorations everywhere. I couldn’t help but remember some quotes from the Founding Fathers of our Nation as we ambled around enjoying the beautiful hot weather.

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
John Adams (The Works of John Adams, ed. C. F. Adams, Boston: Little, Brown Co., 1851, 4:31)

Old style flag storefront decoration

“He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of this country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man….The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.”
Samuel Adams

Antique sign

Storefront Decoration

“Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure (and) which insures to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.”
Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence

American Flag flying in Fredericksburg Maryland

“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”
Patrick Henry

Flag over Chicago