Today is July 4th, 2009, and today, Americans celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks, barbecues and friends.  We pass bottles of wine and cheer as fire comes to life in firepits on the beach.  We get incessantly drunk (at least, the very young and legal of us do), clanging beer bottles together and singing drunken melodies.  Some of us follow our base urges into the night, while others fall into a sleeping stupor and will wake up tomorrow with a terrible headache and a serious need for hydration.

Yes, I realize that this is a very brusque look at our celebrations, but to bring clarity to how few people actually consider what freedom costs, I decided to give this example before hashing out the facts. Onwards.

The Declaration of Independence, one of our most sacred documents as Americans, was signed by 56 men.  Of those 56, 24 were lawyers and jurors.  11 were merchants.  9 were farmers and plantation owners.  These were all considered the smartest of the smart, but truly, they were the bravest of the brave, knowing full well that they were signing their death warrants and those of their families to fight behind a principle that they so believed in.

Here is the true cost of our freedom:

1. Five were captured and tortured by the British before they died behind bars.
2. Twelve lost their homes when the British soldiers burnt them and everything they owned.
3. Two had sons that were captured and never heard from again.  Two others sacrificed them to the mire of war.
   
4. Nine physically fought in the Revolutionary War and lost their lives.
5. One saw all of his boats sunk by the British and had to sell everything to pay what he lost in those fateful hours, including his home and possessions.  Once a rich merchant sailor, he died penniless.
6. One was so constantly harassed by the British that he put his family in hiding; his property was ransacked and stolen, leaving him, also, penniless.
   
7. Eight had their homes broken into, vandalized, and stolen from.
8. One lost his home to General Cornwalis and Cornwalis used it as an HQ for the British Military.  His home was destroyed when he urged Washington to open fire and take out the occupants within.  This signor died bankrupt at his own hand when his home was lost.
   
9. One lost his properties to the British when they were seized on the England side of the pond.  His wife was also lost when she was captured and tortured, dying only a few months later.
   
10. One had to flee his dying wife's beside; his thirteen children also fled, never to be heard from again.  He lived in the forest for years, returning to find himself without any family at all.

Even in a simpler time, our freedom was never free. These men, the ones who put their name on the document that began the war to give us this glorious country, knew precisely what they were getting into.  Their families knew the risk they were taking alongside these men and accepted it.  They were the epitome of brave, and yet...

yet...

We sit in our backyards and grill instead of taking a moment to remember the fallen, the ones who lost everything, every penny, their homes, even their families, to give us our freedom from the oppression the British empire forced on us so many years ago. 

So please, everyone, as you're pulling out the BBQ and laying down the kabobs, take the time to consider what it really is to be free, to not worry about things like conscription and tariffs.  Remember, even for a second, the real cost of freedom, and enjoy your Fourth in such a way that you celebrate those freedoms and the lives lost that afford us those freedoms.

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

~Francis Scott Key, "Defense of Fort McHenry"