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Can you imagine what might have gone on in the minds of members of the Continental Congress in July of 1776?

These men were endangering not only their own lives but those of their families back home in the 13 colonies. They were about to take on the most powerful military power in the world of their time.

If their rebellion failed, they would be hanged, their property seized and no telling what could happen to their loved ones.

That took incredible courage. But miracle of miracles, after years of setbacks, the French joined the fight and their navy and militia surrounded the British forces at Yorktown and forced their surrender.

The new nation survived a bloody birth.

That is what we honor today.

On July 4, 1986, President Reagan spoke on the USS John F. Kennedy in New York Harbor about his predecessors.

“All through our history, our Presidents and leaders have spoken of national unity and warned us that the real obstacle to moving forward the boundaries of freedom, the only permanent danger to the hope that is America, comes from within,” he said.

“It’s easy enough to dismiss this as a kind of familiar exhortation. Yet the truth is that even 2 of our greatest Founding Fathers, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, once learned this lesson late in life.

“They’d worked closely together in Philadelphia for independence. But once that was gained and a government was formed, something called partisan politics began to get in the way. After a bitter and divisive campaign, Jefferson defeated Adams for the Presidency in 1800. Adams slipped away to Boston, disappointed and bitter.

“For years their estrangement lasted. But then when both had retired, Jefferson at 68 to Monticello and Adams at 76 to Quincy, they began through their letters to speak again to each other. Letters that discussed ... the loss of loved ones, the mystery of grief and sorrow, the importance of religion, and of course the last thoughts, the final hopes of 2 old men, 2 great patriarchs, for the country that they had helped to found and loved so deeply.

“It carries me back,” Jefferson wrote, “to the times when ... we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right to self-government. Laboring always at the same oar, with some wave ... threatening to overwhelm us ... we rowed through the storm.”

President Reagan called this “their last gift to us, this lesson in brotherhood, in tolerance for each other, this insight into America’s strength as a nation. And when both died on the same day within hours of each other, that date was July 4th, 50 years exactly after their first gift to us, the Declaration of Independence.

“It falls to us to keep faith with them and all the great Americans of our past. If there’s one impression I carry with me ... it is this: that the things that unite us — America’s past of which we’re so proud, our hopes and aspirations for the future of the world and this much-loved country — these things far outweigh what little divides us.”

In these politically divisive times, it is a blessing to be reminded that we are all Americans and this country belongs to us.

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