By The Honorable James E. Lockemy
I am writing in the early morning hours of April 19, 2025. My thoughts are drifting to a small village in New England where a man, most have never heard of, died over two centuries ago.
On a green in Lexington, Massachusetts, Jonathan Harrington stood with his friends around this time 250 years ago to face a segment of the British army that was headed to the neighboring town of Concord to confiscate munitions and arrest “Sons of Liberty” agitators, John Hancock and Sam Adams. The Commander had decided to send a segment of his Army into Lexington to make sure there would be no attack from behind as they passed this little village.
This was over a year before there was a Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights were well over a decade from existence, and even several months before George Washington would be the Commander in Chief of the American army. Jonathan would die that day when the British soldiers began firing on him and his fellow merchants and farmers. After the musket ball pierced his body and with his life blood pouring on to the beautiful grass of the Green, he could only think of trying to get to his home which was situated around the Green about 60 yards away where his wife and children waited for him to come back home that day as he had every day after the “Minute Men” engaged in their drills. This, however, was no drill. He was shot and was dying. He reached the front steps of his house where his wife and children, hearing the shots, awaited him in shock and horror. He dragged himself into her warm embrace and looked up from her lap as they weeped. One wonders, what was he thinking as life slowly slipped away? He was not a soldier of any organized Army and no United States of America existed? Why did he stand there against a British army that was known as the most powerful force on earth? Why was he now leaving a widow and orphans with no means of support or assistance? What made this worth his life?
We do not know what Jonathan said as he died in the arms of his wife and family that day. We do know however, thanks to historians of this period, the thoughts of many in America during that time. Although a Continental Congress of delegates from each colony tried to put forth a unified American front, most people in the thirteen colonies had no feel of unity with the rest. It was not an “America First” purpose as much as an individual one. Let us look briefly at some of the reasons that Jonathan Harrington was willing to die with other Americans that day and that inspired thousands of others to give their lives in the American Revolution resulting in the creation of the what we celebrate today as the beacon of freedom and liberty—-the United States of America.
A month before Lexington and Concord and “the shot heard ‘round the World”, Patrick Henry had declared, “ I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” His words were that of an individual trying to convince other individuals of the treasure of liberty and the price that one was willing to pay in trying to achieve and maintain it. The same price defenders of our freedoms have been willing to pay and have paid in locales on this continent and in far away places. The American soldier, sailor, airman or marine risks everything not for a thought of government but for the precious individual liberty that we all cherish. That liberty that is shared and guaranteed to the soldier and the soldier’s family foremost above any thoughts of government or monetary benefit.
Although these thoughts of individual liberty can be seen from the writings of Paul and other religious leaders of all faiths, in America we usually look to the words of paragraph 39 of the original Magna Carta of 1215 as the beginning of American individual liberty. There individuals are guaranteed the rights of due process and the protections of the law. The writings of Locke, Montesquieu and people writing pamphlets like Pennsylvania farmer John Dickinson assert the purpose of government is not to have a collective power or to have an object for us to pledge allegiance but is a vehicle to protect the rights of individuals.
When Blackstone wrote his famous Commentaries in 1765, his first and foremost reason for law is “to maintain and regulate these absolute rights of individuals.” His publication was more popular in the American Colonies than in his native Great Britain. They were read with intensity and inspiration in all the colonies from Georgia and South Carolina to New Hampshire and Massachusetts. One has to feel that Jonathan Harrington was aware of the value and priceless worth of individual rights. It was in this spirit that in 1776, Jefferson wrote that “all are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”. Notice how the words “Creator” and “Rights” are both capitalized as if both are worthy of special places in life.
We could continue to cite examples like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and even court cases and statutory laws that glare with professions of individual liberty but we can now get a feel for what must have inspired Jonathan Harrington to give his life on that early morning 250 years ago. It is a sense of individual liberty that is not just embodied in a nationalist thought of country but is something much more important. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence states that the only purpose of government is “to secure these rights”. It is through law enacted by the people that accomplishes this sacred goal. So as we approach the 250th Anniversary of the adoption of this treasured declaration and as we remember Jonathan Harrington dying in the lap of his grieving wife and children, let us not forget it is not a government we celebrate but the individual rights and liberties that the government guarantees and protects that we cherish and for which we are willing to give, as Lincoln said, “the last full measure of devotion”.
INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY: ‘With Certain Unalienable Rights’
