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like the asters in heaven.
You'll be the god for you haven't got class.
Not all you haven't got class.
Now it draws the applause of the masses.
When you wear the pals like the swellest of swells, you can pass any mirror and smile.
You either got or you haven't got.
Child or you haven't got.
Style and charm seem to go on and on.
A flower's not a flower
if it's wielded.
A hat's not a hat till it's
Two, three.
of the stars.
Good morning from the Herald High Noon Central.
I said...
We're safe all
Music of the Stars.
Julie London.
Not too many songs about July.
This is Souter Finnegan.
And concert on Broadway.
Theresa Brewer, remember her?
This is the Gunmiller Army Air Force Band.
Music of the Star.
Starliner!
A close-up of me and a close-up of me.
A close-up of three all together.
A high note for me and a note for me.
Some together.
Our singing won't win us any medallions.
More likely they'll smack us with scallions.
An Italian.
The way.
Break it up.
Together.
When trouble appears.
Stand off the fear.
Like three muskets, tears in a row.
Okay.
Oh, we may leave, but we'll return.
Like Maxine.
Maxine.
Candles burn.
Together.
Wherever we go.
And I feel a pain.
And I feel a pain.
I will take no vacay.
Together.
If my stock should fail, like your tongue, and if my stock should fail, we'll all go to jail, but together.
As friends, we will share life's greatest chance to come.
What have I got here?
The Everly Brothers?
Yes.
The setbacks as well as the
advances.
And will we share each other romances?
Well, I've given all my old telephone numbers to Charlie Weaver.
My bookmaker will love your business.
In Sapporo, like umpapa, like Eva,
Magda,
and Cha-Cha, together, wherever we go.
My pants, like paper, get the clip.
My pants, like Elvis, hit the hips, together.
for the audience of your love network, but particularly to the home folk in Vegas.
And for my lady and for little Sam and big mama.
I dreamed a dream in times gone by when hope was high and life worth living.
that love would never die.
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.
But I was young and unafraid.
And dreams were made and used and wasted.
There was no ransom to be paid.
No song and song, no wine untasted.
But the tigers come at night with their voices soft as thunder.
As they tear your hope apart.
As they turn your dreams to shame.
I slept this summer.
The hot July night in 1776, Benjamin Franklin was aroused from his work by the call of destiny.
Hey, you in there, Ben?
Who's that, Sylvia?
It's the call
of destiny.
Come on, take a look through the curtains
there.
It's Tom Jefferson.
What, again?
There's no good enough.
The truth is, we were just going out of town for the weekend.
But it's only Wednesday.
Yeah.
Well, you know, a penny saved is a penny earned.
What does that got to do with anything, Franklin?
I don't know.
It's the first thing that came into my head.
I was just making conversation.
An idle brain is a devil's playground, you know?
So you're pretty good at that, aren't you?
Yeah,
there's some new wise sayings I just made
up.
Wise sayings?
I call them wise sayings.
What can I do for
you?
Well, I got this petition here.
I've been circulating around the neighborhood.
I thought you'd like to sign it.
It's called the Declaration of Independence.
Yeah, I heard about that.
Sounds a little suspect, if you ask me.
What do you mean, suspect?
Well, you're advocating the overthrow of the British government by force and violence, aren't you?
Well,
yeah, yeah, but we've had it with that royal jazz.
Who's we?
Well, all the guys.
Who's all the guys?
Oh, George, Jim, Madison, Alex, Hamilton, Johnny Adams.
You know all the guys.
The lunatic friend.
Oh, they are not.
Bunch
of wild-eyed radicals.
Professional liberals don't kid me
in.
Oh, you call George Washington a wild-eyed radical?
Washington?
I don't see his name on there.
No, but he promised a sign,
eh?
Oh, yeah.
That's George for you.
Talks up a storm with him wooden teeth.
Can't shut him off.
When it comes time to put the name on the old Parchment of Rooney, try and find him.
Hey, what are you so surly about today?
Surly to bed and surly to rise.
All
right, all right.
Let's knock off the one line jokes and sign the petition.
What do you say, huh,
fella?
Let me skim down it here.
And we're in the course of human events.
And so and so and so and so and so and so and so and so and so and so and so and so and so and so and so and so that among these are life, liberty, and the perfute of happiness.
That's pursuit of happiness.
Well, all your essays look like F's here.
Well, it's stylish.
Oh, I see.
It's in.
It's very in.
Oh, well, if it's in, we therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, so and so and so and so, solemnly publish and declare that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown and so on.
A little overboard.
Well, you write this?
Yeah, yeah, I knocked it out.
It's just a first draft.
Well, I tell you, why don't you leave it with me and I'll mail it in?
Oh,
come on.
Oh, I tell you, Tom, let me say this.
I'm with you in spirit.
I'm sure you understand that.
But, you know, I got a plate conservative.
I'm a businessman.
Yeah.
I got the printing business going pretty good.
Almanac made Book of the Month.
And then I got the inventions, you know, got pretty good distribution on the stoves now.
And, of course, every Saturday evening I bring out the mag.
The what?
Magazine.
Oh.
Well, that reminds me, that artist I sent by, do you look at this stuff?
You mean the Rockwell
Boy?
Skinny kid
with the pipe?
Yeah, that's
a kid.
Yeah, glanced at it, and he's too far out for
me.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I know you gotta play it safe.
Yeah.
But getting back to the signing of the petition, how about it?
Well...
It's
a harmless paper.
Oh, sure, harmless.
I know how these things happen.
You go to a couple of harmless parties, sign a harmless petition, and forget all about it.
Ten years later, you get holed up before a committee.
No, thank you.
I'm not going to spend the rest of my life writing in Europe.
Oh, come on.
Come on what?
Come on
and put your name on the dotted line.
I got to be particular what I sign.
It's just a piece of paper.
Just a piece of paper.
That's what you say.
Come on and put your signature on the list.
It looks to have a very subversive twist.
How silly to assume it.
Won't you nom de plume it today?
You're so skittish
who possibly could care if you do.
The Un-British Activities
Committee.
That's who.
Let's have a little drink-o and fill the quill.
It sounds a little pink-o to me, but still.
Knock off the timid manner if you want a banner to raise.
You must take a stamp, a stamp, a stamp for this brave, for this brave, new life, new land, for who wants who wants to live, to live so conserved or concerned, but if, if a divv, I don't ditch, he don't disagree, agree, but a man can't be too careful what he's done.
Well, if
I sign it, will you renew your subscription?
Yeah, if you promise not to keep throwing it on the rough.
Well,
man.
If it
isn't on the rough, it's in the rose bushes or in the mud.
Well, I said I didn't want to use to be here, you know.
Besides, it's hard to hit the porch from a horse.
Now, come on.
All we want to do is hold a few truths to be self-evident.
You sure it's not going to start a revolution or anything?
Trust
me.
OK, give it to me.
You got a quill on you?
Here you
go.
All right.
Look at this show-off Hancock, will you?
Pretty flamboyant signature for an insurance man.
Ah, you did a good thing, Ben.
You won't be sorry.
Now, if I can just get another three or four guys, we'll be all set.
Well, I tell you one thing.
What's that?
You better get them to sign it in the next couple of days before they all take off for the Fourth of July weekend.
The United States of America was born in 1776, but it was conceived 169 years before that.
The earliest settlers had watered the new world with much sweat.
They had built substantial holdings for themselves, for their families.
And when the time came to separate themselves from a tyranny and ocean away, at best it meant starting all over again after the ravages of war.
Researching what you're about to hear.
gave a whole new dimension to my reverence for our nation's first citizens.
All others of the world's revolutions before and since were initiated by men who had nothing to lose.
Nothing to lose.
Our founders had everything to lose and nothing to gain except one thing.
I'm Paul Harvey.
You remember the cherry tree fiction, a long time after you have forgotten the more earth-shaking history-making episodes in the life of George Washington.
You have misplaced in your memory the details of Ben Franklin's statesmanship, but you remember his flying a kite.
Joyce Kilmer was a great military hero.
But the only thing you personally recall about him is his poetic tribute to trees.
Maybe of this current decade that which will be remembered best will not be its wars and its moon rockets or its crumbling Frontiers or the giants who lived and died maybe all that'll survive to linger in the day-by-day vocabulary of generations yet unborn may be the The songs of a Memphis minstrel or the reincarnation of electric automobiles But for any eve of the 4th of July
I, Paul Harvey, do herewith bequeath unto you something to remember.
You may not be able to quote one line from the Declaration of Independence at this moment.
Henceforth, you'll always be able to quote at least one line.
It's in the last paragraph where you will recall, when I remind you, it says, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
In the Pennsylvania State House that's now called Independence Hall in Philadelphia,
The best men from each of the colonies sat down together.
This was a very fortunate hour in our nation's history.
One of those rare occasions in the lives of men when we had greatness to spare.
These were men of means.
Well educated, 24 were lawyers and jurists.
Nine were farmers, owners of large plantations.
On June 11, a committee sat down to draw up a Declaration of Independence.
We were going to tell the British Fatherland, no more rule by redcoats.
Below the dam, a ruthless foreign rule, a stream of freedom was running shallow and muddy.
And we were going to light a fuse to dynamite that dam.
This pact, as Burke later put it, was a partnership between the living and the dead and the yet unborn.
There was no bigotry.
There was no demagoguery in this group.
all had shared hardships.
Jefferson finished a draft of the document in 17 days.
Congress adopted it in July in so much as familiar history, but now King George III had denounced all rebels in America as traitors, punishment for treason was hanging.
The names now so familiar to you from the several signatures on that Declaration of Independence, the names were kept secret for six
months, for each knew the full meaning of that magnificent last paragraph in which his signature pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor.
Fifty-six men placed their names beneath that pledge.
Fifty-six men knew when they signed that they were risking everything.
They knew if they won this fight, the best they could expect would be years of hardship and a struggling nation.
And if they lost, they'd face a hangman's rope.
But they signed the pledge.
And here is the documented fate of that gallant 56.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, wealthy planter, trader, saw his ships swept from the seas to pay his debts.
He lost his home and all of his properties and died in rags.
Thomas Lynch Jr., who signed that pledge, was a third-generation rice grower, aristocrat, large plantation owner.
After he signed, his health failed.
His wife and he set out for France to regain his failing health.
Their ship never got to France, was never heard from again.
Thomas McKean of Delaware was so harassed by the enemy that he was forced to move his family five times in five months.
He served in Congress without pay.
his family in poverty and in hiding.
Vandals looted the properties of Ellery and Clymer and Hall and Gwinnett and Walton and Hayward and Rutledge and Middleton.
Thomas Nelson Jr.
of Virginia raised it two million dollars on his own signature to provision our allies, the French fleet.
After the war, he personally paid back the loans, wiped out his entire estate, and he was never reimbursed by his government.
In the final battle for Yorktown, he Nelson urged General Washington to fire on his Nelson's own home, which was occupied by Cornwallis.
It was destroyed.
Thomas Nelson Jr.
had pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor.
The Hessians seized the home of Francis Hopkinson of New Jersey.
Francis Lewis had his home and everything destroyed, his wife imprisoned.
She died within a few months.
Richard Stockton, who signed that declaration, was captured and mistreated.
His health broken to the extent that he died at 51.
His estate was pillaged.
Thomas Hayward Jr.
was captured when Charleston fell.
John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside while she was dying.
Their 13 children fled in old directions for their lives.
His fields and grist mill were laid waste.
For more than a year, he lived in forests and caves and returned home after the war to find his wife dead, his children gone, his properties gone, and he died a few weeks later of exhaustion and a broken heart.
Lewis Morris saw his land destroyed, his family scattered.
Philip Livingston died within a few months from the hardships of the war.
John Hancock, history remembers best due to a quirk of fate rather than anything he stood for, that great sweeping signature attesting to his vanity, towers over the others, one of the wealthiest men in New England.
And yet he stood outside Boston one terrible night of the war.
And he said, burn Boston, though it makes John Hancock a beggar, if the public good requires it.
By God, I have had this Congress.
For ten years, King George and his parliament have gulled, cullied, and diddled these colonies, and still this Congress refuses to grant any of my proposals on independence, even so much as the courtesy of open debate.
Good God, what in hell are they waiting for?
to have John.
Of the 56, few were long to survive.
Five were captured by the British and tortured before they died.
Twelve had their homes from Rhode Island to Charleston, sacked, looted, occupied by the enemy or burned.
Two lost their sons in the army.
One had two sons captured.
Nine of the 56 died in the war from its hardships or from its more merciful bullets.
I don't know.
What impression you had had of the men who met that summer in Philadelphia?
But I think it's important that we remember this about them.
They were not poor men.
They were not wild-eyed pirates.
These were men of means.
They were rich men, most of them, and had enjoyed much ease and luxury in their personal living.
Not hungry men.
Certainly not terrorists, not irresponsible.
Malcontents, not fanatical incendiaries.
These men were prosperous men, wealthy landowners.
They were substantially secure in their prosperity.
They had everything to lose.
But they considered liberty, and this is as much as I shall say of it.
They had learned that liberty is so much more important than security that they pledged their lives.
Their fortunes and their sacred honor.
And they fulfilled their pledge.
They paid the price.
And freedom was born.
Mr. Secretary, is the declaration ready to be signed?
It
is.
Very well.
Call the roll.
New Hampshire.
Dr. Josiah Bartlett.
Massachusetts.
Mr. John Adams.
Rhode Island.
Mr. Stephen Popkins.
Connecticut.
Mr. Roger Sherman.
New York.
Mr. Lewis Morris.
New Jersey.
The Reverend Jonathan Witherspoon.
Pennsylvania.
Dr. Benjamin Franklin.
Delaware.
Mr. Caesar Rodney.
Maryland.
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