Within Reach

In the Great Room of Faneuil Hall, beneath a towering painted mural of Daniel Webster addressing an august nineteenth century assemblage, a twenty-first century audience bellowed “Fie!” 

Heads swiveled and people shifted in their seats, some fanning themselves with the cards in their hands. It was a tee-shirt and shorts crowd on a sweltering July 4^th in 2026, but the words spoken and the cause in dispute were those of 1776. A  woman in a red and whited striped camisole read the words of Farmer Joan Hackett and glared at those opposing her claim. “Great Britain has always had our best interests at heart. Without the empire we are defenseless against the ambitious, dangerous nations of Europe. London has always served us as a noble guide and governor. It’s a mistake voting for independence!” 

“Fie! Fie!” Despite the words, the mood was rowdy and exuberant as the bearded moderator in a lavender greatcoat and flounce of white collar banged his gavel. “Enough! In fairness we must hear both sides! Who else would speak?”

Hands flew up around the room, Dave’s among them. He, too, had been given a card by a uniformed National Park Service member and was eager to play his role. But a man in a blue “Boston 250” tee-shirt rose in the back and introduced himself. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am Samuel Adams.”

“Ahhhhh…” crowed the crowd in admiring recognition and perhaps envy that this individual had drawn the card of the famous Revolutionary leader. 

With his shoulders back and spine straight, and perhaps an imagined tri-corn hat atop his head, “Mr. Adams” hissed, “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom – go from us in peace.”

For clarity’s sake, I think Mr. Adams could have improved his grammar, but knowing his intent, the room erupted. “Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!” and no amount of gavel rapping could quiet the cheers nor dampen the spirits of these pilgrims to the Cradle of Liberty for America’s 250^th.  In the row in front of us, a young lad in Colonial garb leapt to his feet and waved his tri-corn hat in the air. Like most others in the room, his face was animated, his smile broad at this effort to recapture the energy of the centuries old debate. 

While the cards distributed represented the actual words of wigmakers, midwives, seamstresses, and coopers, many of the day’s visitors were women, children, and people of color who would have been denied entry to this hall in 1776, not being white men of property. Without doubt, that spurred the vehemence of the speakers: a wish to give life and voice to those suppressed in the past. Hear us now! 

A woman, once given leave to address the room, rose and announced, “I am Abigail Adams.” 

I couldn’t help myself, “Go Abigail!” I cried, knowing what she would say. In truth, her words were never said aloud, but written to her husband, John, as he and his fellow Founders deliberated at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. 

“… By the way,” her stand-in said, “in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power in the hands of the husbands.” The woman paused, her gaze sweeping the room as she raised an eyebrow and smiled a thin, purposeful, smile. “Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

“Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!” We roared our support for this Founding Mother who was home doing it all in her husband’s absence: running the farm, caring for children, and attending to finances. 

At the end of the program, audience members were invited to come to the podium to sign a document in support of independence. The queue was long, and I felt proud to scratch my name with that feathered quill. As I passed it off to the next person in line, the moderator said, “Thanks for committing treason while you’re in town.” 

Many forget, since the battle was won and the Founding Fathers glorified in history’s tomes, paintings, and sculpture, that in signing the Declaration, under British law, they were traitors. They did not take lightly the final sentence above their signatures: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”  

How I wish honor carried more weight in government in 2026.     

Dave and I had begun our day in Boston in the shadow of the old State House with thousands of others braving sweltering heat to hear the Declaration of Independence read. Why had we not thought to wear red, white, and blue? Everyone else had. A kind woman gave my navy sundress an appraising look and said, “I have two flags.  Would you like one?”

Of course. Thank you. 

We chatted with those around us, folks from Michigan, California, and New Orleans, some in Boston for the first time, drawn, as we were, to celebrate this momentous anniversary in the city so pivotal to the Revolution. 

Powerful amps boomed Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” Lynyrd Skynrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” and John Denver’s “Country Road.” The playlist was perfect, and we, united in music and celebration, swayed and sang along.  

When the simple drumbeat strains of Ray Charles version of “America the Beautiful” began, my nose prickled with wistfulness; the ideals of which he sings seem so elusive. Charles opens, not with the traditional first verse, but with the third: 

“O beautiful for heroes proved 

In liberating strife.

Who more than self their country loved

And mercy more than life!”

In this time of power hunger, greed, deportations and detention camps, those words are poignant. And the final line, “And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea” could break your heart. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that more people joined in on “American Pie.” 

Ultimately, Captain Commanding John S. Damiano of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts appeared on the State House balcony above us and read the grievances against King George III that sparked calls for Independence, some unnervingly pertinent today. We were many thousands beneath that balcony and filling Congress Street as far as Faneuil Hall, but we listened quietly, sometimes ruefully nodding or shaking heads at the mention of laws abolished, loyalist judges appointed, trade disrupted, and swarms of officers sent to harass the people. 

It was hot, so hot, and these are worrisome times. Who knew, in that multi-colored crowd of citizens and tourists, where political allegiances lay? Yet, at the conclusion of the reading, confetti shot to the skies and showered us with red, white, and blue. People of every age hooted with delight, faces upraised, hands outstretched, while children scampered about striving to catch drifting scraps. And one could imagine, one could feel, that brotherhood was within reach. 

 

 

A Celebration's Postscript

What’s that sound?  It had been a late night prior, and the heavy brocade curtains in our room at Boston’s Parker House effectively muffled the outside world. But as I shook off sleep, I thought I heard… drums?

 

Omigod! Drums! “Dave! Wake up! The parade’s starting!”

 

It was 9:30 AM, the morning of the 4^th of July, and the Declaration of Independence would be read at 10:00 from the balcony of the Old State House as it was to Bostonians 245 years ago. One of our reasons for this visit to Boston was to be present for that reading. 

 

We scurried about our 7^th floor room, donning jeans and jackets, and grabbing raincoats and umbrellas, then dashed to the elevator. The doors opened to reveal a couple in full red, white, and blue regalia: beads, hats, and tee-shirts. Our lack of visible patriotism was ever more evident when we left the hotel and joined a similarly bedecked throng heading to the square, the trill and thump of fife and drum coaxing our footfalls into a rhythmic march. Thankfully, a city employee was distributing small flags which we gratefully accepted. 

 

After days of rain, the heavens were kind, gray and churning, but so far, dry. With a boom of muskets and pounding of drums, the various bands and corps dressed in colonial garb assembled in the square beneath the East side balcony of the three hundred years-old brick building. Small children were lifted to parents’ shoulders as people poured in from surrounding streets. Strangers smiled at strangers and inched aside to allow others to pass as everyone pressed closer to get a good view.

After this year of Covid, mask-contention, insurrection, shootings, and racial strife, it seemed hopeful and fitting to merge with the multitude for greetings from Boston’s Black mayor, Kim Janey, and Black baritone Dana Whiteside’s magnificent rendition of “God Bless America.” Still, as we jostled cheerfully below the balcony, I couldn’t escape troubling images of other happy celebrants - at a concert in Las Vegas or a night club in Orlando - and headlines, crosshairs, and targets. While no shots rang out, this year’s reading seemed to hold added weight, as I pondered recent events and the country’s opposing factions. How might their interpretations differ in listening to the Declaration’s justifications for separation from a government seen as grievously flawed? 

 

In the Founders’ list of accusations against King George, I heard reflected Trump’s disregard for American traditions, laws, and public health: to me, grounds for impeachment, conviction, and removal. Conversely, those who stormed the Capitol on January 6^th claiming the revolutionary fervor of 1776 might point to some of the same statements as validation for their assault. 

 

The pandemic and January’s uprising were awakenings: we are not immune to the plagues and issues that challenged our ancestors. They are ever-emerging, and ours to address. Never have the people of the past seemed more real. 

 

During a 2019 visit to Boston’s Faneuil Hall, Dave and I participated in a reenactment of a debate over the Fugitive Slave Law and 1854 arrest of Anthony Burns. Burns had escaped slavery and lived in Boston as a free man for two years, but a probate judge bowed to the federal law and Burns was returned to his owner in Virginia. Bostonians erupted at this outcome, and one Amos Adams Lawrence remarked, “[W]e went to bed one night old fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs & waked up stark mad Abolitionists."

 

For the reenactment, index cards bearing the names and assertions of those who’d attended the 1854 meeting were distributed to people who wished to take part. Slavery was abolished in 1865, but the injustices and discrimination of recent years infused the readings of the men, women, and children of all ages and colors who volunteered with an outrage as urgent in 2019 – and 2021 - as when Andrew Burns was led away in chains. The fury we gave those borrowed words was driven also by a sense of responsibility to those confined to the balcony in 1854. At that time, most of us would have been silenced: only white, male property owners had the right to speak.  

 

 

Truth is objective, but the reporting of history is not. It has depended on who held the pen, who knew how to write, who was allowed an education, and whose opinions and input were given credence. How many know the story of Anthony Burns? Or the names of suffragists Lisa Stone and Carrie Chapman Catt? Until recently, the horror of the Tulsa Massacre was largely suppressed, and the current uproar over Critical Race Theory demonstrates the resistance that remains to teaching America’s failings as well as our achievements.  

 

On Sunday, we gathered, jubilant in celebrating 245 years of democracy and progress as clouds of confetti shot skyward in a celebratory whirl. Those once silenced now can speak. Tragedy and activism have spurred wider awareness; and in teaching the whole story, we move forward together.

 

Epilogue: 

 

After the 1854 decision, Anthony Burns spent four months in jail in Richmond, VA and was then sold to David McDaniel of North Carolina. Fortuitously, Boston abolitionists learned of Burns’ whereabouts and raised $1300 to buy and free him. Burns went on to be educated at Oberlin College and became a Baptist preacher in Ontario, Canada. In 1862, he died of tuberculosis at the age of 28.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Expressway to Revolution

Perhaps it’s the popularity of the Broadway show “Hamilton,” or whispers from the spirits slipping unseen through our 1780’s house. Or… maybe it’s my despair at the frailty of the Constitution’s checks and balances in fending off the maelstrom of policies of an administration of aging white men unconcerned about the morale of the country or the health of the planet.  Yeah.  That might be it.  Whatever the causes, lately I have fled to history and the refuge of events resolved. Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Lincoln have been my between-the-pages companions.

So, when I learned that a Museum of the American Revolution had opened in Philadelphia, I was eager to visit.  While home with my mother, I asked if she’d be willing to check it out with me.  Trudging brightly lighted galleries flanked with glass cases can tire anyone, and I know Mom’s not a fan of lengthy excursions, but she must have detected the plea in my voice, and trooper that she is, she agreed.

She held her concerns about hiking those halls to herself, and I kept quiet about my own worry:  city driving.  My experiences behind the wheel in big cities are limited, and have occurred only under duress.  The first, 24 years ago, was when my friend Carey was in the hospital in NYC for an emergency operation.  I was navigating those New York streets pretty well, feeling a little cocky, in fact, as I maneuvered my car, flinching only slightly at honking horns and aggressive drivers.  When I neared the hospital, I thought I had it nailed.  Confidently, I took a left turn… onto a one–way street.  OMG!!!  Cars were coming straight at me!  There was no place to go but the sidewalk!  Yes!  The sidewalk!  And that’s what I did!  Like some crazy cabbie told “Follow that car!” I cut the wheel and did a U-Turn… onto the sidewalk!  Good lord.  You understand my current reluctance…

But this was a trade-off:  a morning hike through the museum for my mom, and Lea as chauffeur through the narrow streets of Philadelphia.

Both WAZE and MOM were my guides.  We wanted to beat the tourist crowds at the museum and so, headed in just after rush hour.  The Schuylkill Expressway is a beautiful route along the river, but traffic-wise, it is no treat no matter the time.  I programmed the GPS to help us once we needed it, but we took back roads for as long as possible.  Unaware of our plan, the WAZE lady with her calm, authoritative British voice tried to convince us to take the Expressway… and Mom contradicted her every direction.

“Go left,” said the WAZE lady.

“Not yet,” said Mom.  “Go straight.”

“Go left,” said the WAZE lady.

“No,” said Mom.  “I think you’ll want the second light up ahead.”

“This one?”

“No.  Not yet.”

“Go left,” urged the WAZE lady.

I felt like an eager, over-anxious schoolgirl perched well forward in my seat, both hands gripping the wheel, posture erect, hoping to please everyone, but given those competing commands, unable to.

Once we reached “town,” as my parents call Philadelphia, we gave WAZE lady the lead. I thought I discerned a smug satisfaction in her tone as she led us unerringly to a parking lot a block from the museum.  “You have reached your destination!” she announced.

With the help of my two guides, I safely delivered us to the heart of early America, so my burden was lifted.  Mom’s museum march still lay ahead. 

We walked down a lane flanked by centuries-old brick buildings.  I noted an inviting tavern and filed it away as a future possibility. Several blocks ahead, I spied Independence Hall and, having not crossed its threshold since a field trip in fifth grade, felt a tug of yearning.  That stop, and the tavern, would have to wait. 

Acquiring our entrance tickets had been another minor challenge.  For years, I had taken pride in being one of the last people on the planet to carry a flip phone and gave in only when my grandson was born.  With its text, phone, GPS, and photo components, my iPhone has opened a new world.  I had no need for its other fancy capabilities, thank you very much, until it was suggested that museum tickets be purchased in advance. The day before our visit, therefore, I called Dave in Connecticut and he talked me through the process using Safari and Google. Neophyte that I was, I was wary, and as it turned out, rightly so. 

While the Viator ticket site assured me, “Your booking is paid for and confirmed,” no voucher appeared when I tapped “View Voucher,” nor when I checked my emails. After several convivial chats with Ella at the museum, Tamara at Visa, and Sarah at Viator, I was assured two tickets would be waiting for us at the will-call desk.  And Alleluia, they were.  Another potential problem overcome.

Tickets clutched tight, we turned to see a stately, but formidable, twisting staircase to the second floor galleries.  “There has to be an elevator, Mom.  There are people in wheelchairs waiting in line.”

“I know, but this will be fine.”  At 85, few things daunt my silver-haired mother, and when they do, she’s determined to best the circumstances.  She took hold of the bannister and, resolute, climbed right up. 

I loved the museum.  Open only a month, the exhibits were a mix of traditional glass cases, three-dimensional vignettes, and interactive digital screens. I could imagine the excited volley of ideas in the brainstorming sessions that led to an entire room dominated by a full-size privateer ship, available for bow to stern clambering; a movie immersion in the Battle of Brandywine where smoke and the smell of sulfur filtered into the room as we “charged” through tall grasses with a battalion; wall-sized time-lines on which the touch of a finger to an event or document generated a blow-up and history of that item; and two real stuffed horses, mounted by British dragoons, frozen in their race.  Dramatic as it was, several visitors wondered aloud how those horses died.  A nice lady assured us that the horses lived a full life on a lovely farm and died a natural death.  Mom and I would have liked to know their names.

Slavery, the “peculiar institution” that Lincoln abolished and that troubled our Founding Fathers’ consciences (clearly, not enough) was highlighted throughout, more than I expected given the usual coverage of the Revolutionary period. The historians who planned this museum wished visitors to contemplate the enigma of those who fought for their own equality and unalienable rights while holding others’ enslaved.

One of the interactive screens provided images of a number of historic people and events and asked viewers to consider “What would you do?”  In one case, Eve, a slave for the wealthy Randolph family of Williamsburg, feared her son George would be sold, so mother and son fled to the British lines in search of the freedom they promised. They arrived to find the British camp infested with smallpox.  Eve was confronted with a terrible choice: stay and chance disease, or return to the Randolphs where punishment, enslavement, and the possible sale of her boy awaited. 

What would you do?

I stood before the lighted panel and pondered.  I‘d learned about Eve when Dave and I visited Williamsburg two years ago.  I tried to conjure this flesh-and-blood woman whose life was unpredictable and beyond her control.  I thought about being owned… owned by a master who could sell my son.  Eve was so respected in the Randolph household that she carried the keys to almost every lock in the house, but she could be sold like a bureau or table if the master wished. I pushed the button marked “Stay in the British camp.”

In a flash, the screen told me my choice matched Eve’s.  But the British lost the Battle of Yorktown… and Eve was returned to slavery.

Several years ago, the Fairfield Museum hosted a traveling exhibit about Abraham Lincoln.  A pen used by the Great Emancipator to sign the document that freed the slaves was in a lighted glass case, low to the ground.  In awe, I sank tearfully to my knees – again, the case was low, but still, the actual pen once held by that extraordinary man and employed to such purpose?  Praise God and thank you, Mr. Lincoln. I respect General Washington, and enjoyed seeing his blue sash, leather duffle, and war tent, but Lincoln holds my heart. 

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote of equality, rights, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness while owning his fellow humans.  Just shy of 100 years later, Lincoln took a step toward upholding those assertions.  To this day, we falter in living them.  The Revolution is behind us, its principles touted and enshrined, but abroad and at home, Americans continue to fight.  Peace, respect, tolerance, and compassion are sacrificed because of distrust… oh, and for oil, money, and power. I ache at our willingness to kill and be killed for such things.

Mom had marched ahead of me, her hike complete, and was waiting on a bench in the hall. As I exited the final gallery to meet her, I passed through a wall of mirrors with a sweeping sign in large gold letters:  MEET THE FUTURE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.  The founders wrote often of their responsibility to posterity; we must give more thought to the generations ahead whose well-being depends so fully on what we do now.

Or, what will they have to say of us?

 

Liberty for All?

The guide for our tour through the Randolph House in Williamsburg is sturdy and middle-aged.   Delia is African-American, her skin a pale cocoa.  Her close-cropped hair is graying and wrapped in a striped kerchief.  She wears a loose white muslin dress, tied at the waist with an apron.  She is good-natured and funny, and cracks up when I say Dave is my first husband.  Awkward.  Don’t even know why it came out that way, but she thinks it’s hysterical, and she smiles and shakes her head every time she glances my way. 

It is sweltering hot and those of us gathered beneath a shade tree in the yard of this stately eighteenth century house are grateful for the chance to rest and fan ourselves while sitting on rough wooden benches awaiting the start of our tour.   “Finish up your snacks and drinks now,” says Delia.   “Don’t want any spills inside.”

A young woman in red sneakers sips from a plastic cup.  “Can I bring it in if I’m really careful?  I just bought it.”

Delia shakes her head.  “Finish it up.  I don’t think any of these folks will mind if we sit a bit longer.”  She’s right: a visit to Williamsburg involves much weary walking and standing.   Once the woman chugs down her beverage, we rise regretfully from our perches and follow Delia through the entrance.

She is intelligent and knowledgeable, and I wonder if she is a history teacher when not impersonating a slave.  For that is her role.  Like every African-American interpreter in this colonial town, she represents one of the enslaved persons that made up 52% of the town’s population in the 1780’s.  “Enslaved persons” is Delia’s preferred term as it emphasizes the state of enslavement and the fact that this individual is not just property, but a person.  A person who has been wronged.  Our guide wants to be sure her charges understand this:  “There was no ‘good’ slavery.”

As we wind past the fine furniture, porcelain ornaments, and china that belonged to the privileged Randolph family, Delia tells us about those who performed the polishing, cleaning, cooking, and laundry.  Johnny and Eve were Mr. and Mrs. Randolph’s personal servants, so trusted they carried the house keys and supervised other workers.  Yet, when the Randolphs died and their wills were read, Johnny and Eve were items to be disbursed along with the bureaus and beds. “Life was hard work,” says Delia,  “and it was also uncertain.  An enslaved person could be given as a birthday present or to settle a debt.”

Later in the afternoon, Dave and I trudge down the hot brick sidewalk to the Charlton Stage, plotting our route from the shade of one tree to that of the next.  While tourists strive to stay cool in skimpy sundresses, shorts, and sandals, the interpreters we encounter are dressed in multiple layers.  I pity the men especially, in their long–sleeved shirts, waistcoats, overcoats, breeches, and woolen stockings.  Woolen stockings!  I shudder.    

We had arrived in Williamsburg the night before our tour and ate dinner at the Dog Street Pub.  Dave loved the beer and the heavy earthenware mug in which it was served.  I loved the creamy Welsh rarebit: a rich cheese sauce with a trace of stone ground mustard poured over a thick slice of toast.  I had eyed a gentleman sitting with his lady two tables over.  Although dressed in a shirt and slacks much like Dave’s, the man was regal.  Something about the angles of his face, the proud nose, and gray hair.  I whispered to Dave,” Bet you anything he’s Thomas Jefferson.”

Dave checked him out.  “Could be…”

Dave and I had prepared for this trip.  He finished Nathaniel Philbrick’s Bunker Hill a few weeks ago, and at Mercy Learning Center, I’ve been studying the Revolutionary War, Declaration of Independence, and Constitution with my students, Taiwo and Nicole.  In our discussions of the founding fathers’ efforts to plan for posterity, to plan for us, I have at times become teary at their foresight, even as Taiwo and Nicole have been wide-eyed with admiration.  So, Mr. Jefferson has been on my mind.   

Upon reaching Charlton Stage, Dave and I inch down the rows of low wooden benches to take our seats in the shade.  Soon Thomas Jefferson – indeed, it is my Mr. Jefferson from the pub – strides down a narrow walkway to the stage.  Seemingly impervious to the heat, he wears a tri-corn hat, white ruffled shirt, blue coat, brown breeches, and riding boots.

The stately Virginian slave-owner opens with references to the Declaration, and the self-evident truths of equality and the unalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.  He asks us, “Consider, if you will, how do you feel when you do good?” 

“Happy,” we, the multitude, dutifully respond.

“And how do you feel if you do something deceitful, something you know not to be right?”

Most mumble the obvious, “bad,” but one thoughtful soul, breaking boldly from group-speak, suggests, “uncomfortable?”

“Indeed,” says Mr. Jefferson.  “Uncomfortable.  Such acts might keep us awake at night.”  And then he makes clear his case that in doing good lies the happiness of which he wrote. 

Our speaker asks for questions and parries concerns about a populace that does not bother to vote despite the right to do so, and a government seemingly in the power of a wealthy few.  In answering, he swivels on one booted heel and sweeps his arm, hand out, palm raised, in a gesture to encompass us all. “Is this not a government of the people?  It is to the people to hold that right and that responsibility firmly.  Speak out!  Just as you are doing here today.” 

I imagine the collective flurry of thoughts as each of us mentally composes letters to our congressmen demanding change as directed by Thomas Jefferson.  For to those of us sitting on these wooden benches in this town of centuries old clapboard and brick homes - having visited coopers and brickmakers, weavers and gunsmiths, having witnessed soldiers recruited for the upcoming battle of Yorktown, and having questioned the quandary of a fight for liberty by those served by slaves - the statesman before us is the Declaration’s author.

Jefferson invites Robert, a young boy of ten or so, to join him on the stage.  Robert has embraced the spirit of this visit to 1781 and wears breeches, stockings, and a tri-corn hat.  His mouth slightly open, his eyes wide, it is hard to say if he is star-struck or nervous as he stands before us, face-to-face with Mr. Jefferson. But there is no mistaking his look of lust when Jefferson draws a sword from its scabbard and hands it to him. 

“While not known as a soldier, I have had some success with the pen,” Jefferson says with a self-deprecating grace that draws a chuckle from the crowd.  He then places a quill in the boy’s other hand.  Predictably, he asks, “Master Robert.  Which do you suppose to be mightier? Pen or sword?”

The boy pauses and I wonder, would a child this age know the expected response?  And much as we Americans have been drilled in that concept and long for its truth, does it still hold in this world rent by war and driven by money?

As one, the audience holds its breath, leans forward, and wills young Robert to respond.

“The pen?”  His response is hesitant, a question really, but we burst into relieved applause.  Huzzah!

Jefferson smiles and nods, then reaches to retrieve the sword – gleaming, impressive, and undeniably mighty.  Robert’s expression is wistful as it disappears into its scabbard, and he is left with the pen.  Jefferson pats the child’s shoulder and the rest of us clap as the boy returns to his seat, proud owner of a new feather quill. 

Will Robert remember this moment, the regal man and his powerful words peppered with “lest we forget” and “forthwith”?  Later, as Dave and I muse at the extremes of inspiration and polarization represented in Williamsburg’s history, I wish I’d asked Mr. Jefferson where his plantation worked by slaves, no, enslaved persons, fits into his concept of liberty.