CV NEWSFEED // This year the United States celebrates its 248th anniversary of independence. Our founding fathers built this country on the ideals of goodwill, hard work, Judeo-Christian values, and liberty. 

CatholicVote has compiled a list of Independence Day speeches every American should know! Read your favorite (or favorites!) aloud around the campfire to get into the spirit of ‘76!

Patrick Henry – “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death,” 1775

The list of Independence Day speeches would only be complete with the famous call to liberty by Patrick Henry. Although the speech was given at the Virginia Convention in 1775, Henry’s message spoke to the hearts and minds of the Founding Fathers and helped inspire the Revolution.  

A prominent lawyer and passionate opponent of the British Crown and unjust taxation, Henry sought to persuade the rest of the Founding Fathers to break away from Great Britain. He demanded the Crown redress the colonies’ grievances with the Intolerable Acts passed by Britain to punish the colonists for the Boston Tea Party. 

Only brief notes of the speech remain, as Henry spoke freely without writing the speech beforehand. But what we do have is inspiring!

Our petitions have been slighted, our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne…we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

Henry asserted that the British Crown had already declared war on the colonies. 

The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” 

Henry theatrically performed the speech, which ignited a spark that would lead to the Declaration of Independence.

“Forbid it, Almighty God!” proclaimed Henry. “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” 

Frederick Douglass- “What to the slave is the 4th of July?” July 5, 1852

Frederick Douglass was a former slave-turned-abolitionist and one of the most well-known figures in American history. “What to the slave is the 4th of July?” was delivered 76 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

Douglass began by praising the Founding Fathers and their fight for freedom, liberty, and justice: 

They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was “settled” that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were “final;” not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.

Douglass praised Independence Day itself – and continued to highlight the current suffering of African Americans due to chattel slavery, “Fellow citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions!” 

Douglass remembered those slaves, “whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.”

Douglass did not despair, but looked forward to the say when the ideals of the Declaration of Independence would be realized:

“I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from ‘the Declaration of Independence,’ the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age.”

John F. Kennedy – “Some Elements of the American Character,” July 4, 1946

Before he became the United States’ first Catholic President, John F. Kennedy was a candidate for Congress. The aspiring politician delivered this speech in 1946, focusing on the religious aspects of America’s founding, patriotism, and American idealism. 

“Our deep religious sense is the first element of the American character which I would discuss this morning. The informing spirit of the American character has always been a deep religious sense,” began Kennedy. 

Throughout the years, down to the present, a devotion to fundamental religious principles has characterized American thought and action. Our government was founded on the essential religious idea of integrity of the individual. It was this religious sense which inspired the authors of the Declaration of Independence.

The future president continued to highlight the role of religion and the importance of God’s presence in America’s founding and natural rights. 

“Conceived in Grecian thought, strengthened by Christian morality, and stamped indelibly into American political philosophy, the right of the individual against the State is the keystone of our Constitution. Each man is free,” argued Kennedy.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. It was the price yesterday. It is the price today, and it will ever be the price. The characteristics of the American people have ever been a deep sense of religion, a deep sense of idealism, a deep sense of patriotism, and a deep sense of individualism.

Martin Luther King, Jr. – “The American Dream” Sermon, July 4, 1965

Two years after delivering his famous “I Had a Dream,” speech, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his Independence Day sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. 

The speech took a firm stance against racism and cited the Declaration of Independence as the foundation for equality. 

“The substance of the dream is expressed in these sublime words,” began King. “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

It does not say some men, but it says all men. It does not say all white men, but it says all men, which includes black men. It does not say all Gentiles, but it says all men, which includes Jews. It does not say all Protestants, but it says all men, which includes Catholics. That is something else that we notice in this American Dream, which is one of the things that distinguishes our form of government with some of the other totalitarian systems.

King argued that all men are of “equal intrinsic worth,” and desired for all Americans to respect the “dignity and worth of all human personality.” He professed the need for change in American society and legislation to reflect these truths and asked for all persons to be recognized as made in the image of God.

King ends by emphasizing the unity of all Americans:

This will be the day when all of the chosen black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last.”

Ronald Reagan – “Address to the Nation on Independence Day,” July 4, 1986

President Ronald Reagan gave his famous “Address to the Nation on Independence Day” speech at the renovation of the Statue of Liberty in New York in 1986. He delivered the address from aboard the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy docked in New York Harbor. 

Remembering the Founding Fathers, he said, “They were brave. They stayed brave through all the bloodshed of the coming years. Their courage created a nation built on a universal claim to human dignity, on the proposition that every man, woman, and child had a right to a future of freedom.”

The president continued to reflect on the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and the concept of liberty. 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Last night when we rededicated Miss Liberty and relit her torch, we reflected on all the millions who came here in search of the dream of freedom inaugurated in Independence Hall. We reflected, too, on their courage in coming great distances and settling in a foreign land and then passing on to their children and their children’s children the hope symbolized in this statue here just behind us: the hope that is America. It is a hope that someday every people and every nation of the world will know the blessings of liberty.

The President ended his speech by reflecting on the unity of the American people over that of division. “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.”  

Reagan declared:

And so tonight we reaffirm that Jew and gentile, we are one nation under God; that black and white, we are one nation indivisible; that Republican and Democrat, we are all Americans. Tonight, with heart and hand, through whatever trial and travail, we pledge ourselves to each other and to the cause of human freedom, the cause that has given light to this land and hope to the world.