What Independence Day Means

This is from the epilogue of my 2015 novel, Gods of Our Fathers. I think this is just as relevant now as when my protagonist Vesey Van Zant wrote them on July 4th, 1854:

 

"(Boston, Massachusetts, July 4th 1854)

What Independence Day means to a body devolves on the color of the skin wrapping it.

      The Burns affair had officially ended, not with the bang that ended the conspiracy, but with an anticlimax. The Morris, its fo'c's'le completely destroyed in the successful attempt to free the anchor from its chain, was immediately docked in ordinary during its repairs. Despite having already been slated to sail to the coast of Angola later this month, Constitution took over the duty of delivering Burns back to the Virginia plantation from which his escape had inflamed our city.

      The black bunting on the day of Burns’s ejection from Boston had long since been replaced with the red, white and blue variety, in observance of our independence. Keeping my head down and ears open, as I often do, I have yet to hear anyone remark on the irony of us celebrating our independence from a tyranny after having had our sovereignty stolen by President Pierce in the act of re-enslaving a black man who merely insisted on his freedom.

      Cornets, trumpets, drums, tubas and all manner of instruments gaily fill the streets with a horrible and hardly self-conscious cacophony in celebration of a day that, to me, seems more hollow and meaningless than usual. We have just gotten our new silver badges, supplanting the old brass ones, and we are expected to turn in the old on receiving the new. I still possess both of mine because I have a decision to make.

      Little boys set off firecrackers in the streets, to the irritation of many stodgy adults. In a way, it is a harmless recreation of the explosive that could’ve blown up much more than a ship or two. Firecrackers make for a harmless reprise of the bomb in the same way the burning of Guy Fawkes effigies is to the Gunpowder Plot...

      Boston is a city of 150,000 souls. And among that number are perhaps millions of trials and tribulations, of which mine, Mama’s, and Maizee’s were but drops in a vast ocean of love, tragedy, grief, and ecstasy.

      As I am but a policeman of some perspicacity, and not a clairvoyant, I know not what will become of this 'city on a hill'. It was optimistically dubbed as such in 1630 by our first Governor, John Winthrop, when it was but a quaint fishing village. In the last two centuries, it has expanded to become, in all ways, one of America’s three great cities. But each time greatness is achieved, it comes at a cost.

    Naturally, I would prefer to believe my city will, in the decades and centuries to come, fulfill the promise of its destiny, to continue advancing toward that blessed day when we will no longer enslave one another or judge others by the hue of their skin. I hope our constabulary will continue to be a force for good and charity, as well as an apparatus to enforce the law.

      But as I said, I am a policeman and I would be silly to be so naïve as to think mere wishful thinking alone will keep evil at bay. My colleagues in other cities round up Negros and sell them into slavery as a matter of law enforcement. My brothers in arms in our own department had arrested Anthony Burns. And some are less tolerant of black people than others. We pass down these dubious values and our gods like odious heirlooms, and it is up to the strong and independent-minded to break these destructive cycles...

      I stand on the Warren Bridge, where this tale began, my arms crossed on the railing. By God’s capricious grace have we become an iconic beacon of liberty for citizen and immigrant, alike... In my left hand is my old brass badge. In my right, the newly-issued silver one. I look at both badges, rear an arm back, and throw one of them into the river."