“These are the times that try men’s souls.
The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
On Christmas Day 1776 George Washington read these words from Thomas Paine’s American Crisis to his troops. The men were hungry, cold, dispirited. Many of them had their feet wrapped in rags because they had no shoes. It looked like their fight for independence might very well be lost. Waiting across the Delaware River in Trenton, NJ, was an army of British and Hessian troops. Early on the morning of December 26 the Continental soldiers rowed across the ice-clogged river. It was only 20 degrees. They launched a surprise attack which ended in the first American victory of the war. As Thomas Paine wrote, these soldiers did indeed win “the love and thanks of man and woman.”
The The men and women who have fought and continue to fight to preserve our freedom deserve our thanks and our love and our prayers. The question, “What price freedom?” has been going through my mind. For too many of our soldiers the price is injury and death. As has been quoted through the years, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” This quote is a modern version of words spoken by Edmund Burke, the 18th-century British statesman. Sadly, freedom is always paid for by the men and women who refuse to let evil triumph no matter the personal cost.
May
