The Declaration of Independence and the day we set aside to commemorate it should make us reflect on the sacrifices of the men who signed it. Representatives from thirteen colonies came together to take a momentous step that they knew might land them on the scaffold or suspended by the hangman's noose. They were protesting that their traditional rights as Englishmen had been violated, and that those violations had forced them into a supreme act of rebellion.

For many Americans the Declaration of Independence has become a fundamental text that tells the world who we are as a people. It is a distillation of American belief and purpose. Pundits and commentators, left and right, never cease reminding us that America is an exceptional nation, "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

Almost as important as a symbol of belief for many contemporary Americans is Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. It is not incorrect to see a purported link between these two documents, as Lincoln intentionally placed his short peroration in the context of a particular reading of the Declaration.