Blog - The American Revolution

Our Forefathers’ Gift

Posted by Roberta Grimes • February 24, 2024 • 12 Comments

My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims’ pride, From every mountainside, let freedom ring! My native country, thee, land of the noble free, thy name I love! I love thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills, My heart... Read More

Judging History

Posted by Roberta Grimes • December 04, 2021 • 75 Comments

“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.– That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”... Read More

Happy Birthday to Liberty!

Posted by Roberta Grimes • July 04, 2020 • 12 Comments

Oh beautiful, for heroes proved in liberating strife, Who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine, ‘Till all success be nobleness and every gain divine. – Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929) from “America the Beautiful” (1895) The purpose of human life is spiritual growth, and... Read More

The Long Tail of Slavery

Posted by Roberta Grimes • June 20, 2020 • 57 Comments

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, Nobody knows but Jesus. Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, Glory hallelujah! – From a pre-1865 Negro spiritual, author unknown Every human being of every shade is a member of a single race. Modern Europeans are in fact east Africans. This scientific certainty has been achieved only very recently,... Read More

The Truth Will Set Us Free

Posted by Roberta Grimes • October 06, 2018 • 30 Comments

Political divisions in America are worse now than they ever before have been, which makes it hard for us to see that we are witnessing the dawning fulfillment of the greatest dream ever dreamed in all of human history. After ten millennia during which humankind groveled beneath the swords of despots and the awful reign... Read More

This is Personal

Posted by Roberta Grimes • July 05, 2017 • 14 Comments

           There is a theory that if you pick up a calf at its birth and then every day thereafter, eventually you can pick up a bull. It’s a nice idea, but I can personally testify that it is not true. I cannot believe that I haven’t found time to write a new blog post... Read More

My Thomas

Posted by Roberta Grimes • December 27, 2015 • 14 Comments

(The final week of December is for reruns, so I hope you’ll forgive me if instead I write a paean to my favorite book. We’ll be back to seriousness next week. Promise!) It has been nearly a year since my spirit guide, Thomas, broke into my daytime existence and began the process that led to... Read More

The Sally Hemings Question

Posted by Roberta Grimes • July 07, 2014 • 0 Comment

It doesn’t matter to me who fathered Sally Hemings’s children. Seeing how devastated Thomas Jefferson was by the death of his wife at thirty-three, at one time I even thought that if he had managed to find a new love later in life, that was fine and none of us had the right to judge... Read More

Hindsight

Posted by Roberta Grimes • April 26, 2014 • 0 Comment

My mother married my father because she was pregnant. As an adult I thanked her for having gone ahead with the pregnancy and given me life, and she said, “You’re assuming I had a choice?” So I must admit to sharing the core aversion that many people have to abortion, but I am not avidly... Read More

Something New in the World

Posted by Roberta Grimes • April 12, 2014 • 1 Comment

My Thomas is about the American Revolution. It is a true story of the kind of love that few of us ever manage to find, and a carefully researched examination of the formative years of one of America’s Founding Fathers, but at its heart it is the tale of a group of people who mutually... Read More