 Good day. I'm Mrs. John Adams or Abigail Adams to my friends and I would like to introduce some of my friends that we have here today. I have Mr. Thomas Jefferson. As always you you do me honor and I thank you for that. Mr. Edward Hector Bombardier Edward Hector. A pleasure to be with you. And Mrs. Oni Judge. Glad to be here. So I guess we could start with everybody saying a little bit of something about themselves. It's a pleasure to have you all here today. Mrs. Judge you go first. Ladies first. Thank you. My name is Mrs. Oni Judge. I'm happy to report that I'm now married woman. I will not give complete details of my whereabouts as we have unfortunately had to uproot twice now but I am originally from Virginia which is close to my heart but now I call the north my home and I am very grateful for my time spent in Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey. I am very fortunate to have had those experiences. I wasn't always a free woman but I am proud to call myself a woman of freedom now. And apparently you're also a mother. Yes. Yes I am. Right now we have just our daughter but I'm hoping that we have the path of freedom more hopefully in several more months. But we have that in common as well. My oldest is my daughter Naby. Good luck with your babies my dear. My dear Hector would you like to introduce yourself? My name is Edward Hector. Many of my friends know me as Ned. I'm one of many blacks who fought in the American Revolution. I served with Procter's third Pennsylvania artillery as a bombardier and as an artillery teamster. As a bombardier I manned one of the three revisions of the canon. As a teamster I transported ammunition and helped to haul the cannons from battle to battle. I saw action in the battle of Brandywine and at the battle of Germantown as well. I am remembered for heroic act involving saving my horses my wagons my cannons and some fallen muskets. We were given the orders when our hill was overran by the redcoats to abandon our horses our wagons and retreat down towards Chester. Instead of doing that I said they shall not have my team. I will save my team and myself. After the war I would live to the age of 90 years old. I would try three times to get my pension from the Pennsylvania Congress only to be denied. They would finally grant me a gratuity instead of 40 dollars. I am so well regarded in my home community of Contra Hawkins that I wouldn't be surprised if they would end up naming a street after me. That's wonderful bombardier Hector. I do believe they should name a street after you in Contra Hawkins. They should name a street Tector Street for you and I personally would love to take a carriage ride down that street. Mr. Jefferson would you like to do a brief introduction of yourself? My name is Thomas Jefferson. I was born in 1743 into a family and into a colony and into a culture that did not question to any practical degree the notion that as one's grandparents and great grandparents were and as one's parents were so was one. That our worth as humans was determined more than any one thing on those who had come before us. I was born in a colony, colony of Virginia that was part of the British Empire. And by being part of the British Empire that meant that I grew up being very proud that I had a king. Being very proud of the fact that my king was my king because of whose parents were. That's what gave him value. It wasn't until later in my life I began to challenge some of those ideas. I did. I began to question them mostly from reading and from various mentors and teachers that came across along the way at William and Mary and later in my study of law and even later in my life. By the end of my life I had helped in a movement on this continent that inspired movements on other continents to challenge those things that when I was a child I'd bear a question. We made progress in changing some of those. We questioned the validity of the divine right of kings, the right of a king to rule at all because of whose parents were. And we also laid the groundwork for questioning the right of anyone to be considered to be considered free or slave, criminal or otherwise because of what their parents did. I'm proud of what I was able to do and help and change some of those things that were assumed when I was young. I acknowledged that I wasn't able to do everything but by the time I came near the end of my time I felt that imperfect, though any human effort might be, perhaps I could allow two or three things to stand as testimonials that I had lived. And what is a testimonial after all? It's not something that takes away all of your mistakes or pretends as though you're something greater than human. A testimonial is something that speaks for you, someone that speaks for you and says, look at this person with all of their strengths and their faults. Here are their merits. Please consider them when you consider this person's worth. If I were to be remembered, then, for three things that would stand as testimonials that I would live with all this in mind, I would say I want to be remembered as the author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom and father of the University of Virginia. Well, thank you, Mr. Jefferson. I don't think I gave myself a brief introduction. Again, I am Mrs. John Adams and in response to your recollections and the things that you considered important in your life, Mr. Jefferson, I would say, personally, I don't expect that I should be remembered for anything other than being the wife of John Adams, whom you knew very well. Mr. Adams and you served on a very important committee, the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. You also served together and separately in government for many years, but I should like to this day discuss the Declaration of Independence. Now, it was on March 31st that I wrote my husband a letter in anticipation of that very same independence. I asked my husband, though, that as long as there was to be a new code of laws, which I supposed it would indeed be necessary for us all to make, that I desired you would remember the ladies, be more kind and generous to us than your ancestors have been, and to not put unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Now, unfortunately, in our Declaration of Independence, certainly, and I know Mrs. Judge, you too can attest to this, that the ladies were not remembered. Indeed, I, one could easily say that well, three-fifths of our population were not necessarily included in the Declaration of Independence, but the Declaration of Independence was not law. It was not our constitution. It was a guideline. It was the hope. It was a hope for the future that, as you have said on many times, Mr. Jefferson, all men are created equal. And it was your hope that in future generations, all men would be treated as they are created, which, as you often say, is equal. So, as we have a very diverse panel here today, I should like to ask us all, what is our hope for independence in the United States? What is our hope for the future of this generation? What are we raising our children? Mrs. Judge, Mr. Hector, Mr. Jefferson, we are all parents. Um, what are we raising them to achieve for the future of this nation? As a new mother, the one thing that I can hope for, I don't know if I will see it in my lifetime, but I do hope that it will happen for later generations for women such as myself, Liza, and I hope that independence will come to everyone. I am raising my children to be strong and independent and to be educated. Education was not given to me. It was not thought to be necessary for who I was and for what I was doing. But I found that when you strip education away from an entire population of people, you render them powerless. But when I finally took those steps to leave the household, one of the first things that I did when I came to New Hampshire was I learned how to read and how to write. That to me is true independence, knowing what you are seeing and understanding it. And I know that my daughter is headstrong already, and I can only hope that she will be strong for the future generations as well. Education is important, and it should be stressed that everyone must learn the past, they must learn from their ancestors, and they must learn from their community, and they must come together to make sure that the young ones are reared up and educated. They must understand where we have come from so that we do not go back into that dark past. Mrs. Judge, I hear your charming little Eliza there in the background. By the way, my sister is an Elizabeth, so it's a name that's very near and dear to our family. I would like to know, how are you able to educate your daughter? What is the state of education in the state of New Hampshire? I rely on a lot of the free community. They helped me in Philadelphia, and they've helped me in New Hampshire. It was difficult to trust again, especially after the Fugitive Slave Act. It really made me very nervous to consider that a white person would be willing to help me. I had to remind myself that there are those who wish to see me do better in my life, who wish for me to understand and to grow in their community. As shocking as it is, Mr. Whipple in New Hampshire has been very, very, very good to me and my family. The free community here has been very helpful, but I'm mostly the one that is teaching them their numbers and their letters, which is helping me to get better with my numbers and my letters, which I did not think possible. But I find comfort in doing that with them. I love the repetition of it, and I do enjoy reading. I really do, and I love to read to them at night, and I read to them stories, and I read to them from the Bible. It comforts me, comforts them, and I hope they pass that on. But it's the community here, the free community that has blessed me with this opportunity, with having someone show me the letters and understand the numbers and how they work, and how I can apply that to my everyday life. Mr. Hector, Bombardier Hector, would you like to give us your thoughts and your hopes for independence? Even more so than my personal desire to be remembered. I want those lack myself to be remembered. Three to five thousand people of color served the American cause. Seven to ten thousand served the British. Believe it or not, General Washington would have one of the most integrated armies all the way up until, well, until much, much, much later. General Washington also would command at least three majority black regiments. One from Massachusetts, one from Rhode Island, and a group that would come in with the French from Haiti. And they would play an important part in the struggle for our independence. In the battle up in New York, we would be losing every last battle until finally we would have our backs up against the river at Brooklyn Heights. We would be trapped. The next day the British are going to close in. They're going to annihilate this army. They're going to capture this trade of Washington. That's going to be the end of our fight for independence. But under the cover of night and fog, under the very nose of the British warships that were anchored in at Harbor that night, men would roll their boats up. They would load these men onto their boats and they would take them across the river. Some making that trip as many as 11 times at night. What people don't realize is that many of those men who are rolling those boats are black sailors from Marblehead, Massachusetts. That night, these men save our revolution and allow us to continue our fight for independence. Not only that, there's going to be another battle that's going to come down the pike, the battle of Yorktown. Oh, did you know that we have spies in the British camp? They're black spies in the British camp. They will get information that the British are going to Yorktown. Washington and Lafayette will make plans. They would surround the British at Yorktown. But in trying to execute the battle, trying to take Yorktown, they would get thrown back a couple of times. Finally, they would start digging trenches towards Yorktown. Washington would call on one of his best regiments, the Rhode Island Regiment. They would go in with their bayonets fixed, their guns unloaded, and they would take their objective of one of those defensive positions in 10 minutes. The French would take out the other ones. We would bring up our heavy cans. We would commit with the bombardment of the city until finally, finally, the British would give up. This is where we would win the war. By the end of the war, 10 to 25 percent of Washington's army would be people of color. Now, people may not realize that the good general doesn't really win that many battles. Maybe, let's pretend he fights 10 battles out of 10 battles. Maybe the only wins two or three. Now, you take away about a quarter of his army. What do you think the chances of winning this war are now? Not too good? So, we people of color played an important part, an essential part to us being the independent nation that we will become later on. What I hope to see is that we are no longer divided by so many differences and we can see what makes us similar to one another, family, children as such as they are. But I want my story to be known because it wasn't just the men who ran away and it wasn't just people who had means and sometimes you strike with the iron is hot and you go and you leave behind everything and everyone you've ever known. But you make your own new family and family is what's important. The community and the bonds that you create. I hope my story is known and it gives inspiration to women that we can do great things. Even if we can't read and we can't write, we can accomplish great things and don't feel limited by your lack of education or your lack of funds. Just remember your past, what you hope to see and for your future and that'll drive you towards pushing. We have set what I think of as a primitive example, not for future generations to follow, but for future generations to improve upon. All men are created equal means that the earth belongs to the living, not to the dead. With that in mind, I hope that the words in this document, our Declaration of Independence, serve to continually remind each succeeding generation that they are our future peers and as our peers it is not for them to place us on pedestals, but rather to take their rightful place beside us in the never-ending fight against tyranny. They will achieve this by encouraging the progress of science in all its branches and not by raising a hue and cry against the sacred name of philosophy, nor by owing the human mind by stories of raw head and bloody bones to a distrust of its own vision and to oppose implicitly on that of others, to go backward instead of forwards to look for improvement, to believe that government, religion, morality, and every other science were in the highest perfection in ages of the darkest ignorance and that nothing can ever be devised more perfect than what was established by their forefathers. If by contemplation of the words in the Declaration of Independence, future generations can know that they are in full possession of the sacred fire of liberty and that they can and must spread the light from that flame to enlighten the world more than was possible for the generation that first kindled that flame, that will mean that America has improved, not become perfect, but more perfect, and I believe that it's all we can hope for. I want to thank you all for joining me today in this discussion. I do hope that we give the rising generation some things to think about, as for myself and for my closing hopes for this nation. My hopes for myself are long gone. I am a woman of a certain age. My children are all birthed and they are busy being educated. They are busy forming their own lives, having their own children. That is indeed what our movement of independence was for, so that we would not consign future generations to feeling a servitude, that we could not believe our country in a worse position than we ourselves have been born to. It is my hope that I am raising my children, that they should carry on the goals of liberty for all, that they should carry on the idea that all men are created equal and that eventually we will come to a more perfect union, the one that is promised in our eventual constitution. I want to thank you all for joining me today and I wish you all well in our future endeavors as a nation.