I am 165 million living souls-- and the ghost of millions who have lived and died for me.
I am Nathan Hale and Paul Revere. I stood at Lexington and fired the shot heard around the world. I am Washington, Jefferson and Partic Henery. I am John Paul Jones, the Green Mountain Boys, and Davy Crockett. I am Lee and Grant and Abe Lincoln.
I remember the Alamo, the Maine and Pearl Harbor. When freedom called, I answered and stayed untill it was over, over there. I left my heroic dead in Flanders Fields, on the rock of the Corregidor, and on the bleak slopes of Korea.
I am the Brooklyn Bridge, the wheat lands of Kansas, and the granite hills of Vermont. I am the coalfieldsof the Virginias and Pennsylvania, the fertile lands of the West, the Goalden Gate and the Grand Canyon. I am Independence Hall, the Monitor and the Merrimac.
I am Big. I sprawl from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 3 million square miles throbbing with industry. I am more than 5 million farms. I am forest, fields, mountians and desert. I am quiet villages--and cities that never sleep.
You can look at me and see Ben Franklin walking down the streets of Philadelphia with his breadloaf under his arm. You can see Besty Ross with her needle. You can see the lights of Christmas, and hear the strains of Auld Lang Ayne as the calendar turns.
I am babe Ruth and the World Series. I am 169,000 schools and colleges, and 250,000 churches where my people worship God as they think best. I am a ballott dropped in a box, the roar of a crowd in a stadium, and the voice of a choir in a cathedral. I am an editorial in a newspaper, and a letter to a Congressman.
I am Eli Whitney and Stephen Forester. I am Tom Edison, Albert Einstein, and Billy Ghram. I am Horace Greeley, Will Rogers, and the Wright Brothers. I am George Washington Carver, Daniel Webster and Jonas Stalk.
I am Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walk Whitman and Thomas Paine.
Yes, I am the Nation, and these are the things that I am. I was concieved in freedom and, God willing, in freedom I will spend the rest of my days.
May I possess always the integrity, the courage and the strength to keep myself unshackled, to remain a citadel of freedom and a beacon of hope to the world.
This is my wish, my goal, my prayer on July 4, 2003-- two hundred and twenty six years after I was born.