A very happy ‘Independence Day’ to our USA readers. May they mediate with wise discernment on the blessings the Lord visited their forefathers with some 247 years ago and on many occasions since.
I am also adding an old poem, published in 1911, which marks the part the immigrants from Ulster played in that deliverance. It was written by William Forbes Marshall, a Presbyterian minister from Sixmilecross, County Tyrone. It asks of Americans that they remember the input and support of immigrants from Ulster on the United States throughout the American Revolution.
Hi Uncle Sam!
When freedom was denied you,
And imperial might defied you,
Who was it stood beside you
At Quebec and Brandywine?
And dared retreats and dangers,
Red-coats and Hessian strangers,
In the lean, long-rifled Rangers,
And the Pennsylvania Line!
Hi! Uncle Sam!
Wherever there was fighting,
Or wrong that needed writing,
An Ulsterman was sighting
His Kentucky gun with care:
All the road to Yorktown,
From Lexington to Yorktown,
From Valley Forge to Yorktown,
That Ulsterman was there!
Hi! Uncle Sam!
Virginia sent her brave men,
The North paraded grave men,
That they might not be slavemen,
But ponder this with calm:
The first to face the Tory,
And the first to lift Old Glory,
Made your war an Ulster story:
Think it over, Uncle Sam!
Sincerely in Christ’s name,
Ivan Foster