by Carlene Phillips ·
Friday, June 5, 2026
As the 250th anniversary of the birth of our nation approaches, it seems important to reflect on the ideals to which the colonists wanted their new country to aspire and to explore the extent to which we still embrace those values. The Harvard Historical Society is presenting a program in partnership with Freedom’s Way called “The Declaration of Independence Then and Now,” which features a dramatic reading of much of the Declaration. The event will be held Sunday, June 14, 2 p.m., at Town Hall and is free for residents of all ages.
Desiree Demski-Hamelin of Freedom’s Way will make some introductory remarks, and state Sen. Jamie Eldridge has been invited to say a few words in celebration of the country’s 250 years of independence. Theresa Curran will sing the national anthem, and local fifers Claire Rindenello, Michael Jacobs, and Margery Goldstein will play music of the period.
In the spring of 1776, when the Continental Congress was considering independence from Great Britain, it wanted assurances that each colony would engage “with their Lives and Fortunes” to support what would be a treasonous act. Most of the colonies responded positively with grievances and aspirations they had been voicing over the past 10 years of popular protest.
The program will show the steps toward independence that Harvard took in the years leading up to the Declaration. A Town Meeting as early as 1767 voted to “lessen the use of superfluities,” by which they meant British goods that now carried a duty tax. In December 1773, Harvard supported the actions of Boston against the East India Company and pledged to give up tea. The Town Meeting decried the British blocking of the Boston harbor as “a system designed to reduce us to basest slavery.”
In February 1773, Harvard voted, as other towns were doing, to form a Committee of Correspondence to consider and state the rights of the colonists and to indicate their support for the measures Boston had taken against British oppression. Head of the committee was Joseph Wheeler, town moderator, who had served as Harvard’s second minister. He put in writing the committee’s resolutions, the sentiments of which would be later echoed in the Declaration of Independence: “When a government uses unjust force and violence against men’s rights, it counteracts the very design for which government was instituted. Every man has a right by nature and by the constitution to have a voice, personally or by representation, in those laws and the levying of taxes as he is to conform to.”
More than three-quarters of Massachusetts towns drafted statements on independence that spring. Crafting, debating, and voting on these statements solidified support and mobilized towns. It primed the people for the Declaration of Independence.
HHS board member Chris Jones will narrate the script, much of which was written for Freedom’s Way about 10 years ago by Mary Fuhrer, public historian and author. Representing voices of the colonists, Bob Eiland, Melissa and David Marteney, and Joan Blue will do a dramatic reading of much of the 1776 Declaration. After declaring that it has become “necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another,” the document clearly states its aspirations for the new country. It asserts that all men are created equal and among their “unalienable Rights are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness;” “Government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government.”
There follows a list of specific ways in which the king of Great Britain has been “destructive” of the people’s unalienable rights. The injustices listed are not only justifications for forming a new government but are also, by inference, the principles on which the new country shall be based. For example, listing as an abuse the fact that the king has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance until his consent is obtained, affirms the colonists’ belief that the leader of a government must not put his will above a due process by which laws are passed. In condemning the fact that “he has kept among us in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures,” and “affected to render the military independent and superior to the Civil power,” the colonists make clear the military is not to supersede laws of Congress or local authorities. When they accuse the king of depriving them in many cases the benefits of trial by jury, they affirm the principle of “justice for all.”
Many attendees may be hearing the Declaration of Independence for perhaps the first time in a while, and there will be an opportunity to discuss whether the founding principles are as important to us today as they were to the founding fathers and if they are, how we can continue to protect our “unalienable rights.”
At the end of the program, there will be summer refreshments. The program is free, but the society appreciates a donation to support its public programming.