Williams Marks 4th with Reading of Founding Documents
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The two speakers made forceful points defending their positions.
But while one was greeted by applause at his conclusion by the hundreds gathered in the sun-struck plaza outside the Williams College Museum of Art, the second was jeered with boos and hisses before he even finished.
Not surprisingly, this audience in the west end of a state known for its revolutionary fervor was primed against the speaker for the Crown. They did, however, give him polite applause for his efforts.
It's part of a long tradition now at Williams College to read the most important documents in the nation's history on the date considered its birthday: the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the Constitution. On the opposite side has been the British Replies to the Declaration, including the reading of King George III's speech to Parliament in October 1776.
This year's readers are both appearing in "Pygmalion" this month at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. The American reader was actor Robert Sean Leonard, who played the character Dr. James Wilson on "House M.D.," and the British reader was Paxton Whitehead, who has appeared on stage and screen.
The historic documents they were reading lay just yards away inside WCMA, where they are being kept during the massive construction occurring across the street at the Chapin Library.
"Welcome to another hot Fourth," said Robert Volz, custodian of the Chapin Library and its collection rare books and manuscripts. "I think this is the 25th year running that we've managed to have 85 degrees or hotter for you."
The crowd didn't seem to mind as they sat on the ground or in chairs they'd brought along. Some staked out seats under trees, content to hear rather than see the speakers, while others crowded close under the hot sun.
Volz veered from his usual introduction of reading a remembrance of a past July 4 celebration at some small New England town. Instead, he chose the Chapin's newest acquisition, a copy of King George's Proclamation of Rebellion of 1775.
"It really is the document that cast the die and is the beginning of the Revolutionary War," said Volz, noting it was the response to Massachusetts colonists' actions at Lexington and Concord, the raising of the Continental Army under Gen. George Washington and the Battle of Bunker Hill.
The king calls on his officers "civil and military, are obliged to exert their utmost endeavors to suppress such rebellion, and to bring the traitors to justice," saying his colonial subjects are being "misled by dangerous and ill designing men."
The proclamation was acquired a bare two weeks ago and has not yet been placed with the rare founding documents owned by Williams College, including a marked up copy of the Constitution by George Mason showing edits and changes made and rejected in the final two days of the Constitutional Convention.
Volz said there's one more he'd like to round out the collection — John Adams' "Thoughts on Government," which predates his writing of the Massachusetts Constitution, on which the federal document is modeled. Only a handful of printings were made.
"I've been looking for one since I came here in 1977," he said.
WCMAs exhibit is free and open to the public; the documents can be seen Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 5 and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m.
Tags: 4th of July, constitution, Declaration, Founding Documents,
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