Live Free Or Die: The Story of General John Stark
By, Jon Hersey
January 4, 2018
The Objectivist Standard
"General John Stark played a tremendous role in winning America’s independence, yet he is virtually unknown today. In 1809, though the two men had never met, President James Madison wrote to Stark in recognition of “the part you bore as a hero and a patriot in establishing the independence of our country.”1
They were men who had not learned the art of submission, nor had they been trained to the arts of war; our ‘astonishing success’ taught the enemies of liberty that undisciplined freemen are superior to veteran slaves.”29 Recalling men’s minds to the purpose of their fight, he continued:
As I was then, I am now, the friend of the equal rights of men, of representative democracy, of republicanism, and the declaration of independence—the great charter of our national rights—and of course a friend to the indissoluble union of these states. I am the enemy of all foreign influence, for all foreign influence is the influence of tyranny. This is the only chosen spot of liberty—this the only republic on earth.30
Without the brave writers and activists who first rose to defend freedom—without those who raised the alarm and alerted their countrymen—American liberty may have perished without a fight, gradually and absent all resistance. So, Stark continued, “These are my orders now, and will be my last orders to all my volunteers.” He commanded those who were to carry on the responsibility of safeguarding liberty to maintain vigilance, to stay alert, “to look to their sentries.”31
Stark ended his letter with a toast that will forever affix him in our minds as an embodiment of that quintessential American virtue: independence. His tribute to those “who had not learned the art of submission” was, “Live free or die—Death is not the worst of evils.”32
Here’s to General John Stark and to all who hold “that undisciplined freemen are superior to veteran slaves.”"
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