Preserving America's Historical Significance

The Gift Outright: Live Free or Die

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Maine was first. Let’s see what makes New Hampshire proud.

 

New Hampshire, one of the original 13 colonies, was the first state to adopt it’s own state constitution.  New Hampshire was the 9th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution–the final state needed to put the document into effect. It plays an important role in national elections, as it is the first state to hold  national primaries.  As leaders in the revolutionary cause, New Hampshire delegates received the honor of being the first to vote for the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. New Hampshire gained a measure of international attention in 1905 when Portsmouth Naval Base played host to the signing of the treaty ending the Russo-Japanese War, known as the Treaty of Portsmouth.

New Hampshire is the home to the USS Albacore, a submarine from the 1980s.  It is also the state which holds the home of Josiah Bartlett, who is known as a politician and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.  The poets Robert Frost and E. E. Cummings, also made their homes in this state.

You can visit the home of the naval hero of the Revolutionary War, John Paul Jones.  During the Revolutionary War, Jones uttered the legendary reply to a taunt about surrender from the British captain: “I have not yet begun to fight!”   New Hampshire’s spirit of independence is embodied in the state motto–“Live Free or Die.”

 

The Gift Outright by Robert Frost
The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.