It was a plotting mix.
The U.S. government’s crusade to prevent the spread of communism on the Korean Peninsula coincided with the 175th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
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And in Philadelphia, where the founding document was birthed in 1776, city planners laid the groundwork for a four-day jubilee.
Festivities kicked off July 1, 1951, and centered around an unorthodox ceremony to blend dirt, or “hallowed earth,” from Independence Square with soil scooped from Revolutionary War battlefields in each of the original 13 colonies.
Judge Edwin O. Lewis, chairman of the city’s celebration, said the exercise would rededicate the states “to the principles of freedom.”
The ceremony was held in the shadow of Independence Hall and featured 19-year-old Army Pfc. Francis R. Findley Jr., of Havertown, who had recently returned from the front lines of the Korean War.
Each of the original 13 states sent representatives, who were dressed in replica uniforms from past conflicts and were escorted by a color guard, and took turns carrying an urn of battle-tested earth to the dais.
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Findley took a fistful of dirt from each urn and added it to a monumentalmixture in a ceremonial pedestal bowl.
Three days later, on the Fourth of July, the then-48 states received a growth opportunity: oak seedlings rooted in the mixed soil.
The seedlings were to be planted as memorials in each state’s capital city.
After the dirt was mixed together, almost as part of a recipe for building democracy into a country’s bedrock, U.S. Sen. James H. Duff, a Republican from Pennsylvania, called upon an “American formula” to help challenge threats of tyranny and oppression.
Historically speaking, subtlety hasn’t traditionally been a strong suit for leaders of the U.S. government.
“We offer the world peace,” Duff said on the Fourth of July, “if we may have peace without appeasement and with freedom.”
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