The weather could have been better. It was hot, so hot that the cracked mud of the plaza had barefoot boys hopping from one foot to another, searching for a shadow to stand in. The sun blazed from a nearly white sky, save at the horizon, where gloom gathered, a thunderstorm forming. Already its heralds had arrived, blustering winds like the breath of an iron foundry.

And yet, as Benjamin Franklin stepped out into the center of the crowd and surveyed it, he knew it was a good day.

Not one of the hundreds gathered in that sweltering plaza in New Paris had not been punished cruelly for the simple crime of being alive. Not one had not lost loved ones. Some had lost much more. In the front were rank upon rank of soldiers—French, English, German, Indian, Negro, Maroon, Swedish—missing arms, legs, ears, noses. Behind them were those injured only in the soul, who had watched their comrades fall and who nestled the most terrible fears a man can fear as near as their own hearts. Beyond them were the children, wives, mothers, and invalids who had waited and wondered whether their loved ones would return. Many—no, most—had been disappointed.

And here they were, come to listen to him.

No, not to him, but to the words Voltaire had written, that the leaders of the new Commonwealth Nations had looked upon just that morning and unanimously put their names to.

As he took his place, the sound of the crowd faded until the rasping of the wind through trees in the distance, the squealing of gulls, and cawing of crows were his only competitors.

He cleared his throat and began.

“My friends, we are free. We were created free by God. By natural right, we deserve freedom. By civil government we preserve it. By neglect we lose it. By struggle we win it back.

“A child is born to freedom but not in it. He comes to liberty as he comes to reason, for one without the other is mere anarchy. Before reason, the child is subject to his parents, who have grown into their estate, and that is as it should be. But a tyrant is not a father, a despot is not a mother, and their subjects are not children, but are reasoning, free, and equal persons, rightly subject to no arbitrary power. We hereby declare that we are not children, that the only just government is one which derives its power from the immediate consent of the governed, which exists solely to secure for its peoples the rights, privileges, and property to which nature and nature's God entitles them.

“And so, though God has declared it, let us declare it again in a single voice, the voice of the Commonwealth Nations of America, a voice that will make every tyrant on Earth tremble. We are free. No man owns another, no nation owns any man, no nation owns another nation. Our law derives from trust, duty, and above all consent. We stand resolved in this, a fortress wall, mortared with the blood of those who fought and died, guarded by those who fought and lived, and by their children, and theirs. So say we all. We are free.”

He began to read the names signed below, but before the first syllable left his mouth the crowd roared, in that single voice of which Voltaire wrote—“We are free.”

They were still shouting it when the storm came, and Franklin could no longer tell his tears from the raindrops or his laughter from the thunder. They sang it to the dark skies, and when it cleared they were still there, every one of them, and the celebrations really began.

As night fell, and Maroon drank with ranger, and Indian with dragoon, Franklin wondered how long it could last, this unity, this peace. But in a brilliant, exquisite moment, he knew it did not matter. What could be once, could be again and again, as long as there were people of the heart and will to speak and act.

This was the first invention of a new age. It most likely would be the best, and it would not be forgotten.