July is typically the month when we are supposed to press our reset buttons for the year—to take a hard-earned break from the daily grind of work and spend time with our families savoring the sun (or the air conditioning), gathering seashells, seeking out new trails, or simply catching a summer blockbuster. It is also a month of parades, picnics and, here in New Hampshire, especially intense pride in the independence that’s always been a hallmark of our state.
New Hampshire has always been a little different in that regard. We have always placed a premium on the belief that anyone—regardless of blood or birth—has the power to make a difference here if he or she wants to; that our government and our leaders are held to a heightened level of accountability; and that our communities, neighbors and families are often the best places to look for solutions to everyday problems. All can be summed up in the four words that make ours perhaps the best-known of all state mottos: “Live Free or Die.”
July 31 will mark the 200th anniversary of that phrase, a toast written by New Hampshire’s most famous soldier from the Revolutionary War, General John Stark, to commemorate America’s victory over the British some 32 years earlier at the Battle of Bennington. The full toast—which Stark wrote in a note declining his invitation to an event due to poor health—read, “Live Free or Die; Death Is Not the Worst of Evils.” A year later, those same organizers would send Stark another invitation (again declined), which read, “The toast, sir, which you sent us in 1809 will continue to vibrate with unceasing pleasure in our ears.”
It has indeed. In 1945, New Hampshire made “Live Free or Die” its official motto, and today monuments to Stark can be found in Manchester, Concord, his hometown of Londonderry, and in New Boston—home to the Molly Stark Cannon (named for Stark’s wife), captured from the British at Bennington. The greatest monument, however, is to be found in the hearts of our citizens, who now as then have taken Stark’s famous charge and that same assertive independence and made it their own.
