I AM THE UNITED STATES I was born on July 4, 1776, and the Declaration of Independence is my birth certificate. The bloodlines of the world run in my veins because I offered freedom to the oppressed: I am the United Statesof America. I am 250 million living souls and have the ghosts of millions who have lived and fought and died for me. I am Nathan Hale and Paul Revere. I stood at Lexington and fired the shot heard around the world. I am Washington, Jefferson, and Patrick Henry. I am John Paul Jones, the Green Mountain Boys, and Davy Crockett. I am Lee, Grant, and Abe Lincoln. I remember the Alamo, the Maine, and Pearl Harbor. When freedom called, I answered and stayed until it was over, over there. I left my heroic dead on the bleak slopes of Korea and Vietnam--in Flandersfield, the rocks of Corregidor, and the desert sands of Kuwait. I am the Brooklyn Bridge, the wheat fields of Kansas, the granite hills of Vermont. I am the coal mines of the Virginias and Pennsylvania, the fertile lands of the West, the Golden Gate and theGrand Canyon. I am Independence Hall, the Monitor, the Merrimac, andthe Challenger. Oh, yes - I am big. I sprawl from the Atlantic to the Pacific -3 million square miles of land throbbing with industry. I am more than 2 million farms. I am forest, field, mountain, and desert. I am quiet villages and cities that never sleep. You can look at me andsee Ben Franklin walking down the streets of Philadelphia with hisbread loaf under his arm. You can see Betsy Ross with her needle.You can see the lights of Christmas and hear the strains of "Auld Lang Syne" as the calendar turns. I am Babe Ruth and the World Series, 170,000 schools and colleges,and more than 300,000 churches where my people worship God as they choose. I am a ballot dropped into a box, the roar of a crowd in astadium, the voice of a choir in a cathedral. I am an editorial in anewspaper and a letter to Congress. I am John Glenn and Neil Armstrong and their fellow astronauts who whirl through the spacesabove my head. I am Eli Whitney and Stephen Foster, Tom Edison, Albert Einstein and Billy Graham. Yes, I am the nation and these are the things that I am. I wasconceived in freedom and, God willing, in freedom I shall spend the rest of my days. May I always possess the integrity, the courage and the strength to keep myself UNSHACKLED , to remain a citadel of freedom and abeacon of hope for all the world. -AUTHOR UNKNOWN. �genealog.i-am-usa: ftp://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/roots-l/genealog/genealog.i-am-usa