Free Downloadable Storyboard – The Spirit of ’76

Free PDF download of the black and white “The Spirit of ’76” storyboard. This is an 8×10 image that we use in our Freedom Gallery.

The Revolutionary War officially began in Lexington, Massachusetts at 5:00 a.m. on April 19, 1775 when one man fired a single shot. It was the “shot heard around the world.”

In essence, an unknown individual began the war for American independence. If one of the colonists, a Minuteman perhaps, fired that shot, we could imagine the situation that that soldier faced. He was probably asleep in his bed that morning when someone pounded on his door and shouted in the darkness: “The Redcoats are coming!” But what could he do? He was only one man against the armed might of Britain. This was no time to be foolhardy. He must keep calm, use his head, and consider the practical aspects. And there was his family to think of. What would become of them?

In early 1776, after the American Revolution was well underway, Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense. This short book inspired many Americans to get behind the Revolutionary cause and revolt against Great Britain. It was a run away best seller.

Common Sense said, in essence, that society is produced by our wants and promotes our happiness. On the other hand, government is produced by our wickedness and promotes our happiness by restraining our vices.

Since we must have government though, said Paine, we should have the best government possible, that is a constitutional government with representatives called from among the people for a time to make and enforce laws and then returned to work among the people. “And on this, (not the unmeaning name of the king) depend the strength of government, and the happiness of the governed.”

Paine then went on to blast the British and the tyranny it produced. Even though the Constitution of England provided for a House of Commons representing the people, it also had a King and House of Lords, which were more powerful and overcame the voice of the people.

Thomas Paine explained, “There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of Monarchy….The state of a king shuts him from the World, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly.”

Paine said in essence: Do what is right in your own eyes. Cut loose from England. Set up a government of your own. “We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now.” The people responded and marched into battle to secure the dream that Paine had painted in their minds to have a new kind of liberty that had never been known on the earth. A Constitutional Republic!

Archibald M. Willard was born in Bedford, Ohio in 1836. From his grandfather, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, and his father, a fundamentalist preacher, he learned a deep sense of patriotism. In 1863 he joined the Union Army in the Civil War and enlisted in the 86th Ohio Infantry. Willard returned to Ohio in 1875. About this time he began work on “Yankee Doodle” (later known as “The Spirit of ’76”) for the centennial celebration of our nation’s founding. The models were his father and two friends.