Herald closed for Independence Day

The Herald Offices will be closed on Tuesday next week in observance of our nation’s Independence Day and to allow time for our staff to spend time with their families. Consequently, there will not be a Wednesday edition of The Smoky Mountain Herald next week. The Herald staff would like to wish all of its loyal readers a Happy Fourth, on this, the 230th anniversary of the formal adoption of the Declaration of Independence, starting the 13 colonies on the road to freedom as a sovereign nation. IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.