Editor’s Note: In celebration of America’s 250th birthday, we are rerunning a column written for the 200th, in 1976, by Express Editor Emeritus Rebecca Gross.

They took great risks, those patriots of 200 years ago, who staked their future and their fortunes on the Declaration of Independence and the chance that a new nation could grow from a union of the 13 British colonies in America. They had faith and they had hope, but they had no promises of success. They did not know, as they signed the Great Declaration, and as they mobilized their puny strength to fight for freedom, whether they would be hung as traitors, hailed as deliverers, or forgotten as failures.

They did know what freedoms they wanted. They could remember from their colonial past, a history of less than 200 years, how repressions had been imposed by religious sanctions; they could vividly recall the limitations of a licensed press controlled by royal governors and agents of the Crown; they had tasted the tyrannies of an arrogant soldiery and high-handed officials; they had paid taxes to meet the costs of imperial wars and royal rivalries in which they had no voice. They knew enough about freedom to know that they wanted it, and they wanted it for a whole new country.

Now that we are celebrating the 200th anniversary of that new nation, which has survived its initial vicissitudes and its later trials to become the world’s oldest democracy and its principal bastion of political freedom, we look backward to remind ourselves of the milestones that mark our progress. Oddly enough, among the many demonstrations with which we are dramatizing the great achievements of the first two centuries of the nation, there appears to be no great illuminating portrayal of the vital role of the free press in achieving Independence and in the development of a great free nation. Our Bicentennial celebration has been accompanied in some quarters, too, by ironical expressions of doubt that the spirit which built the nation has survived into 1976 with the strength and patriotism of 1776.

The third century of American democracy will unfold the answers to such skeptics — and the character of those answers may depend upon two factors on which there has been some debate in this Bicentennial period. One of these factors is the quality of the free press of the United States 200 years after 27 little colonial newspapers struggled to speak for a people embroiled in controversy over the great issue of Revolution. The other factor is the capacity of modern-day Americans, living among many distractions and diversions, to absorb the information they need in order to form sound opinions and participate intelligently in the process of self-government.

Who can say which comes first in importance, a free press which informs its readers adequately, or a body of citizens which knows how to apply information effectively to the improvement of government? Neither press nor public can claim to have reached any degree of near-perfection, either in the art of information completely, or in the citizen’s task of assimilating facts with the mind instead of the emotions, and applying them to the rational understanding of public issues.

Yet we must recognize that what we let happen, during the next 100 years, may have a profound effect upon the democratic freedoms extolled in the Declaration of Independence and enunciated in the Constitution. If we have learned anything from our first 200 years, it has to be the knowledge that democratic freedoms are not self-perpetuating merely because they are set forth in our charters of government. These freedoms must be prized, protected and preserved, for all citizens. They are under the same assaults today as were marshalled against them before 1776, and they will always be vulnerable to the attacks of selfish and greedy enemies of true democracy.

Their protection rests now, as it did 200 years ago, upon the courage, persistence and ability of those who can recognize what is at stake, and take the risks of its defense. Our future, beyond the Bicentennial, even more than the great past which lies behind us, may depend upon the truth we draw from our agencies of information, and the ability of our people to use that truth, to separate fact from frenzy, to act in knowledge and reason, for the common good.

The patriots who started our nation did it in defiance of hazards that threatened their lives as well as their freedoms. Our future is less perilous, the dangers more subtle.

On those who have assumed the constitutional privilege to disseminate information through a free press rests the responsibility to safeguard the flow of truth from pollution of self-serving biases, selfish and partisan influences, and crass blunders. On citizens there rests an equal responsibility to keep alert to the events which create new public problems from day to day so their views can be voiced and their votes cast with knowledge.

In our third century, the worst threat to our freedoms is most likely to be our own failure to recognize significant truth and act upon it promptly.

Rebecca Gross served as long-time editor of The Express. Following her retirement, she was named Editor Emeritus.