Our rights set in stone: Richland honors America’s foundation

You won’t have to travel to Washington, D.C., to glimpse our nation’s founding documents – well, replicas of them, anyway.

On Thursday, Richland County unveils and dedicates its new Charters of Freedom monument displaying etched bronze copies of the Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights set in granite cases.

It’s a project devoted to providing access to and education about American government, said Vance Patterson, founder of the nonprofit Foundation Forward Inc., which has installed Charters of Freedom monuments in five other communities in North Carolina, Illinois and Indiana.

“We want people to be educated on how government ought to work,” Patterson said. “Our founding fathers believed that in order to have a free and independent society, you must understand how government works. You cannot control what you don’t understand.”

The county is the first community in South Carolina to receive one of the monuments.

Patterson also owns Blythewood’s Patterson Fan Co., which is giving the monument as a gift to Richland County at no cost to the county other than to prepare the site in front of the county administration building, at the corner of Harden and Hampton streets in Columbia. County Council in December approved placing the monument on the site.

It is envisioned that schoolchildren will be able to visit the monument on field trips, and the site is available for anyone in the public to visit.

The monument also will include a time capsule to be opened on Sept. 17, 2087, the 300th anniversary of the writing of the Constitution. The capsule will be opened on the same day as capsules included in Charters of Freedom monuments around the country and will include letters and artifacts from the present-day community.

The Charters of Freedom monument will be dedicated during a ceremony at 2 p.m. Thursday. The event will include speakers, patriotic music and the firing of a cannon.