A day after the United States declared itself independent, John Adams wrote a joyous letter to his wife Abigail. He predicted that Independence Day would be “celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”
Adams was a wise man, but in this he was wrong. Every year, Americans celebrate the fourth day of July with fireworks, parades, picnics, and patriotic demonstrations.
But they are gathering on the wrong day.
“The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America,” wrote Adams.
The process of declaring independence began on June 7, 1776, when Richard Henry Lee, acting on instructions given to him by the Virginia Convention (the extra-legal body that provisionally governed Virginia until a formal government was created) introduced a resolution in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia:
“Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”
Several of the colonies’ delegations could not vote for independence until they received authorizations from back home. The vote on Lee’s Resolution was therefore put off for almost a month. The vote finally came on July 2.
Perhaps one could say that Richard Henry Lee was the author of the Declaration of Independence.
The July 4 myth can be traced back to June 10, 1776, when the Congress created the Committee of Five and tasked it with drafting a declaration explaining the colonies’ decision to declare independence (if Congress indeed decided to do so).
In other words, the Declaration of Independence was meant to be a press release, albeit a beautifully written press release that succinctly laid out fundamental principles that should guide all free societies.
Sitting on the committee were Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. Adams was the most influential member of the group. It was he who led the pro-independence faction in Congress. Because Adams needed to do the more important work of actually convincing his colleagues to support independence, not to mention overseeing the American war effort as President of the Board of War and Ordinance, he delegates the task of writing the declaration to Thomas Jefferson. Although he was not particularly influential in Congress, Jefferson was known as a talented writer, a reputation he more than lived up to with his most famous work.
After declaring independence on July 2, Congress met on July 4 to go over the wording of the Committee of Five’s document.
After making some changes, most notably removing a clause that condemned the slave trade and blamed George III for it, the document was sent back to the Committee so that a final copy could be written up and sent to a printer. Most members of Congress did not actually sing the Declaration of Independence until August 1776. A few did not sign until the fall because they had not been in Philadelphia.
Unfortunately, the date on Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence was July 4. Because the Declaration was how people learned of the final break from Britain, they got used to celebrating on the 4th, and sadly the tradition stuck.
Now that I have angered a few traditionalists and bored everyone else, I should note that in my opinion, whether Congress declared independence on July 2 or July 4 has little relevance, because the republic founded by Adams, Jefferson, and their contemporaries, died on the blood soaked battlefields of the American Civil War. The old Union was replaced by a very different kind of government. The founders of 1776 believed that a national government was a threat to liberty. The founders of 1865 understood that while the national government could oppress the people, it also could, and indeed should, protect and expand the liberty of its citizens. A government that used force to seize $3 billion worth of property was an enemy of liberty as it was understood by men like Jefferson. (To put that $3 billion into perspective, the GDP of the entire US at the time was $6 billion.) A government that gives freedom to four million human beings, grants them citizenship, and seeks to provide them with a decent life, was a friend of liberty as it was understood by Lincoln, Thad Stevens, Frederick Douglas, and Grant, not to mention the vast majority of Americans today.
The United States did not become the nation we all love overnight. It was a process that continues to this day.
With Jefferson’s Declaration, Lincoln said, the Founders “did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.”
When we celebrate the work of our Founders, we should do so, as Lincoln did, with the understanding that their work was unfinished, that they bequeathed to us not only a nation, but a responsibility to carry on their work.