“On the second of July, 1776, was adopted the resolution of independence, the sufficient legislative act; and it was this day that Mr. Adams designated as the anniversary in the oft-quoted letter written on his desk at the time, prophesying its future celebration, by bells, bonfires, cannonades, etc. On the fourth of July occurred the Declaration of Independence. On the second of August following took place the ceremony of signature, which has furnished to the popular imagination the common pictorial and dramatic conceptions of the event.
“The history connecting these three dates may be intelligently told in a brief space. On the fifteenth of May, 1776, a convention in Virginia had instructed its delegates in the General Congress ‘to propose to that body to declare the United Colonies free and independent States, absolved from all allegiance to or dependence on the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain, and that they give the assent of this Colony to such declaration, and to whatever measures may be thought proper and necessary by the Congress for forming foreign alliances and a confederation of the Colonies.’ The motion thus ordered was on the seventh of June made in Congress by Richard Henry Lee, as the oldest member of the Virginia delegation. It was to the effect 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.’ The resolution was slightly debated for two or three days, but from considerations of prudence or expediency the discussion was intermitted. As texts for the action of Congress there were the resolution referred to, and the more formal, or at least more lengthy, document which the committee of five—Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Livingston—had been instructed on the eleventh of June to prepare. This document was draughted by Jefferson and presented under the title of ‘A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled.’
“On the first of July there was again called up in Congress the resolution proposed by Mr. Lee. On the second of July it passed. Two days later (the fourth of July) was adopted, after various amendments, the ‘Declaration’ from Mr. Jefferson’s pen. The document was authenticated, like the other papers of the Congress, by the signature of the president and the secretary, and, in addition, was signed by the members present, with the exception of Mr. Dickinson of Pennsylvania, who, as Mr. Jefferson has testified, ‘refused to sign it.’
“But it did not then bear the names of the members of Congress as they finally appeared on it. A number of these still opposed it, and had voted against it; it was passed unanimously only as regarded states. Thus, a majority of the Pennsylvania delegation had persistently opposed it, and it was only the absence of two of their delegates on the final vote that left a majority for this state in its favor. Some days after the Declaration had thus passed, and had been proclaimed at the head of the army, it was ordered by Congress that it be engrossed on parchment and signed by every member; and it was not until the second of August that these signatures were made, and the matter concluded by this peculiar and august ceremony of personal pledges in the autographs of the members. It is this copy or form of the Declaration which has, in fact, been preserved as the original: the first signed paper does not exist, and was probably destroyed as incomplete.
“If the natal day of American Independence is to be derived from the ceremony of these later signatures, and the real date of what has been preserved as the legal original of the Declaration, then it would be the second of August. If derived from the substantial, legal act of separation from the British Crown, which was contained rather in the resolution of Congress than in its Declaration of Independence, it would be the second of July. But common consent has determined to date the great anniversary from the apparently subordinate event of the passage of the Declaration, and thus celebrates the Fourth of July as the birthday of the nation.”
Finally, after making ourselves reasonably intelligent as to the origin, spirit and true significance of Independence Day it behooves us as true Americans to enter the splendid new movement which is endeavoring to make the Fourth over from a day of shallow jingoism and unmeaning brutality and carnage into a day of initiation into the meaning of true citizenship and a festival of deep and genuine and beautiful patriotism.
R. H. S.