(By Valerie Strauss, Washington Post, 02 July 2014)
You learned
in school about what happened in July 1776, and think you have a good handle on
events surrounding American independence from Great Britain. Right? Well, if you think that was the day that
America’s independence was declared by the Continental Congress meeting in
Philadelphia, you are wrong. And if you
think that that was the day that members of the Congress signed the new
Declaration of Independence, as depicted in a famous canvas painting by John
Trumbull, (which now hangs in the Rotunda of the Capitol of the United
States), you are wrong.
And if you
think that Thomas Jefferson alone wrote the Declaration of Independence, or the
Liberty Bell in Philadelphia was made to ring to announce independence, or that
Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag at the request of George Washington,
you are wrong, wrong and wrong. And if you never learned about George
Washington’s own declaration, that’s another gap in your historical knowledge. Here, adapted from George Mason
University’s History
News Network as well as from some other sources, including Joseph J.
Ellis’s book titled “Revolutionary
Summer: The Birth of American Independence,” here are some truths about
July 4th that may be news to you. (Note: I’ve published some of this before for
July 4th).
American
independence from Great Britain was not decided on July 4th.
Actually,
the Continental Congress voted on July 2, 1776 to declare independence. On the night of
July 2nd, the Pennsylvania Evening Post published the statement:
“This day the Continental Congress declared the United Colonies Free and
Independent States.” John Adams thought July 2 was going to be the day future
Americans celebrated, or so he said in a letter to his wife, Abigail Adams:
The
second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of
America. I am apt to believe that it will 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 one end of this continent to the other, from
this time forward forever more.
In fact,
Ellis makes the case that that Adams “liked to claim that the resolution of May
15 was the real declaration of independence and that Jefferson’s more famous
declaration six weeks later was a merely ceremonial afterthought.” The
resolution of May 15, which was actually approved on May 12, was a formal call
for the colonies to write new state constitutions that would “replace the
colonial constitutions. On May 15, Adams added a preface that placed the
resolution in the context of the historical march to independence.
George
Washington issued his own important declaration on July 2nd, Ellis wrote,
without knowing what was happening in Philadelphia. In his General Orders on
that day, he wrote:
“The time is now at hand which must probably determine, Whether Americans are to be, Freeman, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses and Farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of the unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the conduct of this army…. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.”
So what
happened on July 4th, 1776?
The
Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, which was mostly
written by Thomas Jefferson but subject to edits by the other members of the
five-man team appointed to come up with the document (Ben Franklin, Robert
Livingston, John Adams and Roger Sherman) as well as the full Continental
Congress. Franklin had first right of refusal to draft the document, and he
took it; Adams also said he did not want to, so the job fell to Jefferson. He
finished the first draft during the third week of June, Ellis wrote.
But
Americans didn’t first celebrate independence until July 8, when Philadelphia
threw a big party, including a parade and the firing of guns. The army under
George Washington, then camped near New York City, heard the news July 9 and
celebrated then. Georgia got the word August 10th. And the British in London
found out on August 30th. Though both
Jefferson and Adams later claimed the signing ceremony took place on July 4th,
David McCullough wrotes in his biography of John Adams: “No such scene, with all the delegates
present, ever occurred at Philadelphia.”
In fact, most delegates signed the document on August 2nd, when a
clean copy was finally produced by Timothy Matlack, assistant to the secretary
of Congress; some waited even later to sign, and the names on the document were
made public only in January 1777.
The
Liberty Bell did not ring in American Independence, despite the famous
story about how a boy with blond hair and blue eyes was posted next to
Independence Hall to give a signal to an old man in the bell tower when
independence was declared. The story was concocted in the middle of the 19th
century by writer George Lippard in a book intended for children. The book was
aptly titled, “Legends of the American Revolution.” There was no pretense that
the story was genuine. In fact, the bell
was not even named in honor of American independence. It received the moniker
in the early 19th century when abolitionists used it as a symbol of the
antislavery movement. And the famous crack? The bell cracked because it was
badly designed.
It is
also true that Betsy Ross did not in fact sew the first American flag despite
the story that George Washington himself asked her to. It is not known who
actually sewed the first flag, but it was designed by Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration. Records
show that in May 1780 he sent a bill to the Board of Admiralty for designing
the “flag of the United States.” A small group of descendants works hard to
keep his name alive. You may have
learned that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the Fourth of
July. They did, but the well-known story isn’t all true. On July 4, 1826, Adams, the second president,
and Jefferson, the third president, both died, exactly 50 years after the
adoption of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. The country took it as a
sign of American divinity. But there is
no proof to the long-told story that Adams, dying, uttered, “Jefferson
survives,” which was said to be especially poignant, as Jefferson had died just
hours before without Adams knowing it. Mark that as just another story we
wished so hard were true we convinced ourselves it is. By the way, James Monroe, our fifth
president, died on July 4, 1831. And Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president, was
born on July 4, 1872. Have a Happy
Fourth!
