PART III
1776
June 7 -- Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, receives Richard Henry Lee's
resolution urging Congress to declare independence.
June 11 -- Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman,
and Robert R. Livingston appointed to a committee to draft a declaration of
independence. American army retreats to Lake Champlain from Canada.
June 12 - 27 -- Jefferson, at the request of the committee, drafts a
declaration, of which only a fragment exists. Jefferson's clean, or "fair"
copy, the "original Rough draught," is reviewed by the committee. Both
documents are in the manuscript collections of the Library of Congress.
June 28 -- A fair copy of the committee draft of the Declaration of
Independence is read in Congress.
July 1 - 4 -- Congress debates and revises the Declaration of Independence.
July 2 -- Congress declares independence as the British fleet and army
arrive at New York.
July 4 -- Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence in the morning of
a bright, sunny, but cool Philadelphia day. John Dunlap prints the
Declaration of Independence. These prints are now called "Dunlap
Broadsides." Twenty-four copies are known to exist, two of which are in the
Library of Congress. One of these was Washington's personal copy.
July 5 -- John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, dispatches
the first of Dunlap's broadsides of the Declaration of Independence to the
legislatures of New Jersey and Delaware.
July 6 -- Pennsylvania Evening Post of July 6 prints the first newspaper
rendition of the Declaration of Independence.
July 8 -- The first public reading of the Declaration is in Philadelphia.
July 9 -- Washington orders that the Declaration of Independence be read
before the American army in New York -- from his personal copy of the
"Dunlap Broadside."
July 19 -- Congress orders the Declaration of Independence engrossed
(officially inscribed) and signed by members.
August 2 -- Delegates begin to sign engrossed copy of the Declaration of
Independence. A large British reinforcement arrives at New York after being
repelled at Charleston, S.C.
1777
http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/declara1.html
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SOME SUMMATION AND SOME ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
[EMPHASIS ADDED]
But first, a brief word about the actual revolution that was the
particular subject of the Declaration will place that document in its
historical, political, and military setting. The Declaration of
Independence, as we all know, was approved on July 4, 1776, but the
struggle for independence began well before that iconic date and was to
continue for some time thereafter. Historians disagree as to the specific
event that marked the beginning of our revolution, since there was no
formal declaration of war or any other specific signpost on the long road
to separation. Some go back as far as the Boston Massacre of 1770, while
others point to the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Most focus on the first
actual battle between British soldiers and American patriots, at Lexington
and Concord in 1775, where "the shot heard round the world" was fired. The
reality is that, as with most complex historical epics, there was no
singular event that marked its commencement. The American Revolution was an
ongoing process, as the British would surely have argued had they won the
war and placed our revolutionaries-from Samuel Adams to James Madison-in
the dock for treason.
Among the most prominent defendants would have been those
courageous men who evaded British arrest and made it to Philadelphia to
attend the First and Second Continental Congresses, in 1775 and 1776. The
actual resolution by which the Continental Congress officially voted to
separate from Great Britain-the primary overt act of treason-was submitted
on June 7, 1776, by Richard Henry Lee (hardly a household name) and was
approved on July 2, 1776 (hardly a memorable date). It was an eminently
forgettable bare-bones resolution that simply affirmed what everyone
already knew to be the fact: that, as Thomas Paine had correctly observed,
the period of debate was over and the time had come to declare that "these
United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free 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 Declaration of Independence, approved two days later, was,
essentially, an explanation and justification for the action already taken.
It was analogous to a judicial opinion delivered several days after the
actual judgment had been rendered by a court.
The Continental Congress decided on this bifurcated approach in
early June 1776, when, following the introduction of Lee's resolution, it
appointed a committee to "prepare a declaration to the effect of the said
first resolution."
SOURCE: America Declares Independence, Alan Dershowitz, John Wiley & Sons,
Inc. (2003) pp. 4-5
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ANOTHER VIEW
http://www.classbrain.com/artholiday/publish/article_203.shtml
[EXCERPTS FROM -- EMPHASIS ADDED]
4th of July
Making Sense of The 4th of July (part 1)
By Pauline Maier
Jul 2, 2003, 12:25 PST
"Reprinted from AMERICAN HERITAGE, August 7, 1997.)
According to notes kept by Thomas Jefferson, the Second Continental
Congress did not discuss the resolution on independence when it was first
proposed by Virginia's Richard Henry Lee, on Friday, June 7, 1776, because
it was "obliged to attend at that time to some other business." However, on
the eighth, Congress resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole and
"passed that day & Monday the 10th in debating on the subject." By then all
contenders admitted that it had become impossible for the colonies ever
again to be united with Britain. The issue was one of timing.
Congress decided to give the laggard colonies time and so delayed its
decision for three weeks. But it also appointed a Committee of Five to
draft a declaration of independence so that such a document could be issued
quickly once Lee's motion passed. The committee's members included
Jefferson, Livingston, John Adams, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and
Pennsylvania's Benjamin Franklin. The drafting committee met, decided what
the declaration should say and how it would be organized, then asked
Jefferson to prepare a draft.
Even so, when the Committee of the Whole again took up Lee's resolution, on
July 1, only nine colonies voted in favor (the four New England states, New
Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia). South Carolina
and Pennsylvania opposed the proposition, Delaware's two delegates split,
and New York's abstained because their twelvemonth-old instructions
precluded them from approving anything that impeded reconciliation with the
mother country. Edward Rutledge now asked that Congress put off its
decision until the next day, since he thought that the South Carolina
delegation would then vote in favor "for the sake of unanimity." When
Congress took its final tally on July 2, the nine affirmative votes of the
day before had grown to twelve: Not only South Carolina voted in favor, but
so did Delaware-the arrival of Caesar Rodney broke the tie in that
delegation's vote-and Pennsylvania. Only New York held out. Then on July 9
it, too, allowed its delegates to add their approval to that of delegates
from the other twelve colonies, lamenting still the "cruel necessity" that
made independence "unavoidable."
Once independence had been adopted, Congress again formed itself into a
Committee of the Whole. It then spent the better part of two days editing
the draft declaration submitted by its Committee of Five, rewriting or
chopping off large sections of text. Finally, on July 4, Congress approved
the revised Declaration and ordered it to be printed and sent to the
several states and to the commanding officers of the Continental Army.. .
Not until four days later did a committee of Congress-not Congress
itself-get around to sending a copy of the Declaration to its emissary in
Paris, Silas Deane, with orders to present it to the court of France and
send copies to "the other Courts of Europe." Unfortunately the original
letter was lost, and the next failed to reach Deane until November, when
news of American independence had circulated for months. To make matters
worse, it arrived with only a brief note from the committee and in an
envelope that lacked a seal, an unfortunately slipshod way, complained
Deane, to announce the arrival of the United States among the powers of the
earth to "old and powerfull states." Despite the Declaration's reference to
the "opinions of mankind," it was obviously meant first and foremost for a
home audience.
As copies of the Declaration spread through the states and were publicly
read at town meetings, religious services, court days, or wherever else
people assembled, Americans marked the occasion with appropriate rituals.
They lit great bonfires, "illuminated" their windows with candles, fired
guns, rang bells, tore down and destroyed the symbols of monarchy on public
buildings, churches, or tavern signs, and "fixed up" on the walls of their
homes broadside or newspaper copies of the Declaration of Independence.
But what exactly were they celebrating? The news, not the vehicle that
brought it; independence and the assumption of self-government, not the
document that announced Congress's decision to break with Britain.
Considering how revered a position the Declaration of Independence later
won in the minds and hearts of the people, Americans' disregard for it in
the first years of the new nation verges on the unbelievable.. .
The adoption of independence was, however, from the beginning confused with
its declaration. Differences in the meaning of the word declare contribute
to the confusion. Before the Declaration of Independence was issued --
while, in fact, Congress was still editing Jefferson's draft --
Pennsylvania newspapers announced that on July 2 the Continental Congress
had "declared the United Colonies Free and Independent States," by which it
meant simply that it had officially accepted that status. Newspapers in
other colonies repeated the story. In later years the "Anniversary of the
United States of America" came to be celebrated on the date Congress had
approved the Declaration of Independence. That began, it seems, by
accident. In 1777 no member of Congress thought of marking the anniversary
of independence at all until July 3, when it was too late to honor July 2.
As a result, the celebration took place on the Fourth, and that became the
tradition. At least one delegate spoke of "celebrating the Anniversary of
the Declaration of Independence," but over the next few years references to
the anniversary of independence and of the Declaration seem to have been
virtually interchangeable.
Accounts of the events at Philadelphia on July 4, 1777, say quite a bit
about the music played by a band of Hessian soldiers who had been captured
at the Battle of Trenton the previous December, and the "splended
illumination" of houses, but little about the Declaration. Thereafter, in
the late 1770s and 1780s, the Fourth of July was not regularly celebrated;
indeed, the holiday seems to have declined in popularity once the
Revolutionary War ended. When it was remembered, however, festivities
seldom, if ever-to judge by newspaper accounts-involved a public reading of
the Declaration of Independence. It was as if that document had done its
work in carrying news of independence to the people, and it neither needed
nor deserved further commemoration. . .
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