How one date came to define a nation

In every civilization, people seem to take pleasure in marking their birthdays – and nations, in their own way, are no different.

This month, the United States will begin a yearlong commemoration of its 250th birthday. A reasonable question naturally follows: Why do we say the nation’s birthday falls in 1776, and why do we celebrate it specifically on July 4?

Independence didn’t happen all at once

The answer begins with a familiar milestone. Of course, 1776 was the year in which the Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain. Yet this declaration came after the Revolutionary War had already begun in 1775 and long before the conflict was actually won in 1781 at Yorktown. Even then, the war did not formally conclude until the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783.

Even in 1781 or 1783, the thirteen states (no longer colonies after declaring independence) were linked only by the Articles of Confederation, which created a weak central government. Most measures required a majority of state delegations, while the most important actions (such as making war or peace) needed the assent of nine states under Article IX. Amendments, however, required unanimous approval, and Congress had no power to tax directly, only to request money and troops from the states. It was not until 1787, when a new Constitution was agreed to at a Convention in Philadelphia that the country, as we now know it, was on the precipice of being formed. And it was not until 1788, when the Constitution was ratified, that the country really came into being. Why not celebrate the country's beginning when the Constitution was either agreed to or went into effect?

Or why not celebrate the country's beginning on the date the Civil War ended and the country was united again? Or the date slavery was abolished, and the country abandoned its most hideous practice?

Or, for those who really like history, why not celebrate the year Christopher Columbus sailed into the new world (1492); or the year that the first Spanish colony was established in North America at St. Augustine, Florida (1565); or the years the British established colonies in Virginia (1607) or in Massachusetts (1620)?

Every country marks its origin story differently

Other countries, of course, celebrate their own beginnings by various standards:

• France - Although France had a long history as a country before the Bastille was stormed on July 14, 1789, during the French Revolution, that event is the day the country celebrates its national day.
• England - St. George’s Day on April 23 is widely observed as England’s national day. It marks the traditional date on which a Roman soldier, George, refused in 303 A.D. to renounce his Christian faith and was executed. Although Saint George had no historical connection to England, he came to be seen as an English patron for his perceived values of courage, honor, and faith.
• Germany - The date Germany was reunited in 1990 (October 3) is celebrated as German Unity Day, even though Germany had a long history well before the date.
• Canada - Canada celebrates its national day on July 1, for it was on that date in 1867 that the Constitution Act united the Province of Canada (soon divided into Ontario and Quebec), Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick into the Dominion of Canada.
• Japan - Japan celebrates its national day, National Foundation Day, on February 11, marking the traditional date of Emperor Jimmu’s accession to the throne in 660 B.C. This also coincides with the date on which the Meiji Constitution was promulgated in 1889.
• China - October 1 is celebrated as China’s national day, for that date commemorates the day in 1949 that Mao Tse-Tung declared in Beijing the new government of China.

Obviously, the particular event that causes countries to celebrate their National Days varies widely.

Why July 4 and not July 2 or August 2?

In the United States, despite the various possibilities described earlier, the country began to celebrate 1776 as the date of the it’s beginning, even though the country was not recognized then by any foreign country (or even by most residents of the thirteen colonies) as a true independent country in that year. Despite the effort to break away from England in 1776, the 13 colonies had not legally freed themselves from England by that date.

But even if 1776 is accepted as the year in which the thirteen colonies aspired to be an independent country, why July 4 and not two other dates that year: July 2 (when the vote to break away occurred) or August 2 (when the Declaration was actually signed)? The brief background:

On July 2, 1776, the delegates voted unanimously to break away from England.

The efforts of the delegates of the first Continental Congress to get Britain to ease or eliminate taxes on the colonies, and to refrain from other efforts to constrain the colonies’ ability to govern themselves, were going nowhere.

By the time the Second Continental Congress convened in 1775, the delegates seemed to recognize that Britain was unlikely to relent, and a split was likely – and desirable. John Adams was a strong proponent of breaking away and supported a resolution from Richard Henry Lee of Virginia to do so. But the delegates did not have the authority in June of 1776, and Adams thus led the effort to have the delegates return to their colonies, get the requisite authority, and return by the end of June 1776, prepared to vote on the Lee Resolution.

How a draft became a declaration

In anticipation of the likely outcome of a vote to break away from England, on June 11, 1776, the Congress appointed a five-person committee to draft a statement explaining why the vote had occurred. The five committee members were Thomas Jefferson, a young delegate from Virginia (who really preferred at the time to be in Virginia with his ailing wife); John Adams, a leader of the Congress and the breakaway movement; Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the most respected and best-known American at that time; Robert Livingston, a highly respected delegate from New York, (who later administered the oath of office to President George Washington); and Roger Sherman of Connecticut, the person who developed the “Connecticut” compromise during the Constitutional Convention, which led to the bicameral Congress that still exists.

Adams was the logical person to draft the statement explaining the reason for the break from England. Not only had he been one of the Congress’ most ardent supporters of the break, but he was a lawyer, skilled writer, and a respected member of the Congress. However, he apparently felt Jefferson should be the draftsman for a number of reasons (some subsequently attributed to Adams in his retelling of what happened).

Adams apparently felt that he already had a fair number of detractors among the delegates; he was already extremely busy (serving on several dozen of Congress’s committees), and he did not want to give the appearance that Massachusetts (his colony) was the only real proponent of a dissolution from England.

So, Adams asked Jefferson, who was from Virginia and known to be a very skilled writer, to take the lead in drafting the statement. Jefferson was reluctant to take on this assignment as he had been hoping to leave Congress early to return to his wife.

Jefferson ultimately agreed to draft a statement. He was given the assignment on June 11, but apparently did not start drafting until closer to the end of June. Working from his rented apartment, and with no real reference books by his side, he finished on June 28 and then showed it to John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. They made some word edits to the Preamble but essentially left largely untouched what Jefferson had written.

When the delegates to the Congress returned to Philadelphia around June 28, they began a debate on the Lee Resolution to break away from England.

Toward the end of July 2, the vote to break away was passed unanimously although the New York delegates, who were dealing with Britain’s occupying New York, had not yet received the authority to vote for the dissolution.

With the passage of the resolution on July 2, Adams was elated and wrote to his wife Abigail that July 2 would be the date the country would celebrate for many years into the future: “I am apt to believe that it (July 2) will be celebrated by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary festival. It might 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 Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of the Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

After the resolution to dissolve ties with England passed on July 2, the delegates immediately began to consider Jefferson’s document.

The deliberation continued from July 2 through July 4. About 86 changes were made by the delegates to Jefferson’s handiwork, deleting about a quarter of what Jefferson had written. Jefferson sat mute through the discussions. He never said a word. (Jefferson did not like to speak publicly. He only made one public speech in eight years as President).

But Jefferson was certainly not pleased. After the final text was agreed to, Jefferson was so upset with the changes that he wrote to a number of his friends saying the delegates had “mutilated” his document and explained why his draft was better. For about seven years after July 4, 1776, Jefferson did not acknowledge that he had actually been the principal author of the original document. Later, after the Declaration became a symbol of the United States, and its popularity was assured, Jefferson began to acknowledge authorship. Indeed, in preparing the epitaph for his tombstone, he wanted the words “Author of the Declaration of Independence” to be the first lines of the epitaph.

On the night of July 4, a number of delegates took the revised draft of the Declaration and gave it to a local printer, John Dunlop, to prepare a print version on one page (called a “broadside”).

That night, Philadelphia printer John Dunlap produced about two hundred broadside copies of the Declaration, which were sent to the colonies, to Washington to read to his troops, and to King George. Today, about 26 Dunlap broadsides are known to still exist. The last copy sold publicly in 2000 and brought just over $8 million at auction; a subsequent private sale to Bill Gates reportedly occurred at a multiple several times higher.

But as of July 4, the text had not actually been signed by more than two of the delegates.

Because the New York delegates had not yet been able to vote for the Lee Resolution, and because it was decided to have a document with appropriate calligraphy, which would take some time, the delegates were told to return to Philadelphia in early August to sign the document. Apparently, most of the delegates did so on August 2.

So why not celebrate August 2, the date the Declaration was actually signed? (John Hancock, the President of the Congress famously signed first, with his large signature; he allegedly wanted to make sure King George III saw it).

By signing the documents, the delegates were obviously committing treason. And some of the delegates may have had some trepidation about subjecting themselves or their families to attacks by the British troops (or by loyalists among the colonial population – said to be about a third of the population).

Perhaps for that reason, the signed document was not revealed to the public until January 18, 1777, when printed copies were sent to all the States. Some scholars say that the war seemed to be going a bit better then, and the delegates may have been less fearful of being tried for treason. But that is not a universal view.

So why not have the country’s celebratory day on January 18, when the public first saw the engraved and signed copies of the Declaration?

Or perhaps, better yet why not have the national celebratory date be September 17, 1787, when the delegates to the Constitutional Convention agreed to the text of the new document under which the country was to be governed (and, with 27 Amendments, is still governed)? This date is indeed celebrated as Constitution Day, but with much less fanfare than the 4th of July.

The Declaration was a bit of a public relations document. It did not have the force of law – unlike the Constitution. The Declaration is rarely cited by the US Supreme Court as a basis for its decisions; the Constitution is regularly cited.

Or the date the Constitution was ratified, June 21, 1788, as New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution?

So, to summarize, there are a number of years in which the United States could celebrate its birth:

1492 – Columbus “discovers” America

1565 – St. Augustine colony founded

1607 – Virginia colony founded at Jamestown

1620 – Puritans land at Plymouth Rock

1775 – Beginning of Revolutionary War

1776 – Declaration agreed to and published

1777 – Declaration’s signers made public

1781 – Revolutionary War fighting ended

1783 – Treaty of Paris signed, ending war

1787 – Constitution text approved by Convention’s Delegates

1788 – Constitution ratified

It has clearly been decided that the time of the Revolutionary War was the time of the country’s birth. But why not have the birthday be July 2 (when the resolution to break away from England was passed by the Second Continental Congress), or August 2 (when the Declaration was actually signed), or January 18, 1777 (when the signed document was made public for the first time)?

The answer is that July 4 was celebrated initially as the important date one year later, in 1777. John Adams obviously believed that the July 2 date was the much more important date; had he known that the date the Declaration was agreed to would be more significant, he no doubt would have authored the Declaration himself.

As the first anniversary of independence approached in 1777, John Adams assumed that any national celebration would naturally take place on July 2, the date the Continental Congress had actually voted for independence. But the delegates of the Second Continental Congress were focused on the ongoing war effort and never organized festivities for July 2 (some accounts suggest they simply forgot the date altogether). When they realized the oversight, they delayed any public celebration until July 4 , a date already gaining prominence because of its association with the Declaration of Independence rather than the earlier Lee Resolution.

And a celebration did occur on July 4, 1777. At the time, Jefferson’s authorship was not widely known, and thus Jefferson was not seen as being celebrated as opposed to Adams being celebrated. It was a number of years later that Jefferson was seen as a “hero” of the Revolutionary War because of his authoring the Declaration. That was no doubt one, but not the only, reason why Adams and Jefferson more or less ended their relationship for a large part of their post-War lives and only began corresponding again a few years before their deaths. (They both died on July 4, 1826 - fifty years to the day after the Declaration was agreed to by the delegates).

So why did the initial Declaration date, July 4, stick as the country’s birthday? Why not revert to July 2, after the inadvertence of the initial celebration on July 4?

The reason that July 4, 1776, has stuck is really this:

Of course, as noted, it was in fact the first date on which a national “birthday” was celebrated. And Congress made it the “official” birthday when, in 1870 it designated the 4 of July as a federal holiday.

But what is it about the 4 that is so special, compared to the 2 or other dates described above?

One sentence changed everything

Regardless of why we celebrate on July 4, the Declaration of Independence was the result. It is really about one sentence in the Declaration of Independence, which, as Walter Isaacson has called in a new book by this name, “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written.”

What is the sentence?

By way of background, Jefferson wrote the Declaration in three parts – Preamble, List of Grievances, and Resolution of Independence.

At the time it was written, the Preamble was not viewed as all that significant. What was viewed as significant at the time was the list of grievances against King George III. Jefferson described 28 grievances. The Congress shortened the number to 26, most visibly deleting the grievance that King George had forced and sustained the slave trade.

But more important than the grievances against King George were the document’s Resolution of Independence. That was really the big news: the colonies were declaring themselves “free and independent states.” And thus, the British had grounds, in their view, to fight a war against those trying to take away its property – the 13 British colonies in North America.

Neither the British government nor King George responded officially to the Declaration. But the British government did have agents writing responses, the most visible of which perhaps were those that noted how the colonies talked in the Preamble about the fact that “all men are created equal”, yet they were enslaving at the time about 500,000 individuals.

The Declaration did not use the word “slaves” or “enslaved.” The inconsistency of calling for liberty but enslaving people at the same time was recognized by Congress’s delegates. But the Congress had no good answer and ignored the taunts from agents for the British. The delegates recognized that if slavery were to be ended, the colonies would not be sufficiently united to fight or win a war.

But why is the Preamble now considered so important – the greatest sentence - when it was largely ignored at the time of its drafting?

The answer is that the sentence that Jefferson largely drafted (with some edits by Franklin and Adams) has essentially become the creed for the country, the founding principles, even though at the time slavery made the principles more than a bit hollow.

The sentence (in part) reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with the right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Obviously, the sentence flies in the face of reality, at the time, for the colonies enforced a large slavery program. During his lifetime, Thomas Jefferson owned more than 700 slaves.

Jefferson recognized the immorality of slavery and, earlier in his career, proposed that slaves be freed and moved west of the Appalachian Mountains. But such a position was not going to help his political career in Virginia, so he stopped talking about this possibility.

Jefferson almost certainly did not intend to include slaves or women in his famous sentence. He and most of his contemporaries understood “all men” in practice to mean Christian, white, property-owning men, yet his writing in the Preamble did not actually spell out those limitations (because he could not have imagined including slaves or women as “equal” to white men).

An ideal bigger than its moment

Subsequent to the Revolutionary War, Jefferson’s sentence was latched onto by revolutionary leaders in other countries. And the sentence became a rallying cry for all of those around the world and in the United States as well, who wanted equality for all people. Dozens of revolutions were inspired by Jefferson’s words.

Lincoln, a great admirer of the Founding Fathers, gave further credence to what Jefferson had written in his opening sentence of the Gettysburg address:

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on the Continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Lincoln's sentence refers back to the language in Jefferson’s Preamble. But Lincoln was really expanding the concept to include all people. And by doing so, Lincoln upset some of his soldiers and others in the North who did not want blacks and whites to be equal.

But ultimately, slavery ended. And ultimately, women were given the right to vote.

And a steady progression of rights being granted to others occurred over the years, and the concept of everyone being equal, or at least having equal opportunity or equal rights, permeated American government, population, culture, and law.

But the equality concept all started with Jefferson’s words, which he really copied from others, like Virginian George Mason and European philosophers, such as Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke.

So, the reason why we celebrate the July 4 rather than July 2 or any of the other dates described above is that the Declaration became the symbol of what the country believes it stands for – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people.