Editorial: July 7, 2023

Independent Thoughts

We have just celebrated the Fourth of July, surrounded by Canadian smoke, threatening heat waves and heavenly rain. As usual, the Cooperstown Fire Department outdid itself, sending up noisy multi-colored rockets and shooting stars, to the amusement and appreciation of us all, except, of course, our dogs. Oneonta’s Hometown Fourth of July Festival is underway as we go to press.

Independence Day, as this day is called nationally, is a federal holiday. It commemorates the Declaration of Independence, which was ratified by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, establishing the United States of America. It began as a resolution of independence proposed in June 1776 by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, which declared the United States—that is, the Thirteen Colonies—free, united and independent states, independent from King George III and Great Britain’s rule. The Lee resolution was passed by the Second Continental Congress on July 2, approving independence and legalizing a separation of the colonies from Great Britain. It was adopted as the Declaration of Independence, a statement that explained the decision, two days later.

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration, in extensive consultation with the other four members of the Committee of Five—John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman. It was written between June 11, 1776, and June 28, 1776, in Philadelphia, where the Second Continental Congress met. On June 28, the document was presented to the Congress, and the vote was recorded at 6:26 p.m. A second reading occurred on July 2 and a third on July 3. But for two passages in the draft, the declaration was accepted.

Those two passages included a critical reference to King George and the English people and a denunciation of the slave trade and of slavery itself. Both passages were removed.

Although the revisions were completed on July 3, the formal adoption of the Declaration of Independence was voted on by Congress on July 4. The Committee of Five then met to complete the revisions, which were published in a broadside to the public on July 5. John Hancock’s signature stands out, as he was the president of the Continental Congress and, although all members of the congress were signatories, only Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin ever stated that they had signed the document on July 4; the others could not recollect which day they had signed. The durable myth of one grand ceremonial signing, on July 4, 1776, has stood unchallenged—and unresolved—to this day.

In 1777, 13 shots were fired, once in the morning and then in the evening, in Bristol, Rhode Island. There was a 13-shot volley in Philadelphia, along with an official dinner for the Continental Congress, music, parades, troop reviews and fireworks. Ships in the harbor were decorated with red, white and blue bunting. The following year, on July 4, General George Washington offered his soldiers a double ration of rum. In 1781, the Massachusetts General Court recognized July 4 as a state celebration; Salem, North Carolina claimed its celebration with a music program in 1783 was the first public July 4 event. In 1870 the U.S. Congress made Independence Day an unpaid holiday for federal employees, and in 1938 it was changed to a paid one.

(Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, at times good friends and at other times at each others’ throats, died on July 4, 1826, 50 years after the Declaration of Independence. James Monroe also died on July 4, in 1831, and Calvin Coolidge was born on July 4, 1872.)

The Fourth of July this year brought record numbers of travelers and revelers together on this historic day. May this offer a faint glimmer of hope that we Americans might once again come together every day.