The Bob

This Day in History: U.S. declares independence

• July 4: General Interest
• 1776 : U.S. declares independence
• In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress adopts the
• Declaration of Independence, which proclaims the independence of the
• United States of America from Great Britain and its king. The
• declaration came 442 days after the first volleys of the American
• Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts and
• marked an ideological expansion of the conflict that would eventually
• encourage France's intervention on behalf of the Patriots.
• The first major American opposition to British policy came in 1765
• after Parliament passed the Stamp Act, a taxation measure to raise
• revenues for a standing British army in America. Under the banner of
• "no taxation without representation," colonists convened the Stamp Act
• Congress in October 1765 to vocalize their opposition to the tax. With
• its enactment in November, most colonists called for a boycott of
• British goods, and some organized attacks on the customhouses and
• homes of tax collectors. After months of protest in the colonies,
• Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766.
• Most colonists continued to quietly accept British rule until
• Parliament's enactment of the Tea Act in 1773, a bill designed to save
• the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and
• granting it a monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed
• the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by
• Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of
• taxation tyranny. In response, militant Patriots in Massachusetts
• organized the "Boston Tea Party," which saw British tea valued at some
• 18,000 pounds dumped into Boston Harbor.
• Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of
• destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known
• as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to
• merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in
• Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution
• in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The
• colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to
• consider a united American resistance to the British.
• With the other colonies watching intently, Massachusetts led the
• resistance to the British, forming a shadow revolutionary government
• and establishing militias to resist the increasing British military
• presence across the colony. In April 1775, Thomas Gage, the British
• governor of Massachusetts, ordered British troops to march to Concord,
• Massachusetts, where a Patriot arsenal was known to be located. On
• April 19, 1775, the British regulars encountered a group of American
• militiamen at Lexington, and the first shots of the American
• Revolution were fired.
• Initially, both the Americans and the British saw the conflict as a
• kind of civil war within the British Empire: To King George III it was
• a colonial rebellion, and to the Americans it was a struggle for their
• rights as British citizens. However, Parliament remained unwilling to
• negotiate with the American rebels and instead purchased German
• mercenaries to help the British army crush the rebellion. In response
• to Britain's continued opposition to reform, the Continental Congress
• began to pass measures abolishing British authority in the colonies.
• In January 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, an influential
• political pamphlet that convincingly argued for American independence
• and sold more than 500,000 copies in a few months. In the spring of
• 1776, support for independence swept the colonies, the Continental
• Congress called for states to form their own governments, and a five-
• man committee was assigned to draft a declaration.
• The Declaration of Independence was largely the work of Virginian
• Thomas Jefferson. In justifying American independence, Jefferson drew
• generously from the political philosophy of John Locke, an advocate of
• natural rights, and from the work of other English theorists. The
• first section features the famous lines, "We hold these truths to be
• self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
• their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
• Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The second part presents
• a long list of grievances that provided the rationale for rebellion.
• On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to approve a Virginia
• motion calling for separation from Britain. The dramatic words of this
• resolution were added to the closing of the Declaration of
• Independence. Two days later, on July 4, the declaration was formally
• adopted by 12 colonies after minor revision. New York approved it on
• July 19. On August 2, the declaration was signed.
• The American War for Independence would last for five more years. Yet
• to come were the Patriot triumphs at Saratoga, the bitter winter at
• Valley Forge, the intervention of the French, and the final victory at
• Yorktown in 1781. In 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris
• with Britain, the United States formally became a free and independent
• nation.