United States July 4, 1776: Beyond The Myths

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PROLOGUE

“It is a singular fact that the greatest event in American history—the Declaration of Independence—has been the subject of more incorrect popular belief, more bad memory on the part of participants, and more false history than any other occurrence in our national life”…..”The first mistaken popular belief is that the Fourth of July is the anniversary of American Independence. The fact is that Independence Day was properly the day on which Congress passed the resolution which actually established our independence; and that day was July 2 and not July 4, 1776”…..”The second mistaken belief, long popularly held, is that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776.

Most Americans have seen either a facsimile or the original document now in the Library of Congress, with the names signed at the end; and most believe that it was signed on the day that the Congress on July 4, 1776 adopted it. This belief was generally held for over one hundred years. The fact is, however, that it was NOT so signed; and historians are now agreed on this point.”

 

Charles Warren, in the William & Mary Quarterly, 1945

 

 

THE ACT OF JULY 2nd ORDAINED THE ANNUNCIATION OF JULY 4th

 

Between 1855 and 1945 the best minds devoted to the matter of the history of America’s Independence all agreed: The "United States" was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Tuesday July 2, 1776 at the moment that the Continental Congress' vote on the resolution for "Independency" was counted and verified: 12 votes "Yes"; 1 "abstention". (f.y.i.: SAMVA rectified: 4:48 pm). Prior to that historic moment the “Continental Congress” was acting on behalf of the "13 United Colonies"; Yet from that same moment going forward the Continental Congress became the “General Congress of the United States” acting on behalf of 12 "States" and 1 late-to-join Province of

New York, all 13 still "United", nonetheless, as they had been since July 15, 1775 when Georgia elected to be the 13th colony to join The Continental Association. (See further on, regarding July 9, 1776 and the 13th State). In terms of established concepts of political (Constitutional) law, what transformed these colonial provinces into States was the act of adoption of the June 7th resolution on Independency, which declared the provinces to be henceforth "sovereign", "independent" and "free", and therefore no longer subject to the dictates of Britain's Parliament, because the American people no longer considered themselves to be part of the State (Crown) of Great Britain. The Continental Congress was acting on expressed

wishes thru the formally delegated authority of the people in each of these colonial provinces. The Congress had neither constitutional nor governing authority to have declared so on its own,

 

The 13th State, New York, received expressed approval for its statehood in its constitutional Convention on the afternoon of July 9th; and it was soon after, on July 15th, that its statehood was formally recognized to be so by the General Congress of the United States (What had been, prior to Independence, the "Continental Congress" for these at first 12 then 13 colonial provinces between September 5, 1774 and July 2, 1776).

 

On September 9, 1776 the General Congress resolved that in reference to the identity of these 13 sovereign states concerned, all official documents shall use the stile: "United States". Then, on March 1, 1781 the 13th and final State ratification gave birth to the American nation's first constitution, the ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION, which framed the constitutional establishment of the national government of the United States. With its ratifications completed, the official stile of the sovereign States was thereby amended as per Article #1 of the ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION, to be: "The United States Of America"

 

THE "UNITED STATES": ITS FIRST PUBLIC STEP

 

The first public action of the General Congress of the United States took place 3 days into the life of the United States, with the July 5th broadside publication of a declaration of “Independency”, entitled: "A DECLARATION by the Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress..." This was the aboriginal version of what was to become the American nation’s first state document, only later in 1777 to be officially designated as it is now known, The Declaration of Independence. A DECLARATION was published on Friday July 5, 1776, although

dated for the day the text of the declaration was finally adopted by the General Congress on the previous day, July 4th.

 

 

About a month later, on August 2, 1776 the text of A DECLARATION was re-titled "THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA", and "54" delegates autographically signed (Most on August 2nd, a few others on various dates in the months after) by the time this "UNANIMOUS DECLARATION" was first published in Baltimore, MD in January 1777. (Delegates Henry Wisner and Thomas McKean signed even later than January 1777, making the final official version that of "56" delegates as signatories).

[iN ORDER TO DISPUTE THE FACTS SUMMARIZED ABOVE, one must necessarily dispute them by taking issue with the considered judgments of the 7 leading scholar authorities on this historic matter, the providers of the source material of this extended comment: (1) Peter Force, THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (1855); (2) George Bancroft, THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, Vol.II (1860); (3) Mellen Chamberlain, AUTHENTICATION OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (1885); (4) Herbert Friedenwald, THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (1904); (5) John Hazelton, THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (1906); (6) Carl Becker, THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (1922); (7) Charles Warren, FOURTH OF JULY MYTHS (1945). And as one can plainly see, the relevant matters of historic fact regarding Independency were seriously investigated

and laid bare by these and other experts in the scholar community quite a long time before the advent of the internet.]

 

Not unlikely, and notwithstanding what has been maintained here already, many readers may be inclined to some skepticism, in particular to the events pertaining specifically to July 4th. Afterall, just perform a random search in the internet for websites featuring the history of the birth of the USA. Note the virtually innumerable citations contradicting what Charles Warren maintained to be so in 1945: in particular that the Declaration wasn't signed by the members of the General Congress on July 4th and that the Declaration’s adoption was not unanimous until August 2, 1776. [A notable exception to the extensive evidence of myth and misinformation in numerous Early America websites, (which exception contradicts nothing that is here maintained to be so, based largely on the 7 authorities cited above), is the website of the National Archives.]

DEVIL IN THE DETAILS OF JULY 4th, 1776

 

First, as regards the absence of voting members’ signatures, autographical or printed, on the July 5th Dunlap Broadside, the Dunlap Broadside wasn't "signed" by anyone at all as this action is commonly understood. There was but one official printed (non-autographical) "signature", that of the President of the General Congress of the United States, John Hancock. Just refer to a copy of the Dunlap Broadside, the first printing of The Declaration of Independence on July 5th, entitled simply: "A DECLARATION". There it is in plain

letter-press print, towards the bottom immediately following the text: to wit, "Signed by Order and in Behalf of Congress, JOHN HANCOCK, President." What one sees is exactly what it purports to be: a non-autographical authenticating signature by the presiding officer of the General Congress, thereby making official each and every true letter-press copy of this document that was distributed to the public in July 1776. John Hancock didn't take pen (or quill) to paper to render this signature. The adopted draft that went out the door of Independence Hall to the printer, John Dunlap, on the evening of July 4th, didn't have either the finished copy's top line, which reads: "In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776." or the three names and titles found towards the bottom, which are: "John Hancock, President", "Charles Thomson, Secretary", "John

Dunlap, Printer", thus making up the concluding lines of the document. These additions to the top and bottom of the adopted draft came after it had gone to the printer, added by John Dunlap in accordance with the instructions of Congress to the Committee of Five: to "superintend and correct the press" and in the process to have the resulting printer’s proof-copy, the master copy, "authenticated". The archived evidence of record of this authentication of the document is the Dunlap Broadside itself, wherein the non-autographical signature of John Hancock is simply printed, not autographically signed.

 

 

Not the least amazingly, on the evening of July 4th there was no authenticated final adopted draft, with autographical signature, to be archived; yet this hasn’t deterred a minor academic industry from believing that somehow the autographical signature copy has been lost to history. To the contrary, one may only discover by dint of investigation, evidences of the incomprehension of those historians, and the public they confuse, who fail to work through to the standard requirements of the parliamentary practice of official authentication: and so too, the difference between an "autographical signature", which such original signature is necessarily inscribed by hand, and an "authenticating signature", which may be either autographical or simply printed (as Law dictionaries do confirm this basic distinction). In keeping with this parliamentary rationale

Charles Thomson, unlike John Hancock, did not in any sense whatsoever "sign" the document on this same occasion; Charles Thomson, the Congressional Secretary, merely "attested" the official, sole signature in authentication of John Hancock. Attestation is required of the authenticating process; and so Charles Thomson "attested"; though he did not "sign".

Second, the first scholar to point out that John Hancock was sole signatory that historic day, to point it out in a publication then 79 years after the fact, was Peter Force in 1855. (Ref: The DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, Or Notes On Lord Mahon's History Of The American Declaration Of Independence). By the date of his monograph not even a scholar of Peter Force's pre-eminent status, as founder of the Library of Congress, could stop the flow of publications sustaining the mythologies regarding this historic event, such as the various works of Benson J. Lossing: for example, Mythology such as "On July 4th The Declaration was finally adopted and signed by every member present at the time, except Dickinson". Peter Force, correcting the record, wrote: "The Declaration was adopted on July 4th by the vote of 12 States, the same that 2 days before had as Colonies passed the act of Independence....It was the universal diffusion of the Declaration that made the 4th of July the great festival day of the nation, instead of the 2nd day of July, the real birthday of

American Freedom"... And, further-on ..."It should be remembered that on the 4th of July 1776 the document was entitled "A DECLARATION... and it could not then be called THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN STATES, not until New York's constitutional action on July 9th could make it so later ... until when on August 2nd the Declaration of Independence, being engrossed and compared at the table, was to be signed by every member, by order of Congress.."

 

A CODA

 

As Mellen Chamberlain summed it up nicely in his neglected masterpiece, AUTHENTICATION OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (1885), wherein he concluded that: "Independence was announced to the world July 4, 1776. That is glory enough for the most insatiate of days. It needs not the honors of July 2, nor those of August 2" ....."What was done on July 2nd realized the ardent wishes of the patriotic party in

the thirteen colonies. Its consummated act was a notable achievement of advocacy; and the great patriot, John Adams, fondly hoped that it would be celebrated to the remotest times. But it is otherwise. The glory of the act is overshadowed by the glory of its annunciation."

 

 

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