Each year on the fourth of July, also known as Independence Day, Americans celebrate this historic event.
The Declaration of Independence
Conflict between the colonies and England was already a year old when the colonies convened a Continental Congress in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776.
In a June 7 session in the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall), Richard Henry Lee of Virginia presented a resolution with the famous words: "Resolved: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and 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."
Lee's words were the impetus for the drafting of a formal Declaration of Independence, although the resolution was not followed up on immediately.
A committee of five was appointed to draft the declaration, and the task itself fell on Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Discussions of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence resulted in some minor changes, but the spirit of the document went unchanged.
The process of revision by the Continental Congress began July 1, then continued through all of July 3 and into the late afternoon of July 4, when the Declaration was officially adopted. Of the 13 colonies, nine voted in favor of the Declaration, two -- Pennsylvania and South Carolina -- voted No, Delaware was undecided and New York abstained.
John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence. It is said that John Hancock's signed his name "with a great flourish" so England's "King George can read that without spectacles!"
Today, the original copy of the Declaration is housed in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and the fourth of July has been designated a national holiday to commemorate the day the United States laid down its claim to be a free and independent nation.
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