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“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation,” wrote Thomas Jefferson — with a little help from his friends — for the first sentence in the Declaration of Independence, a document citizens of the United States cherish, and rightly should, to this day.

Independence Day is celebrated with fireworks, picnics, parties, and an abundance of flag waving every Fourth of July. John Adams, our second president and one of the five committee members that gave Jefferson a hand with the revered 246-year-old document, said the day “will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.” He wrote his wife, Abigail that it “ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade with shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

The problem is that Adams was not referring to July 4. It was in fact two days earlier that the 56 members of the Second Continental Congress voted to declare independence, but it took two more days for them to change some of the wording. Once approved, Congress sent the edited version to the printer for additional copies, which is why July 4 was affixed to the document. It is said by most historians that John Hancock, the president of Congress, signed it on the forth, but few others did. The bulk of the members signed the Declaration of Independence on Aug. 2 at the Pennsylvania State House, later to become Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, but several didn’t sign until much later. The last person to sign the Declaration was Thomas McKean of Delaware some six months later, possibly as late as 1777.

Not all of the members of Congress were behind the move to officially separate from Great Britain and they refused to sign or even remain in Congress. A few continued to rally behind some sort of reconciliation with the mother country. Jefferson of Virginia was the document’s primary author, but he was helped by the other four members of the committee — Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert Livingston of New York, though the colony of New York initially abstained in voting for independence because the delegation had not received instructions from Albany to vote for independence.

And even though independence was declared in July of 1776, the war for independence had started more than a year prior at Concord and Lexington in Massachusetts and it wasn’t really achieved for another seven years with the Treaty of Paris. Perhaps September 3, 1783, should be the official birth of the United States. Maybe not.

— Ed Moreth