The background is well known, with founding father and later US president John Adams writing to his wife Abigail:
The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.
I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. 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 tale is, like all tales involving politics, more complex.
On 2 July, the Second Continental Congress had before it part of a proposal made by Richard Henry Lee and seconded by Adams. The following was made, and reported in the press:
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.
Meanwhile and in the background, Congress had been working on a declaration, that is, an explanation to the people. After further debate, on 4 July the declaration was approved and sent to the printers.
The document published on 4 July is, in essence, an explanation. It sets out the proposition:
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.
It sets out the assault on the proposition:
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.
And only after these explanations, does it “solemnly publish and declare” the same words of the resolution, those two days before.
Famously, the declaration’s primary author Thomas Jefferson and Adams both died a half century later, on 4 July 1826.
