Dave Rosenberg

INDEPENDENCE DAY PRESENTATION

BY DAVE ROSENBERG
CHAIRMAN. YOLO COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
JULY 3.1997

INDEPENDENCE

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, and to assume among the power of the earth the equal and independent 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 change.

We hold these truth to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, ...

Sound familiar? Well, yes and no. It sounds like the Declaration of Independence, and yet there's something about the words that is different. Correct on both counts! The foregoing words came from Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence. The actual, final words follow:

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.

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, ...

Let me take you back in time about 221 years ago.

Thomas Jefferson was staying in two rented rooms in the house of Jacob Graff, a bricklayer, a few blocks from the State House. He wrote the Declaration without referring to any books or pamphlets. It took him two and a half weeks to complete.

At the same time, the Congress representing the thirteen colonies was meeting in Philadelphia. Richard Henry Lee, Jefferson's colleague from Virginia, had introduced a resolution (in Congress), announcing independence from Great Britain. It was, to say the least, controversial. So John Hancock, the President of the Congress, ruled that the resolution could only pass if it were supported unanimously by the thirteen colonies in Congress.

Debate on Richard Henry Lee's resolution started again in Congress on July 1. A first vote showed only nine of the thirteen colonies now in favor of independence. Pennsylvania and South Carolina both voted "No." The delegates from Delaware and New York disagreed among themselves, so those two colonies abstained.

South Carolina's delegates said their colony would vote for independence if Pennsylvania and Delaware could be persuaded to change their votes. John Adams, Richard Henry Lee, and other supporters of independence quickly went to work. They talked to the four out of seven Pennsylvania delegates who were opposed to the Declaration, trying to get them to change their minds.

They also sent a fast rider on the eighty-mile trip to the farm of Caesar Rodney, Delaware's third delegate. Rodney, a strong supporter of independence, had stayed away from the session because he was suffering from cancer. But he listened carefully as the rider explained the situation and told Rodney how much his vote was needed.

Tuesday, July 2, was gray and humid in Philadelphia. Flies and mosquitoes annoyed the delegates in the State House while they continued to debate Lee's resolution. Two of the Pennsylvania delegates who were opposed to independence stayed home that day. As a result, Pennsylvania's vote would be 3 to 2 in favor.
Shortly after lunch, Caesar Rodney hurried into the Assembly Room. He had been riding since daybreak in order to reach the State House in time. Even though he was sick and exhausted, Rodney asked to speak as soon as possible. He said, "As I believe the voice of all sensible and honest men is in favor of Independence, and my own judgment concurs with them, I vote for Independence!"

Thus, Delaware voted "Yes" along with Pennsylvania. South Carolina swung in line behind the two, as its delegates had promised to do the day before. And Lee's resolution passed 12 to 0, with only New York abstaining. That afternoon, the United Colonies became the United States of America.

Overjoyed, John Adams wrote to his wife with the following (almost accurate) prophesy: "I believe that the second day of July, 1776 will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival . . . It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore."

Congress wasn't as ready to celebrate as Adams. It had voted for independence, but it hadn't yet approved the document that would explain its decision to the world. All during July 3 and most of July 4 the delegates discussed the wording of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. Magi changes were made to the text.

The final text was adopted on the fourth, but the citizens of Philadelphia didn't celebrate the event until four days later on July 8. That morning, the Declaration was published in the city's newspapers. And at noon it was read aloud for the first time in the yard behind the State House.

Colonel John Nixon, commander of the city guard, had been chosen as the speaker because of his powerful voice. Nixon stood on a high wooden platform and began to read: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

After Colonel Nixon had finished, the audience cheered loudly. "God Bless the Free States of America!" someone shouted. Nine men rushed inside the State House and ripped down the king's coat-of-arms from the wall of the Supreme Court Chamber. That night the coat of arms was carried to a nearby park. There it was placed atop a bonfire and burned while a crowd applauded.

According to John Adams, the bells of Philadelphia rang all day on July 8 and most of the night, too. The bell on top of the State House -- the one that came to be known as the Liberty Bell -- chimed with the others.

Similar celebrations took place throughout the colonies when riders delivered the printed copies of the Declaration. Cannons roared, soldiers paraded, bonfires blazed. And in many places something connected with British rule was burned or destroyed.

In New York City, General George Washington ordered the Declaration to be read aloud to his troops on July 9. Afterward a mob, including some soldiers, toppled a statue of King George riding a horse and smashed it into little pieces. They said they did it so that the lead in the statue could be melted down and made into bullets for Washington's army. But Washington himself was not pleased. He though the act showed a lack of self-discipline.

In Savannah, Georgia, which was deep in the South and one of the last places to receive a copy of the Declaration, the citizens celebrated all day long. Then they staged a mock funeral procession and buried a likeness of King George in front of the Court House. Throughout the new nation "King" Streets became "State" Streets.

We could celebrate our national birthday, our Independence Day, on any one of several different dates. It could be July 2, when the Second Continental Congress voted in favor of independence. Or July 4, when the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. Or July 8, when the Declaration of Independence was first read aloud.

VIGNETTES ABOUT THE SUMMER OF 1776
IN PENNSYLVANIA

The weather in Philadelphia that late spring and early summer of 1776 was unusually hot and humid, resulting in a bumper crop of horseflies incubated in the stable next door to the State House (nor Independence Hall).
Benjamin Franklin, the oldest member of the Congress, suffered from gout in his later years and often "drowsed" in public.
Thomas Jefferson, the junior member of the Virginia delegation, was entrusted with the daily weather report.
Rhode Island's Stephen Hopkins, known to his colleagues as "Old Grape and Guts" because of his fondness for distilled refreshment, always wore his round black, wide-brimmed Quaker's hat in the chamber.
Portly Samuel Chase, the gourmand from Maryland (pronounced (Mary-land in those times), was referred to (behind his back, of course) as "Bacon-Face."
Connecticut's Roger Sherman always sat apart from his fellow Congressmen, sipping coffee from a saucerlike bowl.
Caesar Rodney of Delaware, suffering from skin cancer, never appeared in public without a green scarf wrapped around his face.
The dress of the Congressmen graduated from the liberal greens, golds, brocades and laces of the conservative Southerners, to the conservative browns, blacks, mean cloth, and plain linen of the radical New Englanders.
The only two known employees of the Congress were Charles Thomson, secretary, who kept no minutes of the debates (recording only those motions which were passed), and Andrew McNair, custodian and bell-ringer.
A motion concerning Congress's liability for a certain Mr. Melchior Meng's dead mule was debated and approved prior to the motion on independence.
Ben Franklin's illegitimate son, William, was Royal governor of New Jersey until he was arrested, in June 1776, and exiled to Connecticut.
The New York delegation abstained on many votes, including the final vote on independence (that tally being recorded by Mr. Thomson as twelve for, none again, and one abstaining), though later the New York Legislature approved the action after the fact.
General Washington's dispatches arrived on average of three a day, and almost all of them were "gloomy" to the point of despair.
The strength of the armed forces under Washington's command was as dismal as he reported. On May 12, 1776, for instance, the Duty Roster of the Continental Army listed:

Commissioned officers                 589
Non-commissioned officers          722
Present and fit for duty              1,641
Sick but present                           547
Sick but absent                            352
On furlough                                   66
On command (A.W.O.L.)        1,122

The Declaration was not signed on July 4, 1776, the date it was proclaimed to the citizenry of the thirteen colonies. It was actually signed over a period of several months, many of the signers having not been present at the time of its ratification. The greatest number signed on August 2 but one, Matthew Thornton of New Hampshire, did not even enter Congress until November 4, and the name of Colonel Thomas McKean of Delaware, probably the last to sign, had not yet appeared on the document by the middle of January 1777.

SLAVERY

Certainly, the most divisive issue to face the Congress in 1776 was the issue of slavery. Jefferson had written a clause in the Declaration denouncing slavery. The Southern colonies, however, bitterly opposed the clause, and unless it were stricken, would not have voted for Independence.

The following is Jefferson's anti-slavery clause which was stricken from the Declaration of Independence at the demand of South Carolina and Georgia:

... he [King George III] has waged cruel ware against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, and to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain, determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce; and this this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of others.

With chillingly prophetic words in 1776, John Adams cousin, Sam Adams, said to Ben Franklin: "Mark me, Franklin, if we give in on this issue, there will be trouble a hundred years hence; posterity will never forgive us."

THE HOLIDAY TAKES SHAPE

The Fourth of July holiday was almost immediately a hit with Americans. In 1777, bells rang all day in Philadelphia on July 4. The city where the Declaration of Independence was first read aloud was also the city where the Fourth of July celebrations were held.

The citizens had reason to celebrate. Even though the British army occupied New York City and was threatening Philadelphia from the south, the Revolutionary War was not going badly. General George Washington had struck back successfully the winter before in battle at Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey. And Britain's old enemy, France, had agreed to help the struggling American army with men and supplies. Those who feared the Americans would quickly collapse in the face of superior British forces had been proved wrong.

At noon on July 4, warships along the Philadelphia docks fired a thirteen-gun salute in honor of the thirteen United States. That afternoon, many members of Congress, which had been dismissed for the day, attended a grand dinner at City Tavern. A Philadelphia newspaper editor proposed the main toast: "Thus may the Fourth of July, that glorious and memorable day, be celebrated through America by the sons of freedom from age to age, till time shall be no more."

After the dinner, all soldiers who were stationed in Philadelphia paraded through the streets. Large crowds cheered them. That evening bonfires were lit and fireworks exploded in the night sky.

Many families put lighted candles in their windows to celebrate the Fourth and to show their support for the ongoing Revolutionary War. "It was the most splendid illumination I ever saw," John Adams wrote to his wife in Massachusetts.

However, all was not bright and peaceful in Philadelphia that night. People loyal to Great Britain deliberately left their windows dark and angry patriots hurled rocks through many of them.

Other places in the new United States soon began to celebrate the Fourth of July.

The first celebrations in Boston took place on July 4, 1783, the year the Revolutionary War ended. Up until then, Boston's main patriotic holiday had been the anniversary of the Boston Massacre on March 5.

Boston started what became a Fourth of July tradition by having a well-known speaker deliver a patriotic oration on the holiday.

Philadelphia staged a huge celebration on July 4, 1788. It honored not only the holiday but also the U.S. Constitution, which had just been ratified by ten states.

At 9:00 a.m. a grand parade, more than a mile and a half in length, began to march through the streets of Philadelphia. The city was then the capital of the United States. It was the home of the Supreme Court as well as Congress.

The justices of the Supreme Court rode on a horse-drawn float shaped like a giant eagle. Other floats dramatized the Fourth of July 1776 and the new Constitution. The parade lasted for more than three hours. Afterward a picnic lunch was served to the marchers.

The year 1826 marked the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. By then, America stretched from Massachusetts in the East to the Oregon Territory on the West Coast. There were now twenty-four states in the Union, two of them beyond the Mississippi River. The population of the country stood at twelve million -- four times what it had been on the first Fourth of July.

People wanted to observe the 50th anniversary in a dignified manner. As one newspaper editor put it, "Let's not celebrate in the usual way, that is, by frying chickens, firing away damaged powder, or fiddling our noses over tavern wine." All across the country plans were made for picnics, parades and public readings of the Declaration of Independence.

Washington, D.C. had replaced Philadelphia as the nation's capital in 1800. So the mayor of Washington invited all the living signers of the Declaration, and all living ex-Presidents to attend a special ceremony there on July 4. Unfortunately, none of the men was able to come, but they all wrote letters to the mayor.

Thomas Jefferson's was the most eloquent. At the end of the letter, he referred to the Declaration and the human rights that it guaranteed. "Let the annual return of this day refresh our recollections of these rights," the eighty-three-year-old Jefferson wrote, "and our undiminished devotion to them."

United States President John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, marveled at the force of Jefferson's letter. Within a few days it was printed in the Washington newspapers, and later it was reprinted all over the United States.

Meanwhile, John Adams had also been invited to attend the Fourth of July celebrations in Quincy, Massachusetts where he was living in retirement. Adams was then ninety, and too frail to go. However, he wrote a toast for the occasion: "Independent Forever!"

Late in the morning of July 4, a military parade saluted the President at the White House in Washington. Then the President joined the march to the Capitol where the Marine Bank played and the Declaration of Independence was read.

Two days later, word reached Washington that Thomas Jefferson had died quietly in his Virginia home at noon on the Fourth. That was when the ceremonies at the Capitol were at their height. President Adams noted in his diary that Jefferson's dying on the Fourth of July was "a strong and very striking coincidence."

Then on July $, President Adams received several letter from Massachusetts, the latest written on the morning of the Fourth. The letters said that his father, John, was gravely ill.

Early on the morning of the ninth, the President set out for Massachusetts by carriage. But on the way he got word that his father was already dead. John Adams had passed away about five o'clock in the afternoon on the Fourth of July, just a few hours after Thomas Jefferson.

People had been stunned when they learned that Jefferson had died on July 4. They were even more shocked when they heard that Adams had died on that day, too, exactly 50 years after July 4, 1776!

By their words and their deeds, the Declaration of Independence lives on 221 years later in the greatest and oldest democracy on Planet Earth.

GOD BLESS AMERICA!!