Congress votes: these colonies are free and independent states
By the summer of 1776, the Second Continental Congress had spent more than a year running a war it hadn't yet declared. On July 2, delegates in Philadelphia's Pennsylvania State House adopted Richard Henry Lee's resolution declaring the Thirteen Colonies "free and independent States," separate from the British Empire. Twelve delegations voted yes. New York abstained, lacking instructions, and would not add its assent until July 9. John Adams was certain the date would be remembered forever. He was off by two days.
The Declaration's assertion that "all men are created equal" and endowed with "certain unalienable Rights" became the founding text of American political argument — invoked by abolitionists, suffragists, and civil-rights leaders for the next two and a half centuries. No single sentence in American history has been weaponized, debated, stretched, and defended more. Jefferson wrote it; the country has been arguing about what it means ever since.
QWhy did John Adams think Congress would celebrate the wrong day?
Adams wrote to his wife Abigail on July 3, 1776, predicting that July 2 would be commemorated by future generations as the great anniversary of America, complete with fireworks, parades, and bells rung from one end of the continent to the other. He had good reason: July 2 was the day Congress actually voted for independence by adopting the Lee Resolution. But the public came to associate independence with the document explaining it, not the vote enacting it, so the celebration migrated two days later to July 4, when the Declaration's text was formally adopted. Adams got the spirit of the holiday exactly right and the date exactly wrong.
QWhat made New York's abstention on July 2 different from a no vote?
New York's delegation did not oppose independence, it simply had not yet received authorization from the New York Provincial Congress to vote for it, so it sat out the July 2 tally entirely. Twelve colonies voted yes, one recorded no position at all. New York's convention finally issued instructions permitting an affirmative vote, and on July 9 the delegation formally endorsed independence, making the break unanimous among all thirteen after the fact.
QWhat object connects the Declaration's signing to the Constitution eleven years later?
The delegates who signed the engrossed parchment copy beginning August 2, 1776, dipped their pens using the Syng inkstand. That same inkstand reappeared in the same room eleven years later, when delegates gathered to sign the U.S. Constitution in 1787. One piece of silver present at both the birth of the nation and the birth of its governing charter, sitting quietly on the table both times.
