Happy Independence Day, America!
"July 2, 1776, is the day that the Continental Congress actually voted for independence." The Pennsylvania Evening Post published this announcement that night: “This day the Continental Congress declared the United Colonies Free and Independent States.”
John Adams wrote 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."
Two days after that, the declaration was issued after Thomas Jefferson edited it.
John Adams may have been the first American to utter the famous word, "D'oh!"
But he's not wrong. Today was when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve the Lee Resolution, which proposed independence from the British Empire that had been advanced in June by Richard Henry Lee, a Virginia statesman. This was the day that we declared the establishment of a new country of United Colonies as independent from the British Empire. The document wasn't actually signed, it is thought, until Aug. 2nd when the assistant to the secretary of Congress, Timothy Matlack, produced a clean copy.
That copy, however, did not stay clean. At some point before it ended up in the National Archives, a little kid with dirty hands left a handprint in the lower left hand corner.
Check it out here: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration (high resolution available from the National Archives).
Please put your historically accurate information below or any books about this subject or American History you recommend.
In the alternative, any references to Nicholas Cage memes will be accepted.
Or, how awesome were those bells!
Joseph_P_Freshwater: Interestingly, Button Gwinnett of Georgia had made a motion to add "Suck it, Britain" but it narrowly missed being passed.
Reese Witherspoon is actually a decendent of Scottish-born John Witherspoon who signed the declaration. And her dad, another John Witherspoon, was accused of bigamy.
True story.
I dig that the title comes from this: ""While some have boasted it as a work from Heaven, others have given it a less righteous origin. I have many reasons to believe that it is the work of plain, honest men."
Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring is a great read and the basis for AMC's Turn: Washington's Spies.
One of the best shows on TV, shame it's last season is now.
No politics.
I mean who doesn't like those things regularly?! 'Murica!
USA! USA! USA!
Here is the end of the letter from John Adams: "You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. -- I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. -- Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not."
then it's also fair to say that Nelson Mandela and Hitler were both fighting for the freedom to do as they choose. It's a statement with so little substance that it can be applied to anything
The confederacy had legislative power as well. This is an absurd, edgy-high schooler argument.
Sure, the founding fathers were not necessarily good humans, and made sure to keep slavery a thing, but slavery itself was WAY down the list of actual reasons to potentially get slaughtered by the BritishIt wasn't a factor at all, as the British were also pro-slavery at this time. Abolition in the North did begin after independence, though.
Slavery still exists in Africa.
The American republic was not. The bullshit justification of "States rights" meant the right to buy, sell and enslave other human beings. If you want the difference between the two starkly laid out, read the US Constitution and the Confederate Constitution.
Quote from Alexander Stephens, vice-president of the Confederacy:
"The prevailing ideas entertained by [Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
Neo-Confederates like you don't even know your own history in most cases, or if you do, you try to hide it and hope no one will find out.
If that is what passes for your amusement I bet you're just the life of the party.By the way, there is a huge difference between the Confederacy and the Revolution in that Confederate states had representation at both the state level and in Congress. The North had had to compromise with the south over the years in major ways. That was not the case for the Colonies. Good try though.
We aren't refusing the racist aspect at all. It was there. No doubt about it. But that wasn't your intial argument. You said they were basically the same. And they were not. One set of people had representative government. And one did not. Period. You couldn't make your argument stick because and now you are trying to shift it a bit. I have seen you on here for a while speak about history and you know your stuff most of the time. But not this. You are just wrong.
And you shouldn't spout revisionist history. But you did in trying to equate secession and the Revolution. Not the same.