As a 12 year old, way back in 1976, I remember well the wide eyed excitement of the approaching bicentennial.
D. K. Wall:Here we are a mere half century later, celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Independence Day, the July 4, the day the founding fathers gathered in a room in Philadelphia to sign the Declaration of Independence. Or did they?
D. K. Wall:Let me be clear before we begin this twisting little tale. I've never claimed to be a historian. I want to say that upfront the way a fellow at a potluck announces he didn't make the potato salad just in case things go sideways.
D. K. Wall:So if it tastes a little funny or I get a date or fact twisted here or there, you've been warned.
D. K. Wall:And I'm not suggesting my history teachers misled me about the actual events of 1776. It's far more likely I was dozing in the back of a classroom while a well intentioned instructor tried to explain the details to me.
D. K. Wall:However, the notion got planted in my head, I've always pictured the Fourth of July 1776 looking much like the famous John Trumbull painting, a cluster of handsome, resolved men in fancy clothing gathered together signing the grand document.
D. K. Wall:But even in art, I wasn't paying attention. No one but no one is signing anything in that painting nor did Trumbull suggest they were.
D. K. Wall:The scene he captured didn't happen on July 4 at all, But about a week earlier on June 28 as a draft, yes, draft of the Declaration was presented by the five man drafting committee to the Second Continental Congress.
D. K. Wall:Okay. Fine. So it was a draft. A few rewrites, a tweak here, a snip there. Trust me, I have experience with editors and they do love to cut the juicy parts.
D. K. Wall:But no matter. They signed it on July 4. Right?
D. K. Wall:Nope. John Hancock as president of the Second Continental Congress whipped out his feather pen and etched his name bold and proud on August 2. Yep. August.
D. K. Wall:And much to my surprise, all 56 signatures didn't happen even on that day. Some of the stragglers wandered in later still, which I find deeply comforting.
D. K. Wall:There were procrastinators present at the founding of the nation as late as I would have most certainly been. Men who meant to get to Philadelphia right on schedule, and then the wagon needed a thing, then the weather turned, and you know how it is.
D. K. Wall:I picture one of them slipping in around mid August, brushing the road dust off his coat, scanning the parchment, and finding that John Hancock had already signed his name, roughly the size of a barn door.
D. K. Wall:Not that Hancock had much to lose at that point. It's not as though he and the British were about to sit down for tea. They had wanted him locked up for years.
D. K. Wall:Some little grievance about smuggling and dodging taxes, which is also quite the American thing. In fact, the midnight ride of Paul Revere in 1775 was as much the British are coming, the British are coming, and they want you, John Hancock.
D. K. Wall:So imagine the poor latecomer's stomach dropping the way mine does when somebody brings an elaborate homemade dessert to a dinner I showed up to with a bag of pretzels.
D. K. Wall:Now he's got to sign something. He can't write small. That would look like cowardice. And he can't match Hancock. There's no room.
D. K. Wall:And besides, who does he think he is? So he signs somewhere in the middle a respectable medium sized signature, the autograph equivalent of clearing your throat.
D. K. Wall:That, I would argue, is the bravest moment in the whole affair. Not the big flourish, the medium one. The man who knew the British would hang him just as dead for a small signature as for a large one.
D. K. Wall:And yet he signed anyway, even if it was a few days after Hancock.
D. K. Wall:Still, if they didn't sign the document on July 4, then that must have been the day they voted for independence for the colonies. No. A little fact check here. That vote took place on July 2.
D. K. Wall:So why isn't that Independence Day? Good question, asked John Adams, one of those five drafters. He wrote home to his wife Abigail and declared that July 2 would be celebrated by future generations with pomp and parade, bonfires, and illuminations.
D. K. Wall:So close. Off by two days. And he has been quietly losing that bet from the great beyond ever since. While the rest of us light sparklers on a date he never picked.
D. K. Wall:So they didn't sign the document on July 4. They didn't vote for independence, and the war had been raging for some time. What actually happened on July 4?
D. K. Wall:As mundane as it sounds, a vote to approve the final draft and send it to the printer. Yep. Just like a book. Already written, already edited. That was the publication date printed bold and proud across the top.
D. K. Wall:The Dunlap Broadsides were printed and shipped to various points around the colonies to be read in public and posted prominently. Importantly, they appeared without signatures because that didn't happen for another month.
D. K. Wall:And as always, there's a little more to the story. The date wasn't much celebrated at all in those first few decades.
D. K. Wall:The nation and its leaders were a wee bit busy winning a war, writing a constitution, debating how to move forward, and then stumbling into yet another little dust up in 1812 with those pesky Brits.
D. K. Wall:Only after all that, after the Federalists faded and their Jeffersonian passion rose, did somebody suggest a date worth celebrating. The fourth, after all, was the date printed on the document, regardless of when anyone actually signed it.
D. K. Wall:Then comes the part that gives me chills every time. Both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two of the five who drafted the Declaration of Independence, died on July 4 1826, the fiftieth anniversary to the day.
D. K. Wall:Over their long lives, they were first allies in the cause of independence, then political rivals snarling over the young nation's path, and finally, old friends trading a trove of letters back and forth into their twilight.
D. K. Wall:They let go of this world hours apart on the very date they helped make sacred. You couldn't put that in a novel. No one would believe you.
D. K. Wall:Somehow, I think it's all quite fitting because the main thing I've learned about history over the years is that it's messy.
D. K. Wall:Back in those school years, I thought history was a stack of dates to memorize for a test. But does it really matter what happened on June 28, July 2, July 4, or August 2 of 1776?
D. K. Wall:No. What matters is that a cluster of colonies deep in a long festering quarrel with Great Britain decided that enough was enough.
D. K. Wall:The Second Continental Congress had something the First did not, permission from the colonies to debate independence. They debated, they settled it, and then wrote and rewrote and rewrote again, a document that glows with the idea, and signed it for all the world to see.
D. K. Wall:So this fourth or second or whenever it is you happen to be reading this, light something that sparkles. Marvel at the aspirational ideas. Celebrate the poetic language. Salute all 56 signers, the bold and the medium handed, the punctual and the late.
D. K. Wall:And if somebody at the cookout tries to correct the date, do the patriotic thing, let them be. It's much more fun than bickering.
D. K. Wall:The rest, as they say, is history.