{"id":18900,"date":"2025-01-09T15:24:32","date_gmt":"2025-01-09T15:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/business\/finance\/why-do-we-celebrate-independence-on-the-fourth-of-july\/"},"modified":"2025-01-09T15:24:32","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T15:24:32","slug":"why-do-we-celebrate-independence-on-the-fourth-of-july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=18900","title":{"rendered":"Why Do We Celebrate Independence On The Fourth Of July?"},"content":{"rendered":"


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By Peter Anderson<\/span><\/a><\/span> 2 Comments<\/a><\/span> – The content of this website often contains affiliate links and I may be compensated if you buy through those links (at no cost to you!). Learn more about how we make money<\/a>. Last edited

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H<\/span>appy 4th of July everyone!\u00a0 I hope you have a happy and safe holiday.\u00a0 God bless America!<\/p>\n

Today I thought I\u2019d share a little known story about the 4th of July.<\/p>\n

Most people assume that because we celebrate on the 4th, that it\u2019s the day our founding fathers actually voted to approve a resolution of independence, and that the declaration of independence was drafted and signed the same day as well.\u00a0 That isn\u2019t the case, and in fact many didn\u2019t sign it until later.\u00a0 Read on for the rest of the story.<\/p>\n

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Why Do We Celebrate Independence On The 4th Of July?<\/h2>\n

The\u00a0Declaration of Independence was an important document, but it was a vote in a closed session of Congress that approved a resolution of independence on the 2nd of July. The Declaration of Independence was debated and revised and approved of on the 4th.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t signed by all of the delegates until almost a month later.<\/p>\n

From Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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During the American Revolution, the legal separation of the American colonies from Great Britain occurred on July 2, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence that had been proposed in June by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia.\u00a0 After voting for independence, Congress turned its attention to the Declaration of Independence, a statement explaining this decision, which had been prepared by a Committee of Five, with Thomas Jefferson as its principal author. Congress debated and revised the Declaration, finally approving it on July 4. A day earlier, John Adams had written to his wife Abigail:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch 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 shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Adams\u2019 prediction was off by two days. From the outset, Americans celebrated independence on July 4, the date shown on the much-publicized Declaration of Independence, rather than on July 2, the date the resolution of independence was approved in a closed session of Congress.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the most enduring myths about Independence Day is that Congress signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.\u00a0 The myth had become so firmly established that, decades after the event and nearing the end of their lives, even the elderly Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had come to believe that they and the other delegates had signed the Declaration on the fourth. Most delegates actually signed the Declaration on August 2, 1776. In a remarkable series of coincidences, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two founding fathers of the United States and the only two men who signed the Declaration of Independence to become president, died on the same day: July 4, 1826, which was the United States\u2019 50th anniversary.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While the exact dates of the United States independence may be forgotten by many, I think most of us are still grateful for this country, and what it has meant for freedom and prosperity.<\/p>\n

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..<\/h2>\n

So we know why we celebrate the 4th of July on the 4th, but why do we celebrate the birth of our nation?<\/p>\n

Abraham Lincoln, in his debate with Stephen Douglas on a date close to the 4th, talked about what makes this country so great. The idea that all men are created equal.<\/p>\n

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Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometime about the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them.<\/em><\/p>\n

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We are now a mighty nation, we are thirty\u2014or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country,\u2014with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men,\u2014we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves\u2014we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations. <\/em><\/p>\n

But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these men\u2014descended by blood from our ancestors\u2014among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe\u2014German, Irish, French and Scandinavian\u2014men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that gloriou<\/em>s epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that \u201cWe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,\u201d and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration<\/strong> [loud and long continued applause], and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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