Quote:
Originally Posted by vtred
In John Adams biography (David Mccullough) he says that absolutely nothing much happened on July 4th, 1776, but July 2nd was the day that everyone would memorialize forever...wha happened to push the 2nd into oblivion??
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Although not signed that day by anyone other than Hancock, Congress did vote to adopt the Declaration of Independence on July the 4th. While it was the July 2nd vote that determined that the colonies were severing relations with Great Britain, for whatever reasons, the day of the formal announcement of that separation was seen as the nation's official birthday. I think that it is an okay choice. The United States did not vote to become independent, the Congress representing 13 separate colonies did. Two days later, it was The United States passing the declaration measure, the new nation's first official act.
Of course it remains my eccentric conviction that more of a fuss should be made over March 4th, which I think should be national Validation Day and a holiday of stature. It was on that day in 1801 that the head of a government, along with his ministers, appointees and party, voluntarily turned over the power to a group who had been promising to undo a lot of what the party in power had done. It wasn't done at gunpoint, it wasn't done because of a royal command, it was done because they asked the people who were being governed, or at least the largest, broadest cross section of people up to that time, if they wanted to stick with what they had or try something new. The will of the people was honored. The great experiment in democracy worked. Today we take such transferences of power for granted, back then, there was no precedent and no guarantee of good behavior from anyone.