The Wrongologist

On July 4, 1776, or
within a few days thereafter, 56 people signed the Declaration of Independence.

(View the seminal documents of our republic here).

The signers were openly resisting the
legal authority of the King of England. The British considered them outlaws who
were breaking the laws of England. They risked capture, prison and even death
for their belief in independence from England.

The new country was far from perfect: The
vote was restricted to landowners. Most women could not vote, slavery was
already well entrenched in the land, colonists had been forcing Native Americans from their
lands for almost 150 years. So at that point, liberty, equality and unalienable
rights were for a select few.

Is it inalienable or unalienable?

The Grammarist
says English has changed
since the founders of the United States used “unalienable” in the signed final
draft of their 1776 Declaration of Independence (some earlier drafts and later
copies have inalienable). Inalienable
means exactly the same thing (both mean incapable
of being transferred to another or others). Inalienable is now the preferred form.

The legal separation
of the 13 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, declaring the United States
independent from Great Britain.

After voting for
independence, the Continental Congress created a Committee of Five  to write a Declaration of Independence, with Thomas Jefferson as its principal author. Congress
debated and revised the wording of the Declaration, finally approving it on
July 4. John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail:

Adams’s prediction
was off by two days. From the outset, Americans celebrated independence on July
4, the date of the Declaration of Independence, rather than on July 2, the date
the resolution of independence was approved in a closed session of Congress.

Historians dispute
whether Congress actually signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th
, even though Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin all later
wrote that they had signed it on that day. Most historians have concluded that
the Declaration was not signed by all until nearly a month after its adoption,
on August 2, 1776, not on July 4th.

In a remarkable
coincidence, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the only signers of the
Declaration of Independence who later served as presidents of the US, died on
the same day: July 4, 1826. James Monroe, a founder of our country, but not a
signatory of the Declaration, became
the third president in a row to die on July 4th in 1831.

Here are a few
important July 4th milestones:

• 1776
  – The Colonies declare their independence

• 1803
  – The Louisiana Purchase is announced

• 1826
  – Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president of the United States, dies the
  same day as John Adams, 2nd president of the United States. It was
  the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of
  Independence

• 1831
  – James Monroe, 5th president
  dies

• 1863
  – Vicksburg surrenders to US Grant after 47 days of siege

• 1863
  – Lee withdraws from the battlefield after
  losing at the Battle
  of Gettysburg,
  signaling an end to the Southern invasion of the North

• 1872-
  Calvin Coolidge, 30th president was born

• 1966
  – President LB Johnson signs the
  Freedom of Information Act into law

So,
who are the true patriots of today?

• The
  flag-draped politicians who wrote the Patriot Act?

• Those
  same politicians who send other people’s children off to be killed or disabled
  in wars of choice?

• The
  flag-wavers who earn outsized profits through partnership with the government?

• The
  crowds who chant “USA, USA, USA” when they learned about the death of Osama bin
  Laden?

• The
  religious hypocrites who speak of patriotism while they work to limit the
  rights of others?

True patriots today are
those very few people who continue
to fight to preserve our constitutional rights. They are the people who work to
add jobs in our jobs-short economy. They are the military personnel who return
time and again to the front lines, enduring the unendurable. They are the families
of those in the military. They are people who serve on school boards, zoning boards
and town councils, who get a very limited return for their efforts, compared to
politicians on the national level who are working hard to become millionaires,
assuming they were not millionaires when they were elected.

They are average
Americans who are watching the decline of our civic institutions and
infrastructure in disbelief, wondering where to turn if we are to reverse all
of these bad trends.

Is anyone “High as a
kite on the 4th of July” anymore?