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[1] THE LEE RESOLUTION, BORN OF THE VIRGINIA RESOLVE
“(They) have shown much weakness in overrating the Lee Motion in Congress, all the merit of which belongs to the Convention of Virginia, which gave a positive instruction to her Deputies to make the Motion. As this measure of Virginia makes a link in the history of our National birth, it is but right that every circumstance attending it should be ascertained & preserved. You probably can best tell where the instruction had its origin & by whose pen it was prepared. The impression at the time was that it was communicated in a letter from you to Mr. Wythe, (then) a member of the (Virginia) Convention.”
James Madison, 6 September 1823, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson.
The Virginia Resolve of 15 May 1776 was passed by the Fifth Virginia Convention at Williamsburg. This historic three-part resolve became the basis of action plans for three America-wide measures later recommended for adoption by the Continental Congress. The three measures addressed were: [i] Independency; [ii] Diplomacy; and [iii] Confederacy. Richard Henry Lee, head of the Virginia delegation, was "instructed" by the Virginia Convention to move the Virginia Resolve as a Congressional resolution to be adopted on behalf of the Grand American Association of the thirteen United Colonies of North America. The timing of its introduction before Congress was left to the discretion of the Virginia delegation.
The Virginia Resolve was "laid before" Congress on the Monday morning of 27 May 1776, along with a similar resolve submitted by the North Carolina delegation, adopted the previous month at North Carolina’s Halifax Convention, and dated 12 April 1776. On 27 May 1776, both resolves were “read” and “ordered to lie on the table.” This event marked the day that Congress was served formal notice by two colonies that the time had arrived for all the colonies, thirteen-as-one, to prepare to make the sovereign break with the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Eleven days later, on 7 June 1776, in accordance with the parliamentary mode of introducing consideration of a new measure, the Virginia Resolve was "moved" by Richard Henry Lee of the Virginia delegation, and "seconded" by John Adams of the Massachusetts delegation. On this day and by this historic step the Virginia Resolve of May 15th, earlier tabled on May 27th, became the Lee Resolution of June 7th. After two days of protracted debate on the Lee Resolution, conducted throughout Saturday the 8th and Monday the 10th, the process culminated in a crucial, adopted resolve of Congress, enacted on the late Monday afternoon of the 10th.
By the resolve of June 10th Congress agreed to defer further debate on the Independency measure for three weeks, in order to give adequate time for each of the still undecided colonies to come to a decision on how to instruct its delegation on the three measures proposed. Within two days of this June 10th decision three interlocking committees had been established, one for each of the three measures in the Lee Resolution: [i] A committee to prepare a broadside manifesto to justify Independency declared; [ii] A committee to prepare a constitution for Confederacy; and [iii] A committee to prepare template treaties of mutual defense and commerce. Thus was the Congressional stage set for the decisive debate and vote on Independency expected to take place on Monday, 1 July 1776.
[2] THE VIRGINIA RESOLVE, CONCEIVED ON 22 DECEMBER 1775
“The standard histories do not explain the demand by the patriots that Parliament should have no authority in the colonies except to regulate ocean commerce. They do not explain what the colonists meant when they said that they were willing to be ruled by the king alone. They do not explain that the only definition of a colony that the colonists accepted, was one which described a community like the old Greek colonies, sent out by a mother country with the intention that it should become absolutely independent, and that the mother country’s only duty towards a colony would be to protect it from other nations and guarantee its independence.”
Professor Sydney George Fisher (1856-1927), The Legendary and Myth-Making Process in Histories of the American Revolution, p. 62 (Second, revised edition, 18 April 1912 in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, pp. 53-76, Vol. LI, No. 204, April-June, 1912.)
On 22 December 1775 Great Britain’s Parliament enacted a royal proclamation of George III. The enactment prohibited all intercourse with the thirteen colonies, convicted the American colonies of being enemies of the Crown, henceforth to be punished by their removal from the protection and authority of their king. This event was the end-result and the fulfillment of two historic events of 23 August 1775. This was the very day that North Carolina, at the Hillsborough Convention, became the 13th colony to ratify America’s Articles of Association, marking the birth of the Thirteen United Colonies of North America. On this same day in England a royal proclamation of King George III accused the colonies of being in a state of rebellion in the aftermath of the battles of Concord, Lexington and Bunker Hill. The proclamation ordered its suppression. Singled out for punishment were certain “dangerous and ill designing men” bent on fomenting open and defiant rebellion.
The patriot leadership in the Colonies saw the situation differently, justifying their position on the nature of the covenant established by the original colonial charters issued by the Crown. They believed that when Parliament and the ministries violated the Colonists' rights pursuant to the Magna Carta (1215), the Petition of Rights (1628) and the English Bill of Rights (1689), this was a breech of the Crown’s covenant with the Colonists. The American leadership attempted to resolve these differences. In July of 1775, the Colonists submitted the Olive Branch Petition to the Crown wherein they affirmed their loyalty to the Crown and sought to resolve their grievances peacefully. The Crown, unpersuaded by the Olive Branch Petition, eventually encouraged Parliament to pass the Prohibitory Act of December 1775, declaring the Colonies to be enemies of the Crown, removed from its protection and authority. This became the flashpoint that turned America’s leadership away from reconciliation to separation; a majority of their fellow Americans soon joined them.
[3] THE DAY OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCY: 1 JULY 1776
“Monday the 1st of July is fixed upon to decide in Congress the grand question of American Independence.”
As reported in The Virginia Gazette, on 21 June 1776.
“I have only time to inform you that yesterday [July 1st] was agitated in Congress the great question of Independency, & as the facts are as well known at the Coffee Houses of Philadelphia City as in Congress I may go on to inform you that in a Committee of the Whole House it was carried by nine Colonies.”
Delegate Elbridge Gerry, 2 July 1776, in a letter to James Warren of Massachusetts
On July 1st (about 6:30 p.m., as this writer reckons it.), "After 9 hours of debate" (according to Jefferson’s notes for that day), the Committee of the Whole House of the thirteen United Colonies voted 9-2-(2) for "Independency" [Two (2) neutral positions didn’t make the count by the Chairman: the N.Y. delegation abstained; and the Delaware delegation, two of three attending, deadlocked between McKean and Read, Rodney only joining the following day to break the tie in favor.] According to standard parliamentary rules of order for such a majority vote, Committee chairman Virginia delegate Harrison was then in a position to report the Lee Resolution as ready for adoption by the Congress, on that very evening of July 1st; and if Chairman Harrison had done so, the enactment of Independency would have been officially recorded as an accomplished fact, as “resolved,” although not “resolved unanimously.”
In order to adequately explain why Congress chose to defer the then-inevitable outcome to the next day, until July 2nd, a number of negotiating twists and wrinkles informing the story need to be examined. Very briefly, a deal was cut for the next day in order to achieve near-unanimity. The record shows that South Carolina would turn its vote to Aye if Delaware too delivered an Aye, with the anticipated next day arrival of Delaware’s tie-breaking delegate Caesar Rodney. An Aye for an Aye, so to speak. However, for the rest of the story the reader should refer to the well crafted expertise of historian J. H. Powell's book, General Washington and the Jack Ass, in the chapter, "The Day of American Independence, July 1, 1776." (N.J: South Brunswick, Thomas Yoseloff, 1969, 10 essays, 363 pp.) In a chapter amounting in scope to a ‘mini-book’ (pp. 119-176), this event date marking the majority vote for Independency has been rightly accorded the distinction of effectively constituting the American nation's true Independence Day.
The immediate public reaction in Philadelphia, acclaiming the decision of Congress, came on the evening of July 2nd and on the next day. For weeks the American public had been waiting expectantly for the outcome of the July 1st vote scheduled three weeks earlier. Given the number of newspapers throughout the thirteen colonies reporting the significance of the upcoming July 1st vote, the public's expectations were being heightened in the process. On the very evening of July 2nd and on the next day, the Philly newspapers reported the outcome of the official vote, Independence declared on July 2nd. These pre-July 4th reports were picked up by newspapers in other cities in the days thereafter.
See Charles Warren's essay, "Fourth of July Myths" (The WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY: Third Series, Vol. II, No. 3, July 1945. pp. 237-272); also, see David McCullough's book, 1776, p. 135, regarding the Saturday, July 6th celebrations in New York City, when the Philly newspaper accounts of July "2nd” reached New York City, 3 days before the newspaper accounts of A DECLARATION’s text, and its official July 5th distribution.
[4] JULY 4TH, AFTER THE FACT: RIGHT STORY, WRONG DATE
“It is often forgotten that the document which we know as the Declaration of Independence is not the official act by which the Continental Congress voted in favor of separation from Great Britain. . . Strictly speaking, this act of the 2 of July was the official declaration of independence; and if we were a nation of antiquaries we should no doubt find an incongruity in celebrating the anniversary of our independence on the 4 of July.”
Professor Carl Lotus Becker (1873-1945), THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE: A Study in the History of Political Ideas, pg. 3 [N.Y: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1922. 286 pp.; and reprinted: N.Y: Alfred A Knopf, 1942, with a new author’s Introduction of 14 pages (pp.v-xvii)]
Underlying the point of view of this section, derived from a precise treatment of the facts of the record, is the recognition of the disparity between what America’s charter document purports to be and what the average American believes it to be. Here are the relevant facts: The Declaration of Independence was the formal act of separation from Great Britain, as voted by 12 of 13 delegations in Congress on July 2. The broadside manifesto dated July 4th, and distributed by Congress the day after, is A DECLARATION by the Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled, published to convincingly proclaim to the world the reasons why the July 2nd declared separation from the Kingdom of Great Britain was necessary and right --- in short, a published argument as manifesto, dated July 4th, in support of a Congressional action, dated July 2nd. In later years’ correspondence Thomas Jefferson confirmed this much to be so.
Furthermore, that after New York ratified the Declaration of Independence on July 9th, only then making unanimous the thirteen Colonies commitment to Independence, did Congress take steps to prepare a more convincingly & suitably titled second edition of the published broadside. This second edition, unlike the first, is the signed edition forever on display in the U.S. National Archives, The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, first signed on August 2nd by most of the 56 delegates eventually to do so.
Considered from a different angle on the same array of facts, the July 2nd Declaration of Independence is that brief, but crucial closing part of the July 4th manifesto’s text; found in the last five lines of the final paragraph. A final paragraph reporting what had been declared on July 2nd, following after four paragraphs explaining and justifying that earlier declaration. Therefore the near-universal belief that the Declaration of Independence was not just this paragraph but either of the two published editions of Jefferson’s manifesto, either A DECLARATION or The Unanimous Declaration, each in its entirety, is a belief born of confusion reinforced by incompetent scholarship. A close reading of the facts should dispel that belief.
So it took perhaps no more than fifty years of accreting myth-making by popular writers to finally confuse the facts of that historic week in the national memory, and eclipse the significance of July 2nd vis-à-vis July 4th. As Philadelphia historian David Freeman Hawke tellingly put it in Honorable Treason, his book about the July 2nd declaration of Independence and Jefferson’s July 4th manifesto, "The official printer placed July 4 at the top of his broadside of the Declaration and thus accidentally that day came to be celebrated with the pomp and ceremony John Adams expected to be given over to July 2, the day Congress declared independence.” [1976, p. 187]. Also, a century earlier historian Mellen Chamberlain aptly summed it up: “When Lee’s resolution for Independency was agreed to by the Congress on the 2nd of July, the battle had been fought and the victory won. …What was done on July 2nd realized the ardent wishes of the patriotic party in the thirteen colonies. Its consummated act was a notable achievement of advocacy; and the great patriot, John Adams, fondly hoped that it would be celebrated to the remotest times. But it is otherwise: the glory of the act is overshadowed by the glory of its annunciation.” [Authentication of the Declaration of Independence, 1884, p. 27]
[5] AMERICAN UNION: INDEPENDENCY, DIPLOMACY & CONFEDERACY
The 15 May 1776 Virginia Resolve, proposing Independency, Alliances and Confederacy for America, was fulfilled because of the actions of the Continental Congress over a period of precisely eighteen months, between 27 May 1776 when the Virginia Resolve was submitted to Congress, and 28 November 1777 when a post rider set out from York, Pennsylvania, America’s temporary capital, to deliver the proposed constitution, the Articles of Confederation, to each of the 13 States for their approvals. On 28 November 1777 Congress had completed its part in fulfilling the mandates of the Virginia Resolve. The resulting historic high-point events were three:
[1] Independency declared on the afternoon of 2 July 1776. International fulfillment of this declaration came more than seven years later, with the Revolutionary war fought and won. The Peace Treaties of Paris and Versailles were signed on 3 September 1783. The Paris treaty, in the morning, at 10:30 am; the Versailles treaty, in the afternoon, at 3:00 pm. From this moment the rightful sovereign place of the U.S.A in the community of nations became an accepted fact by the European powers. Treaty ratification by Congress took place at Annapolis, MD, on 14 January 1784; and ratifications were exchanged to give legal effect, on the evening of 12 May 1784, at the residence of Benjamin Franklin, in Plassy, France.
[2] Diplomacy fulfilled by the treaties with France: First accomplished by the treaties of alliance, and amity & commerce; signed on 6 February 1778; ratified by Congress on 4 May 1778, and treaty ratifications exchanged to give legal effect, on 17 July 1778.
[3] Confederacy and its constitution: When enactment of the thirteen Articles ofConfederation as proposed by Congress was taken up for consideration by the thirteen State governments. The period of consideration lasted from December 1777 until February 1781, during which time each State took its turn at ratification. The 13th State government to do so was Maryland’s, which ratified the Articles ofConfederation, on 2 February 1781. During the late afternoon the Governor signed the act into law at the Annapolis State House, and thus authorized the subsequent ceremonial confirmation of Maryland’s ratification, on 1 March 1781, in a 12:00 noon signing ceremony before Congress at Philadelphia.
Each of these high-point events contained a number of milestones along the nation’s road to constitutional Union, finally achieved by the unanimous completion of the thirteen ratifications of the Articles of Confederation. As Masonic Brother Ronald E. Heaton summed it up in his book, Masonic Membership of the Founding Fathers, “the war was fought and finally won. The independence declared by the colonies in 1776 had become a reality in 1781.” Fifty-five months after The thirteen united States of North America was established in Congress on 15 July 1776, with New York’s enactment of Independency and its ratification of the Declaration of Independence, on July 9th in the White Plains Convention, America’s States were at long last politically transformed by the completion of their Confederacy, to be, and as they have been ever since, The United States of America.
Forgotten Founders Historic Documents and Coins of Freedom - By Stanley
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1st President of the United States in Congress Assembled
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experienced 15 years of challenges that included war, hyper-inflation, a failed
constitution, judicial corruption, armed citizen and U.S. Army rebellions.
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