From Benson Bobrick’s Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution
On the morning of July 4, Jefferson rose before dawn, and at six a.m. calmly noted that the temperature was 68 degrees Farenheit. The wind was southeast and the mercury soon climbed to 76. He soaked his feet in a basin of cold water (as was his morning habit), took some tea and biscuits, and proceeded to Independence Hall. By midafternoon, the collective editing of the declaration (accelerated by a plague of horseflies which had swarmed out of the stables nearby) had come to its happy end. It was voted on and adopted (New York alone abstaining), whereupon Joseph Hewes of North Carolina, who had repeatedly voted against it, “started suddenly upright, and lifting up both his Hands to Heaven as if he had been in a trance, cry’d out, ‘It is done! and I will abide by it.'” An old bellman at nearby Christ’s Church, waiting for the signal from a boy stationed at the State House door, suddenly heard the lad clap his hands and shout, “Ring! Ring!”
Those who afterward lined up to sign the document (on August 22) had reason to be uneasy. They knew the peril and penalty of treason and were signing, as it were, with halters about their necks. John Hancock, as president of Congress, wrote his name first. “We must be unanimous,” he reportedly declared. “There must be no pulling different ways, we must all hang together.” “Yes,” replied Franklin, ‘we must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Behind them stood Benjamin Harrison, a large, heavy man, who nervously picked up the theme. To the diminutive Eldridge Gerry, he said, “I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body, you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead.”
Yet there was also an overriding and mystical feeling of providential cover to the boldness of their act. As John Page, a Virginia statesman, put it rather beautifully to Jefferson two weeks after the declaration was adopted, “God preserve the United States. We know the Race is not to the swift nor the Battle to the Strong. Do you not think an Angel rides in the Whirlwind and directs this Storm?”
Congress had copies of the declaration sent to every state Assembly and convention, to the various committees of safety, and to the commanding officers of the Continental Army to proclaim before their troops.
John Adams, writing to Abigail, was moved to prophecy by the transcendent spirit of the hour: “You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treausre that it will cost us to maintain the Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph in that day’s transaction, even though we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not.”
It seemed to him, moreover, that it was just as well consideration of the declaration (by which he meant Lee’s resolutions) had taken as long as it had:
Time has been given for the whole people maturely to consider the great question of independence, and to ripen their judgment, dissipate their fears, and allure their hopes, by discussing it in newspapers and pamphlets, by debating it in assemblies, conventions, committees of safety and inspection, in town and county meetings, as well as in private conversations, so that the whole people, in every colony of the thirteen, have now adopted it as their own act. This will cement the union, and avoid those heats, and perhaps convulsions, which might have been occasioned by such a Declaration six months ago.
With his usual prescience, he predicted the day would be “celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival” and “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 forevermore.” (The practice, of course, has been to celebrate the Fourth of July, the day on which the form of the Declaration of Independence was agreed to, rather than the second, when Lee’s resolutions were adopted and which Adams actually had in mind.)
Celebrations followed in city, town, village, and country hamlet, with bell ringing, parades, bonfires,and illuminations throughout the land. In New York, after the colonial assembly “at the risque of our lives and fortunes” gave its assent on July 9, Washington had the army brigades drawn up at six PM to hear “the United Colonies of America” declared “Free and Independent States“. After the text was read, he saw fit to add, “The General hopes that this important event will serve as a fresh incentive to every officer and solider to act with fidelity and courage, as knowing that now the peace and safety of his country depend, under God, solely on the success of our arms; and that he is now in the service of a state possessed of sufficient power to reward his merit, and to advance him to the highest honors of a free country.”
That evening New Yorkers toppled the lead equestrian statue of King George III (errected after repeal of the Stamp Act) from its pedestal on Bowling Green. Eventually, its metal would be melted down and molded into 42,000 cartridges for patriot guns. Citizens in Baltimore, Savannah, and elsewhere likewise burned or buried the king in effigy and tore from their hinges all signs bearing the royal arms. In Worcester, Massachusetts, thirsty patriots repaired to a local tavern and offered toasts to the prosperity of the United States and a dozen other things, including “Perpetual itching without benefit of scratching to the enemies of America.” That Sunday, Bishop Willaim White, the patriot rector of Christ’s Church in Philadelphia, omitted the usual prayers offered for the king, and one year later, as a sign that God’s imprimatur was now stamped upon the radical sermons he preached, a bolt of lightning struck and shattered the Royal Crown of England affixed to the top of the spire.
In just over two years, a new nation had been born.
“Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory.”
Awesome.