Independence Day. The Declaration of Independence from Great Britain was passed by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, July 4, 1776. Pennsylvania, in 1873, was the first state to declare this date a legal holiday. There is, however, a record of an earlier observance elsewhere. The citizens of New Bern, N.C., celebrated Independence Day on July 4, in 1778. Pennsylvania's action was followed by all the states.

On July 4, 1776, the members of the Continental Congress assembled at the State House in Philadelphia to take up a matter of vital importance. Two days earlier the Congress had voted to declare the colonies to be free and independent states. Now they were considering how to announce that fact to the world. By the end of the day, the final wording had been determined and the Congress voted unanimously to adopt one of history's greatest documents the Declaration of Independence.

The stirring phrases of the Declaration inspired the patriots to defeat the British, thus guaranteeing independence. Since that time the Declaration has been a source of pride and strength for every generation of Americans.

The Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4. A copy was ordered engrossed on parchment. This formal document was signed on August 2 by members of Congress present on that date. Those who were absent signed later.

The Declaration did not establish the independence of the American Colonies. It only stated an intention and the cause for action. Complete separation would have to be accomplished by force. Once the Declaration had been adopted, however, there was no turning back.

The Declaration is a statement of the American theory of government.
Three basic ideas were involved:

1. God had made all men equal and had given them the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
   
2. The main business of government was to protect these rights;
   
3. If a government tried to withhold these rights, the people were free to revolt and to set up a new government. These three ideas formed the groundwork for the state governments that were established after the Declaration was adopted.

On July 8, 1776, the people of Philadelphia gathered at the old State House to hear a reading of the Declaration of Independence. They were called together by the ringing of the Liberty Bell in the belfry of the building. It has been said that the bell cracked on that joyful occasion. This is not true, however. The Liberty Bell cracked for the first time in 1752, after it had been brought from London. It was recast the following year by Charles Stow and John Pass. After its use in 1776 the bell was rung each year on the anniversary of the Declaration. In 1835 a crack developed while it was tolling for the death of John Marshall, famous chief justice of the Supreme Court. When the bell was rung on Washington ‘s birthday in 1846, it cracked beyond repair. It was struck lightly by officials of Philadelphia on April 6, 1917, when the United States entered World War I.

The historic old bell hung in the hallway of the State House (renamed Independence Hall) until the bicentennial year of 1976, when it was moved to a new pavilion nearby. The original document of the Declaration is preserved in a helium-filled glass case in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

*This text follows exactly the spelling and punctuation of the original document. IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776.
THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WHEN in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless these people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:For suspending our own Legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

WE, THEREFORE, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

CONNECTICUT Roger Sherman Samuel Huntington William Williams Oliver Wolcott	DELAWARE Caesar Rodney George Read Thomas McKean	GEORGIA Button Gwinnett Lyman Hall George Walton	MARYLAND Samuel Chase William Paca Thomas Stone Charles Carroll of Carrollton
MASSACHUSETTS John Hancock Samuel Adams John Adams Robert Treat Paine Elbridge Gerry	NEW HAMPSHIRE Josiah Bartlett William Whipple Matthew Thornton	NEW JERSEY Richard Stockton John Witherspoon Francis Hopkinson John Hart Abraham Clark	NEW YORK William Floyd Philip Livingston Francis Lewis Lewis Morris
NORTH CAROLINA William Hooper Joseph Hewes John Penn	PENNSYLVANIA Robert Morris Benjamin Rush Benjamin Franklin	John Morton George Clymer James Smith	George Taylor James Wilson George Ross
RHODE ISLAND Stephen Hopkins William Ellery	SOUTH CAROLINA Edward Rutledge Thomas Heyward, Jr. Thomas Lynch, Jr. Arthur Middleton
VIRGINIA George Wythe Richard Henry Lee Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Harrison	Thomas Nelson, Jr. Francis Lightfoot Lee Carter Braxton

The names of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence are listed under the names of the states they represented. John Hancock, then president of the Congress, signed on July 4. Most of the others signed on August 2.

KEY, Francis Scott (1779-1843). A lawyer who wrote verse as a hobby, Francis Scott Key penned the words that became 'The Star-Spangled Banner' after a battle in the War of 1812. The words were sung to the tune of the English drinking song 'To Anacreon in Heaven'.

Francis Scott Key was born on Terra Rubra, his family's estate in western Maryland, on Aug. 1, 1779. Until he was 10 he was educated at home. After attending preparatory school at Annapolis, he entered St. John's College and then prepared for a legal career in the office of Judge Jeremiah Chase. He opened a successful law practice in Georgetown (now part of Washington, D.C.) and served as attorney for the District of Columbia from 1833. He died in Baltimore, Md., on Jan. 11, 1843.

After the burning of Washington by the British in the War of 1812, Key was sent to the British fleet anchored in Chesapeake Bay to secure the release of a friend. He was detained aboard ship overnight on Sept. 13, 1814, during the bombardment of Fort McHenry. When he saw the United States flag still flying over the fortress the next morning, he wrote the words to what was later called 'The Star-Spangled Banner' but was first printed under the title 'Defence of Fort M'Henry'. The song quickly became popular and was adopted by the Army and Navy as the national anthem, but it was not until 1931 that it became officially recognized as such by an act of Congress as the national anthem of the United States.

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