250 years ago, the Birth of American Liberty Thundered Across The World!

“Now your city of Philadelphia can benefit greatly by your Decrees…because here the Bell of Freedom first rang its message to the Nation and the World!” Beloved Godfre  - The Voice of the “I AM” 2005:11:24

America’s Birth Certificate triggered by The Lee Resolution

On June 7, 1776 Richard Henry Lee famously introduced his resolution declaring that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States; and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

He was not alone. By June, several colonial governments had agreed with Lee’s sentiment and had instructed their delegates to support independence.

However, Congress recognized that independence required more than a vote. The world needed an explanation, and future generations needed a statement of the principles upon which the new nation would be founded.

On June 11, 1776, the Second Continental Congress appointed a committee to prepare such a declaration.

The Legendary Committee of Five

The Committee of Five consisted of the charismatic Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, the fiery John Adams of Massachusetts, the venerable Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, the pragmatic Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and the brilliant Robert R. Livingston of New York.

John Adams later explained why Jefferson was selected to write the first draft. Jefferson possessed, in Adams’s words, “a happy talent of composition.” He wrote with uncommon clarity, elegance, and precision. As a Virginian, he also represented the South, giving the document broader acceptance throughout the colonies.

Working in rented rooms on Market Street in Philadelphia, the thirty-three-year-old Jefferson spent nearly two weeks crafting what would become one of the most influential political documents in the history of the modern world.

Every Word Meticulously Chosen

Thomas Jefferson did not write casually. Drawing upon English common law, colonial declarations, the writings of John Locke, and the natural rights tradition, he carefully selected language that would express timeless truths rather than temporary political grievances.

Jefferson's greatest achievement was not inventing new ideas, but expressing familiar principles with extraordinary power.

His pen declared that “all men are created equal” and are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” By grounding rights in the Creator rather than government, Jefferson affirmed that liberty is God’s gift, not a privilege granted by kings or legislatures. Governments exist not to create rights but to protect those already possessed by every person.

After Jefferson completed his draft, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin suggested only modest revisions. Franklin’s most famous change replaced Jefferson’s phrase “sacred and undeniable” with the now-famous words “self-evident.” The Committee of Five approved the revised draft and submitted it to Congress on June 28, 1776.

A ‘Forest of Masts’ descends upon New York Harbor

On June 29, 1776, New Yorkers looked out at the water and saw a nightmare on the horizon. The British fleet had arrived, and so many ships filled the bay that witnesses said the masts looked like "a forest of pine trees" growing out of the sea. The timing could not have been more inopportune.

This was the British empire's stark answer to the rebellion, and it seemed overwhelming. The first wave of around 45 warships and transports dropped anchor off Sandy Hook and Staten Island carrying General William Howe and roughly 10,000 troops.

Within days the fleet kept growing. Shortly, Howe's brother - Admiral Richard Howe followed with even more warships and a further 15,000 troops. The flotilla would eventually swell into one of the largest seaborne invasion forces of the18th century, numbering hundreds of warships and tens of thousands of professional soldiers and German Hessian mercenaries, all gathered with the singular aim of conquering and crushing the resolve of the colonies' second largest city.

While that forest of masts filled New York harbor, delegates in Philadelphia were busy debating the finer points as to whether to declare independence.

At the exact moment the fledgling united states of America was being born on paper, the most powerful military on earth had anchored off its coast, and was preparing to strangle the new nation's birth prematurely in the cradle.

The people of New York understood exactly what they were seeing. Alarm bells rang, panic spread through the streets, and patriot soldiers sprinted to their posts to stare at a force they had almost no hope of matching.

General George Washington's novice army of 9,000 men were vastly outnumbered, outgunned, and destined to be sadly beaten in the battles for New York and Long Island that followed.

Meanwhile, those brave patriots who had assembled in Philadelphia carried on with their task regardless.

Congress refines the Declaration

Between July 1 and July 4, Congress debated Jefferson’s draft line-by-line, making approximately eighty-six changes. Roughly one-fourth of his original wording was revised or deleted. Most edits simplified sentences, softened rhetoric, or clarified meaning.

Although Jefferson disliked many of the revisions, Congress preserved every foundational principle. The Declaration continued to proclaim that rights come from the Creator, governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and the people retain the right to alter or abolish governments that become destructive of those rights.

Those principles formed the enduring heart of the document.

Adoption and Signing

Independence wasn't declared from a position of strength. It was declared with an enemy armada already camping on the emerging nation’s doorstep, with the signers knowing full well what would be coming.

By signing, each of the delegates from the thirteen colonies assembled knowingly committed what Britain considered high treason, punishable by death.

They pledged to one another “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor,” fully aware of the risks they were accepting.

On July 2, 1776, Congress finally approved Richard Henry Lee’s resolution, declaring the colonies independent. John Adams believed Americans would forever celebrate July 2 as the nation’s great anniversary.

Instead, history remembers July 4—the day Congress approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence and ordered that the Declaration of Independence be “proclaimed in each of the United States and at the head of the army.”

History records that on July 8, the Declaration was first publicly read out loud in front of an enthusiastic crowd in the streets of Philadelphia near the State House yard, by Colonel John Nixon. The assembled people responding with “loud huzzas,” while John Adams recollects general festivities including ringing bells, a parade on the commons, and burning the king’s arms.

One Philadelphia spectator however, - Quaker historian Deborah Norris Logan, who was fourteen in the summer of 1776, recalls an earlier reading of the famous document.

In a diary she started many years later, she described what she saw and heard on July 4:

“It is now a matter of doubt as what hour, or how, the Declaration was given to the people. Perhaps few now remain that heard it read on that day. But of the few I am one: being in the lot adjoining to our old mansion house in Chestnut Street, that then extended to 5th Street, I distinctly heard the words of that Instrument read to the people (I believe from the State House steps, for I did not see the reader) a low building on 5th Street (later the location of City Hall) which prevented my sight and I think it was Charles Thomson’s voice.”

Miss Logan went on to recount: “It took place a little after twelve at noon and they then proceeded down the street, (I understood) to read it at the Court House.”

She continued: “It was a time of fearful doubt and great anxiety with the people, many of whom were appalled at the boldness of the measure, and the first audience was neither very numerous, nor composed of the most respectable class of citizens.”

Whatever the truth of the timing of the first reading, or whether it was greeted with shouts of loud accord or trepidation and anxiety, the Declaration shattered the established mold as to where a free Citizen’s rights truly emanated from.

The following day in New York City on July 9, overlooking the might of the invading British Navy with its swaying masts amassed in the city's harbor, George Washington defiantly “caused the Declaration to be proclaimed before all the army under my immediate command.” The words thus spoken emboldened hearts, strengthened resolve and stirred impassioned feelings for the righteousness of the cause.

The die was cast. Liberty or Death.

Epilogue: A Legacy That Changed the World

The Declaration of Independence did far more than announce America’s separation from Great Britain. It proclaimed universal principles that have inspired movements for liberty around the world for nearly 250 years.

Jefferson’s remarkable prose, Franklin’s wisdom, Adams’s counsel, the Committee of Five’s review, and Congress’s careful revisions combined to produce one of history’s greatest statements of human freedom.

Eternal Truths Live On Today

The Declaration’s central truths have endured for 250 years: that our rights come from the Creator; that governments only exist by the consent of the governed; and that liberty is worth defending, even at the greatest personal cost.

Those principles remain the foundation of the American experiment and one of the nation’s greatest gifts to the world.

Acknowledgement is given to the seminal research work, composition and original ideas of Craig Seibert, Chris Coelho and Larry Arnn.