On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, voted unanimously to declare independence as the “United States of America”. On August 2, 1776, Congress signed the Declaration of Independence.
The drafting of the Declaration was the responsibility of a Committee of Five, which included John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and Benjamin Franklin; it was drafted by Jefferson and revised by the others and the Congress as a whole. It contended that “all men are created equal” with “certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, and that “to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”,
as well as listing the main colonial grievances against the crown. Thus what had begun as a rebellion demanding English rights developed into a revolution based on universal rights that was to overthrow the entire political and social order of the Americans. Jefferson expressed that he did not wish to create new arguments, but rather to present those of previous philosophers, such as those of John Locke.
The signers of the Declaration of Independence were highly educated and wealthy, and they came from the older colonial settlements. They were largely Protestant and of British descent.
In the following century, the signing of the Declaration of Independence would be commemorated as Independence Day. Independence Day, known colloquially as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday in the United States which commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, establishing the United States of America.”
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