JULY 4TH, 1776: WHAT WAS AND WASN'T IT ABOUT?

By Edwin Cooney 

Back in fifth grade, I heard about George Washington, John Adams, and his cousin Samuel Adams for the first time. I also learned "My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing!" The Fourth of July was about independence. However, in the minds and hearts of little boys and girls, July 4th, 1776 was about freedom. Only much later did I ask myself and others, whose freedom was July the 4th, 1776 really about?

The leaders and thinkers, men with names like Adams and Hancock, Lee, Henry and even Jefferson, weaponized the demand for independence from a command into a cause.

What's important to remember is that the desire for independence was merely the catalyst for future social and spiritual struggles for the decades and years to come.

Thus, I think it's both important and significant to understand that independence and freedom are not the same thing. Independence means that one's fortune is separate from another's authority. What America would do with the July 4th, 1776 independence it was about to struggle with was quite another matter.

Hence, how really relevant was Jefferson's assertion that “all men are created equal?”  Did Jefferson believe that inhabitants of nations linked politically to other nations weren't equal in "the sight of nature's God”?

Most of the measures Great Britain took to assist them in paying their  national debt after supporting the colonists in the Seven Years’ War against France (1756 to 1763) have come to be judged as reasonable and even a natural expectation on the part of the British. However, the way these measures were introduced and administrated was insensitive to life in the colonies. The 1764 Sugar Act and even  the 1765 Stamp Act and the later tea tax were economic in nature. The intolerable acts allowing for British soldiers to be boarded in colonial homes and the Quebec Act which moved the Canadian border south to the Ohio River were much more serious. On that famous Thursday, July 4th, 1776, 56 delegates from the 13 colonies pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor in support of the Declaration of Independence.

Most Americans acknowledge the significance of our independence from Britain. Few, however, consider that vital significance separating its existence and its meaning for the future.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY