“It was awesome to hear people read the Declaration in front of a crowd, just like it would have happened 250 years ago,” said Steve Bulger, Saratoga County administrator, after the event. “You don’t get to hear the Declaration read very often.”
The “Sharing the Spirit of America” event was spearheaded by the Hawai’i America 250 Committee. A total of 1,126 locations participated in the readings.
“Because the readings are all commensurate with 6 p.m. (EDT), July 8, they are all happening simultaneously,” the event’s website states. “At that moment, though geographically separated, Americans around the world will be joined together in time.”
One such reading took place at the Saratoga County Offices in Ballston Spa. Prior to the reading, the First Presbyterian Church of Ballston Spa rang its bell 13 times (in honor of the 13 original colonies) to commemorate the tolling of the courtyard bells, which called the citizens of Philadelphia together at the Pennsylvania State House for the Declaration’s first public reading.
The document was then read in five parts by Frank McClement, Saratoga County director of veteran services; Heather Mabee, New York State custodian of the Daughters of the American Revolution; Bruce Venter, PhD, historian and author; Michael Companion, the Town of Milton historian; and Lauren Roberts, Saratoga County historian and chair of the Saratoga 250 Committee. After the reading, members of the 2nd Continental Artillery Regiment shot a replica 4-pound cannon specially commissioned by the Saratoga 250 Committee.
Roberts gave a brief history of the Declaration, explaining that “Independence was a lengthy process.”
The initial proposal to declare independence from Great Britain was made during the 2nd Continental Congress on June 7, 1776, by Richard Henry Lee, one of the delegates from Virginia. Congress then assembled a committee to draft the document, comprised of Thomas Jefferson from Virginia, as the primary author; John Adams from Massachusetts; Benjamin Franklin from Pennsylvania; Roger Sherman from Connecticut; and Robert R. Livingston from New York. The first vote on the resolution to declare independence was held on July 1, 1776. It failed to pass with nine colonies voting for it, two voting against; one colony was deadlocked, and New York abstained. A second vote was held on July 2, with 12 colonies voting for it. New York was still the lone holdout.
“The reason they abstained was because they hadn’t yet received permission from their home provincial congress to vote in favor of independence,” Roberts explained. “They had been given clearance to vote for reconciliation with Britain, but obviously that isn’t the way that history went.”
Even with New York’s abstention, the resolution passed on July 2, 1776, and America was officially in a fight for freedom.
“The Declaration really, in my opinion, launched all the colonies on this mission,” Bulger said. “There had been battles before at Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill, but once this declaration got out there and united all 13 colonies, it really became the United States of America versus Great Britain.”
That the colonies would break away from the British government was never in question, but Congress still needed to tweak the wording a bit before the final document was issued to the public. They spent July 3 and 4 editing the Declaration into the final draft we know today. It was first printed in the Pennsylvania Evening Post on July 6 and on July 8, 1776, Col. John Nixon read the document to a crowd gathered at the Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Square.
The document essentially amounts to a list of perceived grievances against the king and the British Parliament, which the colonists found to be grounds for secession.
“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’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation,” the Declaration reads in it’s opening.
What follows is a list of those causes, such as obstructing or outright refusal to follow the rule of law, exciting “domestic insurrections amongst us,” protecting “large bodies of armed troops” from punishment for “any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states,” refusing to pass laws that would benefit the majority of the people “unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the Legislature,” and of course, “for imposing taxes on us without our consent.”
“There are a lot of relatable issues today that we can see a connection with 250 years ago,” Roberts said.
The Declaration of Independence was an imperfect document from the very beginning. From its unfortunate use of the phrase “merciless Indian savages” to describe the Native Americans who sided with the British during the conflict, to the dubious claim that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” scholars have debated for centuries the philosophical implications of the words chosen to create the nation. Despite its contradictions, the Declaration of Independence has remained the solid bedrock on which America has been built.
“All you have to do is look back in history at how many different groups between then and now have used the Declaration of Independence as a basis for their grievances,” Roberts said. “We’re recognizing it’s not a perfect document, there are ideals that we are working towards, and I think that that’s something we can continue to see today.”
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