July 4 · This Day in America
In a sweltering room in Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress votes to adopt the final text of the Declaration of Independence. Thirteen colonies — quarrelsome, unsure, outgunned — put their names to a single audacious sentence: that all men are created equal, and that governments answer to the governed. It is not yet true for everyone who lives here. It will take centuries, and blood, and argument that has not stopped. But the promise is now written down, and a written promise is a thing a people can be held to. Every American story after this is, in some way, an argument with this paragraph.
Source: www.archives.gov
Also on this day · 1826
On the Declaration's 50th anniversary, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson — collaborators, rivals, and finally friends by mail — die within hours of each other. Adams's last words are said to be "Thomas Jefferson survives." He did not know Jefferson had died that afternoon in Virginia. The country took it as something close to a sign.
Source: www.monticello.org
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”Declaration of Independence, 1776