Take That, King!

Today is Independence Day, the day in 1776 that the American Colonies formally declared their independence from Britain. The War of Independence had already been going on for over a year, and had not been going very well. Most of the famous victories, and the biggest tests, were yet to come. But the Founders already had their heads in a noose, and so pledged their lives and their sacred honor to the task of securing independence, a job that was not completed for seven more years.

When I was a kid, my Dad bought one of those fake parchment versions of the Declaration. I remember reading it and being really impressed by the strength of the language and the litany of complaints against the King. I was also, incidentally, impressed that the scribe who had written out the text made an emendation, a caret with the addition of the word "only"  after "answered" in the sentence "Our Petitions have been answered by repeated injury." Was this at the post-draft direction of Jefferson and the Committee of Five, or was it the clerk's original error?. Either way, I knew my Dad, if he'd been on the Committee, would never have stood for that. "Do it over!", he'd have said. And we would have had a more perfect Declaration. And another signature to rival Hancock's.

You can read the text of the Declaration at the Wikipedia page. But it's fun to read it in the clerk's original script. Click on the image above and view it at full resolution. The history of the document is also fascinating. For example, Independence was declared on July 2, the Declaration was approved for dissemination on July 4, but was not signed by Congress until August 2.

Happy Independence Day!