By: Russ Kamp, CEO, Ryan ALM, Inc.

We’ll depart from the usual focus on defined benefit pensions for a day to bring you this history lesson.

Hear ye, hear ye: We’ve been celebrating the wrong “Independence Day” for 250-years. How’s that? Well, if it were up to John Adams (and others), we’d be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States today.

On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to approve Richard Henry Lee’s (Virginia) resolution “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved”. which is the formal decision to break from Britain.

In fact, this was the second day of voting on this resolution, as the first vote on July 1, 1776, saw Pennsylvania and South Carolina vote no, Delaware’s delegates were split, and New York abstained. Why? Lee’s resolution included three parts:
– Seek independence
– Establish foreign-alliances
– Prepare a plan of confederation

On July 2nd, 1776, the second and third parts of the resolution were deferred paving the way for the vote to be unanimous, except that New York once again abstained. They eventually accepted the resolution. That July 2nd vote was the real political act of independence; July 4th was when Congress adopted the text of the Declaration explaining and announcing that decision. 

To add further intrigue, if not confusion, according to the National Archives and several historians, August 2nd is often cited as Independence Day because that is when the parchment copy of the Declaration was first signed by most delegates, including John Hancock, who was the first delegate to sign in his capacity as the President of the Continental Congress.