Philadelphia. July 4, 1776.
Independence is real. Philadelphia rejoices.
And a printer awaits a declaration.
John Dunlap, 29, an immigrant from Northern Ireland who operates a printing shop at Second and High Streets, a short stroll from the Pennsylvania State House, where the rebels conspire, has watched with keen attention the epochal events of the preceding days.
The exultant patriots and curiosity seekers who braved suffocating summer heat to stand watch outside the State House on July 1, when the 56 delegates of the Second Continental Congress finally commence their locked-door debate on independence. The rapture that seems to ring out from every Philly tavern and tippling joint, coffee house, and street corner on July 2, when word that Congress voted to sever ties with King George III spreads through America’s largest and wealthiest city, like a bolt from one of Dr. Franklin’s electricity experiments. The joy. Hope.
And now, as an unusually mild morning gives way to rain-laden clouds, Philadelphia holds its breath upon the brink of a mighty happening.
Cloistered inside their chambers, the delegates fiercely debate and painstakingly parse Thomas Jefferson’s draft of America’s founding creed. Its passage will formalize independence.
Dunlap, who will eventually serve Washington as an officer in the First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry, is a patriot. But nobody’s fool. Months earlier, Dunlap had secured a lucrative $654 printing contract with the Congress, and the handsome commission it brings.
The ink-stained Irishman with the whipcord build of a jockey prepares the shop for the Herculean task he knows is coming. The delegates will desire to thunder out the news of American independence before the iron gall ink even dries on the Dutch paper. John Hancock, 40, charismatic president of the Congress, will want as many broadsides as Dunlap can muster by dawn. Printing broadsides by hand in sweltering, trembling candlelight — meticulously setting the type, carefully rolling the ink, and pulling the heavy presses — is messy, demanding work, the hardened printer knows. He’ll plan to toil until morning’s light.
Outside, citizens collect in High Street. Soon, the print shop door pushes open. A man, his face obscured by the sun, darkens the doorway. He holds something close. A rag paper manuscript written in fine hand, still wet from fresh changes, and borne by delicate hand to the expectant printer. Words upon which a nation now rests. A declaration.
July 1, 1776: Three days earlier
At the Second Street boarding house of Mrs. Sarah Yard, John Adams, 40, awakes before dawn. The unyielding lawyer and farmer from Massachusetts has become accustomed to the city’s morning clarion cry of crowing roosters, ringing bells, clanking ships, and cursing sailors. But not its heat.
Behold this atlas of independence at his breaking point. Exhausted. Homesick. Hot. Beyond cantankerous that any rational being could yet flinch at the surety and necessity of American independence. For weeks, Adams answers angry letters from citizens demanding to know why Congress stalls.
“The only question is concerning the proper time for making a specific declaration in words,” Adams writes, barely concealing his own impatience. “But remember you can’t make thirteen clocks strike precisely alike at the same second.”
For nearly two years, John Adams has fought for liberty like a bruising prizefighter, while his less refined older cousin, Samuel, 53, conducts a campaign of persuasion in the shadows. No one has done more than John Adams for independence. On this morning, John Adams dresses in the twilight, wishing that he had been blessed with the graces and gifts of ancient orators.
“This morning is assigned the greatest debate of all,” Adams writes before leaving for the State House. “A declaration, that these colonies are free and independent states, has been reported by a committee some weeks ago for that purpose, and this day or tomorrow is to determine its fate. May heaven prosper this newborn republic.”
At 9 a.m. on July 1, 1776, Andrew McNair, old and gray bellman of the State House, pulls shut the chamber’s heavy doors. Hancock gavels history to order.
In the silence, rises Pennsylvania’s reluctant rebel, John Dickinson. His writings once rallied American farmers against British taxes. Now, ghostly and gaunt from illness, he remains a dogged dissenter against independence. Summoning his strength, he abides his conscience, arguing America is not yet ready.
To proceed with a declaration during an uncertain struggle would be “to brave the storm in a skiff made of paper,” he tells his colleagues, before sitting.
Outside, the heat breaks. Rain beats against the chamber’s tall windows. Thunder booms. Lightning flashes.
Adams stands. He speaks over the stormy din. His precise words are lost to posterity. He speaks for two hours. John Adams moves men.
Adams speaks “with a power of thought and expression that moves us from our seats,” Jefferson, remaining characteristically mum at his table, will later recall.
A preliminary vote is taken by candlelight. Despite popular opinion, four colonies — including four members of Pennsylvania’s critical seven-man delegation — vote no.
Late into the night, at the City Tavern, the delegates drink upon tenterhooks.
July 2, 1776
The second day of debate begins with a prosperous portent. Caesar Rodney, of Delaware, mud-splattered boots and spurs, arms akimbo, bursts in before the doors to Congress close. The gravely ill delegate rode 80 miles through the tempest to cast his vote for independence.
Better still are the two conspicuously empty chairs at the Pennsylvania table. Unable to vote for independence, but unwilling to thwart unanimity, Dickinson and fellow delegate, Robert Morris, voluntarily abstain. Despite his feelings, Dickinson will soon join the rebel militia — to fight for his country.
Again, the skies open up, raindrops drumming upon the glass.
With New York abstaining — and Pennsylvania swinging toward independence — the vote goes quick.
It is done.
Independence.
July 3, 1776
The Congress continues without a break.
Days earlier, before handing in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson turned to Benjamin Franklin for one last look.
“Will Doctr. Franklyn be so good as to peruse it and suggest such alterations as his more enlarged view of the subject will dictate?” Jefferson inquires, in a note delivered to the silver-haired statesman’s High Street home.
It’s Franklin, sly satirist, homespun philosopher — grand auteur of America’s self-made aura — who possibly suggests, the inspiring “self-evident” phrasing, replacing Jefferson’s initial “sacred and undeniable truths.”
And it is Franklin, 70, spectacled lion of liberty, sage of Philadelphia, tamer of lightning, dean of American charm and wit, wooer of women, broad of bow and frame, portly of paunch and plain of coat, a winsome spark dancing across his gray-blue eyes, who comforts the young writer as delegates slash away at his declaration. The winking newspaperman unspools a tale about an enterprising hatmaker who wishes to advertise his wares. By the time the hatter’s friends finish their edits, all that remains is the man’s name, and a photo of a hat, Franklin jokes.
The delegates trim Jefferson’s harsher language about King George. They excise completely his evisceration of the slave trade. Jefferson does not publicly protest.
July 4, 1776
At 11 a.m., debate is closed.
The moment will eventually be memorialized in painting. The towering trio — Adams, Jefferson, Franklin — presenting America’s credo for approval. Imagine them, these Founding Fathers. These imperfect men for the ages who hazard everything to chance a republic, and change a world.
There is little ceremony. Horseflies from a nearby stable buzz. One after another, a chorus of “Ayes.”
Delegates break the tension with gallows humor about whose necks will snap the swiftest.
History does not record the face of the man who darkens the doorway of John Dunlap’s print shop. Perhaps it was Adams, unable to yield his obsession even in its ultimate realization. Perhaps, it was Franklin, delivering the declaration with a deliciously wry aphorism. Or Jefferson, solemn and silent with the weight of his words.
Dunlap works all night to the thumping groan of the presses. By morning, roughly 200 broadsides start to spread America’s newly minted founding document far beyond Philadelphia. Breathless riders herald the news in town squares.
In the trenches in New York, Washington orders the declaration read aloud. Bells ring. Troops parade. Bonfires alight. Candles burn. Prayers are whispered, for those sons and fathers who will die in the bloody conflict ahead.
By July 6, the Pennsylvania Evening Post, a paper published near Dunlap’s shop, prints the declaration word for word. Its previous issue had been put to press too early to capture the momentous events.
Instead, the July 4, 1776 edition included usual fare.
“To be sold,” read one back-page ad. “A NEGRO BOY, about four or five years of age.”
Crowds pack the State House yard, where the rebels had long conspired. A military officer reads the manifesto to the hushed masses.
Words that birth the American experiment on an ideal — and the sin of slavery. Words that will endure Civil War and oppression. Words that beckon centuries of American promise and possibility, triumph and failure. Words that inspire new revolutions, new freedoms, new fights. Words that transform. Words that twist. Words that promise a pursuit of happiness — but withhold so much from so many. Words that stand tested still.
Words written in Philadelphia.
