Making it Official: The Day the Declaration of Independence was Signed
Independence Day in the United States is celebrated on July 4, the day the Second Continental Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence. If you ask just about any American, they can correctly identify that date. What is less commonly known, however, is that it is unlikely that the Declaration itself was signed on July 4. In fact, it is probable that the majority of the delegates to Congress didn’t sign the document for nearly a month after ratification.
Today, a majority of U.S. historians agree that the document was in fact signed on August 2, 1776. This date was initially a matter of dispute. In the years after independence, reports from a variety of Founding Fathers asserted that the document was signed on the same day as it was adopted. According to the notes taken by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and others, the Declaration was signed on July 4, 1776.
However, in the decades that followed, more facts came to light that called this date into question. Some delegates, such as Thomas McKean in 1796, disputed the idea that the signing had taken place on July 4, as many of the signers of the document weren’t even in Philadelphia until later in that month.
Keep reading at Making it Official: The Day the Declaration of Independence was Signed | Prologue: Pieces of History
