Clearing up the Meaning of Independence Day

As we Americans celebrate our independence today, it is appropriate to clear up the current confusion on the meaning of the Independence Day holiday. As I have posted before, the Continental Congress, which was an assembly of Delegates sent by each of the Thirteen American Colonies which had united against the tyranny of their British mother country, approved a resolution on July 2, 1776 declaring the Colonies to be independent States. Some of the colonies had already declared their own independence from the United Kingdom. The Congress then approved a statement explaining the reasons for the adoption of the resolution, called the Declaration of Independence, which was approved on July 4 and began to be signed by the Delegates. The approval of the document thus did not effectuate independence, only make an explanatory statement for the prior declaration of independence. Although some of the Founding Fathers expected to celebrate July 2 as the true anniversary of American independence, the prominent date of July 4 on the heading of the printed official edition of the Declaration and the brilliance of the document led to celebrations on that date instead. But the distinction is important that the approval of the Declaration of Independence did not make the Colonies independent, it only explained why they had declared their independence. It is also necessary to clear up another distinction, between the “birthday” of American independence and of the United States of America, with which some erroneously conflate the significance of the holiday. Through their declaration of independence, the Colonies became 13 independent States (sovereign political entities), united only loosely through Continental Congress, not through any confederation or federal union. The Union of States, known as the “United States of America,” was only later created by the Constitution, which went into effect in 1789. Independence Day is also not the celebration of the independence or birthday of any “nation,” but of the States. Moreover, even the United States of America is not a nation (a people related by birth) or a nation-state, but a federal Union of States. And neither are any of its member States. Americans should gratefully honor those who sacrificed to win their independence and to appreciate their independence from any foreign power and remain vigilant against threats to it, both directly to our own, and indirectly to the principles of independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity wherever they are threatened around the world in order to defend our own independence and self-determination.