Independence Day

John Adams thought that July 2 would be remembered forever as the day of American independence, for that was the day that the vote was taken and the document was endorsed by the majority in the Continental Congress. It was ratified for good on July 4, but it wasn't completely signed and endorsed by all members of the Continental Congress until August of 1776. But it matters not. Much in the same way that the Battle of Bunker Hill was actually fought on Breeds Hill, July 4 became the day of ultimate independence, instead of July 2.

I'm now reading the fourth book on the Revolutionary War and/or the Founding Fathers. To date, I've read bios about Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and McCullough's excellent "1776" tome. Not bad for seven months. But what all this reading has brought home to me the genius, and barring that, the sheer tenacity, of the Founding Fathers and the Continental Army. As for the army, it was led by men with little education, and if they did have one, it had nothing to do with military matters. Nathaniel Greene had a fifth grade education and walked with a limp. But he boned up on military matters through books and became one of Washington's primary aid-de-camps. Henry Knox was an overweight bookseller turned brigadier general, was clever enough to convince Washington that it was possible to bring over 60 tons of captured artillery left over from the French-Indian War from Fort Ticonderoga, 300 miles away, to Boston's Dorchester Heights, the highest point in Boston and overlooking the British fleet in Boston Harbor. In a two month period, all the artillery arrived via horse driven sled to Boston. In one night, the Continental Army lugged all sixty tons of artillery up the mount and emplaced it under cover of darkness. The British woke up to find their entire fleet endangered, and were forced to evacuate Boston. A British commander was heard to have exclaimed that the Americans had achieved in one night what would've taken British regulars three months. Alexander Hamilton was a student at Kings College (now Columbia), joined the army as a junior officer, read every book on artillery strategy that he could get his hands on, and rose to the rank of general, so efficient were his actions in battle. Washington himself had very little military experience prior to the war for independence, and of the experience that he did have in the French-Indian War, he had performed poorly. Couple all this with the fact that the bulk of the Continental Army were made up of filthy rabble, most of whom were from New England, and it didn't seem to amount to a winning line-up. But win they did. If the inherent psychology of the American mind is one of "all things are possible", it most assuredly took its root in the fact that the Continental Army defeated the most formidible fighting force in the world.

The Fourth of July is not the celebration of final American independence. It is the celebration of a declaration of sovereignty, though true sovereignty was no guarantee. But it was and is a benchmark. The end didn't come until late 1781 at the Battle of Yorktown, and the Treaty of Paris giving the United States full sovereign rights was not drafted until 1783. Several years of bloodshed and hardship occurred between July of 1776 and the end of the war. But it was and is the watershed. A truly revolutionary document, it is the only document that ensures life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There's no nation in the world that has "pursuit of happiness" as a God-given right but ours. What a country, eh?