Did we get the wrong date?

The Fourth of July is celebrated as the official birthday of the United States. According to John Adams—an authority on the matter—we have the date wrong. While adjusting your tricorn hat, consider some lesser-known history about that steamy July week in 1776.

It was in fact two days prior, July 2, that delegates to the Continental Congress first took the plunge. In the then-State House, the body “Resolved: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States … .”

Adams believed it was this date that future Americans would mark with fireworks and hiphip-huzzahs.

But it was on July 4 that members of the Continental Congress “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor,” formally adopting the now-hallowed Declaration.

German speakers were also the first Philadelphians privy to the document’s full text.

In a time of limited literacy, many of the city’s citizenry first heard the text of the Declaration on July 8. Lt. Col. John Nixon delivered the document’s first public reading in “a voice clear and distinct enough to be heard in the garden of Mr. Norris’ house on the east side of Fifth Street.”

As to the crowd’s reaction to the news, consider newspaper reports of their actions that evening: “. . . our late King’s Coat of Arms was brought from the Hall in the State House, where the said King’s Courts were formerly held, and burnet amidst the acclamations of a crowd of spectators.”

The now-famous signatures adorning that parchment copy were not affixed until Aug. 2, perhaps another deserving date lost in the Fourth of July shuffle.

Vincent Fraley is the communications manager for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.