Jul 1, 2015 3 min read

The United States of America will celebrate its independence on Saturday with picnics, parades and fireworks. But if you choose to celebrate the birth of the nation today – the second day of July – you are perfectly justified in doing so, because it was 239 years ago today that the Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain.

On July 3, 1776, in a letter to his wife, Abigail, John Adams wrote: “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”

So, what happened to the Second of July? The draft written by Thomas Jefferson underwent some editing and changes over two days and won final approval on July 4, the date included in the document. It was not signed until Aug. 2. The Dunlap Broadsides, the original printed copies of the signed declaration that were circulated across the country, contained the July 4 date, of course, and so it became the date to be remembered.

But the new nation had little enthusiasm for celebration in its earliest years. It wasn’t until the 1790s, a time of bitter political division, that Independence Day became popular, particularly among the Democratic-Republicans, who were great admirers of Jefferson. The Fourth of July would forever be imprinted on the American mind by events that occurred on the same day on July 4, 1826 – the deaths of Adams and Jefferson. Finally, in 1870, Congress declared July 4 a national holiday.

In the 1790s, Western Pennsylvania was embroiled in bitter partisanship between Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. That conflict developed into the Whiskey Rebellion in summer 1794, the first real test of the authority of the new federal government. We will be commemorating that event right here in Washington next week with the Whiskey Rebellion Festival July 9-12.

Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, hero of the Federalists, imposed an excise tax of whiskey to help pay Revolutionary War debts. Farmers here and all along the western frontier depended heavily on income from distilling their grain and found the tax punitive. They ignored the tax, tarred and feathered tax collectors and threatened to raise an army to defy the government. The insurrection came to an end when President George Washington sent 13,000 troops to Western Pennsylvania, and the rebels skedaddled.

David Bradford, one of the leaders of the insurrection, was forced to flee his home in Washington for the safety of Spanish West Florida, now Louisiana. His house, the oldest in the city and now an National Historic Landmark and a Pennsylvania museum, is one of the venues for the upcoming festival. This coming Sunday’s edition of the Observer-Reporter will include an article about the long effort to restore the David Bradford House, as well as a 24-page Whiskey Rebellion Festival magazine.

We can all join in the celebration of American freedom on Saturday (or today, if you wish), and mark another important event in national history next weekend.