The following is an installment of On This Day, a series celebrating America’s 250th anniversary by following the actions of Gen. George Washington, the Continental Congress, and the men and women whose bravery and sacrifice led up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.PHILADELPHIA — The document that gave birth to the idea of America and our independence from England was four days old when shopkeepers, blacksmiths, and farmers from around this part of the country heard it for the first time. The contents of it were read aloud under a relentless Philadelphia summer sun in the yard of the State House 250 years ago today.When Col. John Nixon stepped up to read the Declaration of Independence, the crowd was very different from the polished statesmen who had labored over it. The yard was filled with regular people, many of whom are ancestors of millions of Americans now spread far and wide across this state and this country.
As Nixon’s voice echoed across the square, something shifted in the U.S. psyche. It wasn’t abstract political theory anymore. It was real.These were people who had been pushed to their limit by a distant, out-of-touch country. They cheered, they wept, and then they marched straight into the courtroom and tore King George’s coat of arms off the wall, and threw it into a public bonfire. They weren’t just burning wood and paint; they were burning the old order.Far from the cheers in Philadelphia, the harsh reality of that choice was already settling in.In New York, Gen. George Washington wasn’t celebrating. He was a man staring down the barrel of an impossible problem, watching the horizon as British warships choked the harbor. His troops, mostly young men who were short on rations and completely lacking in military polish, wrapped their arms and their fate around the cold steel of their muskets and waited.They knew what the politicians in Philadelphia were only starting to realize: The signatures were dry. The speeches were over. The war was here.ON THIS DAY: FROM PHILADELPHIA’S HEAT TO NEW YORK’S SHORESIt is the ultimate American story, one that repeats itself through every generation. We are a people who do not like being told what to do by distant capitals. When the elites in London looked at the colonies, they saw subjects to be managed. They failed to see the fierce, stubborn independence brewing in the hearts of ordinary people.Two and a half centuries later, you can still find that same quiet grit across this country.
