9781422287453

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John Nixon, a colonel in the Continental Army, reads the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 8, 1776. “The greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America, and a greater perhaps, never was or will be decided among men,” John Adams later wrote. “It is the will of heaven that the two countries should be sundered forever.” A Bold Act of Defiance

J ust before 9 A . M . on July 4, 1776, the 56 delegates to the Continental Congress started filing into the State House in Philadelphia. The building had been erected 40 years before as the home of the Pennsylvania Assembly . Now, members of the assembly agreed to conduct their business elsewhere, making the red-brick building available to the Congress. Two days earlier, Congress had voted in favor of the June 7 resolution offered by Richard Henry Lee, which stated: “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

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