I hope all readers of Black Ink and MinnPost and even non-readers had an excellent 4th of July weekend. In an effort to persistently annoy, this post will merely, for the third straight year (that's every year since I left the paper and acquired the freedom, nay independence, to write about whatever I like) point out that as a date to be remembered and honored as the symbol of American independence, the events of July 4, 1776, are greatly overrated, mostly compared with the events of July 2.

July 4 was not the date on which the Continental Congress, in Philadelphia assembled, voted to declare its independence from Britain (that was July 2), nor the date the signers of the Declaration of Independence signed it (that happened over the course of many subsequent days, but none of them, not even John Hancock, signed it on July 4).

July 4, 1776 was merely the day that the Congress -- which had already declared independence -- adopted the final edited version of Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration. It wasn't a nothing day, but the vote on July 2 should have been -- and no less than John Adams, the leader of the Congress' pro-independence forces predicted that it would become -- the date on which independence would be commemorated.

For the details, here is last year's annual act of party poopery on the topic.