[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11147-11148]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            INDEPENDENCE DAY

  Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, on June 7, 1776, Virginian Richard Henry 
Lee introduced a motion in the Second Continental Congress to declare 
the 13 American colonies' independence from Great Britain. Four days 
later, Congress established a committee--the Committee of Five--to 
draft a statement proclaiming and justifying American independence. The 
Committee consisted of John Adams (Massachusetts), Benjamin Franklin 
(Pennsylvania), Thomas Jefferson (Virginia), Robert Livingston (New 
York), and Roger Sherman (Connecticut) and assigned the duty of writing 
the first draft to Thomas Jefferson. The Committee left no minutes so 
we aren't sure how many iterations of the document were drafted before 
the Committee presented the final version to Congress on June 28, 
1776--an action immortalized by the artist John Trumbull in a painting 
that hangs in the Capitol Rotunda.
  On Monday, July 1, 1776, the Committee of the Whole debated the Lee 
Resolution. Jefferson wrote that they were ``exhausted by a debate of 
nine hours, during which all the powers of the soul had been distended 
with the magnitude of the object.'' The Committee of the Whole voted 9-
2 to adopt the Lee Resolution. The following day--July 2, 1776--
Congress heard the report of the Committee of the Whole and declared 
the sovereign status of the American colonies. The Declaration of 
Independence was given its second reading before Congress adjourned for 
the day. On July 3, 1776, the Declaration received its third reading 
and final edits. The text's formal adoption was deferred until the 
following morning--July 4, 1776. That evening, the Committee of Five 
reconvened to prepare the final ``fair copy'' of the document, which 
was delivered to the 29-year-old Irish immigrant printer John Dunlap, 
with orders from John Hancock to print ``broadside'' copies. Dunlap 
worked into the night setting the type and running off 200 or so 
broadside sheets--now known as the Dunlap broadsides--which became the 
first published copies of the Declaration of Independence. Twenty-six 
of the original Dunlap broadsides--or fragments of them--are extant. 
Here in Washington, the Library of Congress has two and the National 
Archives has one. In January 1777, Congress commissioned publisher Mary 
Katherine Goddard to produce a new broadside of the

[[Page 11148]]

Declaration of Independence that listed the individuals who signed it.
  And so, here we are 238 years later, preparing once again to 
celebrate the birth of our Nation and the document that proclaimed it. 
We will have appropriate celebrations from the National Mall to small 
towns across America. We will gather with families and friends in 
communities large and small to relax and refresh ourselves. And we will 
reflect on the blessings of liberty that have been bequeathed to us. We 
must never take those blessings for granted. Americans have fought and 
died to defend them and people around the world have fought and died to 
obtain them.
  We cannot calculate what we owe to Thomas Jefferson and the Committee 
of Five. But, as Abraham Lincoln summoned all Americans in 1863 at 
Gettysburg, we can dedicate ourselves to the ``great task remaining 
before us . . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of 
freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the 
people, shall not perish from the earth.'' The stakes are high, for as 
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt remarked in his fireside chat on 
May 26, 1940, ``We defend and build a way of life, not for America 
alone, but for all mankind.'' That is our unique and solemn 
responsibility as Americans, and our cherished privilege.
  I wish all of my colleagues, my fellow Marylanders, and all Americans 
a happy and safe Fourth of July.

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