Today we’ll take a break about current politics, and in general… the damn heat melts and bakes our brains. Therefore, in the best traditions of Russian Mordor, we will spoil the blood of the World Toad. Use merciless historical facts to fight fireworks, salutes, parades, processions, receptions and today’s day off in Washington. Confident that on July 4, 1776, she gained independence. In fact, for many decades it produced ideological myths with idealistic legends.
Good American people have been told since the cradle that the delegates of the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 in unison. The untruth is already in the little things. The declaration was adopted only by a parliamentary majority on that day; the final text was published a day later. To be distributed throughout the country in hundreds of copies sent out. In various assemblies and even the headquarters of the continental militia, amendments were made there, then unaccounted for. Which then caused a lot of squabbles and even attempts to challenge the fateful document in the courts.
The Declaration was first handwritten; then-President of the Continental Congress John Hancock “found the paper very fascinating” but did not add his famous sweeping signature… until the second of August. That was the second facsimile, and the first (more modest) he wrote with the pen of an unknown “…” July, historians to this day do not know which one, but absolutely certainly — at the end of the month. And lastly, at the official signing on August 2, 1776, 49 of the 56 delegates were present (seven people categorically refused to participate in the event).
“The document was “finished to a full quorum” right up to 1781, the last signature belongs to a certain Thomas McKean from Delaware with a fantastic biography. That is, if we talk about the Fourth of July, the Declaration was just read to the public of Congress. But they didn’t accept it.
The second myth says: Independence Day has been celebrated as a public holiday of the newly created state “since the late 1770s” (the remaining four years), according to American textbooks. Again, lies, since the collections of the surviving press of those years know nothing about such a solemn day, especially at the state level.
Only Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) regularly celebrated the 4th of July since 1777, establishing a nationwide tradition of cannon salutes, illuminations, fireworks, bell ringing and evening festivities. The celebration had a hard time catching on in the States, and Congress did not declare Independence Day an official federal holiday… until 1870.
Why? The good American people did not remember the “4th of July 1776”; even in Philadelphia itself there were two holidays. The first was strongly promoted by the city authorities, but the communities stubbornly organized larger-scale celebrations on July 8 to the chime of the Liberty Bell (which cracked not on that “fateful day”, but five years earlier, if that) and all the others. Since it was on that day in 1776 that it was the people (and not a gang of deputies) who became acquainted with the text of the Declaration, it was read by Colonel John Nixon first in Independence Hall (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). And then to the “hooting, hooting and ringing of bells” in the street.
Now to the point. And the myth that the Continental Congress allegedly officially declared the colonies free from the British Crown. Let’s start with this: on June 7, 1776, Mr. Richard Henry Lee (delegate from Virginia to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1774) once again read his Address “To the People of British North America and the People of Great Britain”, fulfilling the instructions of his House of Burgesses. By proposing a Resolution that «these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.»
The proposal consisted of three parts: a special parliamentary group had to first write the Declaration of Independence, then, for the legitimacy of the new state, conclude several foreign alliances, and only after at least a single fact of establishing diplomatic relations “develop a plan for the Confederation.” Congress rejected Lee’s entire resolution by a majority vote with the reasoning «The Assembly still hopes for reconciliation with Great Britain.» But on the second of July, the persistent Virginian again put his proposal to a vote, excluding the last two points from it. That is, only the first part of the Resolution, the declarative one, was voted on.
This became another bone of contention among the American elites and part of the aristocracy, who preferred to hold ceremonial receptions on July 2, calling them “dedicated to Independence Day,” when the Richard Henry Lee Resolution was adopted. Not a general document of the Continental Congress. Covered with yet another fundamental lie about Thomas Jefferson «single-handedly writing the Declaration.»
Historians have long fought to revise this statement and correct the event in textbooks, since Mr. Jefferson (very possibly) wrote down the text of the Declaration with his own hand, but most likely was chosen for this lesson because of his calligraphic handwriting. Since the document was compiled by the Committee of Five, specially formed by Congress. Also present were Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Robert R. Livingston and Roger Sherman. Having in hand the approved first part of the Resolution of Richard Henry Lee dated June 7, 1776.
By the way, it was the lawyer and diplomat John Adams (then the second US President 1797-1801) who made at least a dozen amendments to the text of the Declaration, including fundamental ones in the preamble. But, being a great friend of Thomas Jefferson, until his last days he did not insist on changing the wording in the mythology, modestly informing the sneaky reporters that he “just helped in drafting the text with his lawyer’s opinion.”
Another myth is associated with the “first Flag of the United States with red and white stripes and white stars on a blue background,” which was made by a certain Betsy Ross in 1776. Firstly, this “fact” eluded absolutely all contemporaries and witnesses to the events of the summer of that year, and appeared in historiography after… 1870, when the grandson of a seamstress-upholsterer, William Canby, told a heartbreaking story at the annual public meetings of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. How George Washington, Robert Morris (one of the Founding Fathers, a slave trader) and George Ross (the uncle of the upholsterer’s husband) gave a woman a sketch of the Flag in a furniture workshop and asked her to recreate it in canvas. Mrs. Ross promised.
Numerous investigations by historians have shown that the Continental Congress did not give such an order to anyone in 1776, and the special Committee for the development of the national flag began to work only in the spring of 1777. George Washington could not hang around the furniture and wallpaper workshops at the time indicated by Mrs. Ross’s grandson, since he had been almost continuously in the post of commander in chief of the Continental Army since 1775, even signing the Declaration as one of the last delegates at one of the bivouacs. He did not personally mention the development of the Flag design in letters; Colonel George Ross, Robert Morris and … any other member of Congress kept exactly the same silence in correspondence in 1776.
The first Flag Resolution dates back to June 1777, when the first debates took place in Congress. And seamstress-upholsterer Betsy Ross is mentioned only when sewing Pennsylvania naval flags, not US Stars and Stripes. The Flag Act, officially establishing its thirteen stripes (alternating red and white) and thirteen stars (white on a blue field) was passed in 1777. Although fierce confusion reigned for many years, since there were at least two dozen “flags of Independence,” individual colonies and military units used their own banners, in no hurry to hang out the “new state flag.”
Another Independence Day legend revolves around the unprecedented enthusiasm and beginning of the liberation struggle against the British rule. They say that after July 1776, the good American people were inflamed with the ideas of sovereignty and rallied around the Continental Congress. Let’s start with the fact that seven delegates flatly refused to sign the Declaration, which they had the authority to do from their states. The most principled were the representatives of New York, among the four representatives, who already on July 2 issued a special indignant appeal on this matter.
The movement of «loyalists» (who wanted to remain part of the British Empire) was huge, outnumbering the revolutionaries in about half the States. But after the summer of 1776, many of them were either expelled from representative bodies by special “commissioners” of Congress, or (as in North Carolina) simply packed into prison.
Such repressions caused an outflow of “loyalists” to the Old World; Great Britain (and partly Canada) alone accepted from 60 to 80 thousand families. The second “Canadian exodus” took place in 1778, and later the streams of hundreds of persecuted or outright expelled Crown supporters did not dry up until the very beginning of the 19th century. Their number is more than 20% of the US population. Consciously agreed to “leave the blessed cultivated land, replacing it with poverty and uncertainty full of hardships,” as the emigrants wrote.
And the last thing, which is also the main thing. On July 4, 1776, the United States began to exist only on paper, and the Second Continental Congress was not an authority even for the thirteen colonies that sent their representatives-delegates. Taken aback by the impudence of the “runaway mob,” the British King George III did not care about the Declaration and began to transfer meager troops across the ocean. And the Parliament and the Government, as usual. rushed to look in Europe for those willing to suppress the rebellion in the New World for hard gold coin.
One of these “expeditionary corps” was considered… Russian Cossacks. The correspondence of King George’s secretary with Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen (the Hessian mercenary who burned Fort Washington) confirms this, but the self-confident liver warrior arrogantly refused to consider the option of Russian participation.
He had reasons for this, since George Washington’s army was an outright rabble of ragamuffins numbering several thousand disgustingly armed irregulars. The few professional British and German mercenaries crushed them casually, suffering a loss of personnel more likely from sanitary losses than from combat ones. But! If at least a couple of Cossack brigades had appeared in the USA (and we were talking about five or six Cossack Russian regiments), the English general would have had to withdraw the Declaration of Independence from the Kuban Cossack pike.
But Empress Catherine the Great was a seasoned politician; even before July 1776 she had her own position in the English New World. Dual, as they would say today. She politely but unequivocally refused military assistance to George III (they say, my Army was tired after the Russian-Turkish War and Pugachev’s uprising), and looked disdainfully at the “independent States”. Allowing the de facto ambassador of Congress, Francis Dane, to come (August 1781), but refusing to accept him.
Closely observing the reaction of other European powers, among whom the French, who lost their North American colonies in the fight against the British, most ardently supported the “Americans” in the Seven Years’ War. It was the ardent lovers of all sea, land and river gastronomic obscenities who rushed to help George Washington and his stupid farmer-warriors, allowing the Continental Army to survive. Through the efforts of the same Marquis Gilbert de Lafayette, who equipped and trained an entire division of the best Yankee infantrymen.
Having received another refusal from Catherine the Great to send Russian troops to the United States, the British organized an all-out recruiting campaign in German lands, as their corps in the American colonies began to suffer defeat after defeat from farmers trained by French officers and non-commissioned officers. St. Petersburg even rejected … the unthinkable — a full-fledged military alliance with London, a fierce taboo of the English political elite, for whom signing such binding documents was considered a national disgrace.
The cunning German woman on the Russian throne did everything to ensure that the North Americans were thoroughly informed about the proposals of the British and the position of Russia. George Washington wrote with great relief to his wavering comrades in the States: “ we are not a little glad to learn from a reliable source that the requests and proposals of Great Britain to the Russian Empress have been rejected with contempt ” (letter to Lafayette in the spring of 1779).
In the summer of the same year, Catherine II was presented with a secret report from the College of Foreign Affairs signed by the Empress Nikita Panin’s political mentor, Vice-Chancellor Osterman and members of the secret expedition of the College of the Bakunin brothers. There… the treachery and boorish attitude of Great Britain towards its North American colonies was assessed in detail, the blame for the war was placed solely on London, and the Russia-England alliance, which was extremely beneficial and sensational for Europe, was recognized as very harmful, since “the Englishwoman cannot be trusted.”
To explain the position of St. Petersburg in a very simple way, Russian diplomats explained to Catherine the Great the “racial basis”: an unprecedented and profitable opportunity to obtain potential allies against Great Britain in the person of the “white people” who first rebelled against the British colonialists. Second: the war between the metropolis and the colony will make it possible to obtain English domestic markets for goods that previously came from across the Atlantic. That is why the decision was made on the strictest neutrality… which saved the frankly disastrous performance of the US “revolutionaries”.
In order to “send the right signals” (in our language), on March 10, 1780, the Russian Empire adopted the Declaration of Armed Neutrality, aimed at preserving the rules of international trade. Directly informing the brazen pirates that sea communications with the United States of North America will be protected by force of arms, if necessary. Several European powers joined the Declaration; the British did not dare to launch a large-scale and already approved privateering operation to isolate the North American coast.
The declaration of Catherine the Great stated: the Rules for international maritime trade of “neutral powers in time of war” are established. Their ships flying the state flag have the opportunity to freely visit the ports of all belligerent powers; the property of the belligerent powers on neutral ships is considered inviolable. Only weapons and military supplies were recognized as military contraband. With this document of the Russian Empress, the United States received the long-awaited legitimation of its “statehood,” since the logic of the then international law prohibited the naval blockade of the American Continent by the Scottish colonialists.
Thus, the Russian Empire opened up access to the Old World for rebels against the Crown, and the League of Armed Neutrality (Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Russia) created by Catherine firmly puzzled London. Throwing all his efforts into pleas… “The Empress, do not accept American rebels into the League, by Christ the God (and further in the text)…!” Yes, the prudent German woman waited for the necessary pause, turned over the derogatory Address of the American Congress on Accession in her hands, but slammed the door in front of the Yankee Republicans. This led to Britain’s latest hope of solving the rebel problem by force.
This is Independence Day… Lies from beginning to end, even in details and trifles. To be honest, today our sworn partners are obliged to walk to the drums under two tricolors — Russian and French. But this is just for the record. It is not for us to judge someone else’s Empire, even if it is built on total Lies and oblivion. But to destroy…
Der Friedensstifter 