July 2 · This Day in America
Two days before the famous date, the real decision is made. The Second Continental Congress takes up Richard Henry Lee's resolution and votes: these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, absolved of all allegiance to the British Crown. Twelve delegations say yes; New York abstains, awaiting word from home. There is no soaring preamble yet — that comes July 4, when the explanation is adopted. This is the act itself. The vote that crossed the line, that turned petition into rebellion, that made the men in that room traitors or founders with no path back. John Adams went to bed certain the second of July would be the day Americans remembered forever. He had the event exactly right, and the date off by two.
Source: www.archives.gov
Also on this day · 1964
In the East Room, on national television, Lyndon Johnson signs the most sweeping civil rights law since Reconstruction — outlawing segregation in public places and discrimination in hiring. It took a 72-day Senate filibuster to get there, and decades of marches and martyrs before that. Johnson used more than 75 pens and gave them away. One went to Martin Luther King Jr. The promise of 1776 inched closer to the people it had left out.
Source: www.archives.gov
“The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.”John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, 1776