Independence Day

4 July 2027

Independence Day is 4 July, the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. In 2027 the date falls on a Sunday, and federal offices observe the holiday on Monday 5 July. Two rules move a holiday that lands on a weekend: P.L. 86-362 (1959) puts a Saturday holiday on the Friday before, and Executive Order 11582 (1971) moves a Sunday holiday to the next workday.

Which day to celebrate was not obvious at the time. The Continental Congress voted for independence itself on 2 July 1776, and John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that night that the second of July would be “the most memorable epocha, in the history of America”, to be marked with parades, bells, bonfires and illuminations for ever after. The Declaration was adopted two days later, in the afternoon of 4 July, after Congress spent 3 July and most of 4 July revising Thomas Jefferson’s draft. It was printed on 5 July. Delegates began signing the engrossed parchment copy on 2 August.

The first anniversary was marked in Philadelphia in 1777 with cannon and bonfires, which Adams described in a letter to his daughter. Regular observance took hold after the War of 1812. Congress made 4 July an official holiday in the District of Columbia in 1870, as part of an act covering several holidays, and a paid holiday for federal employees in 1938. By the 1870s the Fourth was the most important secular holiday on the calendar, and even distant communities on the western frontier gathered for it.

Two of the men most responsible for the document died on its fiftieth anniversary, hours apart. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on 4 July 1826.

The day did not mean the same to everyone. On 5 July 1852 Frederick Douglass asked a Rochester audience what the Fourth of July was to the American slave. On 4 July 1863, Vicksburg surrendered to Grant, and as many as 20,000 enslaved people came into the city afterwards seeking freedom and protection from the U.S. Army. Vicksburg did not mark the day again for decades: the first gathering came in 1945, under the name Carnival of the Confederacy.

Sources

• Congressional Research Service, “Independence Day Speech Resources: Fact Sheet” (R44076)
• National Archives, “Declaration of Independence (1776)”
• Founders Online, “John Adams to Abigail Adams, 3 July 1776”
• Timeanddate.com, “Holidays and Observances in the United States in 2027”
• Library of Congress, “Today in History: July 4”
• National Park Service, Vicksburg National Military Park, “July 4, 1863: Slavery Ends in Vicksburg”
• National Park Service, Vicksburg National Military Park, “Surrender (July 4)”
• 5 U.S.C. 6103, “Holidays”, with historical notes and Executive Order 11582
• Baltimore Sun, “Where the Fourth means little Vicksburg”, 4 July 1997

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