It is a custom to celebrate Independence Day on July 4th with cookouts, family get togethers, boating and fireworks. The national holiday holds such great significance because of what it represents: the hard work, dedication and sacrifice it took gain our freedom in the United States from a tyrannical king, King George III of Britain.
But we need to understand that there were great contradictions in the establishment of our American democracy and Jefferson’s words that “All men are created equal” had a different presence in 1776 than it does today. Jefferson, a Virginian, owned slaves; they weren’t included as equals in his words in the writing of the Declaration. There were other contradictions too, and because of them I feel we should be celebrating our independence day on July 3rd.
On that day July 3rd, 1863, the promises of our declaration started to become possible. Pickett’s charge failed at three in the afternoon that day at Gettysburg, and at that moment a change would start in America, leading to black voting rights, women’s voting rights, Native American voters and a new inclusion into our understanding of what individual rights entail and the work it takes to insure that they last.
The Continental Congress approved the Declaration on July 2nd, 1776, and it went to the printers on July 4th, which has been the traditional day of celebration. Honestly, though one has to look at July 3rd in 1863 as the point when the promises of the Declaration that all men possess unalienable rights including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, started to become a possibility in this country.
We need to look back through our history to understand how the promises took shape and became realities.

AMERICAN REVOLUTION

In the 1700’s the colonies in America were proudly British and most considered themselves loyal subjects of King George III. The colonies governed themselves on local affairs. Britain took the lead on trade and defense of its empire.
That relationship changed after the French and Indian War, which was actually a larger part of the Seven Year’s War from 1756 to 1763. That war was a global conflict fought by numerous great powers primarily in Europe. Campaigns in North America were just a small part of that war, but Britain accumulated an enormous debt. To pay off that debt, British Parliament decided the colonies should help pay and initiated in 1765 the Stamp Act, a tax on printed materials; the Townshed Acts in 1767, taxing glass, lead, paper, paint, and tea; and in 1773 The Tea Act, granting the British East India Company a monopoly on tea trade in the colonies without paying duties, undercutting the prices of local merchants and leading to the Boston Tea Party.
The colonists’ main complaint was not the simple taxation, but “taxation without representation.” The Colonies had no elected representatives in the British Parliament; yet Parliament claimed the authority to tax them. Resistance grew through protests, newspapers, and boycotts. Groups like the Sons of Liberty organized opposition. Political thinkers like John Locke argued that “Governments derive power from the consent of the governed and that people possess natural rights.”
Tensions escalated dramatically after events in Boston in 1770 with the killing of five colonists by British soldiers and in 1773 with the Boston Tea Party. Britain responded with punitive laws known in the colonies as the “Intolerable Acts,” tightening military and political control over Massachusetts.
In 1774 colonial leaders convened the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. At this stage, most delegates still hoped for reconciliation with Britain rather than independence.
The real turning point came in April of 1775 with the battles of Battles of Lexington and Concord. British troops and colonial militias exchanged fire, resulting with the British retreating back to Boston. This started the American Revolutionary War.
Even then, desire for independence was not immediately unanimous. Many colonists remained loyal to Britain, while others were undecided. Public opinion changed when a combination of continued fighting and persuasive political writing occurred.
One of the most influential works was Common Sense by Thomas Paine, published in early 1776. It argued plainly that the monarchy was corrupt and that the colonies should become an independent republic. The pamphlet reached an enormous audience and helped shift public opinion toward separation from the British.
American newspapers overwhelmingly rejected British authority, framing it as illegitimate tyranny that justified outright independence. Rather than seeing themselves as loyal subjects, papers denounced the King and Parliament as "enemies" who had left colonists "no middle way between perfect freedom and abject slavery.” Though individual circulations of the 37 newspapers published at that time were generally small, averaging about 600 copies per issue, their reach was amplified when they were read aloud in taverns, coffee houses, and public meeting spaces.
Meanwhile, the Second Continental Congress was acting increasingly like a national government. It raised an army, appointed George Washington as commander, and managed the war effort.
By mid-1776, several colonies instructed their delegates to support independence. On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee introduced a resolution declaring that the colonies “are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”
Congress then appointed a committee to draft a formal declaration. The main writer was Thomas Jefferson, with contributions and revisions from John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston.
On July 2, 1776, Congress voted for independence. On July 4, it approved the final wording of the Declaration. The July 4th date became celebrated as Independence Day. Most of the delegates did not sign the Declaration until August 2, 1776, but in the end the document had 56 signatures. The declaration itself did not immediately create a new nation in practice, but it transformed the conflict from a colonial rebellion into a revolution based on political principles about basic human rights and self-government.

THE HUGE CONTRADICTION

However, a huge complication was built into the Declaration. Its most famous section written by Thomas Jefferson states, that “All men are created equal and possess unalienable rights including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The ideals presented in the Declaration of Independence and the reality of American society did not match. Slavery continued, women could not vote, and Native nations were excluded from the political system. Those contradictions became central struggles throughout our history and continue today.
A better point of remembrance and definition to the promises of the Declaration of Independence was the moment when they truly started to become possible.
And that moment is on July 3rd. I contend that is the day we should celebrate “All men are created equal.” On July 3rd, in 1863 at three in the afternoon, Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg failed, and the South’s defeat in the Civil War became inevitable. Six thousand, five hundred Confederate men died, were wounded or captured in the assault on the center of the union line in that afternoon’s battle. After briefly breaking through Union defenses, they were pushed back in fierce close combat. It is remembered as the “high-water mark of the Confederacy”, the moment when Southern military momentum reached its furthest point before receding permanently.
It set in motion other events, Lincoln’s Gettysburg address reframed the war as a struggle not to just preserve the Union but to advance human equality and democratic government. Lincoln also made an executive order the “Emancipation Proclamation” prior to the battle, which stated that all enslaved people within the Confederate states were permanently free. This fundamentally shifted the Civil War into a moral crusade to abolish slavery.

BLACK MEN’S RIGHT TO VOTE

The end of slavery and the expansion of voting rights after the American Civil War came through the enactment of constitutional amendments and federal laws during the period known as Reconstruction.
Lincoln’s Emancipation order was limited by wartime conditions and did not permanently abolish slavery everywhere. The permanent legal end of slavery came with the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. It abolished slavery throughout the United States. About four million enslaved African Americans were legally freed.
After slavery ended, the next major issue was citizenship and political rights. Southern states passed “Black Codes” that tried to restrict the freedom of formerly enslaved people. In response, Congress passed Reconstruction laws and adopted the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This amendment established that anyone born or naturalized in the United States was a citizen and guaranteed equal protection under the law.
Voting rights became the next major battleground. During Reconstruction, many formerly enslaved Black men began voting and holding public office for the first time. To protect this, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which said that citizens could not be denied the right to vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
For a brief period, Black political participation expanded dramatically. Black Americans served in state legislatures and in Congress, including figures like Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce.
But Reconstruction faced violent resistance. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan used terror and intimidation to suppress Black voting and restore white control in the South. After Reconstruction ended in 1877, Southern states gradually imposed poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and segregation laws known as Jim Crow laws. These measures effectively stripped many Black Americans of voting rights for decades despite the Fifteenth Amendment.

WOMEN’S RIGHT TO VOTE

The movement for women’s right to vote in the United States took decades of organizing, protesting, political pressure, and social change. In the mid 1800’s it was considered radical for a women to have the right to vote.
After the American Civil War, debates over voting rights intensified. The 15th Amendment gave voting rights to Black men, but not women. That caused divisions within the women’s rights movement. Leaders such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton pushed for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women’s suffrage.
Some western states granted women voting rights before the federal government did. Wyoming became the first territory to give women full voting rights in 1869, followed by several other western states. These victories helped demonstrate that women voting would not destroy society as opponents claimed.
By the 1910s, the movement became larger and more visible. Activists like Alice Paul organized aggressive protests, including picketing the White House. Many protesters were arrested and jailed, and some went on hunger strikes.
World War I also changed public opinion. Women’s large-scale contributions to the war effort strengthened arguments that they deserved full citizenship rights.
In 1920, the campaign succeeded with ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibited denying the right to vote on the basis of sex.
But the story for women did not end there. Many women of color, especially Black women in the South, Native American women, and some Asian American women, still faced barriers such as poll taxes, literacy tests, citizenship restrictions, and intimidation, for decades.

NATIVE AMERICANS RIGHT TO VOTE

Through much of our history Native Americans have had no voting rights, but gradually, through a combination of citizenship laws, court rulings, and later voting-rights protections, they gained their rights. For most of our history they were not considered US citizens.
A major change came with the Indian Citizenship Act passed in 1924. This law granted U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States. In theory, that should have given them voting rights nationwide.
Some western states, however, including Arizona and New Mexico, continued restricting Native voting rights well into the 1940’s and later. Court cases gradually overturned many of those restrictions.
The broader civil rights movement helped expand protections. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 banned many discriminatory voting practices that had prevented Native Americans, Black Americans, and other minorities from voting freely.
Today, Native Americans are fully recognized citizens with voting rights, but legal and political battles over voting access still occur in some areas. Tribal nations also remain sovereign governments, which means Native Americans can simultaneously be citizens of both their tribal nation and the United States.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964

Large-scale federal protection of Black voting rights did not return until the modern Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s helped initiate change. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 officially outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, it dismantled legal segregation and ended unequal voting requirements. The law was designed to stop racial discrimination, especially in Southern states where many Black Americans were prevented from voting despite the Fifteenth Amendment.
Before the law, states used methods such as literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation, violence and unfair registration rules. These barriers were aimed mainly at Black voters, but they also affected Native Americans and other minority groups.
The law banned literacy tests, allowed federal oversight of elections in areas with histories of discrimination, authorized federal officials to monitor voter registration and elections, and made it easier for the federal government to challenge discriminatory voting laws.
But even after the Civil Rights Act passed, many Black Americans in Southern states were still prevented from voting. That led to major voting-rights protests in 1965. One of the most famous was the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. In Selma Civil rights activists, including John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr., organized marches demanding federal protection for voting rights. On March 7, 1965, known as “Bloody Sunday”, saw peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge attacked by Alabama state troopers and deputies using clubs and tear gas. Television coverage shocked many Americans.
The Voting Rights Act, passed in August 1965, was enacted to accomplish what the earlier bill failed to do and led to a large increase in Black voter registration and political participation across the South. It is widely considered one of the most effective civil rights laws in U.S. history. The civil rights movement continued afterward with protests about housing discrimination, economic inequality, school integration, and police treatment of Black Americans throughout the late 1960s.

JULY THIRD’S SIGNIFICANCE

Our Declaration of Independence is 250 years old this year, and it is a milestone to celebrate. But we should never forget that citizenship and voting are part of our unalienable rights, garnered and enumerated in our Declaration of Independence. Those of “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are rights that people are born to enjoy and cannot legitimately be taken away by government. The main idea of our Declaration was that government does not give people these rights. Instead, governments exist to protect rights people already naturally possess.
However, I conclude strongly that July 3rd is the day to celebrate our independence. It is on that day at 3 p.m. the Battle of Gettysburg culminates with the failure of Pickett’s charge and the start of the Confederacy’s eventual defeat. It was at that moment that these promises of our Declaration of Independence, of the unalienable rights that all people want for their lives, started to slowly become possible.