• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2628 0

it many men – Jefferson, Adams, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin, John Witherspoon (first president of Princeton University and the first authority on American English) – who constantly displayed a passionate interest in language and its consistent, careful application. They argued at length over whether the Declaration should use independent or independant, inalienable or unalienable, whether the principal nouns were to be capitalized as Franklin wished or presented lower case as Jefferson desired (and as was the rather racy new fashion among the younger set).*13 Anything to do with language exercised their interest greatly – we might almost say disproportionately. Just a month after the completion of the Declaration of Independence, at a time when the delegates might have been expected to occupy themselves with more pressing concerns – like how they were going to win the war and escape hanging – Congress quite extraordinarily found time to debate the business of a motto for the new nation. (Their choice, E Pluribus Unum, ’One From Many’, was taken from, of all places, a recipe for salad in an early poem by Virgil.) Four years later, while the war still raged, John Adams was urging Congress to establish an American Academy along the lines of the Académie française with the express purpose of establishing national standards of usage. To suggest that these men showed ‘not much concern’ for matters of usage and spelling is to misread them utterly.

Where there was evident uncertainty was in what to call the new nation. The Declaration referred in a single sentence to ‘the united States of America’ and ‘these United Colonies’. The first adopted form of the Declaration was given the title ‘A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled’, though this was improved in the final published version to the rather more robust and assertive ‘The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America’. (It wasn’t in fact unanimous at all. At least a quarter of the delegates were against it, but voting was done by delegation rather than by individuals, and each delegation carried a majority in favour.) It was the first time the country – had been officially designated the United States of America, though in fact until 1778 the formal title was the United States of North America.39 Even after the Declaration, ‘united’ was often left lower case, as if to emphasize that it was merely descriptive, and the country was variously referred to throughout the war as ‘the colonies’, ‘the united Colonies’, the ‘United Colonies of America’ or ‘the United Colonies of North America’. (The last two are the forms under which officers were commissioned into the army.)

That the signing of the Declaration of Independence is celebrated on 4 July is one of American history’s more singular mistakes. America did not declare independence on 4 July 1776. That had happened two days earlier, when the proposal was adopted. The proceedings on 4 July were a mere formality endorsing the form of words that were to be used to announce this breach. Most people had no doubt that 2 July was the day that would ring through the ages. ‘The second day of July, 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha in the History of America,’ John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail on 3 July. Still less was the Declaration signed on 4 July, except by the president of the proceedings, John Hancock, and the secretary, Charles Thomson.*14 It was not signed on 4 July because it had first to be transcribed on to parchment. The official signing didn’t begin until 2 August and wasn’t concluded until 1781 when Thomas McKean of Delaware, the last of the fifty-six signatories, finally put his name to it. Such was the fear of reprisal that the names of the signers were not released until January 1777, six months after the Declaration’s adoption.

Equally mistaken is the idea that the adoption of the Declaration of Independence was announced to a breathless Philadelphia on 4 July by the ringing of the Liberty Bell. For one thing, the Declaration was not