The Lee Resolution: Is July 2 Really the Date of American Independence?

Well, it's that time of year again. Firework vendors set up tents on the outskirts of town as people wave the red, white, and blue ignorant of much American history. It's become like Christmas with few people considering what took place on July 4, 1776, and usually without any contemplation about what liberty and freedom means. Most people just buy into the idea they are free because the federal government says you are free in their rhetoric despite continuing to pass more and more bills that put more restrictions on your freedom like Obamacare.

I ask you, is July 4, 1776, the true date of Independence? Of course Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence was signed on that day, and it's hard to take away from the glory of one of my personal heroes considering the power and eloquence of the Declaration. Yet, Independence was actually declared on July 2, 1776, which means we should be celebrating today and not on the Fourth. Let me explain.

Robert E. Lee's great uncle Robert Henry Lee filed the motion in the Second Continental Congress to declare Independence from Great Britain. In history, this is known as the Lee Resolution. (Those Lees knew a thing or two about handling tyrants through the art of secession.)

Richard Henry Lee of Virginia first proposed it on June 7, 1776, after receiving instructions from the Virginia Convention and its President, Edmund Pendleton (in fact Lee used, almost verbatim, the language from the instructions in his resolution). Voting on the resolution was delayed for several weeks while support for independence was consolidated. On June 11, a Committee of Five was appointed to prepare a document to explain the reasons for independence. The resolution was finally approved on July 2, 1776, and news of its adoption was published that evening in the Pennsylvania Evening Post and the next day in the Pennsylvania Gazette. The text of the document formally announcing this action, the United States Declaration of Independence, was approved on July 4.

Now this leaves the obvious question. In schools we are taught Jefferson was the key figure in declaring Independence, but in reality it was Richard Henry Lee. Is it possible the Lee name has been buried deep in history in this matter because of Lee's great nephew and the hate and misinformation about history told in the pages of the history books about the Civil War? Or could it be The Lee Resolution doesn't look nearly as sexy as Thomas Jefferson's document in the glass cases of Washington? 

Just something to think about as the name Lee family name is often written of negatively in history.