5 Things People Get Wrong About The 4th Of July

If some historians had their way, Independence Day would be celebrated on July 2 instead of the Fourth, or perhaps in early August.

When the 13 colonies separated from the British crown 249 years ago, it certainly was cause for celebration, but the Liberty Bell wasn’t rung so vigorously and jubilantly that it cracked, as you may believe.

And no matter how many times his ride is repeated in verse, Paul Revere wasn’t the lone patriot warning colonists of approaching British forces aiming to squash a new nation separating from the Crown.

Those are among the things people get wrong about the Fourth of July. Below are five myths, and what’s actually true.

Significance Of July 4

Myth: On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain and announced the formation of the United States of America.

Facts: The formal vote declaring independence actually took place two days earlier, and it wasn’t until Aug. 2 that enough delegates signed the declaration to make it official. And the last delegate, Thomas McKean of Delaware, didn’t sign it until January 1977.

The confusion comes because the wording was approved, and it was read aloud for the first time to a crowd outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.

Thomas Jefferson’s Role

Myth: The Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson.

Facts: Jefferson put pen to paper, but he was not the sole author of the document, but one of five contributors to the language. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman contributed equally to the wording.

Revolutionary War Beginning

Myth: The Revolutionary War was fought after the colonists declared their independence.

Facts: Fighting began a year earlier with the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which are regarded as the first in the American War of Independence, on April 19, 1775.

Paul Revere’s Ride

Myth: Paul Revere made his famous ride alone.

Facts: Some misunderstanding comes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s romanticism of the ride in the 1860 poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” which he intended to fuel a wave of patriotism ahead of the American Civil War.

Revere did ride alone on the night of April 18, 1775, to alert the countryside that British troops were on their way from Boston to Lexington, Massachusetts, to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were staying there en route to the Second Continental Congress.

But two other less famous riders — William Dawes and Samuel Adams — were part of the alert system and took separate routes.

A lantern signal system was used, but Revere didn’t light them, according to the Old North Church historic site, which earlier this year commemorated the 250th anniversary of the ride.

On the night of April 18, 1775, Old North Church sexton Robert Newman and Captain John Pulling Jr. climbed the steeple and displayed the lanterns as a signal to alert patriots across the Charles River about the movement of British forces. One lantern meant the British forces were moving across land, and two meant they were crossing the Charles River, or as Longfellow put it in the poem, “by sea.”

“Those two signal lanterns set a complex alarm system into motion, a system that included many messengers fanning out across Massachusetts to spread the warning that night,” according to the historical account. “Once Revere got across the river, he began his own famous Midnight Ride as part of this system. Ultimately, when the British arrived in Lexington the next morning, they were met by local militia members, and the shots fired that morning ignited the American Revolutionary War.”

All three riders were captured but later released, according to The Paul Revere House, now a museum in Boston.

The Liberty Bell’s Crack

Myth: The Liberty Bell’s crack formed during the celebration of the Declaration of Independence.

Facts: The Liberty Bell was originally called the State House bell, and it rang in the tower of the Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall. It was ordered in 1751 from the Whitechapel Foundry in London, but it cracked on the first test ring.

It was melted down by local metalworkers, who cast a new bell, which was used to call lawmakers into session or to summon townspeople to hear the reading of the news, according to the National Park Service.

The first crack most likely occurred in the early 1840s after nearly 90 years of hard use, according to the Park Service. When city leaders in Philadelphia had it repaired in advance of the George Washington birthday holiday on Feb. 23, metalworkers widened the thin crack to prevent it from further degrading the bell.

At the same time, the tone was restored using a technique called “stop drilling.” A close look at the Liberty Bell shows more than 40 drill bit marks in the “crack.”

The repair wasn’t successful. Another fissure developed, running from the abbreviation for “Philadelphia” up through the word “Liberty.” As a result, the bell was silenced forever. And no one living today has ever heard the bell ring freely with its clapper.

It wasn’t until the 1830s that it came to be associated with liberty. Abolitionists saw the inscription — “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10) — as a powerful symbol of their work to end slavery in the United States. The verse in Leviticus proclaims the Jubilee and commands all Israelites to return property to its original owners and free people who were enslaved due to debt.

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