“Time will bring forth...a fine Child”: The Labor of Declaring Independence

Sometimes the waiting is the hardest part. In June 1776, John Adams likened the struggle in the Continental Congress to declare independence to giving birth. For Adams, the fact of independence already existed; it was only a matter of recognizing what was already there. In a letter of June 12, Adams alluded to the momentous occasion finally on the horizon: “We have greater Things, in Contemplation, than ever. The greatest of all, which We ever shall have. Be silent and patient and time will bring forth, after the usual Groans, throws and Pains upon such occasions a fine Child—a fine, vigorous, healthy Boy, I presume. God bless him, and make him a great, wise, virtuous, pious, rich and powerfull Man.”

Those final throws and pains began in earnest on June 7, when Richard Henry Lee put forward a simple but powerful resolution: “Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.” John Adams seconded the motion, but patience was yet required. Some delegates were unwilling to take such a step without explicit instructions from their constituents moved for a delay of consideration of the Lee Resolution. So that there would be no further loss of time, however, it was proposed to form a committee that would draft a declaration to serve as a justification for the resolution should it pass. On June 11, the Continental Congress appointed a Committee of Five—Robert R. Livingston of New York, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, and John Adams of Massachusetts.

Leaving no contemporary minutes, the details of the committee’s proceedings to create the draft of this declaration have been lost to history, although Adams gave a brief, though contested, overview in his Autobiography based on his recollections thirty years later. The draft that came out of the committee on June 28 was closely debated in Congress from July 2d to 4th, and the final product—the Declaration of Independence (to Adams’s surprise)—would go on to surpass the Lee Resolution in national importance and symbolism.

Nevertheless, on July 3, 1776, the day after the Continental Congress unanimously declared “that these United Colonies, are of right ought to be, free and independent States,” Adams wrote triumphantly to his wife Abigail that the “Day of Deliverance” had arrived—the child safe delivered: “Yesterday the greatest Question was decided, which ever was debated in America, and a greater perhaps, never was or will be decided among Men.... You will see in a few days a Declaration setting forth the Causes, which have impell’d Us to this mighty Revolution, and the Reasons which will justify it, in the Sight of God and Man.” The child born, the day past, the real work could now begin.