What Day Was the US Declaration of Independence adoption?

About this date

The Second Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence, announcing the thirteen American colonies' separation from Great Britain — though most delegates actually signed the engrossed parchment copy over the following weeks and months, not on this exact day.

The adoption of the Declaration's text is the event actually commemorated by US Independence Day celebrations.

John Hancock's famously large, bold signature on the later-signed engrossed parchment copy is widely cited as a symbol of defiance, though the document adopted on this date was a printed broadside distributed to the colonies rather than the ornate parchment now displayed in the National Archives.

Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration's principal author, was only 33 years old at the time, and his draft was edited by the drafting committee and Congress before adoption, trimming roughly a quarter of his original text.