NYC 7/4/1776


It would be hard to come up with a more symbolic modern image to celebrate the gifts of freedom associated with the 4th of July than the largest American flag in the country hanging from a night-lit arch of the Washington Bridge, NYC, fireworks exploding in the background.

Travel the bridge back through time to the actual day in 1776, and we know that Washington

was looking out onto the NY harbor as the English mounted what would become the largest battle of the Revolutionary War at Long Island. We also know that he bought a broom.  Another endearing fact you find out about Washington is that he refused to get paid for his services as general. He did, however, take meticulous account of his spending throughout the War. His final total expenditures for the war would have reached somewhere around a million by today's standards.  Upon further review by the financial committee overseeing his final expenses, it turned out Washington undercharged  and was owed something close to 80 dollars.

At the same moment in Philadelphia, an old military friend of Washington's, John Dunlap, was commissioned by John Hancock to print upwards of 200 copies of the recently decided upon Declaration of Independence that night.  These original drafts would later become called the Dunlap Broadsides,

which, like the other drafts before it, written by Jefferson, and checked by the likes of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin,

were hastily completed to the point that the printer had left "watermarks...reversed, some copies look as if they were folded before the ink could dry and bits of punctuation move around from one copy to another...it is romantic to think that Benjamin Franklin, the greatest printer of his day, was there in Dunlap's shop to supervise, and that Jefferson, the nervous author, was also close to hand. John Adams later wrote that 'We were all in haste.'" It wouldn't be until two days later that Washington found a broadside in his own hands to use as a patriotic rallying cry for the battle to come.  The notion of freedom had moved from beyond an idea underlying the fighting and was finally officially articulated and sealed in print.  Across the bay, at Bowling Green NY, a mob of freedom, inspired by the permanence of print, yanked down a statue of George the III and smelted the metal for bullets.