By Tim Sanders

I have often been asked why I haven’t written a column commemorating Independence Day. Well, I attempted just such a column this past February. Unfortunately, the confluence of that Independence Day column with Groundhog Day confused me, and my statement that in July of 1776 the Continental Congress emerged from Independence Hall, saw their shadows, and returned for six more weeks of deliberation followed by the appointment of a fully funded subcommittee to research the mating habits of the gypsy moth did not sit well with the editor. He suggested I stick with a topic I knew something about–if I could find one.

But time marches on, and now July 4th is near. Here’s all you need to know about Independence Day:

It was becoming increasingly clear that 18th-Century American colonists were unhappy having a bloated, incompetent British bureaucracy micromanaging their lives. No, they could take up arms, march in a righteous cause, and one day have their very own bloated, incompetent bureaucracy right here in America micromanaging their lives. Revolution was in the air.

Early in 1776, after the Revolutionary War had already broken out and George Washington had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army (nine embattled farmers standing near a rude bridge, clutching four pitchforks, a musket and a garden rake), Thomas Paine wrote his famous pamphlet, "Common Sense." This pamphlet maintained that a bandy-legged British monarch who relished eating things like "kidney pie" and "spotted dick" had no business running a church bake sale, let alone thirteen entire colonies thousands of miles away. Paine’s publication further fanned the flames of revolution and spurred the colonial delegates to hotfoot it back to Philadelphia and reconvene the Second Continental Congress in the summer of 1776.

By June 7, the original ’76ers were in Philadelphia, where Jefferson was practicing his baseline shot, Erving was working on his three-pointer, Malone was busy at the foul line, and Franklin, the grand old man of the team, was sitting at the training table, dribbling. But soon they hitched up their knee breeches, adjusted their powdered wigs, and went to work, taking two Congressional recesses, bringing three measures to the floor and one to the window sill, and finally resolving to appoint a fact-finding committee to research the viability of declaring that another committee might want to declare its intention to appoint a subcommittee to study the pros and cons of possibly, in no uncertain terms, declaring or not declaring ... something or other.

On June 11, one of several congressional steering committees appointed another committee, consisting of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and some guys we’ve never heard of, to draft a declaration. Had they met in Carpenter’s Hall, where the First Continental Congress met in 1774, that document would undoubtedly have been known as the Declaration of Intention to Procure Bids to Install Hardwood Flooring in All Public Buildings. But since they were now meeting in Independence Hall, the document they decided to compose would become known as the Declaration of Independence. Most historians agree that the move was providential.

Franklin, who was busy writing proposals which would provide federal grants for one of his many vitally important kite-flying-during-thunderstorm projects, nominated Jefferson to pen the document. The other committee members quickly agreed. Jefferson, who was in the bathroom at the time, was awarded the golden quill. By midnight, June 12, he had finished two quarts of whiskey and a very rough draft in which he personally, in elegant and masterful prose, declared independence from Franklin’s "stinking committee" and his own knee breeches, which he said chafed his thighs. The original steering committee, however, steered the wobbly Virginian back to his quarters, parked him and his breeches at his desk, and told him to stay there until he could behave himself and complete his assignment.

On June 14, the Continental Congress officially adopted the nation’s new flag, which would soon proudly wave above our public buildings, our great wooden-hulled, three-masted battleships, and many simple dwellings not yet encumbered by homeowners associations and their regulations. That flag was designed and sewn by General Washington’s close friend, the venerable Philadelphia seamstress who would herself lose two husbands to the Revolutionary War, White House correspondent Helen Thomas.

On June 27, Franklin and the rest of the committee reviewed Jefferson’s revised rough draft and erased the kites, lightning bolts, and bespectacled rats named Ben he’d drawn in the margins. On June 28 that draft was read to the Congress. There was considerable debate over politically incorrect terms like "Nature’s God" and "Supreme Judge of the world," but the terms were left in due to a last-minute compromise which added:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their little invertebrate ancestors slithering out of the primordial soup with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, the pursuit of Class Action Litigation resulting in Large Cash Settlements from Diabolical Fast Food Corporations, and the Right to Capitalize whichever Letters they deem Really Important in their Documents."

After three more days of debate, Jefferson’s description of King George III as "that little Limey monkey man" was deleted, and the Declaration was reread and approved.

On July 2, 1776, as the British fleet sailed into New York harbor, Congress voted itself a pay increase and a generous pension plan. Then, after a short filibuster by Senator Robert Byrd (yes, radiocarbon dating has proven that Senator Byrd actually predated the State of West Virginia by nearly a century), Congress declared a July 4th recess and everyone went to the Hamptons. No, actually it declared independence from Great Britain.

The original Declaration was signed only by John Hancock, who'd labored long and hard providing the other delegates with term life insurance at reasonable rates. On July 4, Hancock put his John Hancock on the document in extra large letters. On July 19, Congress ordered the Declaration to be engrossed on special low-glare, 20 lb. bond, multi-purpose Georgia Pacific parchment, and on August 2, all 56 members of the Second Continental Congress pretended it was still July 4 and signed the document. Again Hancock, armed with his enormous quill, insisted on hogging much of the space for his huge signature, so the rest were left to scribble their names in tiny script. (One of the very first names belonged to Georgian Button Gwinnett. Aside from the fact that there is now a Georgia county named for this delegate–Button County–this information is absolutely meaningless. We just liked the name.)

Finally Congressional leaders held a press conference, posed for a group oil portrait, lit sparklers and bottle rockets, and on August 3, 1776 celebrated the young nation’s very first 4th of July. (To this very day, we memorialize this climactic event in the song, "I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy, born on the 3rd of August.")