We call them Americans now, but at the time they were Brits in America, fighting for their rights. Many people in Britain supported them. They shared a radical idea.

Granville Sharp, the abolitionist, resigned his job in protest, writing the British government, "I cannot return to my ordnance duty whilst a bloody war is carried on, unjustly as I conceive, against my fellow-subjects."

Edmund Burke, the eloquent MP who observed that "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" spoke passionately against the war in the House of Commons.

Thomas Paine left Britain for America just in time to advocate independence in the widely-published pamphlet Common Sense.

Pro-American British activists numbered men whose names have been forgotten such as William Hodgson, a merchant; Thomas Wren, a Presbyterian minister; Reuben Harvey, an Irish, Quaker merchant; Robert Heath, an evangelical deacon and silversmith; and Griffith Williams, a Welsh apothecary.

By the time the men from the British colonies in America met in convention in Philadelphia on the hot and steamy morning of Monday, July 1, 1776, they had already exchanged fire with the King’s troops in Massachusetts. They knew more troops were arriving by ship to put down their rebellion, and that full-scale conflict, if it came, would be bloody.

Other people might have fled. They stood their ground, or rather, they sat down to debate whether to declare independence on the basis of a radical idea established, lost and reestablished by the British during a thousand years of struggle.

David McCullough describes the scene in his biography of John Adams -

At ten o'clock, with the doors closed, John Hancock sounded the gavel. Richard Henry Lee's prior motion calling for independence was again read aloud; the Congress resolved itself into a committee of the whole and 'resumed consideration. Immediately, Dickinson, gaunt and deathly pale, stood to be heard. With marked earnestness, he marshaled all past argument and reasoning against 'premature' separation from Britain. . .To proceed now with a declaration of independence, he said, would be 'to brave the storm in a skiff made of paper'.

When he sat down, all was silent, except for the rain that had begun spattering against the windows.

No one spoke, no one rose to answer him, until Adams at last 'determined to speak'.

He wished now as never in his life, Adams began, that he had the gifts of the ancient orators of Greece and Rome, for he was certain none of them had before him a question of greater importance. Outside, the wind picked up. The storm struck with thunder, lightning, and pelting rain. . .

Adams spoke on steadily, making the case for independence as he had so often before. . .and, looking into the future, saw a new nation, a new time, all much in the spirit of lines he had written in a recent letter to a friend.

'Objects of the most stupendous magnitude, measures in which the lives and liberties of millions, born and unborn are most essentially interested, are now before us. We are in the very midst of revolution, the most complete, unexpected, and remarkable of any in the history of the world. . .'

To Jefferson, Adams was ‘not graceful, nor elegant, nor remarkable fluent’, but he spoke ‘with a power of thought and expression that moved us from our seats.’ Recalling the moment long afterward, Adams would say he had been carried out of himself, ‘carried out in spirit’. . .

But when later that evening a preliminary vote was taken, four colonies unexpectedly held back, refusing to proclaim independence. The all-important Pennsylvania delegation, despite popular opinion in Pennsylvania, stood with John Dickinson and voted no. . .

Delaware, with only two delegates present, was divided. The missing Delaware delegate was Caesar Rodney, one of the most ardent of the independence faction. Where he was or when he might reappear was unclear, but a rider had been sent racing off to find him. . .

The atmosphere that night at City Tavern and in the lodging houses of the delegates was extremely tense. . .To compound the tension that night, word reached Philadelphia of the sighting off New York of a hundred British ships, the first arrivals of a fleet that would number over four hundred.

Though the record of all that happened the following day, Tuesday, July 2, is regrettably sparse, it appears that just as the doors to Congress were about to be closed at the usual hour of nine o’ clock, Caesar Rodney, mud-spattered, 'booted and spurred,' made his dramatic entrance. The tall, thin Rodney – the 'oddest-looking man in the world,' Adams once described him – had been made to appear stranger still, and more to be pitied, by a skin cancer on one side of his face that he kept hidden behind a scarf of green silk. But, as Adams had also recognized, Rodney was a man of spirit, of 'fire'. Almost unimaginably, he had ridden eighty miles through the night, changing horses several times, to be there in time to cast his vote. . .understanding the need for Congress to speak with one voice, John Dickinson and Robert Morris had voluntarily absented themselves from the proceedings. . .

The delegates voted to declare independence.

Congress was "well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us," as Adams put it. Unflinching, the representatives now turned to consider the wording of the declaration by which they would explain themselves to the world.

Thomas Jefferson had drafted it. He drew on a number of sources, including the Virginia Bill of Rights. A quarter of the declaration was cut, including the line, "We might have been a free and great people together". The terrible question of slavery was deferred.

On July Fourth, the delegates accepted the Declaration of Independence. Its ideals have endured for more than two hundred years, and eventually ended slavery and created a country where people from all over the world have found freedom and happiness -

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The Declaration swept the colonies. The last line was quoted, "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour." Militias turned out. "John Dickinson, though ill and exhausted from the strain of the past weeks, departed at the head of the first troops to march out of the city to join in the defense of New Jersey."

John Adams proved prophetic. He imagined that succeeding generations would celebrate the declaration's anniversary with "pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continet to the other from this forward forever more."

As I head out to a parade and fireworks, I hope the Fourth is forever a day of celebration for a country and for an idea, the radical idea established by Brits in Britain and America that NO GOVERNMENT ON EARTH GIVES US OUR RIGHTS. OUR RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS ARE OURS. WE WERE ENDOWED WITH THEM FROM BIRTH. GOVERNMENT EXISTS ONLY TO PROTECT THEM.