DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

This column is being published on July 2. It's the first time in a long time that my column fell on that date, and I've been waiting for this conjunction in order to tell the true story of American independence.

Today is Independence Day.

Yes, if you look at your calendar, it's the Fourth that is in red. The calendar is wrong. So is the Congress that declared the Fourth a holiday, and so are innumerable Fourth of July orators.

Independence Day falls on the day independence was declared. Independence Day was declared on July 2, 1776. Here is the resolution, written by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia:

"Resolved, That these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiances to the british [sic] crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved."

That night, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail, "The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival."

So how did we end up celebrating the wrong day? Because the Declaration of Independence was dated the fourth and few people knew when the actual declaration of independence happened. By the time the Adams letter quoted above came to light, many years after his death, the fourth was so well established as Independence Day that Adams' nephew altered the language of the letter to change the date cited.

Does it matter? It depends on what we consider important. It was the vote on the second that put the lives of the founders on the line. I mean that literally. A century before the American Revolution, the British crown had faced another revolt, in the English civil war. The 59 signers of the death warrant of the duplicitous Charles I, too, put their lives on the line. If their rebellion failed and the monarchy was reestablished, they would be prime candidates for execution themselves.

"Their lives would never be the same again," wrote Alexander Winston in 1964. "For the next decade they struggled to make a success of the Commonwealth government and, failing, watched in despair the Stuart Restoration of 1660."

When Charles II took office, the surviving members of the 59 were hunted down and killed. Even those who had died before the restoration were dug up and "abused," whatever that meant, and their heirs stripped of their estates. A dozen of them escaped England. Three went to North America and lived in hiding until their deaths, sometimes having to live in forests or caves to escape royal agents who arrived in pursuit. People in New England "defied royal authority to protect the outcasts."

That was what awaited those who voted for independence on July 2. That sacrifice, not the paperwork that followed, deserves recognition.

It might be suggested that the July 4 should be celebrated because that's the day the Declaration was signed. Except it wasn't. It was signed by most of the delegates on August 2.

It's hard to believe that a nation so contemptuous of paperwork and bureaucracy prefers honoring the Declaration of Independence over the declaration of independence.