Why is the 4th of July such an important holiday in America? Imagine how you would feel if someone older than you, like an older sister or brother, kept telling you what to do all of the time and kept taking more and more of your allowance. That is how the colonists felt in the years leading up to 1776. England kept trying to make the American colonists follow more rules and pay higher taxes. The colonists started getting mad and began making plans to be able to make their own rules. They no longer wanted England to be able to tell them what to do, so they decided to tell England that they were becoming a separate independent country.

Congress met in Philadelphia, PA and appointed a group of to write a formal document that would tell England that the Americans had decided to govern themselves. The committee asked Thomas Jefferson to write the document, so he worked for days, in absolute secret, until he had written a document that he thought said everything important that the committee had discussed. The committee met to read Jefferson’s document, and after making some changes, the colonists declared their independence on July 2, 1776. They officially adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and that is called “Independence Day."

The Declaration of Independence is more than just a piece of paper. It is a symbol of the country’s independence and commitment to certain ideas. Most people can look at a certain little “swoosh” and know that it stands for “Nike.” Well, the signers of the Declaration of Independence wanted the citizens of the United States to have a document that spelled out what was important to the leaders and citizens. They wanted Americans to be able to look at the Declaration of Independence and immediately think of the goals that should always be worked for, and about the people who have fought so hard to make these ideas possible. The people who signed the Declaration risked being hanged for treason by the leaders in England. They had to be very brave to sign something that would be considered a crime! The Declaration of Independence should remind everyone of the effort and ideas that went into the document, and about the courage it took for these people to stand up for what they knew was right -- independence!

Adapted from an article by Kim Moon.