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Americans are not in the habit of celebrating the anniversary of May 15, 1776, but perhaps we should—especially in this 250th year of our beautiful experiment in liberty. Why not cherish each and every glorious step along the path to creating the greatest nation in history? One of America’s founders certainly thought the events of mid-May were worth noting. Erik Chaput wrote in the Providence Journal in 2018: On May 17, 1776, an exuberant John Adams informed his wife, Abigail, that American independence had finally been declared. Two days before, the Second Continental Congress approved a radical preface to a set of resolutions calling for the creation of new state governments. The preface, drafted by Adams, read in part: it was now “necessary that the exercise of every kind of authority under the said crown should be totally suppressed.” Adams noted that it was “considered” as “equivalent to a declaration of Independence.” History, however, rarely notes the May 15 preface or the
resolutions connected to it. What is part of our collective memory is the Declaration of Independence and July 4, 1776. Adams was always bitter about this. “Jefferson ran away with the stage effect … and all the glory of it,” wrote Adams in 1811. History hasn’t placed as much significance on Adams’s great legislative advance, in part because even his contemporaries weren’t quite sure what to make of his preamble. He was certainly moving the ball forward, but how far? In his biography of Adams the late, great David McCullough recounts:
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