Freedom vs. Independence: What's the Difference?
This July 4th, the USA really has only one thing to celebrate
It is Independence Day in the United States. In practical terms this means the banks and government offices are closed while drunken morons blow up home fireworks of varying legality, scaring dogs and combat veterans with PTSD across the so-called Home of the Brave.
(Indeed, one of the unforeseen pleasures of living in Spain this summer has been not having to spend the better part of a week soothing my pets as the true assholes start their explosive festivities on the 30th of June and don’t let up until at least the fifth or sixth.)
For most Americans, Independence Day is seen as the celebration of when we were made free. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the anniversary actually celebrates. The Fourth of July (as it called more often than its true name) is the date on which The Declaration of Independence was signed. It was when the original thirteen British colonies declared their independence from King George III’s British Empire.
To be sure, this is a significant historical moment. One could view it as the culmination of Enlightenment philosophy, when a group of educated deists officially said, “No more,” to divine right and other medieval concepts grounded in centuries of religious oppression.
The signing of The Declaration of Independence is not when America “became free.” At the time the Continental Congress ratified Thomas Jefferson’s famous manifesto, the future U.S. was already at war with Great Britain. Hostilities began on 19 April 1775 – more than a year before the declaration was signed. The war raged until 3 September 1783, when General Cornwallis surrendered.
The lack of understanding of all those dates is a function of how the American Revolution is taught. Like most moments of nationalistic pride and history, the signing of The Declaration of Independence is whitewashed for elementary school (and increasingly high school) students. The document was incredibly controversial even among its founders, and it nearly didn’t come to be as a result of two key factors – a resolution that it had to be unanimously adopted by all 13 colonies (though in actuality it passed 12-0, with New York abstaining), and Southern states objections to it containing a condemnation of the trans-Atlantic slave trade which was facilitated and perpetuated by George III.
Among the Declaration’s most famous lines is, “We hold these truths to be self-evident – that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
But Southern colonies didn’t actually believe that. Their largely agrarian economies were absolutely dependent on slave labor. And they were willing to scuttle the entire document over Jefferson, a slave-owner himself, including a condemnation of the trade in human beings in the list of grievances against the king.
The moment is immortalized in, of all places, the Broadway musical, 1776. Singing, “Molasses to Rum”, South Carolina representative Edward Rutledge accuses the Northern colonies of hypocrisy since they, too, benefit from “the Triangle Trade” – molasses, rum, and slavery. He leads a walkout of the entire Southern delegation that effectively torpedoes the the push for independence, only agreeing to sign after Jefferson strikes the slavery grievance from the document.
Freedom, it seems, only applied to educated, White landholders.
This fact is not taught very often, if at all, in American schools. What primary and secondary school students learn is the so-called Founding Fathers declared they would be free.
The issue returned a mere 11 years later. When the fledging USA discovered that confederacy was not a workable form of government, another congress was called. This event (rarely revered in the same way the 1776 one was) resulted in the U.S. Constitution.
But as with The Declaration of Independence, rich, White Southerners nearly upended the whole thing over the issue of slavery.
At issue was representation in the proposed republic. To satisfy concerns that smaller states would have unfair influence if each state saw equal representation in the Senate, the framers created a second chamber, the House of Representatives, that would seat members according to population.
And that’s where Southern states rebelled again. They wanted to count slaves in their population census, even though those people would have no right to vote or even the very freedom that Americans to this day claim to cherish as a people. Northern states rightly objected to counting bodies that had no civil rights.
Enter the Three-fifths Compromise. To get a deal done, the Constitutional Congress agreed that Southern states could count each slave as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of determining seats in the House of Representatives.
So much for all men being created equal by their Creator. According to the original U.S. Constitution, African slaves weren’t fully people. Indeed, they were only a little more than half a person.
Ask the average American what the Three-fifths Compromise is, and you’ll get a blank stare. And as modern conservatives move aggressively to whitewash American history and culture even more, it’s no wonder that Americans don’t understand what the distinction between freedom and independence is. As a nation, the U.S. stubbornly refuses to grapple with the points in history where it fell short of the ideals it claims to cherish.
Now, 249 years after Jefferson’s compromise, the monster currently occupying the White House (which was built with slave labor) signs his signature piece of legislation into law. It gives unprecedented funding to a secret police force (ICE) and the construction of concentration camps. It strips social safety-net programs that millions of people depend upon to afford food and healthcare to pay for yet another tax cut for billionaires. And there are a number of insidious clauses that center power with the executive branch in direct defiance of the Constitution’s framers’ intention. The U.S. has taken a major step towards becoming a police state that benefits only its wealthiest citizens. Where the Bill of Rights means nothing.
And so, Americans really have only one thing to celebrate this Fourth of July: Independence from Great Britain. Celebrating freedom isn’t just disingenuous, it’s flat-out wrong.
The alleged Land of the Free has never truly been that, and as of today, it’s become a mockery of even the pretense at revering liberty. Its people, through deliberate ignorance of their own history, have voted for the very authoritarianism against which their ancestors rebelled.
Enjoy the fireworks.