What happened after the Declaration of Independence was read in New York City, July 9, 1776

An article in yesterday’s New York Sun, about an exhibit of Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence, tells how, after the Declaration was first read to General Washington’s troops and New York City citizens assembled at the present location of City Hall Park on July 9, 1776,

a spontaneous mob raced down Broadway—St. Paul’s Chapel, between Vesey and Fulton streets, was 12 years old—to Bowling Green, where an equestrian statue of George III stood, though not for much longer. The mob broke through the iron fence and toppled the statue….

Go to Bowling Green today and look at the fence. It’s the same fence the topplers broke through. All that’s missing are the crowns that once topped the fence posts—they were batted off on that July day in 1776. The uneven tops of the posts attest to the crowns’ onetime presence. Run your hand along the tops for an immediate tactile connection to our nation’s beginning, as stirring, in its way, as looking at Jefferson’s handwriting in the Wachenheim Gallery.

I knew of course about the toppling of the statue of the King on that day, but was not aware that the statue had been located at Bowling Green; and, though I’ve been at Bowling Green many times, I also did not know about the fence with the crowns knocked off. So a friend and I are going to check it out this afternoon.

Bowling Green is a small park located at the very bottom of Broadway, just above the imposing building that used to be the U.S. Customs House and is now a museum on the American Indian. The invaluable Wikipedia has an article on Bowling Green with all kinds of fascinating details that are new to me. For example, I knew that when the British forces evacuated New York City in December 1783, they left a Union Jack on top of a greased flag pole. The spiteful gesture caused a delay of several hours in General Washington’s entry into the city, until finally someone managed to climb the flagpole and remove the British flag, and raise an American flag. I didn’t know that the flagpole had been located in Bowling Green.

I also didn’t know that for many years in the early United States, Evacuation Day, commemorating the departure of the British, included a contest that involved removing a Union Jack from the top of a greased flag pole.

Also interesting is how the fence surrounding the statue of King George (which was erected in 1770) came to be built:

With the rapid deterioration of relations with the mother country after 1770, the statue became a magnet for the Bowling Green protests; in 1773, the city passed an anti-graffiti and anti-desecration law to counter vandalism against the monument, and a protective cast-iron fence was built around it (which still exists as of 2006).

If today’s Americans had in their breasts a fraction of the true spirit of liberty that the Americans of 1775 and 1776 had, the alien and illegitimate reign of modern liberalism (and of its handmaid modern conservatism) would be toppled as surely as was that statue of George III, and the American people would once again come into possession of their own land.

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Here are some past VFR entries on Independence Day:

Don’t Tread on Me! (2003). Includes the history of the “Don’t tread on me” flag, and an exchange between a reader and me about what I saw as his disrespectful remark about the flag with its snake image. In retrospect it occurred to me that my sharp response to him, which offended some people at the time, was as in keeping with the spirit of the day as his remark was in violation of it, since I was basically saying, “Don’t tread on me!”

Patrick Henry’s Last Speech (2005). A story about George Washington and Patrick Henry. Not an Independence Day story, but uplifting.

Independence Day (2007). A note from a reader celebrating the defeat of the Comprehensive National Suicide Act.

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Bill Carpenter writes:

Happy Independence Day! The grim news from Britain on today’s Brussels Journal urges us to give advice to the Britons, which we also need to follow ourselves: The civilized half of the nation must organize to crush the uncivilized half. As the Ed Harris character says in Gone Baby Gone, “This is a war. You have to take a side.”

Everyone is free at all times to choose which side he is on. There is no room for temporizing or excuses. People of all races can participate in their own fashion in a society based on what our law calls “ordered liberty.” Who chooses not to should face destitution, expulsion, imprisonment, or death. Possibly we need to require everyone over a minimum income level to purchase and receive training in arms. Medieval England had wealth-based arms requirements. Such an infringement of personal liberty would have the purpose of securing the more important liberty of all citizens from the violence of lawless predators.

At the same time, let charity preach to the uncivilized and ensure food and shelter for those who are only minimally productive or incapacitated—who cannot be independent.

Here’s to independence and a brief and swift senescence to liberalism!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 04, 2008 01:20 PM | Send