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Washington has the Declaration read aloud to every brigade; British ships fill the harbor

Howe is massing troops on Staten Island, and the men who just heard the words that made them revolutionaries will face them within weeks.

By July 1776, New York Harbor was filling with British ships, and Washington knew an invasion was coming. On July 9, he ordered the Declaration of Independence read aloud to every brigade of the Continental Army gathered in Manhattan. Across the water on Staten Island, General William Howe was massing thousands of troops for what would become the Battle of Long Island. The men heard the words that made them revolutionaries just weeks before they had to fight as one…

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More from July 9
1944

Saipan falls to Smith's Marines and infantry; Japan's inner defense ring is broken

Twenty-four days through caves, cane fields, and Tapotchau's slopes: 3,100 Americans dead, 13,000 wounded, and roughly 30,000 Japanese killed.
1863

Gardner surrenders Port Hudson; the Union holds the Mississippi from source to sea

After 48 days on the bluff, half his men sick and the food gone, the Confederate general yields the last rebel stronghold on the river.
1868

Seward proclaims it law: the Fourteenth Amendment is part of the Constitution

The amendment settles in the document what Dred Scott left open, granting citizenship and equal protection to anyone born on American soil.
19621776 Club
The 1.4-megaton blast, 900 miles from Honolulu, paints bands of light from Samoa to New Zealand; hotel guests watch from rooftops.
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More from Revolution & Founding
1803

Burr fires at Weehawken; Hamilton is rowed back across the Hudson, shot through the liver

The sitting Vice President walks away unhurt. Hamilton's bullet clipped a branch above Burr's head; Burr's found its mark in Hamilton's abdomen.
1812

Hull crosses the Detroit River; his army occupies Sandwich, Upper Canada

The Army of the Northwest pushes onto British soil weeks after the U.S. declared war, planting American forces on the Canadian side of the river.
1787

Confederation Congress charts a path to statehood for the Ohio territory; slavery banned within its bounds

The Northwest Ordinance divides the vast British cession into future states and sets aside a township plot for public schools in every settlement.
1798

It is now a federal crime to publish "false or malicious" criticism of officials; Adams signs the Sedition Act

The last of four laws Congress has passed since June, the act caps a Federalist push to silence perceived French sympathizers working against the government.
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