The other members of the Committee “unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught [sic]. I consented; I drew it; but before I reported it to the Committee, I communicated it separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams requesting their corrections. . . I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the committee, and from them, unaltered to the Congress.”
Thomas Jefferson, 1823
On this day in 1776, the not-yet-U.S. Congress reconvened. The following day, July 2nd, the Lee Resolution for Independence was adopted by 12 of the 13 colonies. New York did not vote. It was then that Congress considered the Declaration. Aside from minor alterations and deletions, the main document remained that of author Jefferson, the sole Southerner on the Committee of Five. The other four tasked with drafting a statement arguing the colonies’ case for independence were John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, and Robert R. Livingston of New York. The process of revision continued through all of July 3rd and late into the morning of July 4th before the Declaration was officially adopted. A nation was thus born.
In this week that commemorates the 248th anniversary of America’s independence, countless citizens of the republic find themselves attempting to interpret the visions of the founding fathers. Rather than a sleepy, summery dog day holiday-truncated trading week, chat rooms are abuzz with debates as to the legality of this or that. For our part, the countdown is on to the July 24th release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Business Employment Dynamics (BED) report for 2023’s fourth quarter. If you recall, the prior quarter ended September 30, 2023, had shown a gain of 640,000 jobs via BLS Establishment Survey data. In late April of this year, the BED revised that ‘plus’ sign to a net loss, as in -192,000 for 2023’s third quarter. Because we know the nation’s most populous state, California, has revised into the red its fourth quarter of last year, it’s a safe bet that the rest of the nation will follow, especially given the acceleration of the bankruptcy cycle and the ramping up of WARN notices we’ve seen in Texas and Illinois since. The downward momentum into 2024’s final three months was well established.