Independence Hall. Photo by Robin Miller, courtesy Independence National Historical Park.
The red-brick Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, known today as Independence Hall, is where delegates to the Second Continental Congress voted for independence in July 1776 and where, in the summer of 1787, the Constitutional Convention wrote the United States Constitution. The ideas in those two documents have influenced governments around the world for more than two centuries, and in 1979 the United Nations inscribed the building on its list of World Heritage Sites.
Road to independence
Britain won the French and Indian War (1754–63) deeply in debt, and King George III had the colonies taxed on goods such as sugar, paper and tea. Colonists boycotted British goods until every tax but the one on tea was repealed. After the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when colonists dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor, the King sent troops to close the port, and the other colonies rallied to Boston's aid.
By 1775 about 2.5 million people lived in the 13 colonies, and most still thought of themselves as British subjects first. Philadelphia, founded by William Penn in 1682, was the largest city in the colonies, with 30,000 people, the biggest port on the coast, and roughly in the middle of the colonies; delegates from Georgia faced an 800-mile trip of two or three weeks on the post roads.
The thirteen colonies, with the post roads. Image from the National Park Service's page.
In September 1774, 55 delegates met in Philadelphia as the First Continental Congress and sent the King a list of grievances. By the time the Second Continental Congress met in the State House on May 10, 1775, fighting had broken out at Lexington and Concord. Congress chose John Hancock as its president and George Washington as commander of the Continental Army. In August it sent the Olive Branch Petition, blaming the King's ministers for the fighting and asking for peace; the King instead declared the colonies in rebellion.
Even then, colonists were divided over separation. On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia moved that Congress declare independence. While the vote was postponed, a committee of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman drafted a declaration, written mainly by Jefferson. It gave the reasons for separation, listed the King's wrongs, and declared the colonies independent, recasting disputes over taxes and trade as a struggle for universal human rights:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Jefferson's draft condemned the slave trade and the King for supporting it; that passage was cut. On July 2, 12 colonies voted for Lee's resolution (New York voted weeks later), and on July 4 the delegates adopted the Declaration, knowing it was treason punishable by death.
Plan of the city and environs of Philadelphia, 1777. Independence National Historical Park.
"The Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776," painted by John Trumbull, 1786–1820. Trumbull Collection, Yale University Art Gallery.
From confederation to Constitution
For much of the war, Congress governed from the State House. It adopted the Articles of Confederation there in 1777; all 13 states ratified them by 1781. The Articles deliberately kept the central government weak — their first article gave the new union its name, the United States of America. Fighting largely ended in October 1781, and Congress ratified the peace treaty on April 15, 1783. But the government under the Articles could not tax, regulate trade or enforce its decisions on the states.
In May 1787, 55 delegates from 12 states (Rhode Island stayed away) met in the State House to revise the Articles. Twenty-nine had college degrees and three-quarters had served in the Continental Congress. They chose Washington to preside, gave each state one vote, and kept their debates secret, closing the doors and windows despite the summer heat.
- Three branches. Edmund Randolph's Virginia Plan proposed executive, legislative and judicial branches, and the delegates made it the basis of a new government rather than a revision.
- The Great Compromise. In mid-July they adopted Roger Sherman's plan: a Senate with two members per state and a House apportioned by population.
- Slavery. Under the Three-fifths Compromise, each enslaved person counted as three-fifths of a person for House representation and taxation. Congress was barred from banning the import of enslaved people until 1808, and escaped enslaved people had to be returned. These compromises let the drafting go on but harmed enslaved people and had grave consequences for later generations.
- The presidency. Electors, chosen as each state legislature directed, would elect a president for four years, with the runner-up as vice president.
The final draft was agreed on September 17, 1787. It needed nine states' ratification; New Hampshire became the ninth on June 21, 1788. Washington wrote that its creation was "little short of a miracle." The new government began on March 4, 1789.
The building
Construction of the State House began about 1732 and ran through the 1740s; until then the Pennsylvania Assembly had met in homes and taverns. The Assembly moved in in September 1735, while work continued. The building, designed in the Georgian style by Assembly Speaker Andrew Hamilton, was the most ambitious public building in the colonies and the largest in Philadelphia: a 105-foot main block joined by covered arcades to two 50-foot wings. The first floor held chambers for the Supreme Court and the Assembly; the upper floor, the Governor's council chamber and a long gallery. The north front has marble panels, marble keystones over the windows, a carved wooden cornice and a rooftop balustrade; the south front is plainer.
The south facade. Photo by Robin Miller, courtesy Independence National Historical Park.
A bell tower was authorized in 1750, and by 1753 the tower and wooden steeple were finished and a bell hung bearing the words "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof."
The building's later history:
| Years | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1777–1778 | British forces occupied Philadelphia, used the State House as a hospital and barracks, and wrecked much of its furnishings; the decayed steeple was later removed |
| June 1783 | Soldiers demanding back pay surrounded the building and drove Congress out of Pennsylvania |
| 1802 | Charles Willson Peale rented the second floor and Assembly Room for his natural history collection and portraits |
| 1812–1816 | The city replaced the wings with fireproof offices and bought the whole block from the state |
| 1824 | Lafayette's visit drew attention to the Assembly Room, first called the "Hall of Independence" |
| 1852 | The first recorded use of "Independence Hall" for the whole building |
| 1876 onward | Centennial collectors brought back furniture thought to be from 1776; the building became a museum |
| 1948 | Congress created Independence National Historical Park, after a campaign by the Independence Hall Association, founded in 1942 |
| 1976 | For the Bicentennial, experts restored the building using 18th-century drawings, documents and paint analysis |
The city still owns the buildings; the National Park Service runs them.
The Assembly Room. Courtesy Independence National Historical Park.
The Assembly Room, about 40 feet square, was large for its day. Its furnishings represent the period, reconstructed from surviving bills and repair records; the only original pieces are the chair Washington used while presiding over the Constitutional Convention and the silver inkstand, made in 1752 for the Pennsylvania Assembly, used to sign both the Declaration and the Constitution.
A symbol for the world
More than 600,000 people visit each year. In 1821 Jefferson wrote that "the flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism." The Philippine declaration of independence from Spain (1898) closely followed the American one; Eastern European leaders meeting in Independence Hall in 1918 issued a declaration in the same style; and Ho Chi Minh invoked the Declaration's principles in Vietnam's 1945 declaration of independence. The Constitution informed the constitutions of Venezuela (1811), Mexico (1824) and Uruguay (1830), among others, and the preamble of the United Nations Charter (1945) begins "We the Peoples."
World Heritage
UNESCO's General Conference adopted the World Heritage Convention on November 16, 1972, after a campaign begun in the late 1950s in which 50 countries gave $80 million to move ancient Egyptian temples out of the way of a Nile dam. Member countries nominate sites of "outstanding universal value"; the International Council on Monuments and Sites evaluates them and the 21-member World Heritage Committee decides.
Independence Hall was inscribed in 1979. Its nomination said the Declaration and the Constitution "enunciate enduring as well as universal principles and eloquently express mankind's aspirations for justice and freedom." As of 2006 the list held 830 sites in 138 countries, 20 of them in the United States, and Independence Hall was one of eight U.S. cultural sites.
Sources
- National Park Service, Teaching with Historic Places: "Independence Hall: International Symbol of Freedom," written by Brenda K. Olio and published in 2007, based on the World Heritage List nomination for Independence Hall, the National Register registration for Independence National Historical Park, and histories by Edward M. Riley, Charlene Mires, Joy Hakim and others. The Declaration, Jefferson's 1821 letter, Washington's remark and the World Heritage nomination are quoted; the lesson's questions and activities are left out.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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