General Washington And The Other Declaration of 1776

In July 1776, Congress proclaimed independence—and George Washington prepared an army to defend it.

Charlton Allen | July 3, 2026

This Fourth of July, Americans rightly celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—the document drafted in Philadelphia, then debated, amended, and approved in the Pennsylvania State House, the building posterity would know as Independence Hall.

We remember Jefferson’s timeless words, which still echo today. We remember the delegates pledging to one another their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. We remember the parchment that proclaimed a new nation and announced to the world the principles upon which it would stand.

But while one declaration was taking shape in Philadelphia, another was issued less than a hundred miles away in New York.

It came not from Congress, but from the commander in chief of the Continental Army. It was not written to justify independence before the nations of the world, but to prepare ordinary men to fight—and perhaps die—for a country that had scarcely begun to exist and for the principle upon which the American experiment would rest: liberty.

On July 2, 1776, Congress adopted Richard Henry Lee’s resolution declaring that the united colonies “are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” Over the next two days, the delegates turned their attention to the document explaining that momentous decision, revising Jefferson’s carefully wrought prose—much to the chagrin of the young Virginian—before formally adopting the Declaration of Independence on July 4.

And yet, that same July 2, British forces were arriving in New York and coming ashore on Staten Island. A vast armada was gathering in the harbor. British regulars—soon to be joined by thousands of German auxiliaries—were assembling for a campaign intended to crush the rebellion and seize the city whose waterways offered command of the Hudson River and access to the interior of the continent.

General George Washington stood between the combined military might of the British Empire and the American cause.

He could not yet have known that Congress had voted for independence that day. Official word and a copy of the Declaration would reach him later, and on July 9 he would order the document read aloud before his assembled troops. Yet his general orders of July 2 seemed almost to answer the vote in Philadelphia before news of it arrived.

Congress had declared what America was to be.

Washington declared what its survival would require.

His orders began in the ordinary language of military administration. General Mifflin was directed to hasten the construction of the........

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