On 2 July 1776, delegates from 12 of 13 colonies voted in favor of the Declaration of Independence.

On 4 July, the Declaration was formally adopted.

Just eight signers were immigrants, but most were recent descendants of immigrants.

They Declaration's signers understood that freedom depends on the freedom to move.

On 2 July 1776, in the City of Brotherly Love, delegates from 12 of the 13 colonies who met at the Second Continental Congress voted in favor of the Declaration of Independence. Two days later, on July 4th, the document was officially adopted; another 29 days after that, on 2 August, most signers put their hands to it. Just eight of those signers were immigrants: three from Ireland, two from England, two from Scotland and another from Wales. Another 10 were immigrants’ sons. And every signer to a man had ancestors who’d crossed over from the British Isles.

They knew from experience, and had written about, the importance of being an immigrant.

Some came from humble beginnings. Josiah Bartlett was the son of a cobbler; George Walton had been apprenticed to a carpenter; Abraham Clark started out as a surveyor; William Whipple was a merchant’s apprentice. Benjamin Franklin’s father made soap.

But all of them had made their way. A dozen were merchants, and another dozen were prominent landowners; one was a minister, one was a musician; four were practicing doctors; 23 had become lawyers; and the vast majority had held political offices—in local councils or assemblies, as judges or justices of the peace.

A committee of five delegates was appointed to draft the Declaration. Roger Sherman, the Connecticut lawyer, and Robert Livingston, the New York judge, offered their thoughts. John Adams, the prolific writer from Boston with a classical education, and Benjamin Franklin, the Pennsylvania printer, edited the manuscript. And Thomas Jefferson, the Virginia planter,........

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