The Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia on this day in 1776, declared that the name of the newly formed nation fighting for its independence from Great Britain would be “The ...

When it was written in June 1776, Jefferson’s “Rough draught” employed a headline in capital letters that read: “A Declaration by the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA in ...

For European colonists, the major threat to security in North America was a foreign ... The Counter-Revolution of 1776 drives us to a radical new understanding of the traditional heroic creation myth ...

On Sept. 9, 1776, the Continental Congress formally changed the name of their new nation to the “United States of America,” rather than the “United Colonies,” which was in regular use at ...