What year was the Declaration of Independence adopted?

The Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776, on July 4, by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, now known as Independence Hall. The actual vote for independence occurred two days earlier, on July 2, when twelve of the thirteen colonies approved Richard Henry Lee's resolution that the United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states. New York's delegation abstained until July 9, when its convention authorized a yes vote.

John Adams predicted in a letter to his wife Abigail that the Second Day of July, 1776 would be celebrated by future generations with pomp and parade, but tradition fixed on July 4, the date the formal text was adopted. The drafting committee, appointed on June 11, 1776, included John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Robert Livingston of New York, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut. Jefferson, then 33 years old, did the writing in about seventeen days, working in a rented Philadelphia parlor on a portable lap desk that survives in the Smithsonian.

Congress edited the draft over July 2, 3, and 4, removing among other things Jefferson's passage condemning the slave trade, before approving the final wording. Most signers added their names on August 2, 1776, when an engrossed parchment copy was ready, although John Hancock as president of the Congress and Charles Thomson as secretary signed on July 4 to authenticate the document.

By that date the war for independence was already underway. Fighting at Lexington and Concord had begun on April 19, 1775, the Continental Army had been organized under George Washington in June 1775, and on the day Congress adopted the Declaration British forces under General William Howe were preparing to invade New York. Independence in 1776 was a declaration of intent backed by force of arms; international recognition came only with the French alliance in 1778 and full British acknowledgment in the Treaty of Paris in 1783.