Use the online resources of the Library of Congress to learn more about United States Independence Day and the Declaration of Independence.

Learn More

• View a selection of images that reflect on the celebrations as well as the complications of American Independence Day in the Free to Use and Resuse: Independence Day set.
• The Library of Congress posts a wealth of online information pertaining to the Declaration of Independence and its principal author, Thomas Jefferson. Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents provides a Timeline leading up to the revolution and a fragment of an early draft of the Declaration. Also, see the Thomas Jefferson Papers, 1606 to 1827, which includes Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration of Independence.
• A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875 contains congressional information concerning the Declaration of Independence in the Journals of the Continental Congress and the Letters of Delegates to Congress.
• Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820 to 1910 contains wonderful Independence Day recollections. Search the collection on the phrase Fourth of July to locate many descriptions of the holiday including “Celebrating The Fourth”, a chapter of Lewis Reimann’s Between the Iron and the Pine: A Biography of A Pioneer Family and A Pioneer Town.
• See the entry for the Declaration of Independence in the Library’s Primary Documents in American History research guide series.