Wednesday, July 1, 2009
The University of West Georgia will observe Independence Day on Friday, July 3, and will be closed. The university will reopen on Monday, July 6, at 8 a.m. Administrators, faculty and staff wish everyone a safe and happy Fourth of July.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
During the American Revolution, the separation of the American colonies from Great Britain occurred on July 2, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence that had been proposed in June by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia.
After voting for independence, Congress turned its attention to the Declaration of Independence, which had been prepared by a committee of five, with Thomas Jefferson as its principal author. Congress debated and revised the Declaration, approving it on July 4.
Happy Fourth of July!