July 4th calls to mind grilling in the backyard, parades filled with red, white and blue everything, days spent in the sun, and fireworks, but there’s much more to the holiday that celebrates America’s Independence.

When the initial battles of the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, many of the colonists were against being entirely separated from British rule. Many just wanted the oppressive taxes including the Stamp Act to stop. However, in the next year, as hostility grew against Great Britain, many opinions started to change. The release of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense” in early 1776, which argued for American independence and highlighted the tyranny of England. Paine’s pamphlet sold more than 500,000 copies, an astounding feat of the time.

On June 7th, 1776, the Continental Congress met in Philadelphia to discuss the colonies’ independence. The debate amongst delegates was heated and indecisive, and the vote was postponed. A 5 person committee was selected to draft a statement formalizing a separation from Great Britain in preparation. The committee was made up of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, and Robert Livingston.

On July 2nd, the congress met again to hold the vote on whether to declare independence. Almost unanimously the congress voted to officially break ties with England.

What’s in a Date?

A great deal of controversy surrounds the dates of America’s independence. The vote to declare independence was officially made on July 2nd, 1776, but a revision of the declaration was made and produced on July 4th, 1776 changing some of the phrasings. While many claim the original draft was signed on July 2nd by the 5 members of the selected committee, the official recognized date for the signing of what we now refer to as The Declaration of Independence happened by a majority of congress members on July 4th.

One of the strongest claims that the holiday should be celebrated on the 2nd came in the form of a letter that John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that July 2 “will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival” and that the celebration should include “Pomp and Parade…Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other.”

John Adams believed that July 2nd was the correct date on which to celebrate the birth of American independence, and would reportedly turn down invitations to appear at July 4th events in protest. Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826—the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

Celebrations

In the pre-Revolutionary years, colonists had held annual celebrations of the king’s birthday, which traditionally included the ringing of bells, bonfires, processions, and speechmaking. By contrast, during the summer of 1776, some colonists celebrated the birth of independence by holding mock funerals for King George III as a way of symbolizing the end of the monarchy’s hold on America and the triumph of liberty. Some of the mock funerals, known as funerals for liberty, went so far as to include lynching a mock-dummy of the king to hang. Celebrations included real coffins, eulogies, and mourning-clothed funeral attendants.

Festivities including concerts, bonfires, parades, and the firing of cannons and muskets usually accompanied the first public readings of the Declaration of Independence, immediately after its adoption. Philadelphia held the first annual commemoration of independence on July 4, 1777, while Congress was still occupied with the ongoing war.

In 1778 and again in 1781 as the war waged on, General George Washington marked the anniversary of July 4th with a double ration of rum for his soldiers and an artillery salute.

After the Revolutionary War, celebrations continued each July 4th as a way to promote unity among the colonies and to give political leaders a way to address citizens. While political turmoil continued leading up to the 18th century as a means to outline the new government, the two major political parties—the Federalist Party and Democratic-Republicans—had begun holding separate Fourth of July celebrations in many large cities.

A Tradition of Fireworks

The tradition of setting off fireworks on the 4 of July began in Philadelphia on July 4, 1777, during the first organized celebration of Independence Day. A ship’s cannon fired a 13-gun salute in honor of the 13 colonies. That same night, the Sons of Liberty set off fireworks over Boston Common.

After the War of 1812 in which the U.S. faced off against England, the celebrations invoked more vigor as a way to vilify Britain.  In 1870, the U.S. Congress made July 4th a federal holiday. Throughout the 19th century, Independence Day celebrations were made to highlight a communal sense of leisure and celebration incorporating barbecues, parties, picnics, and of course—fireworks.

 

Information from History.com and MentalFloss.com

It’s said that on the night of the new moon each September, a strange and ghastly sight can be seen off of Ocracoke Island. There in the waters off the Outer Banks, each year on that one night, a phantom ship engulfed in flames floats silently by the island and disappears into the night. How this came to be brings us back to the early days of the North Carolina colony, to days of settlers and pirates, and to the reign of Queen Anne.

In the late Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Centuries, the religious wars that ravaged Europe caused mass migrations of people displaced by the conflicts. In these wars, England was allied to the Palatine States, in what is today Germany and Switzerland. The countries shared a Protestant faith and a complex history of marriage bonds. In 1689, when the unpopular James II was forced to abdicate by Parliament, James’ daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange were brought in to replace the exiled monarch. Suddenly having a German king on the throne drastically shifted many of England’s diplomatic alliances, and William was happy to use the very large army he suddenly found at his disposal to continue and expand the wars that he had already been fighting in back in the Palatinate Sates.

These wars produced refugees, and William and Mary opened England’s doors to thousands of them. England soon found itself housing a large population of German-speaking refugees who had fled from the continent. These refugees were not ordinary peasants, but well-to-do skilled craftsmen and trade workers. This influx continued for years, into the reign of Queen Anne. The presence of so much unemployed skilled labor dealt a massive blow to the English economy. Native English craftsmen found they were facing levels of competition they’d never before known, and the price for skilled labor plummeted. So the question of what to do with all these Palatines became pressing on Parliament.

A swiss baron, Cristoph von Graffnreid, offered a solution. With the Crown’s permission, he would escort a large number of these refugees to a settlement in the Carolina colonies, to be called New Berne. The plan was met with delight, and the transportation of the Palatine colonists soon began.

It was on one of these voyages that the captain of the chartered vessel, an unscrupulous and greedy man, noticed that his passengers were carrying an unusual amount of gold, jewels, and other wealth with them. Whatever family treasures the Palatines had managed to get out of their homelands were now being taken to the New World. Eyeing this wealth, the greedy captain hatched a plan.

As the ship drew closer to the American coast and the Outer Banks were in sight, on a moonless night the captain put that plan into action. He enlisted the help of his equally greedy crew. One night, the crew crept below decks and, one by one, slit the throat of every passenger on board as they slept. The crew then loaded the passenger’s treasure on the ship’s longboat.

To cover up the crime, the men doused the decks with oil and set the ship on fire as they dropped the longboat into the ocean and set out for the pirate’s refuge at Bath. As the men set off in the longboat, the ship they left behind became engulfed in flames.

As the captain and his men gleefully rowed the longboat away from the flaming ship, they laughed and bragged to each other about their deed. But then the captain looked back towards the flaming ship, and what he saw shocked him. Though the sails were down and the night was still the ship was moving. It was plowing through the waters at high speed, as though it was at full sail and being steered by human hands. But they knew there was not a living soul on board. They had killed everyone on board. This flaming ship filled with dead men was sailing right towards them.

Panicked, the crew rowed fiercely trying to avoid the oncoming ship, but it was no use. The flaming ship rammed the longboat, sinking it, the treasure, and the murderers beneath the waves. The next day, the burned husk of the ship washed ashore on Ocracoke.

Each year, this strangle spectacle is reenacted off the coast of Ocracoke. If you look into the waters off of the Northeast corner of the island on that night in September, you might see it, too.

 

Story originally published on NorthCarolinaGhosts.com