How did British colonists learn they were citizens of the United States of America in July and August 1776? The news spread through broadsides enclosed in letters, newspapers passed between neighbors, and proclamations at local meeting houses. Philadelphia printer John Dunlap published the first copies of the Declaration of Independence—the Dunlap broadsides. While Dunlap's broadside slowly spread up and down the coast, he printed a notice in the Monday, July...
First Posted January 2026 In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson, sequestered in a...


