"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow." -Albert Einstein
“The United States is the only country with a known birthday.” -James G. Blaine
The Story of the Fourth of July - The Declaration of Independence
We celebrate American Independence Day on the Fourth of July every year. We think of July 4, 1776, as a day that represents the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the United States of America as an independent nation.
But July 4, 1776 wasn't the day that the Continental Congress decided to declare independence (they did that on July 2, 1776).
It wasn't the day we started the American Revolution either (that had happened back in April 1775).
And it wasn't the day Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence (that was in June 1776). Or the date on which the Declaration was delivered to Great Britain (that didn't happen until November 1776). Or the date it was signed (that was August 2, 1776).
So, what did happen on July 4, 1776?
The Continental Congress approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. They'd been working on it for a couple of days after the draft was submitted on July 2nd and finally agreed on all of the edits and changes.
July 4, 1776, became the date that was included on the Declaration of Independence, and the fancy handwritten copy that was signed in August (the copy now displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.) It's also the date that was printed on the Dunlap Broadsides, the original printed copies of the Declaration that were circulated throughout the new nation. So when people thought of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 was the date they remembered.
In contrast, we celebrate Constitution Day on September 17th of each year, the anniversary of the date the Constitution was signed, not the anniversary of the date it was approved. If we'd followed this same approach for the Declaration of Independence, we'd being celebrating Independence Day on August 2nd of each year, the day the Declaration of Independence was signed!
How did the Fourth of July become a national holiday?
For the first 15 or 20 years after the Declaration was written, people didn't celebrate it much on any date. It was too new and too much else was happening in the young nation. By the 1790s, a time of bitter partisan conflicts, the Declaration had become controversial. One party, the Democratic-Republicans, admired Jefferson and the Declaration. But the other party, the Federalists, thought the Declaration was too French and too anti-British, which went against their current policies.
By 1817, John Adams complained in a letter that America seemed uninterested in its past. But that would soon changed.
After the War of 1812, the Federalist Party began to come apart and the new parties of the 1820s and 1830s all considered themselves inheritors of Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans. Printed copies of the Declaration began to circulate again, all with the date July 4, 1776, listed at the top. The deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on July 4, 1826, may even have helped to promote the idea of July 4 as an important date to be celebrated.
Celebrations of the Fourth of July became more common as the years went on and in 1870, almost a hundred years after the Declaration was written, Congress first declared July 4 to be a national holiday as part of a bill to officially recognize several holidays, including Christmas. Further legislation about national holidays, including July 4, was passed in 1939 and 1941. - ConstitutionFacts.com
Take heart everyone, America has always had disagreements and protests as it states above. Do not dwell on happenings you have no control over, enjoy your hobby to get your mind off of the media hype.
As with all major holidays, EHS will be closed on Saturday July 4
th
.
Halfway through 2020! Is the glass half full or half empty? That is the choice we all live with - choose wisely. With limited sociability being done and with the hot weather it makes it easier to retreat to the layout room and exercise our social distancing. With the amount of track, structures and scenery we have been selling, I dare to state that there should be some mighty nice layouts being constructed or enhanced. As we asked before, send us your progress and with your permission we would share it on our Facebook page for others to see and get inspiration from. We’ll stay away from the partisan post and just add pure enjoyment and encouragement as a break from all of the negativity that is strewn about.
It has been apparent that our suppliers are getting back to work because we continue to get new items. We just received a shipment from Tangent Scale Models (Including their beautiful cabooses), the new GEVos from Scaletrains, RS3 HO locomotives (including CNW, SP&S & MILW) and 50’ boxcars (including WSOR) from Roundhouse, Covered Hoppers (Including CNW, BN, D&RGW & BNSF) and Ballast Hoppers from Athearn. We are also expecting the new GP7 HO locomotives (including CB&Q & GN) from Walthers Proto, along with the next release of the Milwaukee Road Hiawatha cars, Coil Cars, 40’ Boxcars, and new structures any day. We have a restock of Peco coming tomorrow, but some of the items are very limited since Peco was shut down for a time in England due to Covid-19. We received the new DT602 throttle series from Digitrax and are waiting for the new 21pin eight function Soundtraxx Tsunami2 decoders.
We
persist
on improving our website to make it better and faster, and we will continue to refine it. Once again
, if you know the part number just type it in the search bar at the top of it. However, if you are "shopping" use the drill down menu on the left side of the page. For example: Click on "Shop" at the top of the home page, then Layout> Vehicles> Automobiles> Brand>. The filter search takes a little time; however, you will be down to a couple of pages to select from instead of searching through lots of pages.
We continue to get calls and emails asking if we are open, and the answer is
yes
! However, we ask that you make an appointment. What does this mean: Call or email us to get a time when you would like to come and shop and we will most likely accommodate you. Our front door is locked when we do not have anyone scheduled to visit us with most of the lights out to conserve energy and costs, since we are all busy in the backshop working on projects, receiving product, or shipping out web orders.
