Great Britain’s vote last week to exit the European Union has been widely described as the country’s most consequential decision in decades. But its significance is paltry compared to that of history’s original “Leave” resolution, the 240th anniversary of which Americans commemorate this Fourth of July. The unanimous vote in the Second Continental Congress, which affirmed that “these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states . . . absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown,” was the most far-reaching political event of the 18th century. John Adams, writing from Philadelphia to his wife Abigail, called the vote not just “the greatest decision . . . which ever was debated in America,” but possibly the greatest that ever “was or will be decided among men.”
