In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims the independence of the United States of America from Great Britain and its king. The declaration came 442 days after the first volleys of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts and marked an ideological expansion of the conflict that would eventually encourage France's intervention on behalf of the Patriots.
The first major American opposition to British policy came in 1765
after Parliament passed the Stamp Act, a taxation measure to raise
revenues for a standing British army in America. Under the banner of "no
taxation without representation," colonists convened the Stamp Act
Congress in October 1765 to vocalize their opposition to the tax. With
its enactment in November, most colonists called for a boycott of
British goods, and some organized attacks on the customhouses and homes
of tax collectors. After months of protest in the colonies, Parliament
voted to repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766.
Most colonists continued to quietly accept British rule until
Parliament's enactment of the Tea Act in 1773, a bill designed to save
the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and
granting it a monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed
the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by
Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of
taxation tyranny. In response, militant Patriots in Massachusetts
organized the "Boston Tea Party," which saw British tea valued at some
18,000 pounds dumped into Boston Harbor.
Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts
of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also
known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston
to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in
Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in
America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists
subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united
American resistance to the British.
With the other colonies watching intently, Massachusetts led the
resistance to the British, forming a shadow revolutionary government and
establishing militias to resist the increasing British military
presence across the colony. In April 1775, Thomas Gage, the British
governor of Massachusetts, ordered British troops to march to Concord,
Massachusetts, where a Patriot arsenal was known to be located. On April
19, 1775, the British regulars encountered a group of American
militiamen at Lexington, and the first shots of the American Revolution
were fired.
Initially, both the Americans and the British saw the conflict as a
kind of civil war within the British Empire: To King George III it was a
colonial rebellion, and to the Americans it was a struggle for their
rights as British citizens. However, Parliament remained unwilling to
negotiate with the American rebels and instead purchased German
mercenaries to help the British army crush the rebellion. In response to
Britain's continued opposition to reform, the Continental Congress
began to pass measures abolishing British authority in the colonies. 
In January 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, an
influential political pamphlet that convincingly argued for American
independence and sold more than 500,000 copies in a few months. In the
spring of 1776, support for independence swept the colonies, the
Continental Congress called for states to form their own governments,
and a five-man committee was assigned to draft a declaration.
The Declaration of Independence was largely the work of Virginian
Thomas Jefferson. In justifying American independence, Jefferson drew
generously from the political philosophy of John Locke, an advocate of
natural rights, and from the work of other English theorists. The first
section features the famous lines, "We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The second part presents a
long list of grievances that provided the rationale for rebellion.
On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to approve a Virginia
motion calling for separation from Britain. The dramatic words of this
resolution were added to the closing of the Declaration of Independence.
Two days later, on July 4, the declaration was formally adopted by 12
colonies after minor revision. New York approved it on July 19. On
August 2, the declaration was signed.
The American War for Independence would last for five more years. Yet to come were the Patriot triumphs at Saratoga, the bitter winter at Valley Forge, the intervention of the French, and the final victory at Yorktown in 1781. In 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris with Britain, the United States formally became a free and independent nation.
Taken from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history [04.07.2012]
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