I wake up to the sound of horse hooves clip-clopping against the cobblestone. If I were alive and up with the dawn in Philadelphia on July 8, 1776, four days after the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence at the Pennsylvania State House, this is what life presumably would’ve looked like.
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Wagons full of bleating and lowing livestock and the hurried conversations of tradesmen are within earshot. Between the humidity and the scorching heat, summers in Philadelphia are enough to make the city feel like a steaming pot of soup.
Often this time of year, it’s already 94 degrees in the shade by noon. But today, it’s almost as if the world is celebrating alongside us, because the morning stays cool and the dew lingers. It’s a pleasant day, I can feel it.
I peel myself out of bed to change into the linen dress I patterned and sewed at the end of the winter — it’s the first I made without the help of my older sister. I’m not used to working with linen, but the fabric is both practical for the heat of this place and bold for this political moment.
As a woman, I can’t attend salon conversations or march into battle, but I can purchase and use fabrics that are produced and assembled in the Colonies in lieu of imported British textiles. It feels a little rebellious.
It’s my way of protesting British rule, of making a political statement through my clothing rather than my words.
Though there were women who sneaked onto the battlefields at Fort Washington and Monmouth to fight in secret among the men. I remember hearing of it. Here, in the Colonies, we are authors, thinkers, activists, business owners. We shape our communities and what we want from our lives in the places we call home. And this place feels like it’s changing. From what it is to what it could be.
My copy of the Pennsylvania Evening Post from two days ago is still sitting on the table. Word is that it was the very first newspaper to publish the Declaration of Independence, which is plastered all over the front cover in delightfully dense walls of text.
For the past three generations, my family has called themselves Pennsylvanians. People from Massachusetts are citizens of Massachusetts. Same in Connecticut or New York. Now, there’s something bigger that we belong to. A country. America. I heard that Londoners have been calling us “Americans” as an insult, but I actually quite like the word. Maybe I’ll start calling myself an American to take the power out of the slur and turn it into pride.
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For the most part, the news about the Colonies’ impending independence is positive, but I guess I was expecting it to feel as celebratory in the streets as it does in my mind. Instead, a certain tension hangs in the air. Fellow seamstresses and customers I’ve chatted with in the shop inform me that the British may try to lay siege on our city. There’s already been a year of war. Living in fear of more bloodshed takes a toll. More than 30,000 people live in Philadelphia. It would make sense for the British to try to lay claim one last time. But maybe the pen that signed those names to the Declaration of Independence is mighty enough.
I know Thomas Paine is a bit of a political rebel, but I hold his words from “Common Sense” as wisdom for this moment. “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” So begin again, we do.
At noon today, Col. John Nixon, who led a Patriot militia, stood outside the State House. A crowd gathered before him to hear him deliver the first public reading of the declaration. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” he bellowed, “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.”
As I stood on the lawn, behind the mass of people cheering Nixon along, the words felt even stronger than they did on the page. More real. “Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!” the crowd cheered. A few of the particularly impassioned stormed into the building to tear down the royal coat of arms. Others lit bonfires and rang bells.
The scene made it all quite clear, if it wasn’t already, just how much change is coming. Hopefully, an improved reality. One we all believe in. Striving for that has to be the most human instinct in the world.
But right now, the future is still a fantasy. There is no guarantee of what tomorrow will bring besides a need to put food on the table and sweep out the floors. Maybe there will be more festivities and celebration. Maybe there will be more war and strife. Maybe we will all start calling ourselves “American.”
I mutter the word to myself and practice saying it. It may be entirely new, but it feels oddly fitting already.
This story appears in the July/August 2026 issue of Deseret Magazine under the headline “Begin again, we do.” Learn more about how to subscribe.
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