Video: 'August 2, 1776 - The Day America signed Independence'

(Friday, August 2, 1776; during the American Revolutionary War and the American Revolution) — Delegates to the Second Continental Congress meeting today in Philadelphia began attaching their signatures to the Declaration of Independence, which had been approved July 4, 1776.

Video: 'Signing of Declaration Of Independence'

The declaration proclaimed that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain were now sovereign states, and thus no longer a part of the British Empire.