August 2

On August 2, 1776, Georgia joined the United States. Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, and George Walton signed the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia that day.

Approved on July 4, the declaration was signed by only one man that day, John Hancock. Fifty other delegates to the 2nd Continental Congress signed on August 2. Later that year, five more brought the total to 56.

Eight of the signers, including Gwinnett, were foreign-born. One was Roman Catholic. A handful were deists. The rest were Protestants. They all went on to lives of public service in the republic they founded: there were two future presidents, three vice presidents, two Supreme Court justices, and many congressmen, diplomats, governors, and judges among them.

In 1818, fourteen years after Georgia’s last signer died, Georgia named counties in their honor. Their revolutionary idea of a self-governing free people lives on, and the experiment they began remains unfinished, as it was on August 2, 1776, Today in Georgia History.