The United States got its name in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall
In September 1776, more than a year after the Revolutionary War began, the Second Continental Congress named the country.
The skirmishes between the colonies and England in April 1775 grew into a full-on war by January of 1776. No longer contained to New England, the fighting had spread to Canada and the South; so much so that British loyalist and Virginia’s royal governor Lord Dunmore offered freedom to any enslaved man who fought on behalf of the Crown.
The stakes were high.
The colonies were no longer interested in making nice with England. They wanted independence and realized they had to unite to win.
Stephen Moylan, a Pennsylvanian and officer in the Continental Army first floated the idea of calling the new nation the “United States” in a 1776 letter to politician and comrade in arms Joseph Reed.
“Moylan wrote the ‘united states’ needed to spend emissaries to Spain and build a case for the rising revolution and secure foreign support,” explained Matthew Skic, director of collections and exhibitions at the Museum of the American Revolution.
”That letter, dated Jan. 2, 1776, is the first documented reference to the colonies as the ‘united states’," Moylan said.
Eight days later on Jan. 10, Common Sense, Thomas Paine’s revolutionary 74-page pamphlet urging the colonies to form an independent empire, dropped.
The pamphlet, read aloud in taverns in colonial Philadelphia and throughout the original colonies, stoked the flames of independence. It was printed in Robert Bell’s print shop at Third and Walnut Streets.
“Paine urged the colonies to form states,” Skic said. “But not the 21st century perspective of states as in New Jersey, Virginia, or New York. In the 18th century, states were an independent nation or country with its own government.”
And those states, Paine said, needed to come together to defeat a common enemy: England.
In May 1776, Virginia statesman Richard Henry Lee issued a resolution proposing the Second Continental Congress declare the colonies’ independence, explicitly stating that the new country should consist of independent states formerly known as colonies.
On July 2, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence that referred to the new country as the united States. The united was written in lowercase, Skic said, to emphasize the focus on “States.”
However, it wasn’t until Sept. 9 when during the Second Continental Congress — meeting at the Pennsylvania State House, today’s Independence Hall — delegates voted to call the new government the United States of America, with a capital “U”.
“As soon as independence becomes the goal, not just restoring liberty, the United States took hold as a name,” Skic said. “And it happened in a neat six month time period.”
The official naming of the United States will be remembered Saturday at Independence Hall from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Philadelphia Historic District’s 38th firstival. Firstivals are weekly day parties held in honor of America’s 250th birthday.
“The Continental Congress had been trying to decide how it should represented when we present ourselves to other countries,” Skic said. “What would be the official seal on our government documents? With the Sept. 9 vote, Congress officially says all of the government’s official documents will say ‘United States.’”
The Continental Congress ordered the Continental Army’s property be marked United States in February 1777.
“[The Museum of the American Revolution] has muskets, canteens, and cartridge boxes marked U. States,” Skic said. “We also have the only surviving original mold for the colonial USA buttons.”
The army would be called the Continental Army through the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, after which it disbanded. George Washington was elected president in 1789 and soon after his inauguration, it was reestablished as the United States Army.
This week’s Firstival is Saturday, Sept. 19, from 11 a.m.-1 p.m., at Independence Hall, 520 Chestnut Street.
Each week, The Inquirer is highlighting a “first” from the Philadelphia Historic District’s 52 Weeks of Firsts. A “52 Weeks of Firsts” podcast, produced by All That’s Good Productions, drops every Tuesday.
