July 8, 1776

Liberty Bell

First Philadelphia public reading of the Declaration; Liberty Bell participation unverified

John Adams wrote the next morning that Philadelphia's bells rang all day and almost all night — yet he never named the bell that later became the national icon.

8 July 1776: the Declaration read aloud

Four days after Congress adopted it, the Declaration was proclaimed publicly in Philadelphia on 8 July 1776. Colonel John Nixon read a Dunlap broadside — a disposable printed sheet, not the signed parchment now displayed in Washington — in the yard of the Pennsylvania State House, today's Independence Square.

Pennsylvania's Committee of Safety had directed Sheriff William Dewees to arrange the reading and the bell-ringing that accompanied it.

What John Adams actually reported

Writing the next day, Adams described a large crowd that gave three cheers, and battalions firing a feu de joie despite a shortage of powder.

He also reported that the city's bells rang throughout the day and almost all night. What he did not do was identify the State House bell now called the Liberty Bell among them.

The claim the listing gets wrong

The National Park Service finds no evidence that the Liberty Bell itself rang on either 4 or 8 July 1776, saying only that it may have joined the city's other bells. Andrew McNair's office normally included bell-ringing duties, but records do not establish that he — or the State House bell — performed that duty on 8 July.

The name is anachronistic too: in 1776 it was generally the State House bell, and abolitionists began calling it the Liberty Bell in the nineteenth century.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 3 audit passes Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree about when this happened.

What the sources leave uncertain

The July 8 reading and general bell-ringing are well documented. The disputed element is the event title's claim that the particular bell later called the Liberty Bell rang.
Andrew McNair's office normally included bell-ringing duties, but records do not establish that he—or the State House bell—performed that duty on July 8.