Fourth of July, Independence Day, Independent Day ...

[Flesh Thorn]

Fourth of July, Independence Day, Independent Day ...
What are we supposed to call this holiday?

Americans celebrate their independence from England on Thursday. If you want to be truly authentic while barbecuing and watching the fireworks, should you refer to the holiday as “the Fourth of July” or “Independence Day?”
“Independence Day,” or even “Independent Day.” When 18th-century state legislatures planned the first July 4 observances, they didn’t bother to give the day a proper name. “Independence Day,” however, had slightly more currency than “Fourth of July” in contemporary writings. A Royall Tyler poem dating to the late 18th or early 19th century, for example, commands Americans to “squeak the fife and beat the drum, independence day is come!” Tyler also refers to the holiday as “Independent Day,” which was a widely used alternative.
The phrase “Fourth of July” was in use by the end of the 18th century, but not quite as often. While traveling through Connecticut in 1807 and 1808, early American chronicler Edward Augustus Kendall saw citizens assembling on a knoll to celebrate “the Fourth of July, or Independent or Independence Day.” “Fourth of July” overtook both “Independence Day” and “Independent Day” in newspaper articles and toasts to George Washington during the 19th century. In an article for New England magazine in 1890, historian Edward Hale wrote, “in my boyhood, the event ... was called independence day much more than it is now.”

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[Jim]

Good catch! Happy 4th of July, brother!