This is Angela Odell, and you are listening to Real Cool History for Kids, a podcast show featuring history told from a distinctly biblical worldview perspective. Welcome to an adventure.

Welcome to episode 157 of Real Cool History for Kids.

This episode is for every single one of you who has listened to and supported this

podcast since it started six years ago on July 1st, 2019.

In just a few days, our nation will be celebrating the 4th of July, and in this episode,

we are going to travel back to a time of revolution and courage and powerful ideas, ideas

that changed the course of history forever by bringing about the beginning of our country.

That's right. We are going to have the very first episode all about the story of the 4th of July,

the birthday of our nation, the United States of America.

To begin the story, we have to rewind all the way back

to the 1760s. Back then, the 13 colonies in North America were under the rule of King George

the third of Great Britain. Many of the colonists still thought of themselves as, well,

British citizens, and they were loyal to the king. But that would soon change. At first,

most of the complaints were about money. You've probably heard the phrase, no taxation without representation. That meant

the colonists were being taxed by the British government, but they had no voice, no one to speak

up for them in parliament. But that wasn't the whole picture. As we look deeper into the story, we discover that the

colonist reasons for wanting independence went far beyond taxes. In 1776, a young

Virginian named Thomas Jefferson was asked to write a Declaration of Independence.

This was a document outlining all of the reasons that the American colonies felt that they just, well, they just couldn't stay under Britain's rule. In his rough

draft, Jefferson listed 27 grievances, the many, many ways that King George had mistreated the

colonies. He wasn't just talking about money. He was talking about justice, liberty, and human dignity.

Let's explore some of the lesser-known grievances that Jefferson originally included in his

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