The most dramatic act took place in New York City on July 9, 1776. Early that evening, General George Washington and his troops, along with hundreds of citizens, crowded into what is now City Hall Park to hear a reading of the document that had just arrived from Philadelphia. The enthusiastic throng then headed for Broadway and the two-ton equestrian statue of King George III on Bowling Green.

This was the same route protestors took in 1765 when New Yorkers demonstrated against the Stamp Act taxing a host of goods. The following year, the colony’s assembly commissioned the statue in recognition of the king’s support in repealing the despised legislation. Modeled on the classical equestrian sculpture of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, it arrived from London in 1770 and was erected with great pomp. When John Adams paid his first visit to New York in 1774, he wrote to his wife Abigail that the king’s statue was “very large, of solid lead, gilded with gold, standing on a pedestal of marble very high.”

Two years later, fervent New Yorkers, with the help of Washington’s soldiers, quickly pulled it from its plinth and broke it into pieces. Much of the lead was shipped to Connecticut and melted down to make 42,008 bullets. U.S. Postmaster Ebenezer Hazard wrote that the statue “has been pulled down to make musket ball of, so that his troops will probably have melted Majesty fired at them.”......