Americans began celebrating the Fourth of July before the nation had achieved independence, with the first celebration occurring in 1777, in Philadelphia.

Tomorrow we celebrate the 232nd anniversary of our nation’s birth. And once again, the New York Public Library has placed on display its copy in Thomas Jefferson’s hand of the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson wrote out this fair copy in the week following July 4, 1776, for submission to the Continental Congress. Of the few copies he made, the library’s is one of only two known intact copies. It is thus an autograph manuscript of astonishing historical value. Extremely fragile, it can be exhibited only for very brief periods and under very carefully controlled lighting conditions. It’s on view in the beautiful, compact Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Gallery, on the first floor of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, through August 2.

As in the past, the library has supplemented this manuscript with a choice selection of other items from the collection. These include an autograph letter, dated June 21, 1776, from Benjamin Franklin to George Washington; a July 6 copy of the Pennsylvania Evening Post; a July 10 copy of the Pennsylvania Gazette; a July 15 copy of the New-York Gazette and the Weekly Mercury, and the first broadside printing of the declaration.

Best of all is a copy of the first New York printing, dated July 9, of which only two or three copies are thought to exist. July 9 is when the declaration was first declaimed to New Yorkers assembled on the Commons (where City Hall Park now is). Upon hearing Jefferson’s words, a spontaneous mob raced down Broadway — St. Paul’s Chapel, between Vesey and Fulton streets, was 12 years old — to Bowling Green, where an equestrian statue of George III stood, though not for much longer. The mob broke through the iron fence and toppled the statue.

The German printmaker Franz Xaver Habermann, who’d never seen New York nor, it would appear, read descriptions of the city, commemorated the scene: Majestic stone buildings surround Bowling Green (there were no majestic stone buildings in New York in 1776), while the heavy work of toppling king and horse is carried out by African slaves. The library owns a copy of the print and, though it is laughable, I still wish it had been included with the other materials on display. (This July 4, by the way, is the 181st anniversary of the emancipation of the slaves of New York.)

Go to Bowling Green today and look at the fence. It’s the same fence the topplers broke through. All that’s missing are the crowns that once topped the fence posts — they were batted off on that July day in 1776. The uneven tops of the posts attest to the crowns’ onetime presence. Run your hand along the tops for an immediate tactile connection to our nation’s beginning, as stirring, in its way, as looking at Jefferson’s handwriting in the Wachenheim Gallery.

Of course, Jefferson hated New York, which he called “a cloacina of all the depravities of human nature.” Forced to live here as our first secretary of state, he campaigned hard to move the capital elsewhere. He finally struck a deal with Alexander Hamilton: Jefferson would support the federal government’s assumption of war debts incurred by the individual states, and Hamilton would support the removal of the capital for an interim period to Philadelphia while a new capital city was built ex nihilo on the banks of the Potomac. The dinner meeting where the fateful deal was struck, attended also by James Madison, took place at 57 Maiden Lane, where Jefferson is honored by a fine plaque on the façade of the office building on the site today.

We do not normally associate Hamilton, a New Yorker, with the Fourth of July. But he led New York to accept the Constitution in 1788. Generally, residents of New York City were in favor of ratification; people upstate were not. The Federalist Papers were essays meant to persuade reluctant New Yorkers to accept the new Constitution. New York said yes — by a narrow margin. City artisans and tradesmen, who’d been among the ardent revolutionaries of 1776, planned to stage a great celebratory parade and festival to honor Hamilton on July 4, 1788. The celebration was delayed when word of ratification took longer than expected to reach the city. Thus, the Grand Federal Procession, the city’s greatest parade up to then, took place on July 23, beginning at the Commons, proceeding to Pearl Street, and continuing via Hanover Square back up to Broome Street, where revelers toasted Hamilton in a canvas pavilion created for the occasion by Pierre L’Enfant. Maybe New Yorkers should celebrate July 23 as well as July 4.

We have always commemorated the Fourth of July in a festive mood, so it’s not as though fireworks and hot dogs and bonhomie are in any way degradations of a solemn anniversary. But any among us who is grateful and proud to be American should not lose sight of the day’s meaning. You will not get closer to the origins of the nation than by viewing the Declaration of Independence in the Wachenheim Gallery.

Until August 2 (Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, 212-930-0830).