July 4, 1962 - President Kennedy declared today that the U.S. looked forward to a “declaration of interdependence” that would bring it into a “concrete Atlantic partnership” with a united Europe. A crowd of more than 90,000 persons stood in beautiful Fourth of July weather in Philadelphia’s Independence Square as Mr. Kennedy issued a call for “the eventual union of all free men — those who are now free and those who are vowing that someday they will be free.” The Atlantic partnership he proposed, Mr. Kennedy said, could serve as the “nucleus” for such a union. He declared: “I will say here and now, on this Day of Independence, that the United States will be ready for a declaration of interdependence, that we will be prepared to discuss with a united Europe the ways and means of forming a concrete Atlantic partnership, a mutually beneficial partnership between the new union now emerging in Europe and the old American union founded here 175 years ago.”
