The Declaration of Independence: A History
When in the Course of human events,
it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have
connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the
separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes
which impel them to the separation.
All men and woman are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness .-That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men and woman , deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed, -That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles
and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
affect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that
Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient
causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more
disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by
abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to
reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to
throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the
necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated
injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an
absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a
candid world.
In 1761, fifteen years before the
United States of America burst onto the world stage with the Declaration of
Independence, the American colonists were loyal British subjects who celebrated
the coronation of their new King, George III. The colonies that stretched from
present-day Maine to Georgia were distinctly English in character although they
had been settled by Scots, Welsh, Irish, Dutch, Swedes, Finns, Africans,
French, Germans, and Swiss, as well as English.
As English men and women, the
American colonists were heirs to the thirteenth-century English document, the
Magna Carta, which established the principles that no one is above the law (not
even the King), and that no one can take away certain rights. So in 1763, when
the King began to assert his authority over the colonies to make them share the
cost of the Seven Years' War England had just fought and won, the English
colonists protested by invoking their rights as free men and loyal subjects. It
was only after a decade of repeated efforts on the part of the colonists to
defend their rights that they resorted to armed conflict and, eventually, to
the unthinkable–separation from the motherland.
Drafted by Thomas Jefferson between
June 11 and June 28, 1776, the Declaration of Independence is at once the nation's
most cherished symbol of liberty and Jefferson's most enduring monument.
Jefferson expressed the convictions in the minds and hearts of the American
people. The political philosophy of the Declaration was not new; its ideals of
individual liberty had already been expressed by John Locke and the Continental
philosophers. What Jefferson did was to summarize this philosophy in
"self-evident truths" and set forth a list of grievances against the
King in order to justify before the world the breaking of ties between the
colonies and the mother country.
The Declaration of Independence
Nations come into being in many
ways. Military rebellion, civil strife, acts of heroism, acts of treachery, a
thousand greater and lesser clashes between defenders of the old order and
supporters of the new--all these occurrences and more have marked the
emergences of new nations, large and small. The birth of our own nation
included them all. That birth was unique, not only in the immensity of its
later impact on the course of world history and the growth of democracy, but
also because so many of the threads in our national history run back through
time to come together in one place, in one time, and in one document: the
Declaration of Independence.
The clearest call for independence
up to the summer of 1776 came in Philadelphia on June 7. On that date in
session in the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall), the
Continental Congress heard Richard Henry Lee of Virginia read his resolution
beginning: "Resolved: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought
to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance
to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the
State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."
The Lee Resolution was an
expression of what was already beginning to happen throughout the colonies.
When the Second Continental Congress, which was essentially the government of
the United States from 1775 to 1788, first met in May 1775, King George III had
not replied to the petition for redress of grievances that he had been sent by
the First Continental Congress. The Congress gradually took on the
responsibilities of a national government. In June 1775 the Congress
established the Continental Army as well as a continental currency. By the end
of July of that year, it created a post office for the "United
Colonies."
In August 1775 a royal proclamation
declared that the King's American subjects were "engaged in open and
avowed rebellion." Later that year, Parliament passed the American
Prohibitory Act, which made all American vessels and cargoes forfeit to the
Crown. And in May 1776 the Congress learned that the King had negotiated
treaties with German states to hire mercenaries to fight in America. The weight
of these actions combined to convince many Americans that the mother country
was treating the colonies as a foreign entity.
One by one, the Continental
Congress continued to cut the colonies' ties to Britain. The Privateering
Resolution, passed in March 1776, allowed the colonists "to fit out armed
vessels to cruise [sic] on the enemies of these United Colonies." On April
6, 1776, American ports were opened to commerce with other nations, an action
that severed the economic ties fostered by the Navigation Acts. A
"Resolution for the Formation of Local Governments" was passed on May
10, 1776.
At the same time, more of the
colonists themselves were becoming convinced of the inevitability of
independence. Thomas Paine's Common Sense, published in January 1776, was sold
by the thousands. By the middle of May 1776, eight colonies had decided that
they would support independence. On May 15, 1776, the Virginia Convention
passed a resolution that "the delegates appointed to represent this colony
in General Congress be instructed to propose to that respectable body to
declare the United Colonies free and independent states."
It was in keeping with these
instructions that Richard Henry Lee, on June 7, 1776, presented his resolution.
There were still some delegates, however, including those bound by earlier
instructions, who wished to pursue the path of reconciliation with Britain. On
June 11 consideration of the Lee Resolution was postponed by a vote of seven
colonies to five, with New York abstaining. Congress then recessed for 3 weeks.
The tone of the debate indicated that at the end of that time the Lee
Resolution would be adopted. Before Congress recessed, therefore, a Committee
of Five was appointed to draft a statement presenting to the world the
colonies' case for independence.
The Committee of Five
The committee consisted of two New
England men, John Adams of Massachusetts and Roger Sherman of Connecticut; two
men from the Middle Colonies, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and Robert R.
Livingston of New York; and one southerner, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. In
1823 Jefferson wrote that the other members of the committee "unanimously
pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught [sic]. I consented; I drew it;
but before I reported it to the committee I communicated it separately to Dr.
Franklin and Mr. Adams requesting their corrections. . . I then wrote a fair
copy, reported it to the committee, and from them, unaltered to the
Congress." (If Jefferson did make a "fair copy," incorporating
the changes made by Franklin and Adams, it has not been preserved. It may have
been the copy that was amended by the Congress and used for printing, but in
any case, it has not survived. Jefferson's rough draft, however, with changes
made by Franklin and Adams, as well as Jefferson's own notes of changes by the
Congress, is housed at the Library of Congress.)
Jefferson's account reflects three
stages in the life of the Declaration: the document originally written by
Jefferson; the changes to that document made by Franklin and Adams, resulting
in the version that was submitted by the Committee of Five to the Congress; and
the version that was eventually adopted.
On July 1, 1776, Congress
reconvened. The following day, the Lee Resolution for independence was adopted
by 12 of the 13 colonies, New York not voting. Immediately afterward, the
Congress began to consider the Declaration. Adams and Franklin had made only a
few changes before the committee submitted the document. The discussion in
Congress resulted in some alterations and deletions, but the basic document
remained Jefferson's. The process of revision continued through all of July 3
and into the late morning of July 4. Then, at last, church bells rang out over
Philadelphia; the Declaration had been officially adopted.
The text of the Declaration can be divided into five
sections--the introduction, the preamble, the indictment of George III, the
denunciation of the British people, and the conclusion.
In Congress, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration
of the thirteen united States of America.
He has refused his Assent to Laws,
the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to
pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their
operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has
utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation
of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of
Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable
to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative
bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of
their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance
with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative
Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights
of the people.
He has refused for a long time,
after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative
powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for
their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers
of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the
population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for
Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations
hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the
Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing
Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his
Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of
their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New
Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out
their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of
peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the
Military independent of and superior to the civil power.
He has combined with others to
subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by
our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders
which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of
English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary
government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example
and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters,
abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our
Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and
declaring they invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here,
by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged
our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting
large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation
and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely
paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a
civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow
Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to
become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by
their Hands.
He has excited domestic
insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of
our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions
We have petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions
have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus
marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a
free people.
Nor have we been wanting in
attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of
attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.
We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement
here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have
conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations,
which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too
have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must,
therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold
them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives
of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to
the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the
Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish
and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and
Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British
Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great
Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent
States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances,
establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent
States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm
reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each
other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred honour.
2.5 million. In July 1776, the
estimated number of people living in the newly independent nation. Source: https://lnkd.in/beVpZ_h #4thofJuly
Sources:
-Was John Hancock’s Signature Too Big? Slate articles.
-Declaration of Independence. documents.gov
- National Archive. documents.gov
-Is the Declaration of Independence Illegal? History in the Headlines.
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