Word of the declaration of independence

United States Declaration of Independence
The 1823 facsimile of the engrossed copy of the Declaration of Independence
Created	June–July 1776
Ratified	July 4, 1776
Location	Engrossed copy: National Archives Building Rough draft: Library of Congress
Author(s)	Thomas Jefferson, Committee of Five
Signatories	56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress
Purpose	To announce and explain separation from Great Britain[1]: 5

The United States Declaration of Independence, officially The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, is the pronouncement and founding document adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at Pennsylvania State House, which was later renamed Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. Enacted during the American Revolution, the Declaration explains why the Thirteen Colonies at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain regarded themselves as thirteen independent sovereign states and no longer subject to British colonial rule. With the Declaration, the 13 states took a collective first step in forming the United States and, de facto, formalized the American Revolutionary War, which had been ongoing since April 1775.

The Declaration of Independence was signed by 56 of America’s Founding Fathers, who were Second Continental Congress delegates from New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The Declaration became one of the most circulated and widely reprinted documents in early American history.

The Committee of Five drafted the Declaration to be ready when Congress voted on independence. John Adams, a leading proponent of independence, persuaded the Committee of Five to charge Thomas Jefferson with authoring the document’s original draft, which the Second Continental Congress then edited. The Declaration was a formal explanation of why the Continental Congress had voted to declare its independence from Great Britain, a year after the American Revolutionary War broke out. The Lee Resolution for independence was passed unanimously by the Congress on July 2.

After ratifying the text on July 4, Congress issued the Declaration of Independence in several forms. It was initially published as the printed Dunlap broadside that was widely distributed and read to the public. Jefferson’s original draft is currently preserved at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., complete with changes made by Adams and Benjamin Franklin, and Jefferson’s notes of changes made by Congress. The best-known version of the Declaration is the signed copy now displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., which is popularly regarded as the official document. This engrossed copy was ordered by Congress on July 19 and signed primarily on August 2, 1776.^[2][3]

The sources and interpretation of the Declaration have been the subject of much scholarly inquiry. The Declaration justified the independence of the United States by listing 27 colonial grievances against King George III and by asserting certain natural and legal rights, including a right of revolution. Its original purpose was to announce independence, and references to the text of the Declaration were few in the following years. Abraham Lincoln made it the centerpiece of his policies and his rhetoric, as in the Gettysburg Address of 1863.^[4] Since then, it has become a well-known statement on human rights, particularly its second sentence: «We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 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.»

The declaration was made to guarantee equal rights for every person, and if it had been intended for only a certain section of people, Congress would have left it as «rights of Englishmen».^[5] Stephen Lucas called it «one of the best-known sentences in the English language»,^[6] with historian Joseph Ellis writing that the document contains «the most potent and consequential words in American history».^[7] The passage came to represent a moral standard to which the United States should strive. This view was notably promoted by Lincoln, who considered the Declaration to be the foundation of his political philosophy and argued that it is a statement of principles through which the United States Constitution should be interpreted.^[8]: 126

The Declaration of Independence inspired many similar documents in other countries, the first being the 1789 Declaration of United Belgian States issued during the Brabant Revolution in the Austrian Netherlands. It also served as the primary model for numerous declarations of independence in Europe and Latin America, as well as Africa (Liberia) and Oceania (New Zealand) during the first half of the 19th century.^[9]: 113

Background

Believe me, dear Sir: there is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But, by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose; and in this, I think I speak the sentiments of America.

By the time the Declaration of Independence was adopted in July 1776, the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain had been at war for more than a year. Relations had been deteriorating between the colonies and the mother country since 1763. Parliament enacted a series of measures to increase revenue from the colonies, such as the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767. Parliament believed that these acts were a legitimate means of having the colonies pay their fair share of the costs to keep them in the British Empire.^[11]

Many colonists, however, had developed a different perspective of the empire. The colonies were not directly represented in Parliament, and colonists argued that Parliament had no right to levy taxes upon them. This tax dispute was part of a larger divergence between British and American interpretations of the British Constitution and the extent of Parliament’s authority in the colonies.^[12]: 162 The orthodox British view, dating from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, was that Parliament was the supreme authority throughout the empire, and anything that Parliament did was constitutional.^{[12]: 200–202} In the colonies, however, the idea had developed that the British Constitution recognized certain fundamental rights that no government could violate, including Parliament.^{[12]: 180–182} After the Townshend Acts, some essayists questioned whether Parliament had any legitimate jurisdiction in the colonies.^[13] Anticipating the arrangement of the British Commonwealth, by 1774 American writers such as Samuel Adams, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson argued that Parliament was the legislature of Great Britain only, and that the colonies, which had their own legislatures, were connected to the rest of the empire only through their allegiance to the Crown.^{[12]: 224–225 [14]}

Congress convenes

In 1774, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, known as the Intolerable Acts in the colonies. This was intended to punish the colonists for the Gaspee Affair of 1772 and the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Many colonists considered the Coercive Acts to be in violation of the British Constitution and thus a threat to the liberties of all of British America; the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in September 1774 to coordinate a formal response. Congress organized a boycott of British goods and petitioned the king for repeal of the acts. These measures were unsuccessful, since King George and the Prime Minister, Lord North, were determined to enforce parliamentary supremacy over America. As the king wrote to North in November 1774, «blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent».^[15][16]

Most colonists still hoped for reconciliation with Great Britain, even after fighting began in the American Revolutionary War at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.^[17][18] The Second Continental Congress convened at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia in May 1775, and some delegates hoped for eventual independence, but no one yet advocated declaring it.^[18] Many colonists believed that Parliament no longer had sovereignty over them, but they were still loyal to King George, thinking he would intercede on their behalf. They were disabused of that notion in late 1775, when the king rejected Congress’s second petition, issued a Proclamation of Rebellion, and announced before Parliament on October 26 that he was considering «friendly offers of foreign assistance» to suppress the rebellion.^{[19]: 25 [20]} A pro-American minority in Parliament warned that the government was driving the colonists toward independence.^[19]: 25

Toward independence

Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense was published in January 1776, when the king clearly was not inclined to act as a conciliator.^[21] Paine, recently arrived in the colonies from England, argued in favor of colonial independence, advocating republicanism as an alternative to monarchy and hereditary rule.^{[22][19]: 31–32} Common Sense made a persuasive, impassioned case for independence, which had not been given serious consideration in the colonies. Paine linked independence with Protestant beliefs, as a means to present a distinctly American political identity, and he initiated open debate on a topic few had dared to discuss.^{[23][19]: 33} Public support for separation from Great Britain steadily increased after the publication of Common Sense.^{[19]: 33–34}

Some colonists still hoped for reconciliation, but public support for independence further strengthened in early 1776. In February 1776, colonists learned of Parliament’s passage of the Prohibitory Act, which established a blockade of American ports and declared American ships to be enemy vessels. John Adams, a strong supporter of independence, believed that Parliament had effectively declared American independence before Congress had been able to. Adams labeled the Prohibitory Act the «Act of Independency», calling it «a compleat Dismemberment of the British Empire».^{[24][19]: 25–27} Support for declaring independence grew even more when it was confirmed that King George had hired German mercenaries to use against his American subjects.^[25]

Despite this growing popular support for independence, Congress lacked the clear authority to declare it. Delegates had been elected to Congress by 13 different governments, which included extralegal conventions, ad hoc committees, and elected assemblies, and they were bound by the instructions given to them. Regardless of their personal opinions, delegates could not vote to declare independence unless their instructions permitted such an action.^[26] Several colonies, in fact, expressly prohibited their delegates from taking any steps toward separation from Great Britain, while other delegations had instructions that were ambiguous on the issue;^[19]: 30 consequently, advocates of independence sought to have the Congressional instructions revised. For Congress to declare independence, a majority of delegations would need authorization to vote for it, and at least one colonial government would need to specifically instruct its delegation to propose a declaration of independence in Congress. Between April and July 1776, a «complex political war»^[19]: 59 was waged to bring this about.^{[27]: 671 [28]}

Revising instructions

In the campaign to revise Congressional instructions, many Americans formally expressed their support for separation from Great Britain in what were effectively state and local declarations of independence. Historian Pauline Maier identifies more than ninety such declarations that were issued throughout the Thirteen Colonies from April to July 1776.^{[19]: 48, Appendix A} These «declarations» took a variety of forms. Some were formal written instructions for Congressional delegations, such as the Halifax Resolves of April 12, with which North Carolina became the first colony to explicitly authorize its delegates to vote for independence.^{[27]: 678–679} Others were legislative acts that officially ended British rule in individual colonies, such as the Rhode Island legislature renouncing its allegiance to Great Britain on May 4—the first colony to do so.^{[27]: 679 [29][30]} Many «declarations» were resolutions adopted at town or county meetings that offered support for independence. A few came in the form of jury instructions, such as the statement issued on April 23, 1776, by Chief Justice William Henry Drayton of South Carolina: «the law of the land authorizes me to declare … that George the Third, King of Great Britain … has no authority over us, and we owe no obedience to him.»^{[19]: 69–72} Most of these declarations are now obscure, having been overshadowed by the resolution for independence, approved by Congress on July 2, and the declaration of independence, approved and printed on July 4 and signed in August.^[19]: 48 The modern scholarly consensus is that the best-known and earliest of the local declarations is most likely inauthentic, the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, allegedly adopted in May 1775 (a full year before other local declarations).^[19]: 174

Some colonies held back from endorsing independence. Resistance was centered in the middle colonies of New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Advocates of independence saw Pennsylvania as the key; if that colony could be converted to the pro-independence cause, it was believed that the others would follow.^[27]: 682 On May 1, however, opponents of independence retained control of the Pennsylvania Assembly in a special election that had focused on the question of independence.^[27]: 683 In response, Congress passed a resolution on May 10 which had been promoted by John Adams and Richard Henry Lee, calling on colonies without a «government sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs» to adopt new governments.^{[27]: 684 [19]: 37 [31]} The resolution passed unanimously, and was even supported by Pennsylvania’s John Dickinson, the leader of the anti-independence faction in Congress, who believed that it did not apply to his colony.^[27]: 684

May 15 preamble

As was the custom, Congress appointed a committee to draft a preamble to explain the purpose of the resolution. John Adams wrote the preamble, which stated that because King George had rejected reconciliation and was hiring foreign mercenaries to use against the colonies, «it is necessary that the exercise of every kind of authority under the said crown should be totally suppressed».^{[19]: 37 [27]: 684 [33]} Adams’ preamble was meant to encourage the overthrow of the governments of Pennsylvania and Maryland, which were still under proprietary governance.^{[34][27]: 684 [35]} Congress passed the preamble on May 15 after several days of debate, but four of the middle colonies voted against it, and the Maryland delegation walked out in protest.^{[36][27]: 685} Adams regarded his May 15 preamble effectively as an American declaration of independence, although a formal declaration would still have to be made.^[19]: 38

Lee’s resolution

On the same day that Congress passed Adams’ preamble, the Virginia Convention set the stage for a formal Congressional declaration of independence. On May 15, the Convention instructed Virginia’s congressional delegation «to propose to that respectable body to declare the United Colonies free and independent States, absolved from all allegiance to, or dependence upon, the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain».^{[37][19]: 63 [38]} In accordance with those instructions, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia presented a three-part resolution to Congress on June 7.^[39] The motion was seconded by John Adams, calling on Congress to declare independence, form foreign alliances, and prepare a plan of colonial confederation. The part of the resolution relating to declaring independence read: «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.»^{[19]: 41 [40]}

Lee’s resolution met with resistance in the ensuing debate. Opponents of the resolution conceded that reconciliation was unlikely with Great Britain, while arguing that declaring independence was premature, and that securing foreign aid should take priority.^{[27]: 689–690 [19]: 42} Advocates of the resolution countered that foreign governments would not intervene in an internal British struggle, and so a formal declaration of independence was needed before foreign aid was possible. All Congress needed to do, they insisted, was to «declare a fact which already exists».^{[27]: 689 [9]: 33–34 [41]} Delegates from Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, and New York were still not yet authorized to vote for independence, however, and some of them threatened to leave Congress if the resolution were adopted. Congress, therefore, voted on June 10 to postpone further discussion of Lee’s resolution for three weeks.^{[19]: 42–43 [42]} Until then, Congress decided that a committee should prepare a document announcing and explaining independence in case Lee’s resolution was approved when it was brought up again in July.

Final push

Support for a Congressional declaration of independence was consolidated in the final weeks of June 1776. On June 14, the Connecticut Assembly instructed its delegates to propose independence and, the following day, the legislatures of New Hampshire and Delaware authorized their delegates to declare independence.^{[27]: 691–692} In Pennsylvania, political struggles ended with the dissolution of the colonial assembly, and a new Conference of Committees under Thomas McKean authorized Pennsylvania’s delegates to declare independence on June 18.^{[44][27]: 691} The Provincial Congress of New Jersey had been governing the province since January 1776; they resolved on June 15 that Royal Governor William Franklin was «an enemy to the liberties of this country» and had him arrested.^[27]: 692 On June 21, they chose new delegates to Congress and empowered them to join in a declaration of independence.^[27]: 693

Only Maryland and New York had yet to authorize independence toward the end of June. Previously, Maryland’s delegates had walked out when the Continental Congress adopted Adams’ May 15 preamble, and had sent to the Annapolis Convention for instructions.^[27]: 694 On May 20, the Annapolis Convention rejected Adams’ preamble, instructing its delegates to remain against independence. But Samuel Chase went to Maryland and, thanks to local resolutions in favor of independence, was able to get the Annapolis Convention to change its mind on June 28.^{[27]: 694–696 [45][19]: 68} Only the New York delegates were unable to get revised instructions. When Congress had been considering the resolution of independence on June 8, the New York Provincial Congress told the delegates to wait.^{[46][27]: 698} But on June 30, the Provincial Congress evacuated New York as British forces approached, and would not convene again until July 10. This meant that New York’s delegates would not be authorized to declare independence until after Congress had made its decision.^[47]

Draft and adoption

Political maneuvering was setting the stage for an official declaration of independence even while a document was being written to explain the decision. On June 11, 1776, Congress appointed a «Committee of Five» to draft a declaration, consisting of John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Robert R. Livingston of New York, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut. The committee took no minutes, so there is some uncertainty about how the drafting process proceeded; contradictory accounts were written many years later by Jefferson and Adams, too many years to be regarded as entirely reliable—although their accounts are frequently cited.^{[19]: 97–105 [49]} What is certain is that the committee discussed the general outline which the document should follow and decided that Jefferson would write the first draft.^[50] The committee in general, and Jefferson in particular, thought that Adams should write the document, but Adams persuaded them to choose Jefferson and promised to consult with him personally.^[51] Considering Congress’s busy schedule, Jefferson probably had limited time for writing over the next 17 days, and he likely wrote the draft quickly.^[19]: 104 Examination of the text of the early Declaration drafts reflects Jefferson’s reference to the ideas and writings of John Locke and Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense. He then consulted the other members of the Committee of Five who offered minor changes, and then produced another copy incorporating these alterations. The committee presented this copy to the Congress on June 28, 1776. The title of the document was «A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled.»^[1]: 4

Congress ordered that the draft «lie on the table»^[27]: 701 and then methodically edited Jefferson’s primary document for the next two days, shortening it by a fourth, removing unnecessary wording, and improving sentence structure.^[52] They removed Jefferson’s assertion that King George III had forced slavery onto the colonies,^[53] in order to moderate the document and appease those in South Carolina and Georgia, both states which had significant involvement in the slave trade. Jefferson later wrote in his autobiography that Northern states were also supportive towards the clauses removal, «for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.»^[54] Jefferson wrote that Congress had «mangled» his draft version, but the Declaration that was finally produced was «the majestic document that inspired both contemporaries and posterity», in the words of his biographer John Ferling.^[52]

Congress tabled the draft of the declaration on Monday, July 1 and resolved itself into a committee of the whole, with Benjamin Harrison of Virginia presiding, and they resumed debate on Lee’s resolution of independence.^[55] John Dickinson made one last effort to delay the decision, arguing that Congress should not declare independence without first securing a foreign alliance and finalizing the Articles of Confederation.^[27]: 699 John Adams gave a speech in reply to Dickinson, restating the case for an immediate declaration.

A vote was taken after a long day of speeches, each colony casting a single vote, as always. The delegation for each colony numbered from two to seven members, and each delegation voted among themselves to determine the colony’s vote. Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted against declaring independence. The New York delegation abstained, lacking permission to vote for independence. Delaware cast no vote because the delegation was split between Thomas McKean, who voted yes, and George Read, who voted no. The remaining nine delegations voted in favor of independence, which meant that the resolution had been approved by the committee of the whole. The next step was for the resolution to be voted upon by Congress itself. Edward Rutledge of South Carolina was opposed to Lee’s resolution but desirous of unanimity, and he moved that the vote be postponed until the following day.^{[56][27]: 700}

On July 2, South Carolina reversed its position and voted for independence. In the Pennsylvania delegation, Dickinson and Robert Morris abstained, allowing the delegation to vote three-to-two in favor of independence. The tie in the Delaware delegation was broken by the timely arrival of Caesar Rodney, who voted for independence. The New York delegation abstained once again since they were still not authorized to vote for independence, although they were allowed to do so a week later by the New York Provincial Congress.^[19]: 45 The resolution of independence was adopted with twelve affirmative votes and one abstention, and the colonies formally severed political ties with Great Britain.^[40] John Adams wrote to his wife on the following day and predicted that July 2 would become a great American holiday^{[27]: 703–704} He thought that the vote for independence would be commemorated; he did not foresee that Americans would instead celebrate Independence Day on the date when the announcement of that act was finalized.^{[19]: 160–161}

I am apt to believe that [Independence Day] will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.^[57]

Congress next turned its attention to the committee’s draft of the declaration. They made a few changes in wording during several days of debate and deleted nearly a fourth of the text. The wording of the Declaration of Independence was approved on July 4, 1776, and sent to the printer for publication.

There is a distinct change in wording from this original broadside printing of the Declaration and the final official engrossed copy. The word «unanimous» was inserted as a result of a Congressional resolution passed on July 19, 1776: «Resolved, That the Declaration passed on the 4th, be fairly engrossed on parchment, with the title and stile of ‘The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America,’ and that the same, when engrossed, be signed by every member of Congress.»^[58] Historian George Athan Billias says: «Independence amounted to a new status of interdependence: the United States was now a sovereign nation entitled to the privileges and responsibilities that came with that status. America thus became a member of the international community, which meant becoming a maker of treaties and alliances, a military ally in diplomacy, and a partner in foreign trade on a more equal basis.»^[59]

Annotated text of the engrossed declaration

The declaration is not divided into formal sections; but it is often discussed as consisting of five parts: introduction, preamble, indictment of King George III, denunciation of the British people, and conclusion.^[60]

Introduction Asserts as a matter of Natural Law the ability of a people to assume political independence; acknowledges that the grounds for such independence must be reasonable, and therefore explicable, and ought to be explained.	In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, «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 and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.»[61]
Preamble Outlines a general philosophy of government that justifies revolution when government harms natural rights.[60]	«We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 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, 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 effect 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.»
Indictment A bill of grievances documenting the king’s «repeated injuries and usurpations» of the Americans’ rights and liberties.[60]	«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. «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 of 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 benefit 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 themselves 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 compleat 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.»
Failed warnings Describes the colonists’ attempts to inform and warn the British people of the king’s injustice, and the British people’s failure to act. Even so, it affirms the colonists’ ties to the British as «brethren.»[60]	«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.»
Denunciation This section essentially finishes the case for independence. The conditions that justified revolution have been shown.[60]	«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.»
Conclusion The signers assert that there exist conditions under which people must change their government, that the British have produced such conditions and, by necessity, the colonies must throw off political ties with the British Crown and become independent states. The conclusion contains, at its core, the Lee Resolution that had been passed on July 2.	«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 Honor.»
Signatures The first and most famous signature on the engrossed copy was that of John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress. Two future presidents (Thomas Jefferson and John Adams) and a father and great-grandfather of two other presidents (Benjamin Harrison V) were among the signatories. Edward Rutledge (age 26) was the youngest signer, and Benjamin Franklin (age 70) was the oldest signer. The fifty-six signers of the Declaration represented the new states as follows (from north to south):[62]	New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton Massachusetts: Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross Delaware: George Read, Caesar Rodney, Thomas McKean Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward Jr., Thomas Lynch Jr., Arthur Middleton Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Influences and legal status

Historians have often sought to identify the sources that most influenced the words and political philosophy of the Declaration of Independence. By Jefferson’s own admission, the Declaration contained no original ideas, but was instead a statement of sentiments widely shared by supporters of the American Revolution. As he explained in 1825:

Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion.^[63]

Jefferson’s most immediate sources were two documents written in June 1776: his own draft of the preamble of the Constitution of Virginia, and George Mason’s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Ideas and phrases from both of these documents appear in the Declaration of Independence.^{[64][19]: 125–126} Mason’s opening was:

Section 1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.^[65]

Mason was, in turn, directly influenced by the 1689 English Declaration of Rights, which formally ended the reign of King James II.^{[19]: 126–128} During the American Revolution, Jefferson and other Americans looked to the English Declaration of Rights as a model of how to end the reign of an unjust king.^{[19]: 53–57} The Scottish Declaration of Arbroath (1320) and the Dutch Act of Abjuration (1581) have also been offered as models for Jefferson’s Declaration, but these models are now accepted by few scholars. Maier found no evidence that the Dutch Act of Abjuration served as a model for the Declaration, and considers the argument «unpersuasive».^[19]: 264 Armitage discounts the influence of the Scottish and Dutch acts, and writes that neither was called «declarations of independence» until fairly recently.^{[9]: 42–44} Stephen E. Lucas argued in favor of the influence of the Dutch act.^[66][67]

Jefferson wrote that a number of authors exerted a general influence on the words of the Declaration.^[68] English political theorist John Locke is usually cited as one of the primary influences, a man whom Jefferson called one of «the three greatest men that have ever lived».^[69] In 1922, historian Carl L. Becker wrote, «Most Americans had absorbed Locke’s works as a kind of political gospel; and the Declaration, in its form, in its phraseology, follows closely certain sentences in Locke’s second treatise on government.»^[1]: 27 The extent of Locke’s influence on the American Revolution has been questioned by some subsequent scholars, however. Historian Ray Forrest Harvey argued in 1937 for the dominant influence of Swiss jurist Jean Jacques Burlamaqui, declaring that Jefferson and Locke were at «two opposite poles» in their political philosophy, as evidenced by Jefferson’s use in the Declaration of Independence of the phrase «pursuit of happiness» instead of «property».^[70] Other scholars emphasized the influence of republicanism rather than Locke’s classical liberalism.^[71] Historian Garry Wills argued that Jefferson was influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment, particularly Francis Hutcheson, rather than Locke,^[72] an interpretation that has been strongly criticized.^[73]

Legal historian John Phillip Reid has written that the emphasis on the political philosophy of the Declaration has been misplaced. The Declaration is not a philosophical tract about natural rights, argues Reid, but is instead a legal document—an indictment against King George for violating the constitutional rights of the colonists.^[74] As such, it follows the process of the 1550 Magdeburg Confession, which legitimized resistance against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in a multi-step legal formula now known as the doctrine of the lesser magistrate.^[75] Historian David Armitage has argued that the Declaration was strongly influenced by de Vattel’s The Law of Nations, the dominant international law treatise of the period, and a book that Benjamin Franklin said was «continually in the hands of the members of our Congress».^[76] Armitage writes, «Vattel made independence fundamental to his definition of statehood»; therefore, the primary purpose of the Declaration was «to express the international legal sovereignty of the United States». If the United States were to have any hope of being recognized by the European powers, the American revolutionaries first had to make it clear that they were no longer dependent on Great Britain.^{[9]: 21, 38–40} The Declaration of Independence does not have the force of law domestically, but nevertheless it may help to provide historical and legal clarity about the Constitution and other laws.^{[77][78][79][80]}

Signing

The Declaration became official when Congress recorded its vote adopting the document on July 4; it was transposed on paper and signed by John Hancock, President of the Congress, on that day. Signatures of the other delegates were not needed to further authenticate it.^[81] The signatures of fifty-six delegates are affixed to the Declaration, though the exact date when each person signed became debatable.^[81] Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams all wrote that the Declaration was signed by Congress on July 4.^[82] But in 1796, signer Thomas McKean disputed that, because some signers were not then present, including several who were not even elected to Congress until after that date.^[81][83] Historians have generally accepted McKean’s version of events.^[84][85][86] History particularly shows most delegates signed on August 2, 1776, and those who were not then present added their names later.^[87]

In an 1811 letter to Adams, Benjamin Rush recounted the signing in stark fashion, describing it as a scene of «pensive and awful silence». Rush said the delegates were called up, one after another, and then filed forward somberly to subscribe what each thought was their ensuing death warrant.^[88] He related that the «gloom of the morning» was briefly interrupted when the rotund Benjamin Harrison of Virginia said to a diminutive Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, at the signing table, «I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes and be with the Angels, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead.»^[88] According to Rush, Harrison’s remark «procured a transient smile, but it was soon succeeded by the Solemnity with which the whole business was conducted.»^[88]

The signatories include then future presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, though the most legendary signature is John Hancock’s.^[89] His large, flamboyant signature became iconic, and the term John Hancock emerged in the United States as a metaphor of «signature».^[90] A commonly circulated but apocryphal account claims that, after Hancock signed, the delegate from Massachusetts commented, «The British ministry can read that name without spectacles.» Another report indicates that Hancock proudly declared, «There! I guess King George will be able to read that!»^[91]

A legend emerged years later about the signing of the Declaration, after the document had become an important national symbol. John Hancock is supposed to have said that Congress, having signed the Declaration, must now «all hang together», and Benjamin Franklin replied: «Yes, we must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.» That quotation first appeared in print in an 1837 London humor magazine.^[92]

The Syng inkstand used at the signing was also used at the signing of the United States Constitution in 1787.

Publication and reaction

After Congress approved the final wording of the Declaration on July 4, a handwritten copy was sent a few blocks away to the printing shop of John Dunlap. Through the night, Dunlap printed about 200 broadsides for distribution. The source copy used for this printing has been lost and may have been a copy in Thomas Jefferson’s hand.^[93] It was read to audiences and reprinted in newspapers throughout the 13 states. The first formal public readings of the document took place on July 8, in Philadelphia (by John Nixon in the yard of Independence Hall), Trenton, New Jersey, and Easton, Pennsylvania; the first newspaper to publish it was The Pennsylvania Evening Post on July 6.^[19]: 156 A German translation of the Declaration was published in Philadelphia by July 9.^[9]: 72

President of Congress John Hancock sent a broadside to General George Washington, instructing him to have it proclaimed «at the Head of the Army in the way you shall think it most proper».^[19]: 155 Washington had the Declaration read to his troops in New York City on July 9, with thousands of British troops on ships in the harbor. Washington and Congress hoped that the Declaration would inspire the soldiers, and encourage others to join the army.^[19]: 156 After hearing the Declaration, crowds in many cities tore down and destroyed signs or statues representing royal authority. An equestrian statue of King George in New York City was pulled down and the lead used to make musket balls.^{[19]: 156–157}

One of the first readings of the Declaration by the British is believed to have taken place at the Rose and Crown Tavern on Staten Island, New York in the presence of General Howe.^[94] British officials in North America sent copies of the Declaration to Great Britain.^[9]: 73 It was published in British newspapers beginning in mid-August, it had reached Florence and Warsaw by mid-September, and a German translation appeared in Switzerland by October. The first copy of the Declaration sent to France got lost, and the second copy arrived only in November 1776.^[95] It reached Portuguese America by Brazilian medical student «Vendek» José Joaquim Maia e Barbalho, who had met with Thomas Jefferson in Nîmes.

The Spanish-American authorities banned the circulation of the Declaration, but it was widely transmitted and translated: by Venezuelan Manuel García de Sena, by Colombian Miguel de Pombo, by Ecuadorian Vicente Rocafuerte, and by New Englanders Richard Cleveland and William Shaler, who distributed the Declaration and the United States Constitution among Creoles in Chile and Indians in Mexico in 1821.^[96] The North Ministry did not give an official answer to the Declaration, but instead secretly commissioned pamphleteer John Lind to publish a response entitled Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress.^[9]: 75 British Tories denounced the signers of the Declaration for not applying the same principles of «life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness» to African Americans.^[97] Thomas Hutchinson, the former royal governor of Massachusetts, also published a rebuttal.^{[98][9]: 74} These pamphlets challenged various aspects of the Declaration. Hutchinson argued that the American Revolution was the work of a few conspirators who wanted independence from the outset, and who had finally achieved it by inducing otherwise loyal colonists to rebel.^{[12]: 155–156} Lind’s pamphlet had an anonymous attack on the concept of natural rights written by Jeremy Bentham, an argument that he repeated during the French Revolution.^{[9]: 79–80} Both pamphlets questioned how the American slaveholders in Congress could proclaim that «all men are created equal» without freeing their own slaves.^{[9]: 76–77}

William Whipple, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who had fought in the war, freed his slave Prince Whipple because of his revolutionary ideals. In the postwar decades, other slaveholders also freed their slaves; from 1790 to 1810, the percentage of free blacks in the Upper South increased to 8.3 percent from less than one percent of the black population.^[99] Northern states began abolishing slavery shortly after the war for Independence began, and all had abolished slavery by 1804.

Later in 1776, a group of 547 Loyalists, largely from New York, signed a Declaration of Dependence pledging their loyalty to the Crown.^[100]

History of the documents

The official copy of the Declaration of Independence was the one printed on July 4, 1776, under Jefferson’s supervision. It was sent to the states and to the Army and was widely reprinted in newspapers. The slightly different «engrossed copy» (shown at the top of this article) was made later for members to sign. The engrossed version is the one widely distributed in the 21st century. Note that the opening lines differ between the two versions.^[48]

The copy of the Declaration that was signed by Congress is known as the engrossed or parchment copy. It was probably engrossed (that is, carefully handwritten) by clerk Timothy Matlack.^[101] A facsimile made in 1823 has become the basis of most modern reproductions rather than the original because of poor conservation of the engrossed copy through the 19th century.^[101] In 1921, custody of the engrossed copy of the Declaration was transferred from the State Department to the Library of Congress, along with the United States Constitution. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the documents were moved for safekeeping to the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox in Kentucky, where they were kept until 1944.^[102] In 1952, the engrossed Declaration was transferred to the National Archives and is now on permanent display at the National Archives in the «Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom».^[103]

The document signed by Congress and enshrined in the National Archives is usually regarded as the Declaration of Independence, but historian Julian P. Boyd argued that the Declaration, like Magna Carta, is not a single document. Boyd considered the printed broadsides ordered by Congress to be official texts, as well. The Declaration was first published as a broadside that was printed the night of July 4 by John Dunlap of Philadelphia. Dunlap printed about 200 broadsides, of which 26 are known to survive. The 26th copy was discovered in The National Archives in England in 2009.^[104]

In 1777, Congress commissioned Mary Katherine Goddard to print a new broadside that listed the signers of the Declaration, unlike the Dunlap broadside.^[101][105] Nine copies of the Goddard broadside are known to still exist.^[105] A variety of broadsides printed by the states are also extant, including seven copies of the Solomon Southwick broadside, one of which was acquired by Washington University in St. Louis in 2015.^[105][106]

Several early handwritten copies and drafts of the Declaration have also been preserved. Jefferson kept a four-page draft that late in life he called the «original Rough draught».^[107] Historians now understand that Jefferson’s Rough draft was one in a series of drafts used by the Committee of Five before being submitted to Congress for deliberation. According to Boyd, the first, «original» handwritten draft of the Declaration of Independence that predated Jefferson’s Rough draft, was lost or destroyed during the drafting process.^[108] It is not known how many drafts Jefferson wrote prior to this one, and how much of the text was contributed by other committee members. In 1947, Boyd discovered a fragment of an earlier draft in Jefferson’s handwriting that predates Jefferson’s Rough draft.^[109] In 2018, the Thomas Paine National Historical Association published findings on an additional early handwritten draft of the Declaration, referred to as the «Sherman Copy», that John Adams copied from the lost «original draft» for Committee of Five members Roger Sherman and Benjamin Franklin’s initial review. An inscription on the document noting «A beginning perhaps…», the early state of the text, and the manner in which this document was hastily taken, appears to chronologically place this draft earlier than both the fair Adams copy held in the Massachusetts Historical Society collection and the Jefferson «rough draft».^[110] After the text was finalized by Congress as a whole, Jefferson and Adams sent copies of the rough draft to friends, with variations noted from the original drafts.

During the writing process, Jefferson showed the rough draft to Adams and Franklin, and perhaps to other members of the drafting committee,^[107] who made a few more changes. Franklin, for example, may have been responsible for changing Jefferson’s original phrase «We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable» to «We hold these truths to be self-evident».^{[1]: 1:427–28} Jefferson incorporated these changes into a copy that was submitted to Congress in the name of the committee.^[107] The copy that was submitted to Congress on June 28 has been lost and was perhaps destroyed in the printing process,^[111] or destroyed during the debates in accordance with Congress’s secrecy rule.^[112]

On April 21, 2017, it was announced that a second engrossed copy had been discovered in the archives at West Sussex County Council in Chichester, England.^[113] Named by its finders the «Sussex Declaration», it differs from the National Archives copy (which the finders refer to as the «Matlack Declaration») in that the signatures on it are not grouped by States. How it came to be in England is not yet known, but the finders believe that the randomness of the signatures points to an origin with signatory James Wilson, who had argued strongly that the Declaration was made not by the States but by the whole people.^[114][115]

Years of exposure to damaging lighting resulted in the original Declaration of Independence document having much of its ink fade by 1876.^[116][117]

Legacy

The Declaration was given little attention in the years immediately following the American Revolution, having served its original purpose in announcing the independence of the United States.^{[9]: 87–88 [19]: 162, 168, 169} Early celebrations of Independence Day largely ignored the Declaration, as did early histories of the Revolution. The act of declaring independence was considered important, whereas the text announcing that act attracted little attention.^{[118][19]: 160} The Declaration was rarely mentioned during the debates about the United States Constitution, and its language was not incorporated into that document.^[9]: 92 George Mason’s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights was more influential, and its language was echoed in state constitutions and state bills of rights more often than Jefferson’s words.^{[9]: 90 [19]: 165–167} «In none of these documents,» wrote Pauline Maier, «is there any evidence whatsoever that the Declaration of Independence lived in men’s minds as a classic statement of American political principles.»^[19]: 167

Influence in other countries

According to Pauline Maier, many leaders of the French Revolution admired the Declaration of Independence^[19]: 167 but were also interested in the new American state constitutions.^[9]: 82 The inspiration and content of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) emerged largely from the ideals of the American Revolution.^[119] Lafayette prepared its key drafts, working closely in Paris with his friend Thomas Jefferson. It also borrowed language from George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights.^[120][121] The declaration also influenced the Russian Empire, and it had a particular impact on the Decembrist revolt and other Russian thinkers.

According to historian David Armitage, the Declaration of Independence did prove to be internationally influential, but not as a statement of human rights. Armitage argues that the Declaration was the first in a new genre of declarations of independence which announced the creation of new states. Other French leaders were directly influenced by the text of the Declaration of Independence itself. The Manifesto of the Province of Flanders (1790) was the first foreign derivation of the Declaration;^[9]: 113 others include the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence (1811), the Liberian Declaration of Independence (1847), the declarations of secession by the Confederate States of America (1860–61), and the Vietnamese Proclamation of Independence (1945).^{[9]: 120–135} These declarations echoed the United States Declaration of Independence in announcing the independence of a new state, without necessarily endorsing the political philosophy of the original.^{[9]: 104, 113}

Other countries have used the Declaration as inspiration or have directly copied sections from it. These include the Haitian declaration of January 1, 1804 during the Haitian Revolution, the United Provinces of New Granada in 1811, the Argentine Declaration of Independence in 1816, the Chilean Declaration of Independence in 1818, Costa Rica in 1821, El Salvador in 1821, Guatemala in 1821, Honduras in 1821, Mexico in 1821, Nicaragua in 1821, Peru in 1821, Bolivian War of Independence in 1825, Uruguay in 1825, Ecuador in 1830, Colombia in 1831, Paraguay in 1842, Dominican Republic in 1844, Texas Declaration of Independence in March 1836, California Republic in November 1836, Hungarian Declaration of Independence in 1849, Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand in 1835, and the Czechoslovak declaration of independence from 1918 drafted in Washington D.C. with Gutzon Borglum among the drafters. The Rhodesian declaration of independence is based on the American one, as well, ratified in November 1965, although it omits the phrases «all men are created equal» and «the consent of the governed».^{[96][122][123][124]} The South Carolina declaration of secession from December 1860 also mentions the U.S. Declaration of Independence, though it omits references to «all men are created equal» and «consent of the governed».

Revival of interest

Interest in the Declaration was revived in the 1790s with the emergence of the United States’s first political parties.^[125] Throughout the 1780s, few Americans knew or cared who wrote the Declaration.^[126] But in the next decade, Jeffersonian Republicans sought political advantage over their rival Federalists by promoting both the importance of the Declaration and Jefferson as its author.^{[127][19]: 168–171} Federalists responded by casting doubt on Jefferson’s authorship or originality, and by emphasizing that independence was declared by the whole Congress, with Jefferson as just one member of the drafting committee. Federalists insisted that Congress’s act of declaring independence, in which Federalist John Adams had played a major role, was more important than the document announcing it.^{[128][19]: 171} But this view faded away, like the Federalist Party itself, and, before long, the act of declaring independence became synonymous with the document.

A less partisan appreciation for the Declaration emerged in the years following the War of 1812, thanks to a growing American nationalism and a renewed interest in the history of the Revolution.^{[129]: 571–572 [19]: 175–178} In 1817, Congress commissioned John Trumbull’s famous painting of the signers, which was exhibited to large crowds before being installed in the Capitol.^{[129]: 572 [19]: 175} The earliest commemorative printings of the Declaration also appeared at this time, offering many Americans their first view of the signed document.^{[129]: 572 [19]: 175–176 [130][131]} Collective biographies of the signers were first published in the 1820s,^[19]: 176 giving birth to what Garry Wills called the «cult of the signers».^[132] In the years that followed, many stories about the writing and signing of the document were published for the first time.

When interest in the Declaration was revived, the sections that were most important in 1776 were no longer relevant: the announcement of the independence of the United States and the grievances against King George. But the second paragraph was applicable long after the war had ended, with its talk of self-evident truths and unalienable rights.^[9]: 93 The identity of natural law since the 18th century has seen increasing ascendancy towards political and moral norms versus the law of nature, God, or human nature as seen in the past.^[133] The Constitution and the Bill of Rights lacked sweeping statements about rights and equality, and advocates of groups with grievances turned to the Declaration for support.^{[19]: 196–197} Starting in the 1820s, variations of the Declaration were issued to proclaim the rights of workers, farmers, women, and others.^{[19]: 197 [134]} In 1848, for example, the Seneca Falls Convention of women’s rights advocates declared that «all men and women are created equal».^{[19]: 197 [9]: 95}

John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence (1817–1826)

John Trumbull’s painting Declaration of Independence has played a significant role in popular conceptions of the Declaration of Independence. The painting is 12-by-18-foot (3.7 by 5.5 m) in size and was commissioned by the United States Congress in 1817; it has hung in the United States Capitol Rotunda since 1826. It is sometimes described as the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but it actually shows the Committee of Five presenting their draft of the Declaration to the Second Continental Congress on June 28, 1776, and not the signing of the document, which took place later.^[136]

Trumbull painted the figures from life whenever possible, but some had died and images could not be located; hence, the painting does not include all the signers of the Declaration. One figure had participated in the drafting but did not sign the final document; another refused to sign. In fact, the membership of the Second Continental Congress changed as time passed, and the figures in the painting were never in the same room at the same time. It is, however, an accurate depiction of the room in Independence Hall, the centerpiece of the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Trumbull’s painting has been depicted multiple times on U.S. currency and postage stamps. Its first use was on the reverse side of the $100 National Bank Note issued in 1863. A few years later, the steel engraving used in printing the bank notes was used to produce a 24-cent stamp, issued as part of the 1869 Pictorial Issue. An engraving of the signing scene has been featured on the reverse side of the United States two-dollar bill since 1976.

Slavery and the Declaration

The apparent contradiction between the claim that «all men are created equal» and the existence of slavery in the United States attracted comment when the Declaration was first published. Many of the founders understood the incompatibility of the statement of natural equality with the institution of slavery, but continued to enjoy the «Rights of Man».^[137] Jefferson had included a paragraph in his initial rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence vigorously condemning the evil of the slave trade, and condemning King George III for forcing it onto the colonies, but this was deleted from the final version.^{[19]: 146–150 [53]}

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemispere, or to incure miserable death in their transportation hither. this piratical warfare, the opprobium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he had deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

Jefferson himself was a prominent Virginia slaveowner, owning six hundred enslaved Africans on his Monticello plantation.^[138] Referring to this contradiction, English abolitionist Thomas Day wrote in a 1776 letter, «If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.»^[9][139] The African-American writer Lemuel Haynes expressed similar viewpoints in his essay «Liberty Further Extended», where he wrote that «Liberty is Equally as pre[c]ious to a Black man, as it is to a white one».^[140]

In the 19th century, the Declaration took on a special significance for the abolitionist movement. Historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown wrote that «abolitionists tended to interpret the Declaration of Independence as a theological as well as a political document».^[141] Abolitionist leaders Benjamin Lundy and William Lloyd Garrison adopted the «twin rocks» of «the Bible and the Declaration of Independence» as the basis for their philosophies. He wrote, «As long as there remains a single copy of the Declaration of Independence, or of the Bible, in our land, we will not despair.»^[142] For radical abolitionists such as Garrison, the most important part of the Declaration was its assertion of the right of revolution. Garrison called for the destruction of the government under the Constitution, and the creation of a new state dedicated to the principles of the Declaration.^{[19]: 198–199}

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech asking the question, «What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?».

The controversial question of whether to allow additional slave states into the United States coincided with the growing stature of the Declaration. The first major public debate about slavery and the Declaration took place during the Missouri controversy of 1819 to 1821.^[143] Anti-slavery Congressmen argued that the language of the Declaration indicated that the Founding Fathers of the United States had been opposed to slavery in principle, and so new slave states should not be added to the country.^[143]: 604 Pro-slavery Congressmen led by Senator Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina argued that the Declaration was not a part of the Constitution and therefore had no relevance to the question.^[143]: 605

With the abolitionist movement gaining momentum, defenders of slavery such as John Randolph and John C. Calhoun found it necessary to argue that the Declaration’s assertion that «all men are created equal» was false, or at least that it did not apply to black people.^{[19]: 199 [12]: 246} During the debate over the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1853, for example, Senator John Pettit of Indiana argued that the statement «all men are created equal» was not a «self-evident truth» but a «self-evident lie».^[19]: 200 Opponents of the Kansas–Nebraska Act, including Salmon P. Chase and Benjamin Wade, defended the Declaration and what they saw as its antislavery principles.^{[19]: 200–201}

John Brown’s Declaration of Liberty

In preparing for his raid on Harpers Ferry, said by Frederick Douglass to be the beginning of the end of slavery in the United States,^{[144]: 27–28} abolitionist John Brown had many copies printed of a Provisional Constitution. (When the seceding states created the Confederate States of America 16 months later, they operated for over a year under a Provisional Constitution.) It outlines the three branches of government in the quasi-country he hoped to set up in the Appalachian Mountains. It was widely reproduced in the press, and in full in the Select Senate Committee report on John Brown’s insurrection (the Mason Report).^[145]

Much less known, as Brown did not have it printed, is his Declaration of Liberty, dated July 4, 1859, found among his papers at the Kennedy Farm.^{[146]: 330–331} It was written out on sheets of paper attached to fabric, to allow it to be rolled, and it was rolled when found. The hand is that of Owen Brown, who often served as his father’s amanuensis.^[147]

Imitating the vocabulary, punctuation, and capitalization of the 73-year-old U.S. Declaration, the 2000-word document begins:

July 4th 1859

A Declaration of Liberty
By the Representatives of the slave Popolation of the United States of America

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for an Oppressed People to Rise, and assert their Natural Rights, as Human Beings, as Native & mutual Citizens of a free Republic, and break that odious Yoke of oppression, which is so unjustly laid upon them by their fellow Countrymen, and to assume among the powers of Earth the same equal privileges to which the Laws of Nature, & natures God entitle them; A moderate respect for the opinions of Mankind, requires that they should declare the causes which incite them to this just & worthy action.

We hold these truths to be Self Evident; That All Men are Created Equal; That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. That among these are Life, Liberty; & the persuit of happiness. That Nature hath freely given to all Men, a full Supply of Air. Water, & Land; for their sustinance, & mutual happiness, That No Man has any right to deprive his fellow Man, of these Inherent rights, except in punishment of Crime. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That when any form of Government, becomes destructive to these ends, It is the right of the People, to alter, Amend, or Remoddel it, Laying its foundation on Such Principles, & organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect the safety, & happiness of the Human Race.^[148]

The document was apparently intended to be read aloud, but so far as is known Brown never did so, even though he read the Provisional Constitution aloud the day the raid on Harpers Ferry began.^[149]: 74 Very much aware of the history of the American Revolution, he would have read the Declaration aloud after the revolt had started. The document was not published until 1894, and by someone who did not realize its importance and buried it in an appendix of documents.^{[146]: 637–643} It is missing from most but not all studies of John Brown.^{[150][149]: 69–73}

Lincoln and the Declaration

The Declaration’s relationship to slavery was taken up in 1854 by Abraham Lincoln, a little-known former Congressman who idolized the Founding Fathers.^{[19]: 201–202} Lincoln thought that the Declaration of Independence expressed the highest principles of the American Revolution, and that the Founding Fathers had tolerated slavery with the expectation that it would ultimately wither away.^[8]: 126 For the United States to legitimize the expansion of slavery in the Kansas–Nebraska Act, thought Lincoln, was to repudiate the principles of the Revolution. In his October 1854 Peoria speech, Lincoln said:

Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a «sacred right of self-government». … Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. … Let us repurify it. Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. … If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union: but we shall have saved it, as to make, and keep it, forever worthy of the saving.^{[8]: 126–127}

The meaning of the Declaration was a recurring topic in the famed debates between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in 1858. Douglas argued that the phrase «all men are created equal» in the Declaration referred to white men only. The purpose of the Declaration, he said, had simply been to justify the independence of the United States, and not to proclaim the equality of any «inferior or degraded race».^[19]: 204 Lincoln, however, thought that the language of the Declaration was deliberately universal, setting a high moral standard to which the American republic should aspire. «I had thought the Declaration contemplated the progressive improvement in the condition of all men everywhere», he said.^{[19]: 204–205} During the seventh and last joint debate with Steven Douglas at Alton, Illinois, on October 15, 1858, Lincoln said about the declaration:

I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal—equal in «certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.» This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all, constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere.^[151]

According to Pauline Maier, Douglas’s interpretation was more historically accurate, but Lincoln’s view ultimately prevailed. «In Lincoln’s hands,» wrote Maier, «the Declaration of Independence became first and foremost a living document» with «a set of goals to be realized over time».^[19]: 207

Like Daniel Webster, James Wilson, and Joseph Story before him, Lincoln argued that the Declaration of Independence was a founding document of the United States, and that this had important implications for interpreting the Constitution, which had been ratified more than a decade after the Declaration.^{[152]: 129–131} The Constitution did not use the word «equality», yet Lincoln believed that the concept that «all men are created equal» remained a part of the nation’s founding principles.^[152]: 145 He famously expressed this belief, referencing the year 1776, in the opening sentence of his 1863 Gettysburg Address: «Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.»

Lincoln’s view of the Declaration became influential, seeing it as a moral guide to interpreting the Constitution. «For most people now,» wrote Garry Wills in 1992, «the Declaration means what Lincoln told us it means, as a way of correcting the Constitution itself without overthrowing it.»^[152]: 147 Admirers of Lincoln such as Harry V. Jaffa praised this development. Critics of Lincoln, notably Willmoore Kendall and Mel Bradford, argued that Lincoln dangerously expanded the scope of the national government and violated states’ rights by reading the Declaration into the Constitution.^{[152]: 39, 145, 146 [153][154][155][156]}

Women’s suffrage and the Declaration

In July 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York, the first women’s rights convention. It was organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann McClintock, and Jane Hunt. They patterned their «Declaration of Sentiments» on the Declaration of Independence, in which they demanded social and political equality for women. Their motto was that «All men and women are created equal», and they demanded the right to vote.^[157][158]

Excerpt from «Declaration of Sentiments»:

«We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal»-The Declaration of Rights and Sentiments 1848

Civil Rights Movement and the Declaration

1963, in Washington DC at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr delivered his famous «I Have a Dream» speech. This speech was meant to inspire the nation, to take up the causes of the Civil Rights Movement. Luther uses quotations from the Declaration of Independence to encourage equal treatment of all persons regardless of race.

Excerpt from Luther’s speech:

«I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.'» –Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. 1963

LGBTQ+ Rights Movement and the Declaration

In 1978, at the Gay Pride Celebration in San Francisco, California, activist and later politician, Harvey Milk delivered a speech. Milk alluded to the Declaration of Independence, emphasizing that the inalienable rights established by Declaration apply to all persons and cannot be hindered because of one’s sexual orientation.

Excerpt from Milk’s speech:

«All men are created equal and they are endowed with certain inalienable rights…that’s what America is. No matter how hard you try, you cannot erase those words from the Declaration of Independence.» -Harvey Milk 1978

In 2020, the Unitarian Universalist Association, responding to threats from the Trump Admiration to undermine civil rights protections for transgender individuals, mirrored the language of the Declaration of Independence, stating any such actions would «threaten the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.»^[159]

20th century and later

The Declaration was chosen to be the first digitized text (1971).^[160]

The Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence was dedicated in 1984 in Constitution Gardens on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where the signatures of all the original signers are carved in stone with their names, places of residence, and occupations.

The new One World Trade Center building in New York City (2014) is 1776 feet high to symbolize the year that the Declaration of Independence was signed.^{[161][162][163]}

Popular culture

The adoption of the Declaration of Independence was dramatized in the 1969 Tony Award-winning musical 1776 and the 1972 film version, as well as in the 2008 television miniseries John Adams.^[164][165] In 1970, The 5th Dimension recorded the opening of the Declaration on their album Portrait in the song «Declaration». It was first performed on the Ed Sullivan Show on December 7, 1969, and it was taken as a song of protest against the Vietnam War.^[166] The Declaration of Independence is a plot device in the 2004 American film National Treasure.^[167] After the 2009 death of radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, Focus Today aired a «clip» of Harvey speaking about the lives of all the signers of the Declaration of Independence.^[168]

See also

• Journals of the Continental Congress
• Signers Monument

References

Bibliography

External links

• «Declare the Causes: The Declaration of Independence» lesson plan for grades 9–12 from National Endowment for the Humanities
• Declaration of Independence at the National Archives
• Declaration of Independence at the Library of Congress
• Mobile-friendly Declaration of Independence

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

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 and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 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, 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 effect 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.

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 mean time 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 harrass 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 themselves 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 compleat 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 Honor.

[Georgia:]

Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

[North Carolina:]

William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn

[South Carolina:]

Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

[Maryland:]

Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton

[Virginia:]

George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

[Pennsylvania:]

Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross

[Delaware:]

Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

[New York:]

William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris

[New Jersey:]

Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

[New Hampshire:]

Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Matthew Thornton

[Massachusetts:]

John Hancock
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry

[Rhode Island:]

Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery

[Connecticut:]

Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott

Source: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

The Declaration of Independence is the document in which the Thirteen Colonies of Great Britain in North America declared themselves independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain and explained their justifications for separation. It was ratified by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. This anniversary is celebrated as Independence Day in the United States. The handwritten copy signed by the delegates and given to the Congress is on display in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

The Declaration is a watershed event not only in American history, but in the history of freedom and democracy. Its most famous statement, «We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men 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,» expresses not only the founding ethos of the United States, but established a precedent that would be used later in other struggles for freedom, including the struggle for civil rights in the United States.

History

Background

Throughout the 1750s and 1760s, relations between Great Britain and thirteen of her North American colonies became increasingly strained. Fighting broke out in 1775 at Battles of Lexington and Concord, marking the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. Although there was little initial sentiment for outright independence, the view of the British as oppressors widened after the passage of the Intolerable Acts, which struck strongly against colonial self-rule. The rising tide against British rule was exemplified and strengthened by works such as Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense, first released on January 10, 1776, which had a substantial impact on the hearts and minds of colonial Americans.

Draft and adoption

On June 11, 1776, a committee consisting of John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Robert Livingston of New York, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut (the «Committee of Five»), was formed to draft a suitable declaration to frame this resolution. The committee decided that Jefferson would write the draft, which he showed to Franklin and Adams, who made several minor corrections. Jefferson then produced another copy incorporating these changes, and the committee presented this copy to the Continental Congress on June 28, 1776.

Independence was declared on July 2, 1776, pursuant to the «Lee Resolution» presented to the Continental Congress by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia on June 7, 1776, which read (in part):

«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 full Declaration was rewritten somewhat in general session prior to its adoption by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, at Independence Hall. Word of the declaration reached London on August 10.

Distribution and copies

John Trumbull’s famous painting is usually incorrectly identified as a depiction of the signing of the Declaration. What the painting actually depicts is the five-man drafting committee presenting their work to the Congress. Trumbull’s painting can also be found on the back of the U.S. Two dollar bill.^[1]

After its adoption by Congress on July 4, a handwritten draft signed by President of Congress John Hancock and Secretary Charles Thomson was sent to the printing shop of John Dunlap, a few blocks away. Through the night between 150 and 200 copies were made, now known as «Dunlap broadsides.» One was sent to George Washington on July 6, who had it read to his troops in New York on July 9. The Declaration was read aloud for the first time publicly to those assembled in front Independence Hall in Philadelphia on July 8, 1776. The 25 Dunlap broadsides still known to exist are the oldest surviving copies of the document. The original handwritten copy has not survived.

On July 19, 1776, Congress ordered a handwritten copy be produced for the delegates to sign. This engrossed copy of the Declaration was produced by Timothy Matlack, assistant to the secretary of Congress. Most of the delegates signed it on August 2, 1776, in geographic order of their colonies from north to south, though some delegates were not present and had to sign later. Two delegates never signed at all. As new delegates joined the Congress, they were also allowed to sign. A total of 56 delegates eventually signed the Declaration.

The first and most famous signature on the engrossed copy was that of John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress. Two future presidents, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, were among the signatories. Edward Rutledge (age 26), was the youngest signer, and Benjamin Franklin (age 70) was the eldest. The 56 signers of the Declaration represented the new states as follows:

• New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
• Massachusetts: Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
• Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
• Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
• New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
• New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
• Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
• Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
• Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll
• Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
• North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
• South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
• Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

On January 18, 1777, the Continental Congress ordered that the declaration be more widely distributed. The second printing was made by Mary Katharine Goddard. The first printing had included only the names John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Goddard’s printing was the first to list all signatories.

In 1823, printer William J. Stone was commissioned by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams to create an engraving of the document essentially identical to the original. Stone’s copy was made using a wet-ink transfer process, where the surface of the document was moistened, and some of the original ink transferred to the surface of a copper plate which was then etched so that copies could be run off the plate on a press. Because of poor conservation of the 1776 document through the nineteenth century, Stone’s engraving, rather than the original, has become the basis of most modern reproductions.^[2]

Annotated text of the Declaration

The text of the Declaration of Independence can be divided into five sections: the introduction, the preamble, the indictment of George III, the denunciation of the British people, and the conclusion. (Note that these five headings are not part of the text of the document.)

Introduction

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When, in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bonds 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 and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation.

Preamble

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men 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, 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 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 effect 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.

Indictment

Such has been the patient Sufferance so 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 the Facts be submitted to a candid World.

The signers then list 27 grievances against the British Crown. The grievances are directed personally at the King (as in “He has refused his Assent to Laws…»), although many of them refer to actions taken by the British Parliament or the Royal Governors. Many of the grievances are examples of violations of fundamental English law, such as «imposing taxes on us without our Consent,» and «depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury.» Many historians maintain that some of the grievances are exaggerated for purposes of propaganda (such as the «Swarms of Officers» in truth referring to about 50 men ordered to prevent smuggling); the Founders probably felt that these were valid claims against the King in favor of independence.

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.

Denunciation

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.

Conclusion

The signers assert that (since conditions exist under which people must change their government, and the British have produced such conditions) the colonies must necessarily throw off political ties with the British Crown and become independent states. The conclusion contains, at its core, the Lee Resolution that had been passed on July 2.

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 the 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 the divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Differences between draft and final versions

The Declaration went through three stages from conception to final adoption:

1. Jefferson’s original draft.^[3]
2. Jefferson’s draft with revisions from Franklin and Adams.^[4] This was the document submitted by the Committee of Five to the Congress.
3. The final version, which included changes made by the full Congress.^[5]

Jefferson’s original draft included a denunciation of the slave trade («He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.»), which was later edited out by Congress, as was a lengthy criticism of the British people and parliament. According to Jefferson:

The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many. For this reason those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offense.^[5]

Analysis

Historical influences

The United States Declaration of Independence was influenced by the 1581 Dutch Republic declaration of independence, called the Oath of Abjuration. The Kingdom of Scotland’s 1320 Declaration of Arbroath was undoubtedly also an influence as the first known formal declaration of independence. Jefferson is also thought to have drawn on the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which had been adopted in June 1776.

Philosophical background

The Preamble of the Declaration is influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, including the concepts of natural law, self-determination, and Deism. Ideas and even some of the phrasing were taken directly from the writings of English philosopher John Locke, particularly his Second Treatise on Government, titled «Essay Concerning the true original, extent, and end of Civil Government.» In this treatise, Locke espoused the idea of government by consent based on the Enlightenment belief that human beings were born with certain natural rights.

Locke helped to provide both the American and the French revolutionaries with intellectual ammunition for their respective causes. As a product of the Enlightenment, he did not argue so much for democracy as for a social contract between the governors and the governed. This contract could exist between citizens and monarchies or oligarchies, and not just with elected leaders. In Locke’s “contract,” the governed agreed to surrender certain freedoms they enjoyed under the state of nature in exchange for the order and protection provided by a state, exercised according to the rule of law. However, if the state overstepped its limits and began to exercise arbitrary power, it essentially abrogated the contract and thus, the contract was null and void. Under those circumstances the citizens not only have the right to overthrow the state, but are indeed morally compelled to revolt and replace the state.

Other influences included the Discourses of Algernon Sydney, and the writings of Wawrzyniec Grzymala Goslicki and Thomas Paine. According to Jefferson, the purpose of the Declaration was «not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of…but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.»

Purpose

The document served several purposes. It attempts to establish clear reasons for the American’s rebellion that might persuade reluctant colonists to join them as well as establish their just cause to foreign governments that might lend them aid. The Declaration also served to unite the members of the Continental Congress. Most were aware that they were signing what would be their death warrant in case the Revolution failed, and the Declaration served to make anything short of victory in the Revolution unthinkable. (Or, as Benjamin Franklin wryly noted: «We must all now hang together, or we will all surely hang separately.»)

Influence on other documents

The Declaration of Independence contains many of the founding fathers’ fundamental principles, some of which were later codified in the United States Constitution. It was the model for the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention Declaration of Sentiments. It has also been used as the model of a number of later documents such as the declarations of independence of Vietnam and Rhodesia. In the United States, the Declaration has been frequently quoted in political speeches, such as Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s «I Have a Dream» speech.

Myths

Several myths surround the document:

• Because it is dated “July 4, 1776,” many people believe it was signed on that date—it was signed on August 2, 1776, by most of the delegates.
• An unfounded legend states that John Hancock signed his name so large that King George III would be able to read it without his spectacles. In point of fact, other examples of his signature indicate that he typically signed his name in this way.^[6] Since Hancock was the first to sign the Declaration, he had the largest area in which to sign his name, which might be another reason for his signature’s large size.
• The famous painting by John Trumbull, which hangs in the Grand Rotunda of the United States Capitol Building, is (as mentioned in the caption above) usually incorrectly described as the signing of the Declaration, when what it actually shows is the five-man drafting committee presenting their work. Trumbull depicts most of the eventual signers as being present on this occasion, but this gathering never took place.
• The Liberty Bell was not rung to celebrate independence, but to call the local inhabitants to hear the reading of the document on July 8, and it certainly did not acquire its crack on that occasion; that story comes from a children’s book of fiction, Legends of the American Revolution, by George Lippard. The Liberty Bell was actually named in the early nineteenth century when it became a symbol of the anti-slavery movement.

Notes

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Bailyn, Bernard (ed.). The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Anti-federalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters during the Struggle for Ratification. Part One: September 1787 to February 1788. The Library of America, 1993. ISBN 0940450429
• Bailyn, Bernard (ed.). The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Anti-federalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters during the Struggle for Ratification. Part Two: January to August 1788. The Library of America, 1993. ISBN 094045064X
• The complete text of the Declaration of Independence at AmericanRevolution.com. Retrieved June 1, 2020.
• The Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence at TeachingAmericanHistory.org. Retrieved June 1, 2020.

External links

All links retrieved July 26, 2022.

• Declaration of Independence at the National Archives
• The Declaration of Independence, available for free via Project Gutenberg
• The Declaration of Independence with images, Jefferson’s account, biographies of signers, and extensive additional information.
• Declaration of Independence and related resources at the Library of Congress
• The Preservation and History of the Declaration from PBS/NOVA
• «Teaching the Declaration of Independence» from ERIC Digest
• «Declaration of Independence» from the book Thrilling Incidents in American History
• «The Speech of the Unknown» from the book Washington and His Generals: or, Legends of the Revolution by George Lippard, published in 1847
• Free audiobook of The Declaration of Independence from LibriVox
• The Price They Paid – Sorting Fact from Fiction.
• Signers of the Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, announcing that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain were no longer a part of the British Empire. Drafted by Thomas Jefferson, and revised and approved by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the Declaration is a formal explanation of why Congress had voted on July 2 to obtain independence.

Quotes from the Declaration[edit]

• 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 and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
  • The reference to «the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God» appears to be borrowed from Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, epistle iv, line 331: «Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God»; Pope, in turn, may have borrowed it from a letter to Pope by Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke St. John, who praised the modesty of «[o]ne follows Nature and Nature’s God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word».

• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 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, 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 effect their Safety and Happiness.
  • Comparable to: «All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights», Constitution of Massachusetts (1779)

• We must, therefore,…hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
  • On the British

• 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 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 Honor.

Earlier drafts[edit]

• We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent , that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it
  • Thomas Jefferson, «‘Original Rough Draught’ of the Declaration of Independence» (June 1776), p. 1; in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1950) edited by Julian P. Boyd, Vol. 1, p. 423^[1]

• he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.  this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers; is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
  • Thomas Jefferson, «‘Original Rough Draught’ of the Declaration of Independence» (June 1776), p. 3; in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1950) edited by Julian P. Boyd, Vol. 1, p. 423^[2]
  • Known as the «anti-slavery clause», this section drafted by Thomas Jefferson was removed from the Declaration at the behest of representatives of South Carolina.

• in every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered by repeated injury.
  • Thomas Jefferson, «‘Original Rough Draught’ of the Declaration of Independence» (June 1776), p. 3; in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1950) edited by Julian P. Boyd, Vol. 1, p. 423^[3]

Quotes about the Declaration[edit]

Alphabetized by author

• Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the corner stone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity, and gave to the world the first irrevocable pledge of the fulfillment of the prophecies, announced directly from Heaven at the birth of the Savior and predicted by the greatest of the Hebrew prophets six hundred years before?
  • John Quincy Adams, An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport, at Their Request, on the Sixty-first Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4th, 1837 (Newburyport: Charles Whipple, 1837), pp. 5-6.

• Flights of oratory… especially that concerning Negro slavery, which, though I knew his Southern brethren would never suffer to pass in Congress, I certainly would never oppose.
  • John Adams, regarding a draft of the U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776), as quoted in The Founding Fathers: John Adams: A Biography in his own Words (1973), by James Bishop Peabody, Newsweek, New York, p. 201.

• I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will triumph in that Days Transaction, even although We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.
  • John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams (1776-07-03), published in The Adams Papers : Adams Family Correspondence (2007) edited by Margaret A. Hogan

• Here, in the first paragraph of the Declaration, is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for how can «the consent of the governed» be given, if the right to vote be denied?
  • Susan B. Anthony, in her «Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?» speech before her trial for voting (1873)

• The Declaration of Independence asserted the natural right of revolution as a principle of American nationality. This was a moral and political right, to be exercised prudentially, that justified resistance to oppressive government. It was not a claim of legal immunity imposing duty and obligation on others not to interfere.
  • Herman Belz, «Review Essay» (2004), Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, University of Illinois Press

• In this preamble however it is, that they attempt to establish a theory of Government; a theory, as absurd and visionary, as the system of conduct in defence of which it is established, is nefarious.
  • Jeremy Bentham, Short Review of the Declaration,[4] in An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress, by John Lind (1776), p. 120, as quoted in The Declaration of Independence: America’s First Founding Document in U.S. History and Culture (2018), p. 20
• 245 years ago we declared our independence from a distant king. Today we’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus. That’s not to say the battle against COVID-19 is over, we’ve got a lot more work to do. But just as our declaration in 1776 was a call to action, not a reason for complacency, or a claim of victory, it was a call to action. The same is true today. Back then we had the power of an idea on our side, today we have the power of science. Thanks to our heroic vaccine effort, we’ve gained the upper hand against this virus. We can live our lives, our kids can go back to school, our economy is roaring back. Don’t get me wrong. COVID-19 has not been vanquished. We all know powerful variants have emerged like the Delta variant. But the best defense against these variants is to get vaccinated. My fellow Americans it is the most patriotic thing you can do. So please, if you have not gotten vaccinated, do it, do it now. For yourself. For your loved ones. For your community. For your country. You know, that is how we’re going to stay ahead of these variants and protect the hardwon progress we’ve made.
  • Joe Biden, «Declaring Our Independence from a Deadly Virus» 2021. Vital Speeches of the Day 87 (9): 213–14.

• The Declaration of Independence should have read thus:

  «We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, and the right to make that of another miserable by thrusting upon him an incalculable quantity of acquaintances; liberty, particularly the liberty to introduce persons to one another without first ascertaining if they are not already acquainted as enemies; and the pursuit of another’s happiness with a running pack of strangers.»

  • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic’s Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).

• The American Revolution began with certain latent hopes that it might turn into a genuine break with the State ideal.  The Declaration of Independence announced doctrines that were utterly incompatible not only with the century-old conception of the Divine Right of Kings, but also with the Divine Right of the State.  …  If revolution is justifiable a State may even be criminal sometimes in resisting its own extinction.
  • Randolph Bourne, ¶9 of §II of «The State» (1918).  Published under «The Development of the American State,» The State (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), pp. 30–31

• In 1776, the Americans laid before Europe that noble Declaration, which ought to be hung up in the nursery of every king, and blazoned on the porch of every royal palace.
  • Henry Thomas Buckle, History of Civilization in England (1903; first published in 1861), vol. 2, chapter 7, p. 341

• I am grateful to Almighty God for the blessings which, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, He had conferred on my beloved country in her emancipation and on myself in permitting me, under circumstances of mercy, to live to the age of 89 years, and to survive the fiftieth year of independence, adopted by Congress on the 4th of July 1776, which I originally subscribed on the 2d day of August of the same year and of which I am now the last surviving signer.
  • Charles Carroll, Remarks on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (August 2, 1826)

• Its constitution the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the Declaration of Independence.
  • Rufus Choate, Letter to the Maine Whig Committee (1856). Six years earlier, Choate gave a lecture in Providence which was reviewed by Franklin J. Dickman in the Journal of December 14, 1849. Unless Choate used the words «glittering generalities», and Dickman made reference to them, it would seem as if Dickman must have the credit of originating the catchword. Dickman wrote: «We fear that the glittering generalities of the speaker have left an impression more delightful than permanent». Reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

• We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.
  • Winston Churchill, «The Sinews of Peace», address at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri (March 5, 1946); in Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963 (1974), Vol. 7, p. 7288

• July 4, 1776 was the historic day on which the representatives of three millions of people vocalized Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill, which gave notice to the world that they proposed to establish an independent nation on the theory that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The wonder and glory of the American people is not the ringing Declaration of that day, but the action then already begun, and in the process of being carried out, in spite of every obstacle that war could interpose, making the theory of freedom and equality a reality… The doctrine of the Declaration of Independence predicated upon the glory of man and the corresponding duty to society that the rights of citizens ought to be protected with every power and resource of the state, and a government that does any less is false to the teachings of that great document — false to the name American.
  • Calvin Coolidge, Equal Rights (1920)

• Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed. If no one is to be accounted as born into a superior station, if there is to be no ruling class, and if all possess rights which can neither be bartered away nor taken from them by any earthly power, it follows as a matter of course that the practical authority of the Government has to rest on the consent of the governed. While these principles were not altogether new in political action, and were very far from new in political speculation, they had never been assembled before and declared in such a combination… In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause… If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.
  • Calvin Coolidge, speech on the Occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (5 July 1926)

• We live in an age of science and abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create the Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all of our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage bequeathed to us, we must be like minded as the Founders who created. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had and for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshipped.
  • Calvin Coolidge, speech on the Occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (5 July 1926)

• About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776 — that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance of the people of that day and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But, that reasoning cannot be applied to the great charter… No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward a time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more «modern,» but more ancient than those of our Revolutionary ancestors.
  • Calvin Coolidge, as quoted in Foundations of the Republic; Speeches and Addresses (1926), p. 451

• The Declaration of Independence was the passionate manifesto of a revolutionary war, and its doctrine of equal human rights a glittering generality… It would have been perfectly easy to say, ‍’‍We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all white men of the European race upon this continent are created equal — to their brethren across the water; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; but that yellow, blacky brown, and red men have no such rights‍’‍. It would have been very easy to say this. Our fathers did not say it, because they did not mean it. They were men who meant what they said, and who said what they meant, and meaning all men, they said all men. They were patriots asserting a principle and ready to die for it, not politicians pettifogging for the presidency.
  • George William Curtis, «The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question» (18 October 1859)

• The declaration was a nice document. Notice the part about all men being equal? Ending slavery was part of fulfilling that document. Therefore the south was blocking the fulfillment of the promises made in the declaration. It is ironic that secessionists want to claim the declaration, yet reject the issue of equality it contains. As we have been finding out, equality is one of the main principles of the American Revolution. We are still striving to fully realize that promise. The people that advocate secession whether it was in 1860 or today only claim the Declaration in an attempt to deny the principles of the American Revolution. It is a big paradox and one the big reasons why secession today will not occur again.
  • Jimmy Dick, Chat-Room Crossroads (15 February 2014)

• The libertarian vision is all in…your Declaration of Independence:  We are all created equal; no one ought to have any special rights and privileges in social relations with other men.  We have, inherently, certain rights—to our life, to our freedom, to do what we please in order to find happiness.  Government has one purpose: to help us protect those rights.  And if it doesn’t do that, then it has to go, by any means necessary.
  • Brian Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (PublicAffairs, 2007), p. 21^[5]

• English barrister John Lind pointed out, with some justice, that the American Declaration of Independence was a formula for anarchy, since every government violated the inalienable rights it listed in some manner.
  • Brian Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (PublicAffairs, 2007), p. 622, n. 1^[6]

• The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history — the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny. Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.
  • Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? (1852), Speech, Corinthian Hall, Rochester, NY (5 July 1852) — Full text at Wikisource

• The Declaration of Independence announces the sublime truth, that all power comes from the people. This was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others. It was the first grand assertion of the dignity of the human race. It declared the governed to be the source of power, and in fact denied the authority of any and all gods. Through the ages of slavery — through the weary centuries of the lash and chain, God was the acknowledged ruler of the world. To enthrone man, was to dethrone God.
  • Robert Ingersoll, , Individuality (1873).

• One hundred years ago, our fathers retired the gods from politics.

  The Declaration of Independence is the grandest, the bravest, and the profoundest political document that was ever signed by the representatives of a people. It is the embodiment of physical and moral courage and of political wisdom.

  • Robert Ingersoll, Centennial Oration (1876)

• The Declaration of Independence announces the sublime truth, that all power comes from the people. This was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others. It was the first grand assertion of the dignity of the human race. It declared the governed to be the source of power, and in fact denied the authority of any and all gods. Through the ages of slavery — through the weary centuries of the lash and chain, God was the acknowledged ruler of the world. To enthrone man, was to dethrone God.
  • Robert Ingersoll, Individuality (1873)

• While the Declaration was directed against an excess of authority, the Constitution was directed against anarchy.
  • Robert H. Jackson, The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy: A Study in Crisis in American Power Politics (1941), p. 8

• [W]ith respect to our rights, and the acts of the British government contravening those rights, there was but one opinion on this side of the water. All American whigs thought alike on these subjects. When forced, therefore, to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right.
  • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Henry Lee (8 May 1825)

• May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.
  • Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Roger C. Weightman, on the decision for Independence made in 1776, and represented by the Declaration (24 June 1826)

• Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.  Born April 2 1743 Died July 4 1826.
  • Thomas Jefferson’s self-written epitaph

• If our nation had done nothing more in its whole history than to create just two documents, its contribution to civilization would be imperishable. The first of these documents is the Declaration of Independence and the other is that which we are here to honor tonight, the Emancipation Proclamation. All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations, no matter how extensive their legions, how vast their power and how malignant their evil… The Declaration of Independence proclaimed to a world, organized politically and spiritually around the concept of the inequality of man, that the dignity of human personality was inherent in man as a living being. The Emancipation Proclamation was the offspring of the Declaration of Independence. It was a constructive use of the force of law to uproot a social order which sought to separate liberty from a segment of humanity.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address at the New York Civil War Centennial Commission’s Emancipation Proclamation Observance, New York City, (12 September 1962)
• In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the «unalienable Rights» of «Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.» It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked «insufficient funds.» But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
  • Martin Luther King Jr., «I Have a Dream» speech, August 28, 1963

• The United States was founded on the principle that all human beings, by virtue of their shared human nature, possess equal natural rights. According to the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents, rights come from a creator, not government. Government’s purpose is limited to protecting natural rights, which is the standard we use to judge governments. People may exercise their natural right ‘to alter or to abolish’ a government that violates, rather than protects, these rights. The political logic of the American Founding requires that a government of limited purpose should be a government of limited power. The U.S. Constitution and all state constitutions limit the power of government so that it better achieves its purpose, protecting rights, rather than threatening them.
  • Thomas L. Krannawitter, «Racial Preferences Mean Big Government» (30 October 2006), Writings, The Claremont Institute

• The bill of grievances contained in the immortal Declaration of Independence could be extended by our own citizens in modern times, had they the stomach for it.  …  So important is the right and duty of the people to dispense with despotism, this great Declaration contains the sentence not once, but twice.  In its final utterance, the choice of words does not call for the formation of a government.  Rather, it calls for «new guards» which may or may not entail such a unit as an artificial agency.
  • Robert LeFevre, This Bread is Mine (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: American Liberty Press, 1960), pp. 363, 365^[7]

• Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a «sacred right of self-government.» These principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and Mammon; and whoever holds to the one must despise the other. … Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. … Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. … If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union: but we shall have saved it, as to make, and keep it, forever worthy of the saving.
  • Abraham Lincoln, in a speech in Peoria (16 October 1854), cited in Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (1991) by James McPherson, pp. 126–127

• Chief Justice does not directly assert, but plainly assumes, as a fact, that the public estimate of the black man is more favorable now than it was in the days of the Revolution. This assumption is a mistake… In those days, as I understand, masters could, at their own pleasure, emancipate their slaves; but since then, such legal restraints have been made upon emancipation, as to amount almost to prohibition. In those days, Legislatures held the unquestioned power to abolish slavery in their respective States; but now it is becoming quite fashionable for State Constitutions to withhold that power from the Legislatures. In those days, by common consent, the spread of the black man’s bondage to new countries was prohibited; but now, Congress decides that it will not continue the prohibition, and the Supreme Court decides that it could not if it would. In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it… The Declaration of Independence includes ALL men, black as well as white, and forth… I appeal to all, to Democrats as well as others, are you really willing that the Declaration shall be thus frittered away? Thus left no more at most, than an interesting memorial of the dead past? Thus shorn of its vitality, and practical value; and left without the germ or even the suggestion of the individual rights of man in it?
  • Abraham Lincoln, speech at Springfield, Illinois (26 June 1857)

• Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometimes about the fourth of July, for some reason or other. These fourth of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. … We are now a mighty nation; we are thirty, or about thirty, millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years, and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men; we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity which we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time, of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves, we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live, for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these, men descended by blood from our ancestors — among us, perhaps half our people, who are not descendants at all of these men; they are men who have come from Europe — German, Irish, French and Scandinavian — men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that «We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal» and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration; and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Speech in Reply to Senator Stephen Douglas in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of the 1858 campaign for the US Senate, at Chicago, Illinois (10 July 1858)

• Now, my countrymen if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur, and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me, take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever; but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man’s success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of Humanity; the Declaration of American Independence.
  • Abraham Lincoln, speech at Lewistown, Illinois (17 August 1858)

• The Judge has alluded to the Declaration of Independence, and insisted that negroes are not included in that Declaration; and that it is a slander upon the framers of that instrument, to suppose that negroes were meant therein; and he asks you: Is it possible to believe that Mr. Jefferson, who penned the immortal paper, could have supposed himself applying the language of that instrument to the negro race, and yet held a portion of that race in slavery? Would he not at once have freed them? I only have to remark upon this part of the Judge’s speech, and that, too, very briefly, for I shall not detain myself, or you, upon that point for any great length of time, that I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence; I think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, that Washington ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any member of Congress ever said so, or that any living man upon the whole earth ever said so, until the necessities of the present policy of the Democratic Party, in regard to slavery, had to invent that affirmation.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Fifth Lincoln-Douglas Debate (7 October 1858)

• Now, I have upon all occasions declared as strongly as Judge Douglas against the disposition to interfere with the existing institution of slavery. You hear me read it from the same speech from which he takes garbled extracts for the purpose of proving upon me a disposition to interfere with the institution of slavery, and establish a perfect social and political equality between negroes and white people. Allow me while upon this subject briefly to present one other extract from a speech of mine, more than a year ago, at Springfield, in discussing this very same question, soon after Judge Douglas took his ground that negroes were not included in the Declaration of Independence: I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal — equal in «certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.» This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all, constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Seventh and Last Joint Debate with Steven Douglas, at Alton, Illinois (15 October 1858)

• I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here and adopted that Declaration of Independence—I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army, who achieved that Independence. I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the mother land; but something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.
  • Abraham Lincoln, speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (22 February 1861); quoted in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 4 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 204

• It is claimed by the Democrats of today, that Jefferson has uttered an untruth in the declaration of principles which underlie our government. I still abide by the democracy of Jefferson, and avow my belief that all men are created equal. Equal how? Not in physical strength, not in symmetry of form and proportion, not in graceful of motion, or loveliness of feature, not in mental endowment, moral susceptibility, and emotional power. Not socially equal, not of necessity politically equal. Not this, but every human being equally entitled to his life, his liberty, and the fruit of his toil. The Democratic Party deny this fundamental doctrine of our government, and say that there is a certain class of human beings which have no rights. If you maliciously kill them, it is no murder. If you take away their liberty, it is no crime. If you deprive them of their earnings, it is no theft. No rights which another is bound to regard. Was there ever so much diabolism compressed into one sentence?
  • Owen Lovejoy, «The Fanaticism of the Democratic Party» (February 1859), as quoted in His Brother’s Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 177

• We thank thee for the wisdom of the fathers in the formation of this government, and for the assistance thou didst render them in arriving at the great principles relating to the equality of man. We thank thee for the glorious declaration.
  • Owen Lovejoy, prayer (November 1863), as quoted in His Brother’s Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 394

• «All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness».

  This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the Earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and to be free.

  The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also states: «All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights.»

  Those are undeniable truths.

  • Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese Declaration of Independence (2 September 1945)

• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are not only created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights among which are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, but that when this equality and these rights are deliberately and consistently refused, withheld or abnegated, men are bound by self-respect and honor to rise up in righteous indignation to secure them. Whenever any Form of Government, or any variety of established traditions and systems of the Majority becomes destructive of Freedom and of legitimate Human Rights, it is the Right of the Minorities to use every necessary and accessible means to protest and to disrupt the machinery of Oppression, and so to bring such general distress and discomfort upon the oppressor as to the offended Minorities shall seem most appropriate and most likely to effect a proper adjustment of the society.
  • National Committee of Black Churchmen, «The Black Declaration of Independence,» The New York Times, July 3, 1970

• Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation — not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago: «We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.» That is the true genius of America — a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles.
  • Barack Obama, speech at the Democratic National Convention (27 July 2004)

• Today, on this day of possibility, we stand in the shadow of a lanky, raw-boned man with little formal education who once took the stage at Old Main and told the nation that if anyone did not believe the American principles of freedom and equality, that those principles were timeless and all-inclusive, they should go rip that page out of the Declaration of Independence.
  • Barack Obama, Knox College Commencement Address (5 June 2005)

• My own nation’s story began with simple words: All men are created equal, and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Realizing that ideal has never been easy, even within our own borders, even among our own citizens. But staying true to that story is worth the effort. It is an ideal to be strived for; an ideal that extends across continents, and across oceans. The irreducible worth of every person, the insistence that every life is precious; the radical and necessary notion that we are part of a single human family -– that is the story that we all must tell.
  • Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Abe of Japan at Hiroshima Peace Memorial at Hiroshima Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, Japan (May 27, 2016)

• At the time of America’s Declaration of Independence, when preparing to separate from England, a remarkable incident took place. During the proceedings at this historic convention there came a moment of hesitation and uncertainty. Suddenly, a tall stranger stepped out from amid the Assembly and delivered a fiery speech, which he ended with the words «Let America be free!» The enthusiasm of the Assembly was kindled, and the Declaration of Independence was signed. But when the delegates sought to greet the person who had helped them to make the great decision, the stranger had disappeared. Thus, through the whole of history is seen the Helping Hand of the Great Community of Light.
  • Helena Roerich, Letters of Helena Roerich I (25 March 1935)

• The virtually official reply to the Declaration was written by the barrister John Lind, who largely devoted himself to refuting the «calumnies» against the king.  As for the philosophy of the Declaration, Lind thought it sufficient to make the penetrating observation that these doctrines «put the axe to the root of all government,» since every existing or conceivable government alienates some of these supposedly inalienable rights—in short, that the logical conclusion of the natural rights philosophy was anarchism.
  • Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty, vol. 4, The Revolutionary War, 1775–1784 (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999, orig. 1979), p. 184^[8]

• When the decision was finally made to accept blacks as full citizens, the founders’ principles provided the theoretical foundation. Lincoln’s revival of the declaration in the 1850s had prepared the way. In principle, people of all races can become citizens of a nation based on the idea that ‘all men are created equal’.
  • Thomas G. West, Vindicating the Founders (2001), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., p. 28

• The growing openness to members of all the world’s races was always possible under the terms of the Declaration of Independence, which, as Lincoln noted, made a transracial principle, the equal natural rights of all men, the basis of citizenship. For that reason, America from the beginning was always a multinational and multiracial society. As early as 1776, as we saw in the first chapter, some blacks were citizens, as were many non-British Europeans.
  • Thomas G. West, Vindicating the Founders (2001), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., p. 167

External links[edit]

• Declaration of Independence at the National Archives
• US History — Declaration of Independence
• Duke University — The Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence
• Library of Congress: Declaration of Independence and Related Resources
• Colonial Williamsburg Foundation: The Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution
• University of Virginia: Albert H. Small Declaration of Independence Collection
• PBS/NOVA: The Preservation and History of the Declaration
• Colonial Hall: A Line by Line Historical Analysis of the Grievances
• Three copies of the Declaration of Independence held by the UK National Archives.
• Online Library of Liberty: Strictures upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia (London 1776), Thomas Hutchinson’s reaction to the Declaration, which he regarded as «false and frivolous»
• «The Stylistic Artistry of the Declaration of Independence» by Stephen E. Lucas

Audio and video

• Mike Malloy reads The Declaration of Independence
• Short film released in 2002 with Hollywood actors reading the Declaration; produced by Norman Lear with an introduction by Morgan Freeman

Lesson plans

• Object of History: Jefferson Desk
• «An Expression of the American Mind» — Understanding the Declaration of Independence