Declaration of Independence

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In one vibrant paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson managed to compress both a résumé of American constitutional theory that justified the struggle for independence and a précis of a revolutionary, republican theory of government. “All men are created equal”; they enjoy “unalienable Rights” (this repudiated arguments by Thomas Hobbes and William Blackstone that people surrender their natural rights when they leave the state of nature); these rights include “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (a liberal and literary improvement on John Locke's triad of life, liberty, and property); governments exist to protect those rights; governments are created by “the consent of the governed” (the compact theory); the people retain the right “to alter or to abolish” government when it violates its ends, “and to institute new Government” to secure the people's “Safety and Happiness” (the commonwealth theory). In their totality, these concepts provided a comprehensive statement of popular sovereignty.

The remainder of the Declaration consisted of a indictment arraigning King George III with thirty offenses, some constitutional, some legal, and some merely matters of policy. The indictment omitted counts drafted by Jefferson that condemned the slave trade, at the insistence of South Carolina and Georgia delegates, who were determined that self‐government and unalienable rights in America were to remain the prerogatives of white men exclusively.

The Declaration was drafted by Thomas Jefferson, with only minor participation by a committee that included John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston, pursuant to a resolution of the Second Continental Congress. It was adopted by Congress on 4 July 1776. Jefferson himself belittled the originality of his work, stating that, though he penned the Declaration without consulting other sources, it contained nothing novel in the way of political thought. In this, he was correct: the basic theory of the Declaration was derivative of the thought of Locke and reflected English Whig theory as it had evolved in the preceding century and a half. George Mason had anticipated much of the substance of Jefferson's ideas in his draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (12 June 1776), though the literary grace and felicity of Jefferson's Declaration eclipsed the ponderous lawyer's couplets and triplets of the Virginia Declaration.

The constitutional and legal status of the Declaration of Independence is curiously ambiguous. John Hancock (in his capacity as president of the Second Continental Congress) and James Madison both considered it to be, in Madison's words, “the fundamental Act of Union of these States.” Reflecting that view, Congress has placed it at the head of the United States Code, under the caption, “The Organic Laws of the United States of America.” The Supreme Court has infrequently accorded it binding legal force, for example, in resolving questions of alienage (Inglis v. Trustees of Sailor's Snug Harbour, 1830). Yet lawyers generally, and the Supreme Court in particular, have been reluctant to treat the Declaration as part of American organic law, or even to accord it the restricted status of the Preamble to the Constitution. Conservatives like Daniel Webster denied that there is a constitutionally recognized right of revolution, and those state supreme courts that have addressed the issue in the twentieth century have adopted Webster's view. Reformers, such as antebellum abolitionists, insisted that the Declaration was part of the constitutional order, while their opponents, including John C. Calhoun, denigrated its authority and validity. The adoption of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments allayed the urgency of that question by incorporating concepts of equality, freedom, and citizenship into the operative constitutional text.

Nevertheless, the Declaration of Independence endures as the basic statement of the principles of American government. Abraham Lincoln invoked its authority in the supreme crisis of the union, and it remains today the foundation of our constitutional order.

See also Natural Law.

Bibliography

• Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence (1922).
• Gary Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence (1978)

— William M. Wiecek

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A U.S. document adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, during the Revolutionary War, to announce the separation of the American colonies from Britain. It included charges against the crown and Parliament for violations against the colonists, and it was the first formal document affirming a people's right to a government of their own choice. Written predominately by Thomas Jefferson, it asserted “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.”

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

The statement agreed by the Continental Congress on 4 July 1776 proclaiming the freedom and independence of thirteen British colonies in North America and announcing the creation of the United States of America. The Declaration can be divided into four parts. It begins with a preamble revealing that the statement's primary purpose is to provide a justification for dissolving the ties binding the colonies to Britain. The second part claims that people are duty bound to throw off governments that fail to meet the requirements of that theory. Part three is a catalogue of grievances against George III prior to a concluding section asserting that the former colonies were now ‘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’.

For Americans, the Declaration of Independence, authored primarily by Thomas Jefferson, is second only to the US Constitution as a hallowed document symbolizing the founding of the nation. However, Congress actually announced the independence of the colonies on 2 July, two days before the Declaration of Independence was agreed. Furthermore many of the grievances listed in the Declaration are of dubious validity, but even if they are accepted they do not support the sweeping allegations of absolute despotism and tyranny ‘with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages’. George III and his ministers were insensitive, short-sighted, and incompetent, but hardly tyrants.

It was in any case inappropriate for the Declaration to direct its fire so exclusively at the person of the King, at one point even going so far as to accuse him of inciting ‘the merciless Indian savages’ against his colonial subjects. In fact, Parliament and government ministers were the principal parties to the dispute with the colonies even though they receive no direct mention in the Declaration.

The most enduring and universally significant part of the Declaration of Independence is to be found in its second paragraph: ‘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 when any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new 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.’ This famous passage encapsulates several of the canons of liberal democracy including the principle of equality, natural rights, government by consent and limited government. The influence of John Locke on Jefferson and his colleagues has been widely noted and it is evident that the Declaration states briefly many of the themes developed at greater length in Locke's Second Treatise of Government.

— David Mervin

For more information on Declaration of Independence, visit Britannica.com.

Declaration of Independence, 1776. Conflict in America was well advanced when Congress on 4 July 1776 adopted the Declaration of Independence. Primarily the work of Thomas Jefferson, a principal objective was to facilitate an understanding with France. The celebrated ‘self-evident truths’ of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were followed by a fierce denunciation of George III as ‘a tyrant unfit to be the ruler of a free people’. The declaration concluded that ‘all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.’

This document, which the Second Continental Congress adopted on 4 July 1776, proclaimed the original thirteen American colonies independent of Great Britain and provided an explanation and justification of that step. Although it was first drafted as a revolutionary manifesto, Americans of later generations came to honor the Declaration less for its association with independence than for its assertion that "all men are created equal" and "are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights," among which are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," individual rights that went unmentioned in the federal Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The Development of Independence

The original thirteen British colonies of mainland North America moved toward independence slowly and reluctantly. The colonists were proud of being British and had no desire to be separated from a mother country with which they were united, as John Dickinson put it in his popular newspaper "letters" from "a Farmer in Pennsylvania" (1767–1768), "by religion, liberty, laws, affections, relation, language and commerce." Not even the outbreak of war at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts on 19 April 1775 produced calls for independence. In July of that year, the Second Continental Congress sent the King a petition for redress and reconciliation, which Dickinson drafted in conspicuously respectful language.

The king did not formally answer to the petition. Instead, in a proclamation of August 23, 1775, he asserted that the colonists were engaged in an "open and avowed rebellion." Then, on October 26, he told Parliament that the American rebellion was "manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent Empire," and that the colonists' professions of loyalty to him and the "parent State" were "meant only to amuse." News of the speech arrived at Philadelphia in January 1776, just when Thomas Paine's Common Sense appeared. American freedom would never be secure under British rule, Paine argued, because the British government included two grave "constitutional errors," monarchy and hereditary rule. Americans could secure their future and that of their children only by declaring their independence and founding a new government whose authority rested on the people alone, with no king or other hereditary rulers. The pamphlet opened a widespread public debate on the previously taboo subject of independence. News of Parliament's Prohibitory Act (December 1775), which declared colonial ships and cargoes forfeit to the Crown as if they were the possessions of "open enemies," added force to Paine's argument, as did news that the Crown had hired German mercenary soldiers to help subdue the Americans.

Finally, on 10 and 15 May 1776, Congress passed a resolution written by John Adams with a radical preface that called for the total suppression of "every kind of authority under the … crown" and the establishment of new state governments "under the authority of the people." Simultaneously, on 15 May, Virginia instructed its Congressional delegation to move that Congress declare independence, negotiate foreign alliances, and design an American confederation. As a result, on 7 June 1776, Richard Henry Lee introduced the following resolution: "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 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." Lee also moved that Congress "take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances" and prepare "a plan of confederation" for the colonies' consideration.

Congress debated Lee's resolution on Saturday, 8 May, and again the following Monday. According to notes kept by Thomas Jefferson, most delegates conceded that independence was justified and inevitable, but some argued for delay. The colonies should negotiate agreements with potential European allies before declaring independence, they said. Moreover, the delegates of several colonies, including Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York, were bound by instructions that precluded their voting for independence. Since opinion in those colonies was said to be "fast advancing," even a short delay might avoid a seriously divided vote. The delegates therefore put off the decision until July, but on 11 June appointed a committee to draft a declaration on independence. It had five members: Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert R. Livingston of New York, and Pennsylvania's Benjamin Franklin.

Drafting the Declaration

The drafting committee left no formal records of its proceedings, and the private notes that Jefferson kept devote only a few sentences to the subject. The story of the Declaration's creation must be pieced together from a handful of documents of the time and from accounts by Jefferson and Adams, most of which were written long after the event and sometimes contradict each other. Before appointing a draftsman, it seems likely that the committee met, discussed how the document should be organized, and perhaps wrote "minutes" or instructions, as Adams said. Probably, as Jefferson claimed, he alone was asked to write the document.

In the previous few weeks, Jefferson had drafted a preamble for Virginia's new constitution. He clearly modeled its opening paragraph on the British Declaration of Rights (February 1689), which charged King James II with attempting to "subvert and extirpate" both the Protestant religion and the "Laws and Liberties of this Kingdom." Jefferson similarly accused George III of attempting to establish "a detestable & insupportable tyranny" in Virginia, and then listed a series of transgressions that, like those in the British Declaration, began with the word "by." Now he returned to a draft of his Virginia preamble that remained among his papers, rearranging and expanding the list of grievances for use in the Declaration of Independence. However, rather than start with a "Whereas" clause, as had both his Virginia preamble and its British predecessor, Jefferson proposed a magnificent opening paragraph beginning "When in the course of human events." It identified what followed as having significance far beyond America and Britain alone.

Jefferson's famous second paragraph, which began "We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable," expressed ideas widely shared among the colonists. Its language, however, owed much to an early version of the Virginia Declaration of Rights written by George chMason. Jefferson took phrases from the Mason draft, compressed them, then added language of his own to construct a single long sentence, based on a standard eighteenth-century rhetorical device that prescribed a series of phrases whose meaning became clear only at the end. The Mason draft said, for example, "all men are born equally free and independent." Jefferson wrote instead "that all men are created equal & independent," then crossed out "& independent." The Mason draft asserted that men had "certain inherent natural rights" that they could not "by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; among which are, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." Jefferson wrote instead that men had "inherent & inalienable rights" including "life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness." To secure those rights, he added, "Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." He concluded his series of phrases with a powerful assertion of the people's right to abolish and replace a government that became destructive of their rights—in short, of the right of revolution, which the Americans were exercising in 1776. That right should not, he went on to say, be invoked for "light & transient causes," but it became not only the people's right but also their "duty to throw off" a government guilty of "a long train of abuses & usurpations" moving toward the establishment of "arbitrary power." And the reign of George III, Jefferson asserted, was "a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations," directed toward "the establishment of an absolute tyranny over the American states.

A long list of examples, or charges against the king, followed. They began not with "by" but with the more emphatic words "he has." The first set of charges recalled somewhat obscure grievances suffered by a specific colony or group of colonies; then, under a charge that "he had combined with others" to perform certain acts, the list recalled more familiar acts of Parliament that had received the royal assent. A final section cited recent events, such as the king's "declaring us out of his allegiance & protection" by approving the Prohibitory Act and employing "large armies of foreign mercenaries" against his American subjects. The Jefferson draft also charged the king with responsibility for the slave trade. A king "whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant," the draft said, "is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free." A rambling, angry penultimate section castigated the British people for supporting King and Parliament. Then, in its final paragraph, the draft declared "these colonies to be free and independent states" with all the rights of such states. "And for the support of this declaration," it ended, "we"—the delegates who would in time sign the document—"mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, & our sacred honor."

Jefferson sketched out parts of the draft on scraps of paper, some of which survive, then copied the whole to show to other members of the committee. He also used that copy—the "original Rough draught," as he called it, which is now at the Library of Congress—to record all subsequent editorial changes. Jefferson submitted the draft to John Adams, who made a complete copy of the document as it stood when he saw it, and also to Benjamin Franklin, who was recovering from a severe attack of gout. They suggested some changes, and Jefferson initiated others. Then, he told James Madison in 1823, he submitted the revised document to the committee, which sent it "unaltered" to Congress. However, a note he sent to Franklin with an already revised draft in June 1776 tells a different tale. "The inclosed paper has been read and with some small alterations approved by the committee," it said. Would Franklin please "peruse it and suggest such alterations as his more enlarged view of the subject will dictate? The paper having been returned to me to change a particular sentiment or two, I propose laying it again before the committee tomorrow morning." Clearly the draft was a collaborative effort, and some of the changes that appear on the "rough draft" in Jefferson's handwriting were mandated by the committee.

Independence

On 28 June 1776, the committee submitted its draft to Congress, which promptly tabled it for later consideration. Meanwhile, towns, counties, grand juries, and some private groups publicly declared and explained their support for independence. Gradually one state after another fell into line, revising their Congressional instructions and sometimes also issuing state declarations of independence either as separate documents (Maryland, 6 July 1776) or as opening sections of their new constitutions (Virginia, 29 June, and New Jersey, 2 July). Those documents vary in form and style, but most of them recall the colonists' past affection for the king and cite a familiar set of fairly recent events to explain their change in sentiment—the king's neglect of the colonists' dutiful petitions; his endorsement of the Prohibitory Act and hiring of German mercenaries; his use of slaves and Indians against white colonists; the devastation caused by his armies. They also explain independence as a step the Americans accepted only to save themselves from destruction. Americans needed to bid Britain "the last adieu," as Buckingham County, Virginia, put it, before any foreign nations would, "for their own interest, lend an assisting hand … and enable us to discharge the great burdens of the war."

On 1 July, when Congress again debated independence, sentiment remained divided, with nine states in favor, two (Pennsylvania and South Carolina) opposed, and one (Delaware) split. New York's delegates abstained because their year-old instructions, which precluded doing anything that would impede reconciliation with Britain, had not been replaced. However, a delegate from South Carolina asked that the final vote be delayed until the next day. Then, with the timely absence of a few Pennsylvania delegates, the arrival of another Delaware delegate, Caesar Rodney, and a shift in the South Carolina vote, Congress approved the Lee resolution with twelve in favor, none opposed, and the New Yorkers still watching from the sidelines.

The delegates then took up the Declaration of Independence, and—even as a major British force debarked in New York to put down the Americans' "rebellion" once and for all—spent most of the next two days editing the document. They made only a handful of changes to its lyrical opening paragraphs, which Jefferson had already worked over carefully; but they eliminated entirely the long paragraph that placed blame for the slave trade entirely on the king and, curiously, called him a tyrant for offering freedom to slaves who abandoned their masters and joined his army. Several other changes similarly cut back or eliminated overstatements or inaccuracies in the draft. For example, where Jefferson charged the King with "unremitting" injuries, as if he never slept, Congress substituted the word "repeated." The delegates also made some minor adjustments to language ("neglected utterly" became "utterly neglected"); compressed Jefferson's rambling, overlong attack on the British people; and rewrote the all-important final paragraph, adding references to God and substituting the words of the Lee resolution for those proposed by the drafting committee, but retaining Jefferson's mellifluous closing reference to "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." Jefferson watched this triumph of group editing with pain, and later made several copies of the committee draft to show correspondents how Congress had "mutilated" his work.

Finally, on 4 July, Congress approved the revised text, then ordered that it be printed and authenticated under the supervision of the drafting committee and distributed to the states and continental army commanders so it could be "proclaimed in each of the United States, and at the head of the army." Congress's printer, John Dunlap, quickly produced a broadside copy, which John Hancock, Congress's president, sent out with appropriate cover letters. On 9 July, New York added its consent to that of the other thirteen states. And on 19 July, after hearing that news, Congress 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 parchment copy should be signed "by every member of Congress." The main signing occurred on 2 August. However, it was not until January 1777—after Americans victories at Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey, had ended the long disastrous military campaign of 1776—that Congress sent authenticated copies of the signed Declaration to the states.

From Announcement to Icon

The letters from Hancock that accompanied the Dunlap broadside called on the states to proclaim the Declaration "in such a Manner, that the People may be universally informed of it." Massachusetts directed that the Declaration be read aloud after Sunday services in churches; in Virginia and Maryland, it was read to the gatherings of people at county court days. In New York, General Washington had the Declaration read "with an audible voice" before several brigades of the Continental Army, "formed in hollow squares" often with the British in view on nearby Staten Island.

In the decade and a half after 1776, Americans sometimes referred to the Declaration as the "instrument of our Independence," as if it, and not Congress's less familiar resolutions of 2 July, had ended America's subservience to Britain. Otherwise, the document was all but forgotten until the 1790s, when it emerged from obscurity not as a revolutionary manifesto—by then Independence was old news—but a statement affirming human equality and the existence of "unalienable rights."

The document's celebrants were at first members of the Jeffersonian Republican Party. But as its fiftieth anniversary approached after the War of 1812, the Declaration became a national icon, though one soon embroiled in controversy. As antislavery advocates enlisted the Declaration in their cause, Southern defenders of slavery and their northern allies vociferously denied that "all men" are "created equal" and have "unalienable rights." The Declaration's assertions, they said, applied at best to white men only, and should have been omitted from a document that was meant only to separate America from Britain.

On the opposite side stood a set of men, shaped in the patriotic culture of the 1820s, who later found a home in the Republican Party and whose most eloquent spokesman was Abraham Lincoln. The equality in the Declaration, they said, never implied that men were equal in intellect or strength or appearance. It consisted, they said, in men's equal possession of rights. Had the Declaration's purpose been confined to independence, it would be only "an interesting memorial of the dead past" with no practical use in later times. As a testament to personal rights, however, the Declaration was, and was always meant to be, a document of continuing significance. It set up, Lincoln said, "a standard maxim for free society" that was to be enforced "as fast as circumstances should permit," gradually extending its influence and "augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere" (Springfield, 26 June 1857). Members of the Republican Party finally added the principles of the Declaration of Independence, as they understood them, to the Constitution by enacting the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery, and, following Lincoln's death, the Fourteenth Amendment, which precluded the states from depriving "any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

Today Americans revere the Declaration of Independence less as "the instrument of our Independence" than a statement of rights. They remember only those opening phrases of its second paragraph that speak of equality and of unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Even the engraving on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., cuts off Jefferson's carefully constructed long sentence in the middle, ending with the assertion "that to these rights governments are instituted among men." The right of revolution, the original point of the sentence, was edited out, transforming a revolutionary manifesto into an assertion of the rights that established governments must protect, much like a bill of rights. Not only the members of the drafting committee and other delegates to the Second Continental Congress edited the Declaration of Independence, but also generations of later Americans. They gave it a function with which Jefferson would not perhaps have disagreed, but that remains nonetheless different from that of the document as he understood it.

Bibliography

Boyd, Julian P. The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text. Reprint, Charlottesville, N.C.: International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, 1999.

———, ed. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. vol. 1. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950.

Hazelton, John H. The Declaration of Independence: Its History. Reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1970.

Larson, Carlton F. W. "The Declaration of Independence: A 225th Anniversary Re-Interpretation," Washington Law Re-view, LXXVI (2001): 701–787.

Lucas, Stephen E. "The Rhetorical Ancestry of the Declaration of Independence," Rhetoric and Public Affairs, I (1998): 143–184.

Maier, Pauline, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York: Knopf, 1997.

—Pauline Maier

A formal announcement executed by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, on behalf of the people living in the American colonies, that asserted and proclaimed their freedom from Britain.

Since its creation in 1776, the Declaration of Independence has been considered the single most important expression of the ideals of U.S. democracy. As a statement of the fundamental principles of the United States, the Declaration is an enduring reminder of the country's commitment to popular government and equal rights for all.

The Declaration of Independence is a product of the early days of the Revolutionary War. On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress — the legislature of the American colonies — voted for independence from Great Britain. It then appointed a committee of five— John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston — to draft a formal statement of independence designed to influence public opinion at home and abroad. Because of his reputation as an eloquent and forceful writer, Jefferson was assigned the task of creating the document, and the final product is almost entirely his own work. The Congress did not approve all of Jefferson's original draft, however, rejecting most notably his denunciation of the slave trade. Delegates from South Carolina and Georgia were not yet ready to extend the notion of inalienable rights to African Americans.

On July 4, 1776, the day of birth for the new country, the Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration served a number of purposes for the newly formed United States. With regard to the power politics of the day, it functioned as a propaganda statement intended to build support for American independence abroad, particularly in France, from which the Americans hoped to have support in their struggle for independence. Similarly, it also served as a clear message of intention to the British. Even more important for the later Republic of the United States, it functioned as a statement of governmental ideals.

In keeping with its immediate diplomatic purposes, most of the Declaration consists of a list of thirty grievances against acts of the British monarch George III. Many of these were traditional and legitimate grievances under British constitutional law. The Declaration firmly announces that British actions had established "an absolute Tyranny over these States." Britain's acts of despotism, according to the Declaration's list, included taxation of Americans without representation in Parliament; imposition of standing armies on American communities; establishment of the military above the civil power; obstruction of the right to trial by jury; interference with the operation of colonial legislatures; and cutting off of trade with the rest of the world. The Declaration ends with the decisive resolution 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 disolved."

The first sentences of the document and their statement of political ideals have remained the Declaration's most memorable and influential section. Among these sentences are the following:

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.

Ever since their creation, these ideas have guided the development of U.S. government, including the creation of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. The concepts of equal and unalienable rights for all, limited government, popular consent, and freedom to rebel have had a lasting effect on U.S. law and politics.

Scholars have long debated the relative importance of the different sources Jefferson used for his ideas in the Declaration. Most agree that the natural rights philosophy of English philosopher John Locke greatly influenced Jefferson's composition of the Declaration. In particular, Locke advanced the ideas that a just government derives its legitimacy and power from the consent of the governed, that people possess inalienable rights that no legitimate government may take away, and that the people have the right and duty to overthrow a government that violates their rights. Jefferson also paralleled Locke in his identification of three major rights — the rights to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" — though the last of his three is a change from Locke's right to "property."

Jefferson himself minimized the Declaration's contribution to political philosophy. In a letter that he wrote in 1825, fifty years after the Declaration was signed, he described the document as "an appeal to the tribunal of the world." Its object, he wrote, was

[n]ot 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.

Although the Declaration of Independence stands with the Constitution as a founding document of the United States of America, its position in U.S. law is much less certain than that of the Constitution. The Declaration has been recognized as the founding act of law establishing the United States as a sovereign and independent nation, and Congress has placed it at the beginning of the U.S. Code, under the heading "The Organic Laws of the United States of America." The Supreme Court, however, has generally not considered it a part of the organic law of the country. For example, although the Declaration mentions a right to rebellion, this right, particularly with regard to violent rebellion, has not been recognized by the Supreme Court and other branches of the federal government. The most notable failure to uphold this right occurred when the Union put down the rebellion by the Southern Confederacy in the Civil War.

Despite its secondary authority, many later reform movements have quoted the Declaration in support of their cause, including movements for universal suffrage, abolition of slavery, women's rights, and civil rights for African Americans. Many have argued that this document influenced the passage and wording of such important developments in U.S. law and government as the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, which banned slavery and sought to make African Americans equal citizens. In this way, the Declaration of Independence remains the most outstanding example of the spirit, as opposed to the letter, of U.S. law.

The Declaration of Independence, perhaps the most famous document in U.S. history, was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. The preparation of the declaration began on June 11, when Congress appointed a committee composed of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman. Jefferson actually wrote the declaration, appropriating some of the language in the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Jefferson's famous phrase concerning "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is a slight reworking of the wording of the Virginia declaration.

After debate on Jefferson's draft, the Congress made several changes, yet the document remained an expression of the liberal political ideas articulated by John Locke and others. The second section, with its reference to "He," is an indictment of the actions of King George III. Like Common Sense, this section destroyed the aura surrounding the monarchy and helped move the colonists toward psychological as well as political independence from Great Britain.

For the members of the Continental Congress, the declaration served as a vehicle for publicizing their grievances and winning support for the revolutionary cause. It affirmed the natural rights of all people and the right of the colonists to "dissolve the political bands" with the British government. Later generations have laid more stress on the political ideals expressed in the declaration and, in particular, have found inspiration in the phrase "all men are created equal."

Declaration of Independence

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 shown, 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 or 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 endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration 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 endeavored 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 state 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 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 disolved; 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.

The fundamental document establishing the United States as a nation, adopted on July 4, 1776. The declaration was ordered and approved by the Continental Congress and written largely by Thomas Jefferson. It declared the thirteen colonies represented in the Continental Congress independent from Britain, offered reasons for the separation, and laid out the principles for which the Revolutionary War was fought. The signers included John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, and Jefferson. The declaration begins (capitalization and punctuation are modernized): “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 govenment, 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.”