What events directly led to the writing of the Declaration of Independence?

Answer 1

This summary is taken from Jefferson's Declaration of Independence: Origins, Philosophy, and Theology

Christopher M Duncan. Perspectives on Political Science. Washington: Winter 1999. Vol. 28, Iss. 1; pg. 56, 1 pgs

I hope this is helpful

Bill Crawley

Reference Librarian

Illinois Central College Jayne, Allen Jefferson's Declaration of Independence: Origins, Philosophy, and Theology Lexington: University Press of Kentucky 245 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-8131-2017-9 Publication Date: February 1998 In this book Allen Jayne, a Cambridge-- trained Ph.D., focuses his considerable historical and analytic skills on the mind of Thomas Jefferson. The result is a meticulously researched, cogently argued view of Jefferson that should force most readers to reconsider their understanding of him. It is a work fit for scholars, useful for the classroom, and of potential interest to other serious readers of American history and political thought. Jayne brings coherence to the thought of an often eclectic Jefferson. He explains that his contribution is original because it demonstrates "that a succinctly stated heterodox theology is institutionalized in the Declaration as a primary truth and necessary corollary of its political theory" (7). Through a comprehensive survey of Jefferson's reading habits and through painstaking close readings both of Jefferson and of works that Jefferson read, Jayne renders a compelling picture of a great mind at war with tyranny in all its manifestations. Jayne's Jefferson builds his intellectual house on a diverse foundation by drawing from the wisdom of Bolingbroke, Locke, Henry Home, Lord Kames, and Thomas Reid. The result is a Jefferson who deftly and concurrently embraced deism. the primacy of reason, egalitarianism, liberal individualism, democracy, and the commonsense moral philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment. The enemy of Jayne's Jefferson is "authority." Jefferson himself made this plain when he wrote: '"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction, is the last degradation of a free moral agent" (166). Subsequently, Jefferson endorsed a system of political ideals and institutional structures, such as the Bill of Rights, that would maintain the necessary intellectual and political space for the free practice of that cherished agency. While Jefferson apparently worried about the solipsistic dangers of such a world view, his faith in "the essential goodness of man; and a belief in man's perfectability through rational humanitarian means" (165) allowed him to forge confidently ahead. As Jayne understands Jefferson. he was utterly opposed to the "antiegalitarian. antidemocratic, implications of Judeo-Christian orthodoxy in the colonies at the time of the American Revolution" (9). He rejected the doctrine of original sin because politically it implied rule by either the morally tainted or an oppressive Leviathan (171). Both alternatives seemed too cruel and unreasonable to have been perpetrated by "Nature's God." Ironically, however, most Americans of the day disagreed with Jefferson on this point. For them C. S. Lewis's later observation (that he was a democrat because he believed in the fall of man) would have been more apropos. Hence, oddly, one of the central documents of the American founding period was based on theological and philosophical views foreign to the typical citizen. Furthermore, it remains foreign; Jefferson's prediction that "there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian" (166) did not come to pass. If there is a serious weakness in Allen Jayne's fine book, it is his failure to expound on the implications of his own findings. Jayne brings Jefferson's thought closer to us but fails to acknowledge that in doing so he has propelled us farther from Jefferson

Answer 2

Americans did not like the way they were being governed by the British King. If you READ the Declaration, it spells out their complaints. Here are a few of the complaints:

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.

In short- Americans were fed up with King George III, and wanted him to go away, and leave them alone.

Answer 3

King George was giving them a hard time such taxes, intolerable acts. so the United States wanted to break that connection that it has with the british.