Declaration of Independence

Popular Sovereignty

The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Also, the right of the people to abolish or alter the government if it is necessary.

That the fundamental purpose of government is to protect people's rights and that government must have the consent of the governed. Michael Montagne

it was an objective and biased statement in the point of view of those who wrote it.

John Hancock was the most visible signer of the declaration of independence

• the loyalists belived that

They're been taxed without consent and "No Taxation Without Representation".

Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, James Madison

The Quartering Act allowed each colonial governor to lodge troops. The governors could place them in private establishments if need be.

james madison plad the consitution role..<3

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. 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 to 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 of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has 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 harass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature. He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to 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 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 offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring 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 in 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, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and 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 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 attention 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. 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 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 Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, 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 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 Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776

Answer 1
I would say the question is a mute point. We have been independent for over 200 yrs. We had a war with the UK and now they are best allies on the planet.
The rest is history.

Answer 2
Imagining that I were returning to the 1770s, there were several reasons why America should not have declared independence.

Protection from Foreign Powers: The United Kingdom fought numerous wars to protect the Thirteen Colonies from foreign powers. Most importantly, they defended the colonies in the Seven Years War and kept the Mediterranean Pirates at bay. Additionally, the British forged numerous treaties with the Native Americans which prevented violence to a great degree on the frontier.

Vast Differences between Colonies: New England, the Middle Colonies, and the Southern Colonies had vastly different economic organizations, political organizations, religious pluralities, and different states of readiness for self-government. It is surprising that the US Civil War did not happen in the 1820s instead of the 1860s.

Infrastructure: The Colonies were vast pieces of territory with few roads and minimal infrastructure. It would make it very expensive to maintain such a country and organize it. The UK had such substantial resources. The recently independent colonists did not.

Taxes: Britain operated the thirteen colonies at a loss. The profitable British colonies were the islands in the Caribbean (like Barbados, the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos) and the Indian Subcontinent (the British only controlled coastal cities, but the tea produced there was very lucrative). The taxes on the colonies were minimal and less than every other location in the Empire. The idea that these miniscule (relatively speaking) taxes should justify a revolution is absurd.

The ideas of John Locke and Thomas Paine influenced the writing of the Declaration of Independance.

Thomas Jefferson wrote about unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence. The idea was adapted from the philosophy of John Locke.

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john Locke believed in natural an unalienable rights that everyone is born with. These rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
philosopher john lockes main ideas were to get people natural rights. rights that we are already born with and noone can't take away from us. the governments job is to protect those rights.

Penesylvania

During the revolution, those who wanted to be independent were called "patriots".

Jean-Jacques Rousseau gave Jefferson the idea that a "well regulated militia as essential to liberty" and Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (known simply as "Montesquieu"), gave the Founding Fathers the concept of "the separation of powers" found in the US Constitution.

The goal of the farmers when they met at independence hall was to to revise the articles of confederation.

Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, Maryland, South Carolina,New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island and Providence Plantations

Yes the Declaration of Independence lead to the Civil War because the sentiments said all men are equal...not women. Also not all men were equal. Slaves were treated like dogs and there were many debates on this; which includes the Compromise of 1850.

because he was elected after two other presidents