US Declaration of Independence History

Overview

The Declaration of Independence   is arguably one of the most influential documents in American History. Other countries and organizations have adopted its tone and manner in their own documents and declarations. For example, France wrote its 'Declaration of the Rights of Man' and the Women's Rights movement wrote its 'declaration of Sentiments'. However, the Declaration of Independence was actually not technically necessary in proclaiming independence from Great Britain.

History of the Declaration of Independence

A resolution of independence passed the Philadelphia Convention on July 2. This was all that was needed to break away from Britain. The colonists had been fighting Great Britain for 14 months while proclaiming their allegiance to the crown. Now they were breaking away. Obviously, they wanted to make clear exactly why they decided to take this action. Hence, they presented the world with the 'Declaration of Independence' drafted by thirty-three year old Thomas Jefferson.
The text of the Declaration has been compared to a 'Lawyer's Brief'. It presents a long list of grievances against King George III including such items as taxation without representation, maintaining a standing army in peacetime, dissolving houses of representatives, and hiring "large armies of foreign mercenaries." The analogy is that Jefferson is an attorney presenting his case before the world court. Not everything that Jefferson wrote was exactly correct. However, it is important to remember that he was writing a persuasive essay, not a historical text. The formal break from Great Britain was complete with the adoption of this document on July 4, 1776.

Background

To gain a further understanding of the Declaration of Independence, we will look at the idea of mercantilism along with some of the events and actions that led to open rebellion.

Mercantilism

This was the idea that colonies existed for the benefit of the Mother Country. The American colonists could be compared to tenants who were expected to 'pay rent', i.e., provide materials for export to Britain. Britain's goal was to have a greater number of exports than imports allowing them to store up wealth in the form of bullion. According to mercantilism, the wealth of the world was fixed. To increase wealth a country had two options: explore or make war. By colonizing America, Britain greatly increased its base of wealth. This idea of a fixed amount of wealth was the target of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations(1776). Smith's work had a profound effect on the American founding fathers and the nation's economic system.

Events Leading to the Declaration of Independence

The French and Indian War was a fight between Britain and France that lasted from 1754-1763. Because the British ended in debt, they began to demand more from the colonies. Further, parliament passed the Royal Proclamation of 1763 which prohibited settlement beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Beginning in 1764, Great Britain began passing acts to exert greater control over the American colonies which had been left more or less to themselves until the French and Indian War. In 1764, the Sugar Act increased duties on foreign sugar imported from the West Indies. A Currency Act was also passed that year banning the colonies from issuing paper bills or bills of credit because of the belief that the colonial currency had devalued the British money. Further, in order to continue to support the British soldiers left in America after the war, Great Britain passed the Quartering Act in 1765. This ordered colonists to house and feed British soldiers if there was not enough room for them in the barracks.
An important piece of legislation that really upset the colonists was the Stamp Act passed in 1765. This required stamps to be purchased or included on many different items and documents such as playing cards, legal papers, newspapers, and more. This was the first direct tax that Britain had imposed on the colonists. The money from it was to be used for defense. In response to this, the Stamp Act Congress met in New York City. 27 delegates from nine colonies met and wrote a statement of rights and grievances against Great Britain. In order to fight back, the Sons of Liberty and Daughters of Liberty secret organizations were created. They imposed non-importation agreements. Sometimes, enforcing these agreements meant tarring and feathering those who still wished to purchase British goods.
Events began to escalate with passage of the Townshend Acts in 1767. These taxes were created to help colonial officials become independent of the colonists by providing them with a source of income. Smuggling of the affected goods meant that the British moved more troops to important ports such as Boston. The increase in troops led to many clashes including the famous Boston Messacre.
The colonists continued to organize themselves. Samuel Adams organized the Committees of Correspondence, informal groups that helped spread information from colony to colony.
In 1773, parliament passed the Tea Act, giving the British East India Company a monopoly to trade tea in America. This led to the Boston Tea Party where a group of colonists dressed as Indians dumped tea from three ships into Boston Harbor. In response, the Intolerable Acts were passed. These placed numerous restrictions on the colonists including the closing of Boston Harbor.

Colonists Respond and War Begins

In response to the Intolerable Acts, 12 of the 13 colonies met in Philadelphia from September-October, 1774. This was called the First Continental Congress. The Association was created calling for a boycott of British goods. The continuing escalation of hostility resulted in violence when in April 1775, British troops traveled to Lexington and Concord to take control of stored colonial gunpowder and to capture Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Eight Americans were killed at Lexington. At Concord, the British troops retreated losing 70 men in the process. May, 1775 brought the meeting of the Second Continental Congress. All 13 colonies were represented. George Washington was named the head of the Continental Army with John Adams backing. The majority of delegates were not calling for complete independence at this point so much as changes in British policy. However, with the colonial victory at Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, King George III proclaimed that the colonies were in a state of rebellion. He hired thousands of Hessian mercenaries to fight against the colonists.
In January, 1776, Thomas Paine published his famous pamphlet entitled “Common Sense.” Up until the appearance of this extremely influential pamphlet, many colonists had been fighting with the hope of reconciling. However, he argued that America should no longer be a colony to Great Britain but instead should be an independent country.

Committee to Draft the Declaration of Independence

On June 11, 1776, the Continental Congress appointed a committee of five men to draft the Declaration: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman. Jefferson was given the task of writing the first draft. Once complete, he presented this to the committee. Together they revised the document and on June 28 submitted it to the Continental Congress. The Congress voted for independence on July 2. They then made some changes to the Declaration of Independence and finally approved it on July 4.

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
Action of Second Continental 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 [George III] 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 harass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring 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 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 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 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.

The signers of the Declaration:
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