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Open Anthology of The American Revolution: The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America

Open Anthology of The American Revolution
The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America
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table of contents
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Table Of Contents
  5. Introduction
  6. Questions to Guide Your Reading
  7. The Virginia Settlement
    1. Starving Time
    2. An Indentured Servant’s Letter Home
    3. Bacon’s Manifesto
  8. The Puritans of New England
    1. Early Education Laws
    2. Limits of Toleration
    3. Prologue to “The Tenth Muse”
    4. Connecticut’s “Blue Laws”
    5. Records of the Trial and Execution of Sarah Good
    6. Two Letters of Gov. William Phips
  9. The Old Colonial System
    1. Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England
    2. The Navigation Act of 1660
    3. Commission of Sir Edmund Andros for the Dominion of New England
    4. Boston Revolt of 1689
    5. Bars Fight
    6. Albany Plan of Union
    7. The Way to Wealth
  10. The Revolution
    1. Second Treatise of Government
    2. Chart of Battles, Leaders, and Congresses During the Revolutionary War
    3. Petition from the Massachusetts House of Representatives to the House of Commons (in response to the Sugar Act)
    4. Patrick Henry’s Resolutions Against the Stamp Act
    5. Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, To the Inhabitants of the British Colonies
    6. After the Boston Tea Party: Cartoons
    7. Continental Congress’s Declaration of Rights and Grievances against Great Britain
    8. Articles of Association
    9. The Alternative of Williamsburg
    10. Petition of the New York Assembly to George III
    11. Address from Joseph Warren
    12. The Charlotte Town Resolves
    13. The Olive Branch Petition
    14. His Excellency General Washington
    15. Oath of Allegiance to the King George III
    16. Letter from George Washington to John Hancock
    17. Common Sense
    18. Resolve of the Continental Congress Regarding State Governments
    19. Richard Henry Lee Resolution for Independence
    20. Appointment of Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams to Draft the Declaration of Independence
    21. Adoption of the Lee Resolution
    22. The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America
    23. The American Crisis
    24. Draft Notice
    25. Treaty of Alliance with France
    26. Address of the Congress to the Inhabitants of the United States of America
    27. Establishment of the American Army
    28. Marquis de Lafayette’s Oath of Allegiance
    29. Letter of John Adams to the President of Congress
    30. Details from a Providence (RI) Town Meeting About Quartering of Troops
    31. Letter from Elizabeth Burgin to Reverend James Calville
    32. Letter from General George Washington to Congress Announcing the Victory at Yorktown, Virginia
    33. Benjamin Franklin’s Draft of Preliminary Articles of Peace
    34. Treaty of Paris
    35. Minutes of a Conference between George Washington and Guy Carleton
    36. Letter from Joseph Warren to Benjamin Franklin
    37. Articles of Confederation
    38. Northwest Ordinance
    39. Thomas Walke’s Account of Capturing his Runaway Slaves in New York City
    40. General Washington’s Instructions to Commissioners of Embarkation
    41. Letter from Embarkation Commissioners to General Washington
    42. An Address to the Negroes In the State of New-York
    43. Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery
    44. Testimony of Deborah Sampson Gannett
  11. Appendix 1: More Readings

38

The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America

 July 4, 1776

Thomas Jefferson and The Second Continental Congress

Background

Drafted for the most part by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence justified breaking the colonial ties to Great Britain by providing a basic philosophy of government and a list of grievances against the Crown. Under the supervision of the Committee of Five who drafted it, the approved Declaration was printed on July 5th.

After the Second Continental Congress declared independence on July 4 in Philadelphia, Americans might not have heard the news for several days. Broadsides—large pieces of paper printed to be posted in public spaces—were a common way to spread news…  These printed copies were distributed distributed among the new states and troops, state assemblies, conventions, committees of safety, and commanding officers of the Continental troops, to be read aloud and posted in public areas.

In justifying independence, the Declaration of Independence asserted an eternal and universal truth about human rights in words that have inspired downtrodden people through the ages and around the world to rise up against their oppressors.

Background Information Adapted From: “Dunlap Broadside” from the National Archives, Original License CC 4.0 BY NC SA

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 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 of 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 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 of 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 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. 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.[1]

View a Facsimile of Thomas Jefferson’s Draft of the Declaration of Independence


  1. Accessed at https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/dunlap-broadside ↵

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