Declaration of Independence

Description: The document in which a group of colonial American leaders declared themselves independent of Great Britain and King George III

Significance: The Declaration of Independence was the legal basis for the formation of the United States; it has significantly influenced American political thought, as well as that of other emerging nations, through the years

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.

So begins one of the most famous documents in political history. The American Declaration of Independence has had broad and sweeping historical effects. Believing in self-government, the signers of the declaration also believed they were providing the legal basis for organizing a new government—provided that the new republic, with the help of its allies, could win control of the field in battle. The endeavor marked the origins of what eventually became the most powerful nation in the world. In the twentieth century, the United States had great significance in world history, and the origins of that historical effect can be traced back to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and July 4, 1776.

The Declaration and the Revolution

Many nations have found in the Declaration of Independence inspiration and ideological support for their own revolutions. Some of the wording and many of the ideas have found their way into later, more modern declarations of independence in various parts of the world. The American Revolution was not really a revolution in the modern sense of the word, but was a separatist war seeking independence rather than seeking to overthrow an existing government. In that sense the war could more accurately be called the American war for independence from Great Britain.

The colonists claimed they were fighting a defensive war for the preservation of English liberties in the American colonies. There was indeed a continuity with the past, and many of the prewar political leaders in America continued as leaders in the new republic, but major changes also took place, including the writing of the Constitution of the United States in 1787. English customs, traditions, and the continuity of the English common law in the United States helped to preserve stability and minimize the upheaval of such momentous change. In several states the colonial charters were kept largely intact, changing only terms to meet the new political realities.

The Declaration of Independence was not entered into lightly, as the preamble and first paragraph explicitly state: “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” The Americans, though, were convinced that there was a design on the part of King George III of Great Britain to “reduce” the American colonies to rule under “absolute Despotism.” For that reason they decided to declare independence and risk their lives, fortunes, and “sacred Honor” in the pursuit of freedom and independence. They stood on principle and they stood together, for as Benjamin Franklin so aptly put it, “We must all hang together or surely we will all hang separately.” The British, however, did not consider the Declaration of Independence to be a legal document. The risks were great and so was the courage of the patriots. In the end, the British had no choice but reluctantly to acknowledge American independence as declared.

The Americans declared that they were fighting for certain things besides independence. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, penned the views of the assembled Continental Congress. His famous words expressed their views on the purpose for, and basis of, government:

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.

“Unalienable Rights.”

All Americans (indeed all people, according to the implication of these words) have “certain unalienable Rights.” Where did those rights come from? Certainly not from the state—or else the state could change and take them away, and they would not be “unalienable.” They came from “their Creator,” from “the Laws of nature and of Nature’s God.” The Declaration of Independence then acknowledges a higher law, or natural law, to which government and human laws must conform. Jefferson was a leader of the American Enlightenment and so used “natural law” terminology. Many of the other leaders were orthodox Christians and so used biblical terminology. John Dickinson, a leader of the Stamp Act Congress, for example, wrote that “Our liberties do not come from charters; for these are only the declaration of preexisting rights. They do not depend on parchments or seals; but come from the King of Kings and Lord of all the earth.” Enlightenment or traditional Christian, both groups agreed that Americans are born with certain God-given rights, including life and liberty.

The concept of inalienable rights for the individual presupposes limitations on the power of the state, and that idea is the basic assumption involved in writing a constitution. During the American Revolution, the main constitutional authority in the United States rested in the thirteen state constitutions. The Continental Congress acted as the extralegal representative assembly that attempted to hold the states together and to conduct the war and diplomatic relations. It was not until 1781 that the first “constitution” of the United States was adopted, the Articles of Confederation. Both the Continental Congress and the Confederation Congress lacked sufficient authority to act as a central government, however, and in due time the United States Constitution was written, adopted, and put into effect in 1789.

Thomas Jefferson did not claim originality in writing the Declaration. “All American whigs [Patriots],” he wrote, “thought alike on these subjects.” He wrote the declaration “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. . . . 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. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, etc.”

The Declaration of Independence is not a constitution. It was partially designed to attract international support to the American cause. Yet if its basic presuppositions are correct and “the people” have a right to change their form of government, then the declaration is extremely important as a representative expression of the collective will of the people.

Bibliography

A good starting point for further reading on the Declaration of Independence is a collection of essays on the subject (and related matters), Earl Latham’s The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (3rd ed. Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1976). The ideas leading to the signing of the Declaration of Independence are brilliantly discussed in Bernard Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1967), and in Gordon S. Wood’s The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1969). Dumas Malone’s The Story of the Declaration of Independence (New York: Oxford UP, 1975) is a pictorial book prepared for the bicentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and is useful not only for the story but also for its sketches of the lives of the signers of the declaration. Those are given in more detail in C. Edward Quinn’s The Signers of the Declaration of Independence (2nd ed. New York: The Bronx County Historical Society, 1988). Carl L. Becker’s classic account, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (New York: Vintage Books, 1922, reprint 1960), is still useful. Russell Kirk has a chapter on the ideas implied in the Declaration of Independence in his The Roots of American Order (3rd ed. Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1991). Many biographies of Thomas Jefferson are available, including Merrill D. Peterson, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (New York: Oxford UP, 1960). In Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (New York: Liveright, 2014), Danielle S. Allen highlights the gravity of the task undertaken by the Founders to create a unifying document during such turbulent times. Steven C. A. Pincus's The Heart of the Declaration: The Founders' Case for an Activist Government (New Haven: Yale UP, 2016) offers a more unique analysis of the Declaration of Independence that focuses on the Founders' intentions to set up a government with the authority to promote the welfare of the people.