Declaration of Independence (1776): Text, Authors and Legacy

The Declaration of Independence is the document in which the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, announced on 4 July 1776 that the thirteen American colonies were free and independent states, no longer subject to the British Crown. Drafted mainly by Thomas Jefferson, it explained the decision to the world, set out a theory of natural rights and listed grievances against King George III. Its opening statement that “all men are created equal” became one of the most influential sentences in modern political history.

The road to independence

When the First Continental Congress met in 1774, very few delegates wanted independence. Even after the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the Second Continental Congress raised an army while still professing loyalty to the King. In July 1775 it sent the Olive Branch Petition, but George III refused to receive it and in August proclaimed the colonies to be in open rebellion.

Over the following months opinion shifted rapidly. In December 1775 Parliament passed the Prohibitory Act, cutting off trade with the colonies and treating American ships as enemy vessels. News that Britain was hiring German troops angered many colonists. In January 1776 Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense attacked monarchy itself and argued plainly for separation, selling in huge numbers.

By spring, colonies began to authorise their delegates to vote for independence. North Carolina did so in the Halifax Resolves of 12 April, and on 15 May the Virginia Convention instructed its delegates to propose it. In resolutions of 10 and 15 May, Congress urged the colonies to form new governments wherever royal authority had collapsed.

The Lee Resolution and the committee of five

On 7 June 1776 Richard Henry Lee of Virginia moved in Congress that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States”. Delegates from the middle colonies, including New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware, were not yet ready, so the vote was postponed for three weeks.

To save time, Congress on 11 June appointed a committee to prepare a declaration explaining the decision: Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert R. Livingston of New York. The committee gave the task of writing the first draft to Jefferson, then 33, who had a reputation as a gifted writer.

Jefferson wrote in a rented room in Philadelphia over about two weeks. He drew on ideas widely shared at the time, especially the political philosophy of John Locke, and on recent American documents, including George Mason’s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights and his own draft preamble for a Virginia constitution. Adams and Franklin suggested changes, and the committee presented the draft to Congress on 28 June.

The votes of 2 and 4 July

On 1 July Congress debated Lee’s resolution in a committee of the whole. On 2 July twelve colonies voted for independence, with New York abstaining because its delegates lacked instructions. Pennsylvania’s majority changed when John Dickinson and Robert Morris stayed away, and Caesar Rodney rode through the night from Delaware to break a tie in his delegation. New York’s approval followed on 9 July.

Congress then spent parts of 2, 3 and 4 July editing Jefferson’s text, removing roughly a quarter of it. The longest cut was a passage blaming George III for the Atlantic slave trade. According to Jefferson’s own notes, it was dropped to satisfy South Carolina and Georgia, and some northern delegates whose regions profited from the trade were also uneasy with it. On 4 July Congress approved the final wording.

That night the printer John Dunlap produced the first broadside copies, signed in type only by John Hancock as president and Charles Thomson as secretary. Copies were sent by riders to the states and to the army. The Declaration was read publicly in Philadelphia on 8 July, and in New York on 9 July it was read to George Washington’s troops, after which a crowd pulled down the gilded statue of George III on Bowling Green.

What the text says

The Declaration has a clear structure. A short introduction states that a people separating from another should explain why. The famous second paragraph sets out its philosophy: “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.”

It continues that governments are created to secure these rights and draw their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that when a government becomes destructive of these ends, the people have the right to alter or abolish it. The longest section lists 27 grievances against the King, among them dissolving colonial assemblies, keeping standing armies in peacetime, cutting off trade, imposing taxes without consent, depriving colonists of trial by jury and waging war against them. The document closes by declaring the colonies “Free and Independent States” with full power to make war, conclude peace and form alliances.

By blaming the King rather than Parliament, the authors reflected the American view that Parliament had never had rightful authority over them, so that their only remaining tie to Britain was the Crown.

The signers

On 19 July Congress ordered the text to be engrossed, or written out formally, on parchment under the new title “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America”. Most members signed it on 2 August 1776. Some signed later, and several who had voted for independence never signed, while some who signed had not been present for the vote.

In all, 56 delegates put their names to the parchment. John Hancock’s large signature at the centre gave rise to the American expression “John Hancock” for a signature. The signers included lawyers, merchants, planters and physicians; Benjamin Franklin, at 70, was the oldest. In January 1777 Congress ordered an authenticated printed copy with the names of the signers, published in Baltimore by Mary Katharine Goddard.

Key people

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was the principal author and later became the third president of the United States. He owned more than 600 enslaved people over his lifetime, a contradiction with the text’s language about equality that critics noted even in his own time. John Adams (1735–1826) led the campaign for independence on the floor of Congress and later became the second president.

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), the most famous American in Europe, helped revise the draft and later secured the French alliance. Richard Henry Lee moved the resolution for independence, and John Hancock, president of Congress, was the first to sign. In a remarkable coincidence, Jefferson and Adams both died on 4 July 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration.

Legacy

At first the Declaration was valued mainly as a statement of independence, needed to win foreign support; France formally allied with the United States in 1778, and Britain recognised American independence in the Treaty of Paris of 1783. British critics, such as the former Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson and the pamphleteer John Lind, published replies attacking its claims; Hutchinson pointed to the holding of enslaved Africans by men who proclaimed liberty.

In the nineteenth century the second paragraph took on a life of its own. The women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls in 1848 modelled its Declaration of Sentiments on it, adding that “all men and women are created equal”. Frederick Douglass, in his 1852 address on the meaning of the Fourth of July to enslaved people, held the nation to its founding words, and Abraham Lincoln made the principle of equality central to his politics, recalling 1776 in the Gettysburg Address of 1863.

Abroad, the Declaration became a model for many later declarations of independence, from Latin America in the early nineteenth century to Ho Chi Minh’s declaration for Vietnam in 1945, which quoted its words on equality and rights. The historian David Armitage has counted well over a hundred such declarations worldwide. The signed parchment, much faded, is displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and 4 July is the national holiday of the United States.

Myths and facts

Myth: everyone signed on 4 July 1776. The text was approved that day, but most signatures were added on 2 August, and some later still.

Myth: the Liberty Bell rang out on 4 July to announce independence. This story first appeared in fiction written in the 1840s. Bells were rung at the public reading on 8 July, but there is no evidence for the famous 4 July scene.

Myth: John Trumbull’s painting shows the signing. It actually depicts the committee presenting its draft to Congress, generally identified with 28 June 1776, and it includes men who were not present together on any single day.

Timeline

• 1776, January: Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense.
• 1776, 15 May: The Virginia Convention instructs its delegates to propose independence.
• 1776, 7 June: Richard Henry Lee moves the resolution for independence.
• 1776, 11 June: Congress appoints the committee of five to draft a declaration.
• 1776, 28 June: The committee presents Jefferson’s draft to Congress.
• 1776, 2 July: Congress votes for independence, with New York abstaining.
• 1776, 4 July: Congress approves the final text; Dunlap prints the first copies that night.
• 1776, 8 July: The Declaration is read publicly in Philadelphia.
• 1776, 2 August: Most delegates sign the engrossed parchment.
• 1826, 4 July: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both die.

Why it matters

The Declaration of Independence created the United States as a political fact and gave it a founding creed. Its promise of equal natural rights, unfulfilled for many Americans when it was written, became a standard that later generations, at home and abroad, used to demand liberty and equality for themselves.