The
United States Declaration of Independence is a
statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress on
July 4, 1776, which
announced that the thirteen American
colonies then at war with Great Britain
were now independent states, and thus no longer a
part of the British Empire.
Written primarily by
Thomas
Jefferson, the Declaration is a formal explanation of why
Congress had voted on July 2 to
declare
independence from Great Britain, more than a year after the
outbreak of the
American
Revolutionary War.
The birthday of the United States of America
—Independence Day—is
celebrated on July 4, the day the wording of the Declaration was
approved by Congress.
After finalizing the text on July 4, Congress issued the
Declaration of Independence in several forms. It was initially
published as a printed
broadside
that was widely distributed and read to the public.
The most famous
version of the Declaration, a signed copy that is usually regarded
as the Declaration of Independence, is on display at the
National Archives
in Washington, D.C.
Although the wording of the Declaration was
approved on July 4, the date of its actual signing is disputed by
historians, most accepting a theory that it was signed nearly a
month after its adoption, on August 2, 1776, and not on July 4 as
is commonly believed.
The sources and interpretation of the Declaration have been the
subject of much scholarly inquiry. The Declaration justified the
independence of the United States by listing colonial grievances
against
King George
III, and by asserting certain
natural rights, including a
right of revolution. Having
served its original purpose in announcing independence, the text of
the Declaration was initially ignored after the
American Revolution. Its stature grew
over the years, particularly the second sentence, a sweeping
statement of
human rights:
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.
This sentence has been called "one of the best-known sentences in
the English language" and "the most potent and consequential words
in American history". The passage has often been used to promote
the rights of marginalized groups, and came to represent for many
people a moral standard for which the United States should strive.
This view was greatly influenced by
Abraham Lincoln, who considered the
Declaration to be the foundation of his political philosophy, and
promoted the idea that the Declaration is a statement of principles
through which the
United
States Constitution should be interpreted.
Background
By the time the Declaration of Independence was adopted in July
1776, the
Thirteen Colonies and
Great Britain had been at war for more than a year. Relations
between the colonies and the
mother
country had been deteriorating since the end of the
Seven Years' War in 1763. The war had
plunged the British government deep into debt, and so
Parliament enacted a series of
measures to increase tax revenue from the colonies. Parliament
believed that these acts, such as the
Stamp Act of 1765 and the
Townshend Acts of 1767, were a legitimate
means of having the colonies pay their fair share of the costs to
keep the colonies in the
British
Empire.
Many colonists, however, had developed a different conception of
the empire. Because the colonies were not directly represented in
Parliament, colonists argued that Parliament had
no right to levy taxes
upon them, despite some British claims of "
virtual representation." This tax
dispute was part of a larger divergence between British and
American interpretations of the
British Constitution, the historic
rights of Englishmen, and the
extent of Parliament's
authority in the
colonies. The orthodox British view, dating from the
Glorious Revolution of 1688, was that
Parliament was the
supreme
authority throughout the empire, and so by definition anything
Parliament did was constitutional. In the colonies, however, the
idea had developed that the British Constitution recognized certain
fundamental rights, that no
government—not even Parliament—could violate. After the Townshend
Acts, some essayists even began to question whether Parliament had
any
legitimate jurisdiction
in the colonies at all. Anticipating the arrangement of the
British Commonwealth, by
1774 American writers such as
Samuel
Adams,
James Wilson, and Thomas
Jefferson were arguing that Parliament was the legislature of Great
Britain only, and that the colonies, which had their own
legislatures, were connected to the rest of the empire only through
their
allegiance to
the Crown.
Congress convenes
The issue
of Parliament's authority in the colonies became a crisis after
Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in
1774 to punish the Province of
Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party
. Many colonists saw the Coercive Acts as a
violation of the British Constitution and thus a threat to the
liberties of all of
British America.
In
September 1774, the First
Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia
to coordinate a response. Congress organized
a
boycott of British goods
and
petitioned the king
for repeal of the acts. These measures were unsuccessful because
King George III and
the
North ministry were determined
not to retreat on the question of parliamentary supremacy. As the
king wrote to
Prime
Minister Lord North
in November 1774, "blows must decide whether they are to be subject
to this country or independent".
Even after
fighting in the American
Revolutionary War began at Lexington and
Concord
in April 1775, most colonists still hoped for
reconciliation with Great Britain. When the Second Continental Congress
convened at the Pennsylvania State House
in Philadelphia in May 1775, some delegates hoped
for eventual independence, but no one yet advocated declaring
it. Although many colonists no longer believed that
Parliament had any sovereignty over them, they still professed
loyalty to King George, whom they hoped would intercede on their
behalf. They were to be disappointed: in late 1775, the king
rejected Congress's
second
petition, issued a
Proclamation of Rebellion, and
announced before Parliament on October 26 that he was even
considering "friendly offers of foreign assistance" to suppress the
rebellion. A pro-American minority in Parliament warned that the
government was driving the colonists towards independence.
Towards independence
In January 1776, just as it became clear in the colonies that the
king was not inclined to act as a conciliator,
Thomas Paine's pamphlet
Common Sense was published.
Paine, who had only recently arrived in the colonies from England,
argued in favor of colonial independence, advocating
republicanism as an alternative to monarchy
and hereditary rule.
Common Sense introduced no new ideas,
and probably had little direct effect on Congress's thinking about
independence; its importance was in stimulating public debate on a
topic that few had previously dared to openly discuss. Public
support for separation from Great Britain steadily increased after
the publication of Paine's enormously popular pamphlet.
Although some colonists still held out hope for reconciliation,
developments in early 1776 further strengthened public support for
independence. In February 1776, colonists learned of Parliament's
passage of the
Prohibitory Act,
which established a blockade of American ports and declared
American ships to be enemy vessels.
John
Adams, a strong supporter of independence, believed that
Parliament had effectively declared American independence before
Congress had been able to. Adams labeled the Prohibitory Act the
"Act of Independency", calling it "a compleat Dismemberment of the
British Empire". Support for declaring independence grew even more
when it was confirmed that King George had hired German mercenaries
to use against his American subjects.
Despite this growing popular support for independence, Congress
lacked the clear authority to declare it. Delegates had been
elected to Congress by thirteen different governments—which
included extralegal conventions, ad hoc committees, and elected
assemblies—and were bound by the instructions given to them.
Regardless of their personal opinions, delegates could not vote to
declare independence unless their instructions permitted such an
action. Several colonies, in fact, expressly prohibited their
delegates from taking any steps towards separation from Great
Britain, while other delegations had instructions that were
ambiguous on the issue. As public sentiment for separation from
Great Britain grew, advocates of independence sought to have the
Congressional instructions revised. For Congress to declare
independence, a majority of delegations would need authorization to
vote for independence, and at least one colonial government would
need to specifically instruct its delegation to propose a
declaration of independence in Congress. Between April and July
1776, a "complex political war" was waged to bring this
about.
Revising instructions
In the campaign to revise Congressional instructions, many
Americans formally expressed their support for separation from
Great Britain in what were effectively state and local declarations
of independence, including more than ninety such declarations that
were issued throughout the Thirteen Colonies from April to July
1776. These "declarations" took a variety of forms. Some were
formal, written instructions for Congressional delegations, such as
the
Halifax Resolves of April 12,
with which North Carolina became the first colony to explicitly
authorize its delegates to vote for independence. Others were
legislative acts that officially ended British rule in individual
colonies, such as on May 4, when the Rhode Island legislature
became the first to declare its independence from Great Britain.
Many "declarations" were resolutions adopted at town or county
meetings that offered support for independence. A few came in the
form of jury instructions, such as the statement issued on April
23, 1776, by Chief Justice
William
Henry Drayton of South Carolina: "the law of the land
authorizes me to declare...that
George the Third, King of
Great Britain...has no authority over us, and we owe no
obedience to him." Most of these declarations are now obscure,
having been overshadowed by the declaration approved by Congress on
July 4.
Some colonies held back from endorsing independence. Resistance was
centered in the
middle colonies of
New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.
Advocates of independence saw Pennsylvania as the key: if that
colony could be converted to the pro-independence cause, it was
believed that the others would follow. On May 1, however, opponents
of independence retained control of the
Pennsylvania Assembly in a
special election that had focused on the question of independence.
In response, on May 10 Congress passed a resolution, which had been
introduced by John Adams, calling on colonies without a "government
sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs" to adopt new
governments. The resolution passed unanimously, and was even
supported by Pennsylvania's
John Dickinson, the leader of the
anti-independence faction in Congress, who believed that it did not
apply to his colony.
May 15 preamble
As was the custom, Congress appointed a committee to draft a
preamble that would explain the purpose of
the resolution. John Adams wrote the preamble, which stated that
because King George had rejected reconciliation and was even hiring
foreign mercenaries to use against the colonies, "it is necessary
that the exercise of every kind of authority under the said crown
should be totally suppressed". Everyone understood that Adams's
preamble was meant to encourage the overthrow of the governments of
Pennsylvania and Maryland, which were still under
proprietary governance. Congress passed
the preamble on May 15 after several days of debate, but four of
the middle colonies voted against it, and the Maryland delegation
walked out in protest. Adams regarded his May 15 preamble as
effectively an American declaration of independence, although he
knew that a formal declaration would still have to be made.
Lee's resolution and the final push
On the same day that Congress passed Adams's radical preamble, the
Virginia Convention set the
stage for a formal Congressional declaration of independence. On
May 15, the Convention instructed Virginia's congressional
delegation "to propose to that respectable body to declare the
United Colonies free and independent States, absolved from all
allegiance to, or dependence upon, the Crown or Parliament of Great
Britain". In accordance with those instructions,
Richard Henry Lee of Virginia presented a
three-part resolution to Congress on
June 7. The motion, which was seconded by John Adams, called on
Congress to declare independence, form foreign alliances, and
prepare a plan of colonial confederation. The part of the
resolution relating to declaring independence read:
Resolved, 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.
Lee's resolution met with resistance in the ensuing debate.
Opponents of the resolution, while conceding that reconciliation
with Great Britain was unlikely, argued that declaring independence
was premature, and that securing foreign aid should take priority.
Advocates of the resolution countered that foreign governments
would not intervene in an internal British struggle, and so a
formal declaration of independence was needed before foreign aid
was possible. All Congress needed to do, they insisted, was to
"declare a fact which already exists". Delegates from Pennsylvania,
Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, and New York were still not yet
authorized to vote for independence, however, and some of them
threatened to leave Congress if the resolution were adopted.
Congress therefore voted on June 10 to postpone further discussion
of Lee's resolution for three weeks. Until then, Congress decided
that a committee should prepare a document announcing and
explaining independence in the event that Lee's resolution was
approved when it was brought up again in July.
Support for a Congressional declaration of independence was
consolidated in the final weeks of June 1776. On June 14, the
Connecticut Assembly instructed its delegates to propose
independence, and the following day the legislatures of New
Hampshire and Delaware authorized their delegates to declare
independence. In Pennsylvania, political struggles ended with the
dissolution of the colonial assembly, and on June 18 a new
Conference of Committees under
Thomas
McKean authorized Pennsylvania's delegates to declare
independence. On June 15, the
Provincial Congress of New
Jersey, which had been governing the province since January
1776, resolved that Royal Governor
William Franklin was "an enemy to the
liberties of this country" and had him arrested. On June 21, they
chose new delegates to Congress and empowered them to join in a
declaration of independence.
Only Maryland and New York had yet to authorize independence. When
the Continental Congress had adopted Adams's radical May 15
preamble, Maryland's delegates walked out and sent to the
Maryland Convention for instructions. On
May 20, the Maryland Convention rejected Adams's preamble,
instructing its delegates to remain against independence, but
Samuel Chase went to Maryland and,
thanks to local resolutions in favor of independence, was able to
get the Maryland Convention to change its mind on June 28. Only the
New York delegates were unable to get revised instructions. When
Congress had been considering the resolution of independence on
June 8, the
New York
Provincial Congress told the delegates to wait. But on June 30,
the Provincial Congress evacuated New York as British forces
approached, and would not convene again until July 10. This meant
that New York's delegates would not be authorized to declare
independence until after Congress had made its decision.
Draft and adoption
While political maneuvering was setting the stage for an official
declaration of independence, a document explaining the decision was
being written. On June 11, 1776, Congress appointed a "
Committee of Five", consisting of John
Adams of Massachusetts,
Benjamin
Franklin of Pennsylvania,
Thomas
Jefferson of Virginia,
Robert R. Livingston of New York, and
Roger Sherman of Connecticut, to draft
a declaration. Because the committee left no minutes, there is some
uncertainty about how the drafting process proceeded—accounts
written many years later by Jefferson and Adams, although
frequently cited, are contradictory and not entirely reliable. What
is certain is that the committee, after discussing the general
outline that the document should follow, decided that Jefferson
would write the first draft. Considering Congress's busy schedule,
Jefferson probably had limited time for writing over the next
seventeen days, and likely wrote the draft quickly. He then
consulted the others, made some changes, and then produced another
copy incorporating these alterations. The committee presented this
copy to the Congress on June 28, 1776. The title of the document
was "A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of
America, in General Congress assembled." Congress ordered that the
draft "
lie on the
table".
On Monday, July 1, having tabled the draft of the declaration,
Congress resolved itself into a
committee of the whole and resumed
debate on Lee's resolution of independence.
John Dickinson made one last
effort to delay the decision, arguing that Congress should not
declare independence without first securing a foreign alliance and
finalizing the
Articles of
Confederation. John Adams gave a speech in reply to Dickinson,
restating the case for an immediate declaration.
After a long day of speeches, a vote was taken. As always, each
colony cast a single vote; the delegation for each colony—numbering
two to seven members—voted amongst themselves to determine the
colony's vote. Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted against
declaring independence. The New York delegation, lacking permission
to vote for independence, abstained. Delaware cast no vote because
the delegation was split between
Thomas
McKean (who voted yes) and
George Read (who voted no). The
remaining nine delegations voted in favor of independence, which
meant that the resolution had been approved by the committee of the
whole. The next step was for the resolution to be voted upon by the
Congress itself.
Edward Rutledge of
South Carolina, who was opposed to Lee's resolution but desirous of
unanimity, moved that the vote be postponed until the following
day.
On July 2, South Carolina reversed its position and voted for
independence. In the Pennsylvania delegation, Dickinson and
Robert Morris abstained,
allowing the delegation to vote three-to-two in favor of
independence. The tie in the Delaware delegation was broken by the
timely arrival of
Caesar Rodney, who
voted for independence. The New York delegation abstained once
again, since they were still not authorized to vote for
independence, although they would be allowed to do so by the
New York Provincial
Congress a week later. The resolution of independence had been
adopted with twelve affirmative votes and one abstention. With
this, the colonies had officially severed political ties with Great
Britain. In a now-famous letter written to his wife on the
following day, John Adams predicted that July 2 would become a
great American holiday. Adams thought that the vote for
independence would be commemorated; he did not foresee that
Americans—including himself—would instead celebrate
Independence Day on the
date that the announcement of that act was finalized.
After voting in favor of the resolution of independence, Congress
turned its attention to the committee's draft of the declaration.
Over several days of debate, Congress made a few changes in wording
and deleted nearly a fourth of the text, most notably a passage
critical of the
slave trade,
changes that Jefferson resented. On July 4, 1776, the wording of
the Declaration of Independence was approved and sent to the
printer for publication.
Text
The first sentence of the Declaration asserts as a matter of
Natural law the ability of a people to
assume political independence, and acknowledges that the grounds
for such independence must be reasonable, and therefore explicable,
and ought to be explained.
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.
The next section, the famous preamble, includes the ideas and
ideals that were principles of the Declaration. It is also an
assertion of what is known as the "
right of revolution": that is, people
have certain rights, and when a government violates these rights,
the people have the right to "alter or abolish" that
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.
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.
The next section is a list of charges against King George which aim
to demonstrate that he has violated the colonists' rights and is
therefore unfit to be their ruler:
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 disolutions, 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 harrass 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 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.
Many Americans still felt a kinship with the people of Great
Britain, and had appealed in vain to the prominent among them, as
well as to
Parliament,
to convince the King to relax his more objectionable policies
toward the colonies. The next section represents disappointment
that these attempts had been unsuccessful.
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.
In the final section, the signers assert that there exist
conditions under which people must change their government, that
the British have produced such conditions, and by necessity the
colonies must throw off political ties with the British Crown and
become independent states. The conclusion incorporates language
from Lee's resolution of independence that had been passed on July
2.
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 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.
Influences
Historians have often sought to identify the sources that most
influenced the words of the Declaration of Independence. By
Jefferson's own admission, the Declaration contained no original
ideas, but was instead a statement of sentiments widely shared by
supporters of the American Revolution. As he explained in
1825:
Neither aiming at originality of principle or
sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing,
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.
Jefferson's most immediate sources were two documents written in
June 1776: his own draft of the preamble of the
Constitution of Virginia, and
George Mason's draft of the
Virginia Declaration of
Rights. Ideas and phrases from both of these documents appear
in the Declaration of Independence. They were in turn directly
influenced by the 1689
English
Declaration of Rights, which formally ended the reign of
King James II. During the
American Revolution, Jefferson and other Americans looked to the
English Declaration of Rights as a model of how to end the reign of
an unjust king.
English political theorist
John Locke is
usually cited as a primary influence on the Declaration. As
historian
Carl L. Becker wrote in 1922, "Most Americans had
absorbed Locke's works as a kind of political gospel; and the
Declaration, in its form, in its phraseology, follows closely
certain sentences in Locke's
second treatise on government."
The extent of Locke's influence on the American Revolution was
questioned by some subsequent scholars, however, who emphasized the
influence of
republicanism rather than
Locke's
classical liberalism.
Historian
Garry Wills argued that
Jefferson was influenced by the
Scottish Enlightenment, particularly
Francis Hutcheson,
rather than Locke, an interpretation that has been strongly
criticized. The Scottish
Declaration of Arbroath (1320) and
the Dutch
Act of Abjuration (1581)
have also been offered as models for Jefferson's Declaration, but
these arguments have been disputed.
Signing
The date when the Declaration was signed has long been the subject
of debate. Within a decade after the event, Thomas Jefferson,
Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams all wrote that the Declaration
had been signed by Congress on July 4, 1776. This seemed to be
confirmed by the signed copy of the Declaration, which is dated
July 4. Additional support was provided by the
Journals of
Congress, the official public record of the Continental
Congress. When the proceedings for 1776 were first published in
1777, the entry for July 4, 1776, stated that the Declaration was
engrossed (carefully handwritten) and signed on that date.
In 1796, signer
Thomas McKean disputed
that the Declaration had been signed on July 4, pointing out that
some signers were not then present, including several who were not
even elected to Congress until after that date. "[N]o person signed
it on that day nor for many days after", he later wrote. Although
Jefferson and Adams disagreed with McKean, his claim gained support
when the
Secret Journals of Congress were published in
1821. The
Secret Journals contained two previously
unpublished entries about the Declaration. The entry for July 19
reads:
The entry for August 2 stated:
In 1884, historian Mellen Chamberlain argued that these entries
indicated that the famous signed version of the Declaration had
been created following the July 19 resolution, and had not been
signed by Congress until August 2. Historian John Hazelton
confirmed in 1906 that many of the signers had not been present in
Congress on July 4, that the fifty-six signers had never been
together as a group, and that some delegates must have added their
signatures even after August 2. While it is possible that Congress
signed a document on July 4 that has since been lost, historians do
not think that this is likely.
Although most historians have accepted the argument that the
Declaration was not signed on July 4, and that the engrossed copy
was not created until after July 19, legal historian Wilfred Ritz
wrote in 1986 that "the historians and scholars are wrong". Ritz
argued that the engrossed copy of the Declaration was signed by
Congress on July 4, as Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin had stated,
and that it was implausible that all three men had been mistaken.
Ritz believed that McKean's testimony was questionable, and that
historians had misinterpreted the July 19 resolution. According to
Ritz, this resolution did not call for a new document to be
created, but rather for the existing one to be given a new title,
which was necessary after New York had joined the other twelve
states in declaring independence. Ritz argued that the phrase
"signed by every member of Congress" in the July 19 resolution
meant that delegates who had not signed the Declaration on the 4th
were now required to do so.
Ritz argued that about thirty-four delegates signed the Declaration
on July 4, and that the others signed on or after August 2.
Historians who reject a July 4 signing maintain that most delegates
signed on August 2, and that those eventual signers who were not
present added their names later.
List of signers
Fifty-six delegates eventually signed the Declaration:
President of
Congress
- 1. John Hancock
(Massachusetts)
New Hampshire
- 2. Josiah Bartlett
- 3. William Whipple
- 4. Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts
- 5. Samuel Adams
- 6. John Adams
- 7. Robert Treat Paine
- 8. Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island
- 9. Stephen
Hopkins
- 10. William Ellery
Connecticut
- 11. Roger Sherman
- 12. Samuel
Huntington
- 13. William
Williams
- 14. Oliver Wolcott
New York
- 15. William Floyd
- 16. Philip Livingston
- 17. Francis Lewis
- 18. Lewis Morris
New Jersey
- 19. Richard
Stockton
- 20. John Witherspoon
- 21. Francis Hopkinson
- 22. John Hart
- 23. Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania
- 24. Robert Morris
- 25. Benjamin Rush
- 26. Benjamin Franklin
- 27. John Morton
- 28. George Clymer
- 29. James Smith
- 30. George Taylor
- 31. James Wilson
- 32. George Ross
Delaware
- 33. George Read
- 34. Caesar Rodney
- 35. Thomas McKean
Maryland
- 36. Samuel Chase
- 37. William Paca
- 38. Thomas Stone
- 39. Charles Carroll of
Carrollton
Virginia
- 40. George Wythe
- 41. Richard Henry Lee
- 42. Thomas Jefferson
- 43. Benjamin Harrison
- 44. Thomas Nelson, Jr.
- 45. Francis Lightfoot
Lee
- 46. Carter Braxton
North
Carolina
- 47. William Hooper
- 48. Joseph Hewes
- 49. John Penn
South
Carolina
- 50. Edward Rutledge
- 51. Thomas Heyward, Jr.
- 52. Thomas Lynch, Jr.
- 53. Arthur Middleton
Georgia
- 54. Button Gwinnett
- 55. Lyman Hall
- 56. George Walton
Signer details
Of the approximately fifty delegates who are thought to have been
present in Congress during the voting on independence in early July
1776, eight never signed the Declaration:
John Alsop,
George Clinton,
John Dickinson,
Charles Humphreys,
Robert R. Livingston,
John Rogers,
Thomas Willing, and
Henry Wisner. Clinton, Livingston, and Wisner
were attending to duties away from Congress when the signing took
place. Willing and Humphreys, who voted against the resolution of
independence, were replaced in the Pennsylvania delegation before
the August 2 signing. Rogers had voted for the resolution of
independence but was no longer a delegate on August 2. Alsop, who
favored reconciliation with Great Britain, resigned rather than add
his name to the document. Dickinson refused to sign, believing the
Declaration premature, but remained in Congress. Although
George Read had voted against the
resolution of independence, and
Robert Morris had abstained, they
both signed the Declaration.
The most famous signature on the engrossed copy is that of John
Hancock, who, as President of Congress, presumably signed first.
Hancock's large, flamboyant signature became iconic, and
John
Hancock emerged in the United States as an informal synonym
for "signature". Two future presidents, Thomas Jefferson and John
Adams, were among the signatories.
Edward Rutledge (age 26) was the youngest
signer, and
Benjamin Franklin (age
70) was the oldest signer.

John Hancock's now-iconic signature on
the Declaration is nearly long.
Some delegates, including
Samuel Chase,
were away on business when the Declaration was debated, but were
back in Congress to sign on August 2. Other delegates were present
when the Declaration was debated but added their names after August
2, including
Elbridge Gerry,
Lewis Morris,
Oliver
Wolcott, and
Thomas McKean.
Richard Henry Lee and
George Wythe were in Virginia during July and
August, but returned to Congress and signed the Declaration
probably in September and October, respectively.
As new delegates joined the Congress, they were also allowed to
sign. Eight men signed the Declaration who did not takes seats in
Congress until after July 4:
Matthew
Thornton,
William
Williams,
Benjamin Rush,
George Clymer,
James Smith,
George Taylor,
George Ross, and
Charles Carroll of Carrollton.
Because of a lack of space, Thornton was unable to sign next to the
other New Hampshire delegates; he instead placed his signature at
the end of the document, on the lower right.
The first published version of the Declaration, the
Dunlap broadside, did not list the signers.
The public did not learn who had signed the engrossed copy until
January 18, 1777, when the Congress ordered that an "authenticated
copy", including the names of the signers, be sent to each of the
thirteen states. This copy, the
Goddard Broadside, was the first to list
the signers.
Various legends about the signing of the Declaration emerged years
later, when the document had become an important national symbol.
In one famous story, John Hancock supposedly said that Congress,
having signed the Declaration, must now "all hang together", and
Benjamin Franklin replied: "Yes, we must indeed all hang together,
or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." The quote did not
appear in print until more than fifty years after Franklin's
death.
Publication and reaction

Johannes Adam Simon Oertel's painting
Pulling Down the Statue of King George III, N.Y.C., ca.
1859, depicts citizens destroying a statue of King George after the
Declaration was read in New York City on July 9, 1776.
After Congress approved the final wording of the Declaration on
July 4, a handwritten copy was sent a few blocks away to the
printing shop of
John Dunlap. Through
the night between 150 and 200 copies were made, now known as
"
Dunlap broadsides". Before long,
the Declaration was read to audiences and reprinted in newspapers
across the thirteen states.
The first official public reading of the
document was by John Nixon in
the yard of Independence Hall
on July 8; public readings also took place on that
day in Trenton, New
Jersey
, and Easton, Pennsylvania
. A German translation of the Declaration was
published in Philadelphia by July 9.
President of Congress John Hancock sent a broadside to General
George Washington, instructing him
to have it proclaimed "at the Head of the Army in the way you shall
think it most proper".
Washington had the Declaration read to his
troops in New York
City
on July 9, with the British forces not far
away. Washington and Congress hoped the Declaration would
inspire the soldiers, and encourage others to join the army. After
hearing the Declaration, crowds in many cities tore down and
destroyed signs or statues representing royalty. An equestrian
statue of King George in New York City was pulled down and the lead
used to make musket balls.
British officials in North America sent copies of the Declaration
to Great Britain. It was published in British newspapers beginning
in mid-August; translations appeared in European newspapers soon
after. The North ministry did not give an official answer to the
Declaration, but instead secretly commissioned pamphleteer
John Lind to publish a response, which
was entitled
Answer to the Declaration of the American
Congress.
Thomas
Hutchinson, the former royal governor of Massachusetts, also
published a rebuttal. These pamphlets challenged various aspects of
the Declaration. Hutchinson argued that the American Revolution was
the work of a few conspirators who wanted independence from the
outset, and who had finally achieved it by inducing otherwise loyal
colonists to rebel. Lind's pamphlet included an anonymous attack on
the concept of
natural rights written
by
Jeremy Bentham, an argument he
would repeat during the
French
Revolution. Both pamphlets asked how slave owners in Congress
could proclaim that "all men are created equal" without then
freeing their own slaves.
History of the documents
Although the document signed by Congress and enshrined in the
National Archives is usually regarded as
the Declaration
of Independence, historian
Julian P.
Boyd, editor of Jefferson's papers,
argued that the Declaration of Independence, like
Magna Carta, is not a single document. The
version signed by Congress is, according to Boyd, "only the most
notable of several copies legitimately entitled to be designated as
official texts". By Boyd's count there were five "official"
versions of the Declaration, in addition to unofficial drafts and
copies.
Drafts and Fair Copy
Jefferson preserved a four-page draft that late in life he called
the "original Rough draught". Known to historians as the Rough
Draft, early students of the Declaration believed that this was a
draft written alone by Jefferson and then presented to the
Committee of Five. Scholars now believe that the Rough Draft was
not actually an "original Rough draught", but was instead a revised
version completed by Jefferson after consultation with the
Committee. How many drafts Jefferson wrote prior to this one, and
how much of the text was contributed by other committee members, is
unknown. In 1947, Boyd discovered a fragment in Jefferson's
handwriting that predates the Rough Draft. Known as the Composition
Draft, this fragment is the earliest known version of the
Declaration.
Jefferson showed the Rough Draft to Adams and Franklin, and perhaps
other committee members, who made a few more changes. Franklin, for
example, may have been responsible for changing Jefferson's
original phrase "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable"
to "We hold these truths to be self-evident". Jefferson
incorporated these changes into a copy that was submitted to
Congress in the name of the Committee. Jefferson kept the Rough
Draft and made additional notes on it as Congress revised the text.
He also made several copies of the Rough Draft without the changes
made by Congress, which he sent to friends, including
Richard Henry Lee and
George Wythe, after July 4. At some point in
the process, Adams also wrote out a copy.
The copy that was submitted to Congress by the Committee on June 28
is known as the Fair Copy. Presumably, the Fair Copy was marked up
by secretary
Charles Thomson while
Congress debated and revised the text. This document was the one
that Congress approved on July 4, making it what Boyd called the
"official" copy of the Declaration. The Fair Copy was sent to be
printed under the title "A Declaration by the Representatives of
the , in General Congress assembled". The Fair Copy has been lost,
and was perhaps destroyed in the printing process, or destroyed
during the debates in accordance with Congress's secrecy
rule.
Broadsides
The Declaration was first published as a
broadside printed the night of July 4
by
John Dunlap of Philadelphia. John
Hancock's eventually famous signature was not on this document; his
name appeared in type under "Signed by Order and in Behalf of the
Congress", with Thomson listed as a witness. It is unknown exactly
how many
Dunlap broadsides were
originally printed, but the number is estimated at about 200, of
which 26 are known to survive. One broadside was pasted into
Congress's journal, making it what Boyd called the "second official
version" of the Declaration. Boyd considered the engrossed copy to
be the third official version, and the
Goddard Broadside to be the fourth.
Engrossed copy
The copy of the Declaration that was signed by Congress is known as
the engrossed or
parchment copy. Whether
first signed on July 4 or August 2, it was probably handwritten by
clerk
Timothy Matlack, and given the
title of "The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States
of America".
Throughout the Revolutionary War, the engrossed copy was moved with
the Continental Congress, which relocated several times to avoid
the British army. In 1789, after creation of a new government under
the
United States
Constitution, the engrossed Declaration was transferred to the
custody of the
secretary of state. The
document was
evacuated
to Virginia when the British
attacked Washington, D.C. during the
War of 1812.
After the War of 1812, the symbolic stature of the Declaration
steadily increased even though the engrossed copy's ink was
noticeably fading. In 1820, Secretary of State
John Quincy Adams commissioned printer
William J. Stone to create an
engraving
essentially identical to the engrossed copy. Boyd called this copy
the "fifth official version" of the Declaration. Stone's engraving
was made using a wet-ink transfer process, where the surface of the
document was moistened, and some of the original ink transferred to
the surface of a copper plate, which was then etched so that copies
could be run off the plate on a press. When Stone finished his
engraving in 1823, Congress ordered 200 copies to be printed on
parchment. Because of poor conservation of the engrossed copy
through the 19th century, Stone's engraving, rather than the
original, has become the basis of most modern reproductions.
From 1841 to 1876, the engrossed copy was publicly exhibited at the
Patent Office building in Washington, D.C. Exposed to sunlight and
variable temperature and humidity, the document faded badly. In
1876, it was sent to Independence Hall in Philadelphia for exhibit
during the
Centennial
Exposition, which was held in honor of the Declaration's 100th
anniversary, and then returned to Washington the next year.
In 1892,
preparations were made for the engrossed copy to be exhibited at
the World's
Columbian Exposition
in Chicago, but the poor condition of the document
led to the cancellation of those plans and the removal of the
document from public exhibition. The document was sealed
between two plates of glass and placed in storage. For nearly
thirty years, it was exhibited only on rare occasions at the
discretion of the secretary of state.

The Rotunda for the Charters of
Freedom in the National Archives building.
In 1921,
custody of the Declaration, along with the United States Constitution, was
transferred from the State Department
to the Library of Congress
. Funds were appropriated to preserve the
documents in a public exhibit that opened in 1924.
After the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor
in 1941, the documents were moved for safekeeping
to the United States Bullion
Depository
at Fort
Knox
in Kentucky, where they were kept until
1944.
For many
years, officials at the National Archives
believed that they, rather than the Library of
Congress, should have custody of the Declaration and the
Constitution. The transfer finally took place in 1952, and
the documents, along with the
Bill of Rights, are now on
permanent display at the National Archives in the "Rotunda for the
Charters of Freedom". Although
encased in
helium, by the early 1980s the
documents were threatened by further deterioration. In 2001, using
the latest in preservation technology, conservators treated the
documents and re-encased them in encasements made of
titanium and
aluminum,
filled with inert
argon gas. They were put on
display again with the opening of the remodeled National Archives
Rotunda in 2003.
Legacy
Having served its original purpose in announcing the independence
of the United States, the Declaration was initially neglected
following the American Revolution. Early celebrations of
Independence Day, like
early histories of the Revolution, largely ignored the Declaration.
Although the
act of declaring independence was considered
important, the
text announcing that act attracted little
attention. The Declaration was rarely mentioned during the debates
about the
United States
Constitution, and its language was not incorporated into that
document. George Mason's draft of the Virginia Declaration of
Rights was more influential, and its language was echoed in state
constitutions and state bills of rights more often than Jefferson's
words. "In none of these documents", wrote Pauline Maier, "is there
any evidence whatsoever that the Declaration of Independence lived
in men's minds as a classic statement of American political
principles."
Although some leaders of the
French
Revolution admired the Declaration of Independence, they were
more interested in the new American state constitutions. The French
Declaration
of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) borrowed language from
George Mason and not Jefferson's Declaration, although Jefferson
was in Paris at the time and was consulted during the drafting
process. According to historian David Armitage, the United States
Declaration of Independence did prove to be internationally
influential, but not as a statement of human rights. Armitage
argued that the Declaration was the first in a new genre of
declarations of
independence that announced the creation of new states. The
Manifesto of the Province of Flanders (1790) was the first
foreign derivation of the Declaration; others include the
Venezuelan Declaration of
Independence (1811), the Liberian Declaration of Independence
(1847), the declarations of secession by the
Confederate States of America
(1860–61), and the Vietnam Declaration of Independence (1945).
These declarations echoed the United States Declaration of
Independence in announcing the independence of a new state, without
necessarily endorsing the political philosophy of the
original.
Revival of interest
In the United States, interest in the Declaration was revived in
the 1790s with the emergence of America's
first political parties. Throughout the
1780s, few Americans knew, or cared, who wrote the Declaration. But
in the next decade,
Jeffersonian Republicans sought
political advantage over their rival
Federalists by promoting both the
importance of the Declaration and Jefferson as its author.
Federalists responded by casting doubt on Jefferson's authorship or
originality, and by emphasizing that independence was declared by
the whole Congress, with Jefferson as just one member of the
drafting committee. Federalists insisted that Congress's act of
declaring independence, in which Federalist John Adams had played a
major role, was more important than the document announcing that
act. But this view, like the Federalist Party, would fade away, and
before long the act of declaring independence would become
synonymous with the document.
A less partisan appreciation for the Declaration emerged in the
years following the War of 1812, thanks to a growing American
nationalism and a renewed interest in the history of the
Revolution.
In 1817, Congress commissioned John Trumbull's famous painting of
the signers, which was exhibited to large crowds before being
installed in the Capitol
. The earliest commemorative printings of the
Declaration also appeared at this time, offering many Americans
their first view of the signed document. Collective biographies of
the signers were first published in the 1820s, giving birth to what
Garry Wills called the "cult of the signers". In the years that
followed, many stories about the writing and signing of the
document would be published for the first time.
When interest in the Declaration was revived, the sections that
were most important in 1776—the announcement of the independence of
the United States and the grievances against King George—were no
longer relevant. But the second paragraph, with its talk of
self-evident truths and unalienable rights, had lost none of its
relevance. Because the Constitution and the Bill of Rights lacked
sweeping statements about rights and equality, advocates of
marginalized groups turned to the Declaration for support. Starting
in the 1820s, variations of the Declaration were issued to proclaim
the rights of workers, farmers, women, and others. In 1848, for
example, the
Seneca Falls
Convention, a meeting of women's rights advocates,
declared that "all men and women
are created equal". But the Declaration would have its most
prominent influence on the debate over slavery.
Slavery and the Declaration
The contradiction between the claim that "all men are created
equal" and the existence of American slavery attracted comment when
the Declaration was first published. "If there be an object truly
ridiculous in nature", English abolitionist
Thomas Day wrote in a 1776 letter, "it is an
American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one
hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted
slaves." In the 19th century, the Declaration took on a special
significance for the abolitionist movement. Historian Bertram
Wyatt-Brown wrote that "abolitionists tended to interpret the
Declaration of Independence as a theological as well as a political
document". Abolitionist leaders
Benjamin
Lundy and
William Lloyd
Garrison adopted the "twin rocks" of "the Bible and the
Declaration of Independence" as the basis for their philosophies.
"As long as there remains a single copy of the Declaration of
Independence, or of the Bible, in our land," wrote Garrison, "we
will not despair." For radical abolitionists like Garrison, the
most important part of the Declaration was its assertion of the
right of revolution: Garrison
called for the destruction of the government under the
Constitution, and the creation of a new state dedicated to the
principles of the Declaration.
The controversial question of whether to add additional
slave states to the United States coincided with
the growing stature of the Declaration. The first major public
debate about slavery and the Declaration took place during the
Missouri controversy of 1819 to
1821. Antislavery Congressmen argued that the language of the
Declaration indicated that the
Founding Fathers of the
United States had been opposed to slavery in principle, and so
new slaves states should not be added to the country. Proslavery
Congressmen, led by Senator
Nathaniel
Macon of North Carolina, argued that since the Declaration was
not a part of the Constitution, it had no relevance to the
question.
From this time forward, defenders of slavery, from
John Randolph in the 1820s to
John C. Calhoun in the 1840s, found it necessary to
argue that the Declaration's assertion that "all men are created
equal" was false, or at least that it did not apply to black
people. During the debate over the
Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1853, for
example, Senator
John Pettit of Indiana
argued that "all men are created equal", rather than a
"self-evident truth", was a "self-evident lie". Opponents of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, including
Salmon
P. Chase and
Benjamin Wade, defended the Declaration and
what they saw as its antislavery principles.
Lincoln and the Declaration
The Declaration's relationship to slavery was taken up in 1854 by
Abraham Lincoln, a little-known
former Congressman who idolized the Founding Fathers. Lincoln
thought that the Declaration of Independence expressed the highest
principles of the American Revolution, and that the Founding
Fathers had tolerated slavery with the expectation that it would
ultimately wither away. For the United States to legitimize the
expansion of slavery in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, thought Lincoln,
was to repudiate the principles of the Revolution. In his October
1854
Peoria speech,
Lincoln said:
The meaning of the Declaration was a recurring topic in the
famed debates
between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in 1858. Douglas argued that
"all men are created equal" in the Declaration referred to white
men only. The purpose of the Declaration, he said, had simply been
to justify the independence of the United States, and not to
proclaim the equality of any "inferior or degraded race". Lincoln,
however, thought that the language of the Declaration was
deliberately universal, setting a high moral standard for which the
American republic should aspire. "I had thought the Declaration
contemplated the progressive improvement in the condition of all
men everywhere", he said. According to Pauline Maier, Douglas's
interpretation was more historically accurate, but Lincoln's view
ultimately prevailed. "In Lincoln's hands", wrote Maier, "the
Declaration of Independence became first and foremost a living
document" with "a set of goals to be realized over time".
Like
Daniel Webster,
James Wilson, and
Joseph Story before him, Lincoln argued that
the Declaration of Independence was a founding document of the
United States, and that this had important implications for
interpreting the Constitution, which had been ratified more than a
decade after the Declaration. Although the Constitution did not use
the word "equality", Lincoln believed that the Declaration's "all
men are created equal" remained a part of the nation's founding
principles. He famously expressed this belief in the opening
sentence of his 1863
Gettysburg
Address: "Four score and seven years ago [i.e. in 1776] our
fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in
Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal."
Lincoln's
view of the Declaration as
a moral guide to interpreting the Constitution became influential.
"For most people now," wrote Garry Wills in 1992, "the Declaration
means what Lincoln told us it means, as a way of correcting the
Constitution itself without overthrowing it." Admirers of Lincoln,
such as
Harry V. Jaffa, praised this development. Critics of
Lincoln, notably
Willmoore Kendall
and
Mel Bradford, argued that Lincoln
dangerously expanded the scope of the national government, and
violated
states' rights, by reading
the Declaration into the Constitution.
In popular culture
The adoption of the Declaration of Independence was dramatized in
the 1969
Tony Award-winning musical play
1776, and the 1972 movie of
the
same name, as well as in the 2008
television miniseries
John
Adams. The engrossed copy of the Declaration is central to
the 2004 Hollywood film
National Treasure, in which
the main character steals the document because he believes it has
secret clues to a treasure hidden by some of the
Founding Fathers of the
United States. The Declaration figures prominently in
The Probability
Broach, wherein the point of divergence rests in the
addition of a single word to the document, causing it to state that
governments "derive their just power from the
unanimous
consent of the governed". The Declaration also plays a major part
in
Honour Among
Thieves, a novel by
Jeffrey
Archer where
Saddam Hussein tries
to steal the Declaration and publicly burn it on July 4.
Notes
References
- Armitage, David. The Declaration Of Independence: A Global
History. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
2007. ISBN 978-0-674-02282-9.
- Bailyn, Bernard. The
Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Enlarged
edition. Originally published 1967. Harvard University Press, 1992.
ISBN 0-674-44302-0.
- Becker, Carl. The Declaration
of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas.
1922. Available online from The Online Library of Liberty and Google Book Search. Revised edition New York: Vintage
Books, 1970. ISBN 0394700600.
- Boyd, Julian P. The
Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text.
Originally published 1945. Revised edition edited by Gerard W.
Gawalt. University Press of New England, 1999. ISBN
0844409804.
- Boyd, Julian P., ed. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson,
vol. 1. Princeton University Press, 1950.
- Boyd, Julian P. "The Declaration of Independence: The Mystery of
the Lost Original". Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography 100, number 4 (October 1976), 438–67.
- Burnett, Edward Cody. The Continental Congress. New
York: Norton, 1941.
- Christie, Ian R. and Benjamin W. Labaree. Empire or
Independence, 1760–1776: A British-American Dialogue on the Coming
of the American Revolution. New York: Norton, 1976.
- Detweiler, Philip F. "Congressional Debate on Slavery and the
Declaration of Independence, 1819–1821," American Historical
Review 63 (April 1958): 598–616.
- Detweiler, Philip F. "The Changing Reputation of the
Declaration of Independence: The First Fifty Years." William
and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 19 (1962): 557–74.
- Dumbauld, Edward. The Declaration of Independence And What
It Means Today. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1950.
- Ellis, Joseph. American
Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the
Republic. New York: Knopf, 2007. ISBN 9780307263698.
- Ferling, John E. A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create
the American Republic. New York: Oxford University Press,
2003. ISBN 0195159241.
- Friedenwald, Herbert. The Declaration of Independence: An
Interpretation and an Analysis. New York: Macmillan, 1904.
Accessed via the Internet Archive.
- Gustafson, Milton. "Travels of the Charters of Freedom".
Prologue Magazine 34, no 4. (Winter 2002).
- Hamowy, Ronald. "Jefferson and the Scottish Enlightenment: A
Critique of Garry Wills's Inventing America: Jefferson's
Declaration of Independence". William and Mary
Quarterly, 3rd series, 36 (October 1979), 503–23.
- Hazelton, John H. The Declaration of Independence: Its
History. Originally published 1906. New York: Da Capo Press,
1970. ISBN 0306719878. 1906 edition available on Google Book Search
- Jensen, Merrill. The Founding
of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763–1776.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.
- Maier, Pauline. American
Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York:
Knopf, 1997. ISBN 0679454926.
- Malone, Dumas. Jefferson the
Virginian. Volume 1 of Jefferson and His Time.
Boston: Little Brown, 1948.
- Malone, Dumas. The Story of the Declaration of
Independence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. A
picture book with text by a leading Jefferson scholar.
- Mayer, Henry. All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the
Abolition of Slavery. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. ISBN
0-312-18740-8.
- McDonald, Robert M. S. "Thomas Jefferson's Changing Reputation
as Author of the Declaration of Independence: The First Fifty
Years." Journal of the Early Republic 19, no. 2 (Summer
1999): 169–95.
- McPherson, James. Abraham Lincoln and the Second American
Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. ISBN
0-19-505542-X.
- Middlekauff, Robert. The
Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789. Revised
and expanded edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
- Rakove, Jack N. The
Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the
Continental Congress. New York: Knopf, 1979. ISBN
0801828643
- Ritz, Wilfred J. "The Authentication of the Engrossed
Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776". Law and History
Review 4, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 179–204.
- Ritz, Wilfred J. "From the Here of Jefferson's Handwritten
Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence to the
There of the Printed Dunlap Broadside".
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 116, no. 4
(October 1992): 499–512.
- Warren, Charles. "Fourth of July Myths." The William and
Mary Quarterly, Third Series, vol. 2, no. 3 (July 1945):
238–72.
- Wills, Garry. Inventing America:
Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. Garden City, New
York: Doubleday, 1978. ISBN 0385089767.
- Wills, Garry. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Rewrote
America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. ISBN
0-671-76956-1.
- Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War
Against Slavery. Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve
University, 1969. ISBN 829501460.
External links
- Audio and video
- Lesson plans