Drafted in the language of the Enlightenment By Thomas Jefferson between 11 June and 28th June 1776, the Declaration of Independence formally dissolves Great Britain’s political control over American colonies, advancing a revolutionary Charter intended to unite Americans under the banner of Liberty and the consent of the governed.
When armed conflict bands of rebellious American expatriates in British soldiers begin in Massachusetts in April 1775, the rebels were ostensibly opposing perceived incursions against their rights as subjects of the British crown. But as the rebellion burgeoned into the Revolutionary War, delegates of British America’ (1774) and ‘Declaration of the causes and necessity of Taking Up Arms’ (1775), drafted the document that would become the Declaration of Independence. The language was intended to galvanize support for the cause.
Jefferson’s draft was made up of an introduction, a preamble, a body (divided into two sections) and a conclusion. The introduction effectively stated that it had become ‘necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands’ to Britain, and thus they needed to ‘ declare the causes’. While the body of the document outlined a list of grievances against the British crown, the preamble includes it’s most famous passage:
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, 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.
The Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on 2 July and formally declared it on 4 July, the day rated as the birth of American independence. as the first formal statement by a nation’s people asserting their there right to choose their own government, the Declaration of Independence became a significant landmark in the history of democracy. In addition to its importance in the fate of the fledgling American Nation, it would also exert a tremendous influence outside the United States, most memorably in France during the French Revolution. Together with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence is considered the first of the three founding documents of the United States government – and the one proving hardest to live up to.
