The Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776 as a statement of the Second Continental Congress of the independence of the American colonies from British rule. Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft, and ideas were then incorporated from John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. The document was adopted on July 4, and along with success in the American Revolution, the Declaration ushered in a new political age (Carruth 138). The document produced at the behest of the Second Continental Congress expressed a number of political ideas then current in the colonies, ideas which had been expressed by others in a different form and which were now brought together by Jefferson in a final statement of independence from England.

Jefferson based much of the document on ideas derived from Locke and Rousseau concerning the value of natural law, to the effect that natural law should stand as the principle which protects the rights of individuals against the abuses of government. These are the truths that Jefferson sets forth in the opening paragraph as "self-evident," that all men are created equal, that they have certain rights given to them by God and which cannot be taken away, and that these rights include the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are familiar words to us today but were not such common ideas in 1776. The Declaration of Independence was directed at abuses charged to King George III, and many of these abuses are indicated in the document--he

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war (Zinn 67-80). Thomas Paine's political declaration in his tract Common Sense struck a chord with the Americans of his time. The book was so popular that it went through fifty-six editions in the first year. The book was published anonymously in 1776, and the sentiments expressed in this work by Paine helped direct the energies of the rebels and point the way to American independence from England. What Paine did in this small book was to enunciate important principles of individual human rights and the specific right of the people to challenge unjust laws and an unjust government. What Paine did was to gather together many of the intellectual currents of his time, specifically those describing the importance of and effects of natural law and its consequences for government and the relationship of the people to their government. Vernon L. Parrington takes note of the power of Common Sense and sees its great popularity as flowing "from its direct and skillful appeal to material interests" (Parrington 335). Paine was joining in a debate that had been ongoing for some time and that had already erupted into the beginnings of war. Isaac Kramnick (in an introduction to Common Sense, 1986) writes: Americans fought Englishmen o

Category: History - T