11/24/2014
Purposes
Declaration of Independence
• Gain sympathy & understanding from world
leaders
• Unite the colonists
• List complaints against George III
Thomas Jefferson to Roger Weightman
Monticello June 24, 1826
“an instrument pregnant with our own, and the
fate of the world….”
Jefferson to RH Lee, 1825
“an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed
proper for our justification. This was the object of the
Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new
principles, or new arguments never before thought of,
not merely to say things which had never been said
before; but 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. 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.”
This is the only
surviving
fragment of the
broadside of the
Declaration of
Independence
printed by John
Dunlap and sent
on July 6, 1776,
to George
Washington by
John Hancock,
President of the
Continental
Congress in
Philadelphia
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11/24/2014
In 1778, the French statesman Turgot wrote:
This people is the hope of the human race. It may become the
model. It ought to show the world by facts that men can be free
and yet peaceful, and may dispense with the chains in which
tyrants and knaves of every color have presumed to bind them,
under pretext of the public good. The Americans should be an
example of political, religious, commercial and industrial liberty.
The asylum they offer to the oppressed of every nation, the
avenue of escape they open, will compel governments to be just
and enlightened; and the rest of the world in due time will see
through the empty illusions in which policy is conceived. . But to
obtain these ends for us, America must secure them to herself;
and must not become, as so many of your ministerial writers have
predicted, a mass of divided powers, contending for territory and
trade, cementing the slavery of peoples by their own blood.
Samuel Johnson, English essayist
“How is it we hear the loudest yelps for
liberty among the drivers of the Negroes?”
Philadelphia newspaper, 1792:
Opening paragraph:
“not to be celebrated, merely as affecting the separation
of one country from the jurisdiction of another; but as
being the result of a rational discussion and definition of
the rights of man, and the end of civil government.”
Jefferson had written:
“When in the course of human events it becomes
necessary for a people to advance from that
subordination in which they have hitherto
remained”
Congress amended to:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes
necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bands which have connected them with another”
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Pursuit of Happiness…
James Otis in The Rights of the British Colonies
Asserted and Proved (1764) affirmed that the
duty of government is “above all things to
provide for the security, the quiet, and happy
enjoyment of life, liberty, and property.”
Josiah Quincy, in his Observations on the Act of
Parliament Commonly Called the Boston Port-Bill
(1774) avowed that the proper object of civil
society is “the greatest happiness of the greatest
number….”
Group #1:
•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; He has refused to pass other Laws for the
accommodation of large districts of people…
•He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with
manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
•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;
•For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
Group #3:
•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 and 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, 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.
Pursuit of Happiness continued…
James Wilson in his Considerations on the
Nature and Extent of the Legislative
Authority of the British Parliament (1774)
asserted that “the happiness of the society
is the first law of every government.”
John Adams in Thoughts on Government
(1776) declared that “the happiness of
society is the end of government.”
Group #2:
•For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
•For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
•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:
Concluding paragraph
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.
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Quiz, Week 3
1. Name the most important purpose of the
Declaration.
2. Name the second most important purpose of
the Declaration
3. Name the third most important purpose of
the Declaration.
4. One way discussed in class to describe the
Declaration.
5. Another way discussed in class to describe
the Declaration.
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