The Declaration of Independence: Origins
The Bill of Rights Institute
Bozeman, Montana
November 15, 2012
Artemus Ward
Department of Political Science
Northern Illinois University
http://polisci.niu.edu/polisci/faculty/ward
Prelude: When the
French Leave…
• 1763 – The French and Indian War ended. The British forced the French
from North America and assumed financial obligations that led them to try
to raise more revenue from the American colonists.
• 1765 – Parliament passed the Stamp Act, its first effort to lay a direct tax
on the Americans, provoking massive colonial opposition.
• 1767-1768 – Parliament passed the Townshend Acts to raise money
through duties on trade, provoking another wave of colonial resistance.
• 1770 – British troops fire on and kill five civilians during a riot in Boston
which becomes known as “The Boston Massacre.”
• 1773 – Parliament passed the Tea Act prompting colonists dressed as
“Indians” to dump newly imported tea into Boston harbor rather than allow
the import taxes on it to be paid in what became known as the Boston
Tea Party.
Revolution
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1773 – The British responded with a series of “Coercive Acts.” They closed the
port of Boston, revised the Massachusetts charter to undercut popular power and
enhance that of the Crown, allowed English officials charged with murder for
killing colonists with repressing riots or enforcing British revenue laws to be tried
in England (which, colonists said, meant they would be acquitted), and allowed
military commanders to quarter troops where needed to control the civilian
population.
1774 – Americans throughout the Continent quickly called those laws the
“Intolerable Acts,” and most colonies sent delegates to a Continental Congress,
later known as the “First Continental Congress,” to coordinate their opposition. It
met in Philadelphia in September and October 1774, and dumbfounded the King’s
ministers, who considered the colonists incapable of acting together. Congress
pledged loyalty to the Crown and assured the King that peace and harmony would
immediately return if the colonies were returned to their situation in 1763. The
King ignored their pleas.
1775 – War broke out in the farming towns of Lexington and Concord some
twenty miles north and west of Boston. Paul Revere, a Boston silversmith and
experienced express rider, warned the people in the town the night before that
war was imminent. Samuel Adams and John Hancock are among those who
escape.
The Second
Continental Congress:
Same as the First?
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While the fledgling United States was fighting for its independence from
England, it was being run (and the war conducted) by the Continental Congress.
Although this body had no formal authority, it met in session from 1774 through
the end of the war in 1781, establishing itself as a “de facto” government.
But it may have been something more than that. About a year into the
Revolutionary War, the Second Continental Congress took steps toward
nationhood.
It met on May 10, 1775 and began drafting and issuing numerous petitions,
resolutions, addresses, and declarations for settling their grievances with Britain.
For example, Thomas Jefferson drafted a Declaration on Taking Up Arms only
to have it rejected and an alternate declaration written by John Dickinson
approved.
None of the documents called for independence and many explicitly rejected
that outcome.
Thomas Paine
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On January 9, 1776—the same day James Wilson
proposed that Congress once again disavow any desire for
Independence, a Philadelphia press distributed the first
copies of Common Sense.
The pamphlet was published anonymously, but in time it
became known as the work of Thomas Paine, a largely selfeducated Englishman of no particular distinction, who had
first arrived in America in 1774.
Earlier colonial pamphlets and essays, including John
Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (176768), had presented carefully reasoned arguments sprinkled
with references to Tacitus, Montesquieu, or a familiar list of
English and Scottish political and legal writers of the 17th
and 18th centuries, and often assumed an almost scholarly
character.
Not Common Sense. Paine wrote in a knock-about
language, as John Adams later put it, “suitable for an
Emigrant from New Gate [the English jail], or one who had
chiefly associated with such Company,” with references to
“’The Royal Brute of England,’ ‘The Blood upon his Soul,’
and a few others of equal delicacy.”
While Paine’s arguments were not new, particularly in
Congress, they were meant to persuade the people whose
support Congress needed. The pamphlet was widely
published, circulated, read, and discussed and was
successful in shifting the public debate from reconciliation to
deciding how an independent America should be governed.
Common Sense
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American freedom would never be secure under British rule,
Paine argued, because “the so much boasted Constitution of
England” was deeply flawed. The problem lay in two major
“constitutional errors”—monarchy and hereditary rule. To
prove the point he cited, with more passion than order, one
kind of evidence after another.
The Bible, he insisted, condemned monarchy as “one of the
sins of the Jews.” Nature also disapproved of monarchy,
which was why it so often presented capable kings with inept
sons, or gave mankind “an ass for a lion.” Monarchy and
hereditary rule made bad rulers even of capable individuals
by breeding arrogance, and by separating them from the rest
of mankind whose interests they needed to know well.
Moreover, the ambitions of kings and those who would be
kings caused civil and foreign wars that had laid both Britain
and “the world in ashes.” The problem, then, was not just that
evil persons were exercising power. It was systemic, in the
very design of British government, which, like all
governments, was incapable of constraining the power of
hereditary rulers.
The only way to solve that problem was to redesign the
machine of government, eliminating monarchy and hereditary
rule and expanding the “republican” element of British
government which derived power not from birth but from the
ballot. The solution, in short, was revolution.
Paine provided suggestions for a new government and
argued that Americans could defeat the British and thrive on
their own—both economically and politically.
The Declaration of Independence
• On June 11, 1776, a committee was appointed to draft the document:
Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston,
and Thomas Jefferson.
• On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution
declaring the “United States Colonies free and independent states.” Two
days later, on July 4, it formalized this proclamation in the Declaration of
Independence, in which the nation’s founders used the term United States
of America for the first time.
• But what was in the Declaration? And who was responsible for it? While
this question has been debated by scholars for some time, there is
general consensus today on these questions…
Thomas Jefferson
• The committee chose Jefferson to draft
the document. Why?
• Because having a Virginian and a
Southerner, rather than a New
Englander, write the document had
great political advantage: it would
demonstrate that support for
Independence went far beyond the
“radical” New Englanders who were
sometimes accused of pulling the
country in their preferred “democratical”
or “anti-monarchical” direction.
• As was the common practice at the
time, Jefferson drew on other
documents for his draft: the draft
preamble for the Virginia constitution
that he had just finished and which was
itself based on the English Declaration
of Rights; a preliminary version of the
Virginia Declaration of Rights by
George Mason.
Jefferson’s Draft: Charges and Opening
• All agreed that the document must contain a set of charges against the
King. The English Declaration of Rights and previous colonial documents
of a similar sort had included such a set of claims.
• The various charges had a common purpose: to demonstrate that the
King had inflicted on the colonists “unremitting injuries and usurpations,”
all of which had as a “direct object the establishment of an absolute
tyranny.”
• But it was the paragraphs that preceded and introduced the charges
against the King that were distinctive.
• “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 & of nature’s
god entitle them, a descent respect to the opinions of mankind
requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to
the separation.”
• In an earlier draft the opening began, “When in the course of human
events it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that
subordination in which they have hitherto remained, and to assume…,”
which was more awkward and also harder to say than the revised version.
The earlier draft also referred to an “equal & independent station” rather
than a “separate and equal.”
Jefferson’s Draft: Second Paragraph
• As reported by the committee, the paragraph began:
• “We hold these truths to be self-evident;
that all men are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creator with inherent and
inalienable 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 the
foundation on such principles, and
organizing it’s powers in such form as to
them shall seem most likely to effect their
safety & happiness.”
Jefferson’s Draft: Second Paragraph
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George Mason
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Jefferson—perhaps with some help from Franklin—made
the same kind of careful editorial adjustments in the
opening lines of this paragraph, which, as an examination
of successive drafts of the document reveals, were based
on the first three provisions of George Mason’s Virginia
Declaration of Rights.
Jefferson began with Mason’s statement “that all men are
born equally free and independent,” which he rewrote to
say they were “created equal & independent” then (on his
“original rough draft”) cut out the “& independent.”
Mason said that all men had “certain inherent natural
rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or
divest their posterity,” which Jefferson compressed into a
statement that men derived from their equal creation
“rights inherent & inalienable,” then moved the noun to the
end of the phrase so it read “inherent & inalienable rights.”
Among those rights, Mason said, were “the enjoyment of
life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and
possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining
happiness and safety,” which Jefferson again shortened
first to “the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of
happiness,” and then simply to “life, liberty, & the pursuit
of happiness.”
Jefferson’s Draft: Second Paragraph
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The second paragraph continued: “Prudence indeed will
dictate that governments long established should not
be changed for light & 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 re accustomed. But when a long train of abuses &
usurpations, begun at a distinguished period, &
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, & to
provide new guards for their future security.”
Jefferson’s assertions of the right of revolution summarized
succinctly ideas defended and explained at greater length
by a long list of 17th-century writers that included such
prominent figures as John Milton, Algernon Sidney, and
John Locke, as well as a host of others, English and
Scottish, familiar and obscure.
By the time of the Revolution those ideas had become, in
the generalized form captured by Jefferson, a political
orthodoxy whose basic principles colonists could pick up
from sermons or newspapers or even schoolbooks without
ever reading a systematic work of political theory.
The sentiments Jefferson eloquently expressed were, in
short, absolutely conventional among Americans of his time.
John Locke
Jefferson’s Draft: Second Paragraph
• Jefferson concluded the second paragraph:
“Such has been the patient sufferance of
these colonies; & such now is the
necessity which constrains them to
expunge their former systems of
government. The history of the present
King of Great Britain is a history of
unremitting injuries and usurpations,
among which appears no solitary fact to
contradict the uniform tenor of the rest,
but all have in direct object the
establishment of an absolute tyranny
over these states. To prove this, let the
facts be submitted to a candid world, for
truth of which we pledge a faith yet
unsullied by falsehood.”
• After his list of charges, he concluded that
section: “a prince whose character is
thus marked by every act which may
define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of
a people who mean to be free.”
King George III
Jefferson’s Draft: The Penultimate Section
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The underlined passages were deleted from the final draft and the bold passages left in.
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“Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have
warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend a
jurisdiction over these our states. We have reminded them of the
circumstances of our emigration & settlement here, no one of which could
warrant so strange a pretension: that these were effected at the expense of our
own blood & treasure, unassisted by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain:
that in constituting indeed our several forms of government, we had adopted one
common king, thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league & amity with them:
but that submission to their parliament was no part of our constitution, nor ever in
idea if history may be credited: and we appealed to their native justice &
magnanimity as well as to the ties of our common kindred to disavow these
usurpations which were likely to interrupt our connection &
correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice & of
consanguinity, & when occasions have been given them, by the regular course
of their laws, of removing from their councils the disturbers of our harmony, they
have by their free election re-established them in power. At this very time too they
are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common
blood, but Scotch & foreign mercenaries to invade & destroy us. These facts have
given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bid us to renounce
forever these unfeeling brethren. We must endeavor to forget our former love for
them, and to hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in
Peace Friends. We might have been a free & a great people together; but a
communication of grandeur & of freedom it seems is below their dignity. Be it so,
since they will have it: the road to happiness & to glory is open to us too; we will
climb it apart from them and acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our
eternal separation!”
Jefferson’s Draft: The Penultimate Section
• For Jefferson, the key to this
section was that America had
been settled with no help from
Britain.
• Indeed, he had written an
entire treatise, which remained
locked away in an unpublished
notebook until the 20th century,
to refute a point in the speech
on American affairs that
George III delivered to
Parliament in 1775.
• The King said that the colonies
had been planted by the British
nation “with great industry,
nursed with great tenderness,”
and, above all, “protected and
defended at much expence and
treasure.”
Jefferson’s Draft: The Conclusion
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Then, finally, on the basis of all that came before, the
Declaration arrived at its main business:
“We therefore the representatives of the United States
of America”—no longer the United Colonies—“in
General Congress assembled do, in the name & by
authority of the good people of these states, reject
and renounce all allegiance & subjection to the kings
of Great Britain & all others who may thereafter claim
by, through, or under them,” a passage that amounted
to a rejection not only of George III but of his descendants
and any other claimants to the throne, in effect, a
rejection of monarchy, as well as of those public servants
the King appointed.
And more: “we utterly dissolve all political connection
which may heretofore have subsisted between us &
the parliament of people of Great Britain,” a statement
that strangely suggested there might once have been
some political connection between Parliament and the
“good people” of America; “and finally we do assert and
declare these colonies to be free and independent
states and that as free & independent states they
have full power to levy war, conclude pace, contract
alliances, establish commerce, & to do all other acts
and things which independent states may of right do.
And for the support of this declaration we mutually
pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our
sacred honor.”
* Much of this
language
was initially drafted by
Richard Henry Lee
(above) in his
congressional
resolution to declare
independence, June 7,
1776. And Jefferson’s
prose was further
edited by Congress to
more accurately reflect
Lee’s language.
Mr. Jefferson and His Editors
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The committee suggested changes and
Jefferson accommodated them, working
closest with Adams and Franklin.
Then Congress made their revisions:
rewriting or chopping off large sections of
the draft, eliminating in the end fully ¼ of
Jefferson’s text.
Exactly how this process unfolded and
who was responsible for what largely
remains a mystery as there are no
accounts of the proceedings beyond
Jefferson’s notes and he was anything but
a dispassionate observer.
Congress agreed to the final version on
July 4, 1776.
In the end, what generations of Americans
came to revere was not Jefferson’s but
Congress’s Declaration, the work not of a
single man, or even a committee, but of a
larger body of men with the good sense to
recognize a “pretty good” draft when they
saw it, and who were able to identify and
eliminate Jefferson’s more outlandish
assertions and unnecessary words.
To Sign or Not to Sign?
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Why sign the document?
Only John Browne, Parliament’s clerk, signed the English
Declaration of Rights. Moreover, the members of England’s
17th century Parliaments did not customarily sign instruments
they presented to the King, nor were declarations and
petitions signed by their drafters elsewhere in Europe.
From the viewpoint of those who opposed its message, the
Declaration was nothing less than a public confession of
treason. And conviction for treason meant death and
confiscation of estate.
The Crown did not recognize the legitimacy of the
Continental Congress. By affixing their signatures, the
delegates signaled that each of the colonies mentioned
supported the petition, and also founded it upon their own
personal authority and dignity. This was, they seemed to
say, not the work of an inconsequential faction of colonists,
as their critics in England so often alleged, but the voice of
the American people and of the men of consequence they
selected to speak for them.
The Declaration was read in American cities in the days after
its adoption by Congress. Still, only on January 8, 1777, after
the long, disastrous military campaign of 1776 was over and
the Americans had won victories at Trenton and Princeton,
did Congress send the states authenticated copies of the
Declaration of Independence — with the signatures affixed.
George Washington
rallies the troops
at Princeton.
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Signers
— John Hancock
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James
Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas
Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Aftermath: American Scripture
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In the 15 years after its adoption, the Declaration was
all but forgotten.
It was revived by Jeffersonian Republicans and used
as a partisan document in the 1790s. The
Declaration’s language was used to support
Republicans and the French Revolution and used
against the Federalists and their alliance with Britain.
In the late 1820s and 1830s, both Whigs and
Jacksonians claimed descent from Jefferson and his
party, which served to confirm and perpetuate the old
Republican reverence for the Declaration of
Independence and its emphasis upon Jefferson’s role
in its creation, which persists today, over a century and
a half later.
Opponents of slavery also cited the Declaration,
particularly its second paragraph. In his most famous
speech—the Gettysburg Address (1863)—President
Abraham Lincoln began: “Fourscore and seven years
ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new
nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.”
The Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC (19391943) contains excerpts from the Declaration.
However, Jefferson’s prose was altered (for space
reasons), the right of revolution passage that Jefferson
felt was the point of the Declaration was eliminated,
and much of what was included was not, in fact,
written by Jefferson.
Conclusion
• It is important to understand that the ideas in the Declaration
were not Jefferson’s but were instead a reflection of popular
ideas and writings of the time.
• Furthermore, the finished product—the words themselves—
should by understood as the work of Congress as a whole and
not the work of Jefferson.
• The Declaration—and Jefferson himself—have gained an
almost mythic quality. This deification of the document and the
man who was picked to draft it has obscured the reality of
America’s revolutionary past and the politics involved in
constructing and developing the American polity: a far messier
and complicated project than is popularly understood.
Further Reading
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Becker, Carl. The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of
Political Ideas. Harcourt Brace, 1922.
Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. 1689.
Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence.
Knopf, 1997.
Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. 1776.