The Declaration of Independence
Seminar/Discussion questions
How is the Declaration’s idea about why governments are formed still important to
our country today?
How does the language in the list of charges (paragraphs 3-30) against the king
appeal to people’s emotions?
What do you think “tyrant” means in paragraph 30?
Whose authority does Congress use to declare independence in paragraph 32?
From whom did the declarations signers receive their authority to declare
independence in paragraph 32?
The Following is part of a passage that the Congress removed from Jefferson’s original
draft: “He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred
rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him,
captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable
death in their transportation thither.” Why do you think the Congress deleted this
passage?
“…[the] Declaration [gave] liberty not alone to the people of this country, but hope to
the world for future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight
should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.
This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”
--Abraham Lincoln, Independence Hall Speech, February 22 1861.
How would Lincoln respond to the statement that the Declaration of Independence
grew in importance to become the embodiment of American democracy?
“In this preamble however it is, that they attempt to establish a theory of government; a theory, as
absurd and visionary, as the system of conduct in defense of which it is established, is
nefarious. Here it is, that maxims [sayings] are advanced in justification of their enterprises
against the British Government. To these maxims, adduced for this purpose, it would be
sufficient to say, that they are repugnant to the British Constitution. But beyond this they are
subversive of every actual or imaginable kind of government…What they call self-evident
truths, “All men,” they tell us, “are created equal.” This surely is a new discovery; now for the
first time, we learn that a child, at the moment of his birth, has the same quantity of natural
power as the parent, the same quantity of political power as the magistrate.
The rights of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”—by which, if they mean
anything, they must mean the right to enjoy life, to enjoy liberty, and to pursue happiness—
they ‘hold to be unalienable.’ At the same time, to secure these rights, they are content that
governments should be instituted. They perceive not, or will not seem to perceive, that nothing
which can be called government ever was, or ever could be, in any instance, exercised, but at
the expense of one or another of those rights.—That, consequently, in as many instances as
Government is ever exercised, some one or other of these rights, pretended to be unalienable is
actually alienated.
...But rather surprising it must certainly appear, that they should advance maxims so
incompatible with their own present conduct. If the right of enjoying life be unalienable,
whence came their invasion of his Majesty’s province of Canada? Whence the unprovoked
destruction of so many lives of the inhabitants of that province? If the right of enjoying liberty
be unalienable whence came so many of his Majesty’s peaceable subjects among them, without
offence, without so much as a pretended offence, merely for being suspected not to wish well to
their [rebellion], to be held by them in [custody]? If the right of pursuing happiness be
unalienable, how is it that so many others of their fellow-citizens are by the same injustice and
violence made miserable, their fortunes ruined, their persons banished and driven from their
friends and families?...is it that among acts of coercion, acts by which life and liberty are taken
away, and the pursuit of happiness restrained, those only are unlawful, which their
delinquency has brought upon them, and which are exercised by regular, long established
accustomed governments?”
--John Lind, An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress, London, 1776 pp 117-119
Contrast these remarks by a British lawyer to the theory of government advanced in
paragraph 2 of the Declaration. How would you as a patriot answer these criticisms
of the ideals expressed in the Declaration?