The Declaration of Independence: Origins
The Bill of Rights Institute
Chicago, IL
October 2, 2008
Artemus Ward
Department of Political Science
Northern Illinois University
http://polisci.niu.edu/polisci/faculty/ward
Background
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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.
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
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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.
“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!
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 in his
congressional resolution to declare independence, June 7, 1776. And
Jefferson’s prose (above) 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.
Signers
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— 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 (1939-1943)
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 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.