The Declaration of Independence In July of 1776, the thirteen American colonies had already been at war with England for more than a year. It might seem strange that Americans would feel a need to spend time writing a formal Declaration of Independence, but that is exactly what they did. They felt obligated, they wrote at the very beginning of the Declaration, “by a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” to explain why they no longer considered themselves subjects of the British kingdom. This suggests how members of the Continental Congress such as Thomas Jefferson, who drafted the Declaration, viewed the relationship between a government and its citizens. They believed in a “social compact” among citizens, and between citizens and government. Simply by virtue of existing, they believed, every person has an equal right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In order to make these rights secure, they wrote, “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Thomas Jefferson was the main author of the Declaration of Independence.
A government, in other words, is established by citizens. The only reason people agree to this is so that government will protect their fundamental rights. King George III, wrote the Founders, had been breaking that agreement for a long time. Instead of protecting the people, his government had engaged in a “long train of abuses” of their rights. They believed no government should be changed “for light and transient causes.” They believed, however, that once the government becomes an enemy of rights, rather than their protector, citizens have a right to “alter or abolish” that government. The Declaration of Independence includes a long list of King George’s violations of the colonists’ rights. He had found numerous ways to keep their representatives from having a say in how the colonies were governed, even as he levied new taxes on them. He sent numerous government officials to tell them what to do and kept large numbers of troops among them, even to the point of forcing colonists to give over parts of their homes to soldiers. He restricted their ability to sell their products overseas, locked up colonists without fair trials, and allowed his navy to force colonists into working as sailors against their will. Meanwhile, wrote Jefferson, the people who had been their fellow British citizens ignored their cries for help. “They too,” according to the Declaration of Independence, “have been deaf to the voice of justice.”
"Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams while preparing documents in Jefferson's apartment in Philadelphia," painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris Why did the Founders bother to write all this down? Plenty of people in history had gone to war in order to have power over territory, and none of them had bothered to explain why. Unlike most nations in history, however, America hadn’t gone to war because they were a tribe fighting other tribes, or because Americans wanted to kill people who practiced a different religion, or because they believed the only way to have wealth was to seize other people’s property and make it their own. For most of their lives, they had considered themselves British subjects, and they had been proud of that fact. In the Declaration itself, they call the British their “brethren.” They wrote the Declaration of Independence precisely because being British subjects had meant something important to them. It was no small thing to break the social compact between citizens and government, and the Founders argued that George III had broken Britain’s compact with the American colonies. They believed so strongly in the rights of people that they could not continue to put up with the King’s tyranny. He had broken the contract a legitimate government has with its citizens. The very justification for a government—protecting the rights of the people—was also the justification, in the absence of that protection, for abolishing that government.
Declaration of Independence
And so we have, wrote the Founders, “full Power to levy War.” That might seem silly to put in the document, given that they had already shown that they knew how to wage war against England. Their point, however, was that this was a morally justified war, waged because people will always have the right to defend their freedom. Reading the Declaration of Independence, we see that the United States is a nation founded not on conquest or tribal loyalty, but on the idea of a free and self-governing people. The Founders—all of them important and well- regarded men—believed so strongly in the right of self-governance and the protection of individual rights that they pledged “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor” to the cause of independence. They knew the price, should they lose this battle with the most powerful country on the planet, would likely be the loss of all their wealth, as well as their lives.
John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman were members of the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence. "Founding Fathers: The Declaration Committee," painting by John Buxton
The members of the Continental Congress who signed Jefferson’s Declaration had more to lose from war with England than most colonists. To pursue their ideas took courage. It is easy to forget this, living as we do under the protection of theConstitution they established. Because there will always be people who want to rule over others, however, we should remember that every generation of citizens must muster the courage to resist those who would take their freedoms away, whether all at once, or bit by bit.
DOCUMENTS OF FREEDOM – Declaration of Independence
Handout B: Declaration Scavenger Hunt
Determine the relationship of the person, place, or thing below to the Declaration of Independence. On a separate sheet of paper, briefly describe that relationship for each.
Use the resources in this packet or the internet.
Thomas Jefferson The Committee of Five Natural Rights Continental Congress The Lee Resolution Spirit of ‘76 Common Sense Treason King George III Charles Thomson John Hancock National Archives John Locke Abraham Lincoln George Mason Martin Luther King Jr. Revolutionary War July 2, 1776 Government by Consent Sacred Honor Dunlap Broadsides Engrossing No Taxation without Representation Social Compact The Constitution When the American Founders declared independence from Britain, they explained that they were doing so because its government was violating their inalienable rights, which include “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” As they organized to fight the British and write the Declaration of Independence, the American colonists formed a confederation of states with some basic agreements called “The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.” The Articles of Confederation enabled them to cooperate in waging the Revolutionary War and to speak with a single voice when negotiating for weapons and trade with countries like France.
James Madison was one of the authors of the Federalist Papers and he is known as the "Father of the Constitution."
Soon after the war ended, however, many Founders began to argue that the Articles of Confederation were not adequate to secure the rights they had fought to defend. Any law or treaty established under the Articles could be ignored by a state government. Citizens of one state could be treated with negative bias by courts in another state. States were beginning to tax one another’s products, threatening to undermine American prosperity by hampering free trade. “The peace of the whole,” argued Alexander Hamilton, “ought not to be left at the disposal of a part.”
Americans had battled one of the most powerful nations on earth because its king trampled their rights. Now many believed they faced the opposite problem: a government without enough authority to pay its debts, guarantee equal treatment before the law, or fund a small defensive army. As states sent delegates to a convention organized to revise the Articles of Confederation, many ideas emerged about how a national government should work. Despite their differences, most delegates agreed that government should be constrained from abusing citizens’ rights while also possessing sufficient power to protect those rights. They also understood that whatever they proposed needed approval from legislatures in most of the states, which meant that they also had to take into account local interests and concerns.
Their goal – as they eventually explained in the opening sentences (the Preamble) of the Constitution—was “to form a more perfect union.” Many who think the word “perfect” can only mean “flawless” miss what the Constitution’s framers intended. They weren’t claiming that the Constitution would make for a flawless national government. They were using the definition of “perfect” that meant –especially in their day – “complete” or “lacking in no essential detail.” In other words, they desired a true union of states, with enough authority to bind them and their citizens, yet with a universal set of rights and freedom for people to make most governmental decisions in their states and communities.
United States Constitution The Constitution’s preamble also reveals that its framers believed the system they devised— by dividing government into branches that would check one another’s exercise of power, and listing specific government powers in order to ensure rulers wouldn’t imagine they had more authority than intended—would “establish justice” for its citizens. Justice meant that citizens would be treated equally and fairly by their government and also have their persons and property protected. This more perfect union, rooted in ideas of freedom, individual responsibility, and justice, would help to “insure domestic tranquility” between states and their citizens and also provide “for the common defense.” Our national government would have courts to handle disputes between states or between citizens of different states, as well as the power to raise an army if foreign enemies threatened our lands or people.
Instead of a mere collection of states as a “firm league of friendship,” the ratification of the Constitution by state conventions would recast the nation as a sovereign entity authorized by “We, the people of the United States.” It would have a government with specific and limited authority. Its leaders would be expected to “promote the general welfare,” meaning they would only pass laws that benefited the nation as a whole and not merely narrow or local interests.
"Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States," painting by Howard Chandler Christy This new, federal government would not make most decisions or take responsibility for making people’s lives better. That would remain the responsibility of individuals and families acting independently or joined together in their communities. That is why the Founders placed such a strong emphasis on virtue. They knew that no government could ever establish peace and prosperity without citizens willing to work hard, take care of their families, and stand up for freedom and justice. The job of the federal government would be to protect the freedoms people needed to govern themselves, pursue religion as they saw fit, engage in commerce, and live peaceably alongside one another. It was designed to “ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Although delegates disagreed on many points (for example, how to balance the power between the large and small states), they produced a document that they believed gave their proposed national government the necessary power to protect freedom while shackling it with the necessary restrictions to keep it from becoming a tyranny. John Adams wrote to John Jay from his diplomatic assignment in Europe: “A result of accommodation and compromise cannot be supposed perfectly to coincide with everyone’s idea of perfection. But, as all the great principles necessary to order, liberty, and safety are respected in it, and provision is made for corrections and amendments as they may be found necessary, I confess I hope to hear of its adoption by all the states.”