DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS George Mason, author of Virginia Declaration of Rights All men are created equally free and independent and have certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Local declarations Richard Henry Lee s resolution Locke s Second Treatise on Government Francis Hutcheson and quantification
LIBERTY Revolutionary America conceived of liberty as resistance to tyranny. With the Declaration of Independence, liberty became a natural right and justification for rebellion and thus independence. Transformation from reform within the empire to the doctrine of popular sovereignty; from rights as Englishmen to natural rights
INDEPENDENCE On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee introduced a resolution to the Second Continental Congress proclaiming the colonies free and independent of Britain. This resolution was debated and deferred. On July 2, it was finally adopted. Two days later the delegates approved the wording of a formal statement announcing the decision for independence. Richard Henry Lee
ORIGINAL INTENT The original authors of the Declaration intended it to be only a means of carrying the news that the Continental Congress had decided on independence. If it were truly independence that was being celebrated, the national holiday should be July 2, when the resolution was passed in Congress. Over time, the Declaration came to represent lofty ideals of American equality and liberty for all.
DECLARATION Preamble offers theoretical justification Series of grievances and injuries Addressed to King George III specifically, Parliament indirectly Plot to deprive a free people of their liberties Scheme to enslave colonists
SELF-EVIDENT TRUTHS Natural rights Social contract Conflict between freedom and tyranny Pursuit of happiness meant advancing progress of humankind Succeeding generations of Americans have confused the adoption of independence with its declaration. The Fourth of July was rarely celebrated during the Revolution and seems actually to have declined in popularity once the war was over.
LONG TRAIN OF ABUSES The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these states. Arbitrary power Suspended assemblies Vice-admiralty courts Deprived trial by jury Standing armies Restricting free trade
AND USURPATIONS Imposing taxes without consent of the governed Molasses Act Sugar Act Stamp Act Townshend duties Tea Act The Proclamation of 1763 Customs officials armed with writs of assistance Boston Massacre trial
REPEATED INJURIES Quebec Act Denied charters Lexington and Concord Bunker Hill Hessian mercenaries Impressment Grievances ignored
AMERICA S MOST WANTED The signers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. Risked lives with a treasonous act John Hancock
EFFECTS Cause to fight and die for Foreign support Model for other countries and future generations Ideal more than reality American paradox Much of American history has been an effort to actualize and extend the high ideals of the Declaration to greater and greater numbers of people.
MISSING CLAUSE 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 & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguishing die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
RACE AND REVOLUTION
DECLARING FOR FREEDOM In Nov. 1775, Gov. Dunmore (VA) proclaimed that any slave who deserted his master to fight for the king would be freed. Slaves forced the issue. exciting domestic insurrections 400,000 black slaves living in colonies in 1776 Flight, rebellion, and protest increased significantly after 1765. Declaring own freedom
EVOLVING MEANINGS In the 19 th century, the Declaration became a statement of principles to guide stable, established governments. Neither the federal Constitution nor the Bill of Rights asserted men s natural equality or their possession of inalienable rights, or the right of the people to reject or change their government. So, politicians and reformers cited the Declaration as justification for their policies of change.
SUCCESSIVE GENERATIONS
AMERICAN FREEDOM Historian Eric Foner argues, Freedom is both an idea and a practice, a complex of values and an experience implemented in law and public policy. Unfortunately individual freedom and liberty has been limited in the name of freedom in our history Various types and conceptions of freedom political, social, religious, personal, economic, etc. Positive and negative definitions Concept ever-changing
BIRTH OF THE REPUBLIC One person s freedom is another s servitude. Invented tradition of free born Englishmen in 18 th century Power versus liberty Civic virtue Liberalism and republicanism Political freedom required economic independence Equality and opportunity central tenets National identity revolved around freedom.
LEGACY Americans cast into role of citizens empowered with right of self-government Jefferson viewed individuals as tied together in society by rights and duties and bound together in their affections by a moral sense. The Declaration s power emanates from its capacity to inspire and move the hearts of Americans, and its meaning lies in what people choose to make of it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Davidson, James West and Mark Hamilton Lytle. After The Fact: The Art of Historical Detection. Fourth Edition. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000. Ellis, Joseph J. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Knopf, 1996. Faragher, John Mack. The Encyclopedia of Colonial and Revolutionary America. New York: Da Capo, 1996 (1990). Foner, Eric. The Story of American Freedom. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. Frey, Slyvia. Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York: Knopf, 1997. Morgan, Edmund S. The Meaning of Independence. New York: W.W. Norton, 1978.