Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence is drafted in the late spring of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, with revisions by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and the rest of the Continental Congress, and adopted on July 4 in the State House at Philadelphia. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduces the resolution for independence on June 7; the Congress refers it to a five-man drafting committee — Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston — and Jefferson, the youngest at thirty-three but the most polished writer, produces the draft. The committee revises lightly. The Congress revises more heavily on the floor, removing Jefferson's striking but politically untenable passage condemning the slave trade.

The document divides into three parts. The opening paragraph announces the occasion: one people dissolving the political bonds that tied them to another, as required by the laws of nature and of nature's God, and assuming their separate and equal place among the powers of the earth. The second paragraph is the philosophical core, modelled on Locke's Second Treatise: we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 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. Then come twenty-seven specific grievances against George III, each beginning with "He has," constituting the legal indictment.

The closing paragraph is the formal declaration of independence: the representatives of the thirteen united States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of their intentions, solemnly publish and declare that these colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states. The vote is taken on July 2; the document is adopted on July 4; copies are sent to the states and to Europe. The Declaration is the document that announces the United States as a political project rather than as a list of colonies in revolt.