Declaration of Independence
The Continental Congress voted for independence on 2 July 1776 and approved the text explaining it on the 4th. Richard Henry Lee had moved the resolution on 7 June, and the vote was postponed for three weeks to let the middle colonies catch up with opinion — a committee of five was appointed in the interval to prepare a declaration in case the resolution passed. Jefferson wrote the draft in about seventeen days in a rented room, at a portable desk of his own design. The document has three parts and the middle one is the longest: a statement of principle, a list of twenty-seven grievances against the king, and a declaration of separation. The preamble's claim that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is a rewriting of Locke, with property replaced. Congress edited the draft heavily and cut about a quarter of it, including a passage blaming the king for the slave trade, which Jefferson resented for the rest of his life and which was struck at the insistence of South Carolina and Georgia and, he noted, some northern delegates whose ports carried it. It was signed by most delegates on 2 August rather than on the 4th. Adams predicted that the second of July would be celebrated by succeeding generations, and was wrong by two days. He and Jefferson both died on 4 July 1826. The claim about equality was written by a man who owned some 175 people and did not free them. That contradiction is the American argument, and Lincoln, Douglass and King all made their case by quoting the sentence back rather than by discarding it.
- Year: 1776 CE
- Category: Political
