Volume 16 , Issue 23

Declaration of Independence

You all remember the beginning of the Declaration of Independence, don't you? The Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson drafted between June 11 and June 28, 1776.

Jefferson expressed the convictions in the minds and hearts of the American people. The political philosophy of the Declaration was not new. Its ideals of individual liberty had already been expressed by John Locke and the Continental philosophers. What Jefferson did was to summarize this philosophy in "self-evident truths" and set forth a list of grievances against the King in order to justify before the world the breaking of ties between the colonies and the mother country.

"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 and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

It continues ...

"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, --"

The 56 signatures On Declaration

Column 1, Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton.

Column 2, North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn; South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton.

Column 3, Massachusetts: John Hancock; 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.

Column 4, 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.

Column 5, New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris; New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark.

Column 6, New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple; Massachusetts: 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 Hampshire: Matthew Thornton.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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