Events
June7
Second Continental Congress begins to debate independence
July2
Second Continental Congress votes to declare independence
July4
Delegates sign Declaration of Independence
Key People
-
Thomas Jefferson
Virginia statesman who drafted the Declaration of
Independence
-
John Adams
Massachusetts
delegate at the Continental Congress; assisted Jefferson with revisions
to the Declaration of Independence
-
Benjamin Franklin
Pennsylvania delegate at the Continental Congress;
assisted Jefferson with revisions to the Declaration of Independence
-
George III
King
of Great Britain throughout the American Revolution
Virginia Proposes Independence
At a meeting of the Second Continental Congress
in the summer of 1776, Richard
Henry Lee, a delegate from Virginia, proposed that the American
colonies should declare their independence from Britain. Delegates
debated this proposal heavily for a few weeks, and many returned
to their home states to discuss the idea in state conventions.
By this point—after the Battle of Lexington and
Concord, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and George III’s rejection of
the Olive Branch Petition—the thought of independence appealed to
a majority of colonists. By July 2, 1776,
the Continental Congress, with the support of twelve states (New
York did not vote), decided to declare independence.
Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence
Congress then selected a few of its most gifted delegates,
including Benjamin Franklin, John Adams,
and Thomas Jefferson, to draft a written proclamation
of independence. Jefferson was chosen to be the committee’s scribe
and principal author, so the resulting Declaration of Independence was
a product primarily of his efforts.
Jefferson kept the Declaration relatively short and to
the point: he wanted its meaning to be direct, clear, and forceful.
In the brief document, he managed to express clearly the ideals
of the American cause, level weighty accusations against George
III, offer arguments to give the colonies’ actions international
legitimacy, and encapsulate the American spirit of freedom and unity.
In his first draft, Jefferson also wrote against slavery, signifying
that people were fundamentally equal regardless of race as well—but
this portion was stricken from the final document. Nevertheless,
Jefferson’s words gave hope to blacks as well as landless whites,
laborers, and women, then and for generations to come.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
The Declaration’s second paragraph begins the body of
the text with the famous line, “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.” With these protections, any American, regardless
of class, religion, gender, and eventually race, could always strive—and
even sometimes succeed—at improving himself via wealth, education,
or labor. With those seven final words, Jefferson succinctly codified
the American Dream.
The Social Contract
Jefferson argued that governments derived their power
from the people—a line of reasoning that sprang from the writings
of contemporary philosophers including Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas
Paine. Both had argued that people enter into a social
contract with the body that governs them and that when the
government violates that contract, the people have the right to
establish a new government. These notions of a contract and accountability
were radical for their time, because most Europeans believed that
their monarchs’ power was granted by God. The Declaration of Independence
thus established a new precedent for holding monarchies accountable
for their actions.
