Our Independence

Here I hope to enlighten all of you as to our Independence from England. I hope that all of you will learn at least one thing you may not have known before. Our Independence Day celebrations take place on July 4. Please fly your flags on that day to show that you are PROUD to be an AMERICAN.

On July 4, 1776, the members of the Continental Congress assembled at the State House in Philadelphia to take up a matter of vital importance. Two days earlier the Congress had voted to declare the colonies to be "free and independent states." Now they were considering how to announce that fact to the world. By the end of the day, the final wording had been determined and the Congress voted unanimously to adopt one of history's greatest documents----the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

The stirring phrases of the Declaration inspired the patriots to defeat the British, thus guaranteeing independence. Since that time the Declaration has been a source of pride and strength for every generation of Americans.

THE MOVEMENT TOWARD INDEPENDENCE

When the Revolutionary War broke out at Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775, few colonists desired independence. Most of them wanted only a larger measure of self-government within the British Empire. In June 1775, General Washington promised to work for "peace and harmony between the mother country and the colonies." As late as September, Thomas Jefferson "looked with fondness towards a reconciliation."

Although they wanted to remain in the British Empire, most of the colonies insisted that they have the right of self-government. As the year 1775 wore on, it became clear that both of these goals could not be achieved. Parliament would not repeal the "five intolerable acts" or admit that only the local assemblies could tax the colonists. In August the king called the patriots "rebels," and summoned all British subjects to aid in bringing them to terms. In December he removed the colonies from his protection and blockaded their ports. In effect, the king had begun war almost a year before the Declaration was adopted.

The ravages of war were making the people more and more bitter. In October 1775, the British burned the town of Portland, Maine, destroying the homes of a thousand people just at the approach of winter. The siege of Boston inflicted sever hardships on its people. Then came the news that 20,000 Hessian troops had been hired to put down the revolt. "The king," wrote Jefferson, "has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed our people." The German mercenaries were intended "to complete his works of death, desolation and tyranny." On the frontiers he had aroused "the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare" was the destruction of women and children. If the colonists had to preserve their rights by fighting, then they had to have the means of making war and trading with other nations. They could not, however, secure aid abroad so long as they were British subjects, nor could they make a treaty of commerce with a foreign state.

THE DECLARATION IS FRAMED

The time was ripe. In January 1776, Thomas Paine wrote a vigorous pamphlet 'Common Sense'. How, he asked, could the people at once fight against the king and profess their loyalty to him? The day of compromise had passed. "The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of Nature cries, 'Tis time to part'. Here is the vast continent of North America, suited to become the home of a race of free men; let it no longer lie at the feet of an unworthy king." Thousands of men read this challenge and accepted the idea of complete separation from Great Britain.

In the spring of 1776, North Carolina was the first of several states to direct its delegates in Congress to declare for independence. Virginia voted to have its delegates make the necessary motion. As a result, on June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee introduced the dramatic resolution. It declared that "these United Colonies are, and of a right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved."

THE DECLARATION ADOPTED

The resolution could not be adopted immediately because not all the states had yet told their delegates to vote for independence. Therefore a committee was appointed to prepare a statement of the American case. It was made up of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. Jefferson was chosen to draw up the necessary declaration. It was brought to the floor of Congress on June 28.

On July 2, the Lee resolution was adopted and debate on Jefferson's declaration began. In a list of charges against King George III, Jefferson had attacked slavery and the slave trade. Representatives from southern slaveholding colonies refused to accept this clause, and after heated debate it was dropped.

The Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4. A copy was ordered engrossed on parchment. This formal document was signed on August 2 by members of Congress present on that date. Those who were absent signed later.

The Declaration did not establish the independence of the American Colonies. It only stated an intention and the cause for action. Complete separation would have to be accomplished by force. Once the Declaration had been adopted though, there was no turning back.

ORIGIN OF THE DECLARATION

Jefferson put little that was new into the famous document. Its ideas had already been much discussed in America. They had previously been popular in England; John Locke had used them in his book 'On Civil Government', a defense of the English Revolution of 1688.

The Declaration is a statement of the American theory of government. Three basic ideas were involved:

(1) God had made all men equal and had given them the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (instead of Locke's "pursuit of property").

(2) The main business of government was to protect these rights.

(3) If a government tried to withhold these rights, the people were free to revolt and to set up a new government.

These three ideas formed the groundwork for the state governments that were established after the Declaration was adopted.

CHARGES AGAINST THE KING

The colonists had good reasons for taking their stand of protest against the king. If the Declaration had attacked the British Parliament, the American people would be attacking the representatives of the British people, particularly in the elected House of Commons. So, the Americans leveled their charges against the person of the king. It was George III, they said, who had no real power over the American Colonies. Thus they sought to gain the sympathy of the British people.

The king had powerful enemies at home who might help the colonists if they believed that the Americans were fighting solely against the monarch. To foreigners the Revolution would not seem to be a revolt against the authority of the British Parliament, but a revolt against the tyranny of the British king. It would seem to be only a defense of rights long enjoyed and impossible to give up.

When the Declaration was adopted, racing horsemen and the noise of cannon fire carried the news far and wide. General Washington had the document read to the army, and its ringing sentences strengthened the morale of his troops.

On July 8, 1776, the people of Philadelphia gathered at the old State House to hear a reading of the Declaration of Independence. They were called together by the ringing of the Liberty Bell in the belfry of the building. It has been said that the bell cracked on that joyous occasion. This is not true however!! The Liberty Bell cracked for the first time in 1752, after it had been brought from London. It was recast the following year by Charles Stow and John Pass. After its use in 1776, the bell was rung each year on the anniversary of the Declaration. In 1835 a crack developed while it was tolling for the death of John Marshall, famous chief justice of the Supreme Court. When the bell was rung on Washington's birthday in 1846, it cracked beyond repair. It was struck lightly by officials of Philadelphia on April 6, 1917, when the United States entered World War I.

The historic old bell hung in the hallway of the State House (renamed Independence Hall) until the bicentennial year of 1976, when it was moved to a new pavilion nearby. The original document of the Declaration is preserved in a helium-filled glass case in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

This information taken from "Compton's New Century Encyclopedia and Reference Collection II". Their copyright is their own.

The following is copied exactly as seen in the original document.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776.

THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 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.-------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, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object envinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.-------Such has been the patient sufferance of the Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. 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. To prove this, let Fact be submitted to a candid world.-------He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.-------He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.-------He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless these people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.-------He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.-------He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.-------He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for the exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.-------He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.-------He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.-------He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.-------He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. -------He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.-------He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.-------He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:-------For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:-------For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:------- For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:-------For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:-------For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:-------For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: -------For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:-------For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:-------For suspending our own Legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.-------He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.-------He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.-------He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.-------He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.-------He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.-------

WE, THEREFORE, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.-------And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

This document was signed by:

(CONNECTICUT)
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott

(DELAWARE)
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

(GEORGIA)
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

(MARYLAND)
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton

(MASSACHUSETTS)
John Hancock
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry

(NEW HAMPSHIRE)
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Matthew Thornton

(NEW JERSEY)
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

(NEW YORK)
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris

(NORTH CAROLINA)
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn

(PENNSYLVANIA)
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross

(RHODE ISLAND)
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery

(SOUTH CAROLINA)
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur M iddleton

(VIRGINIA)
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

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