September 27th

The Declaration of Independence
*The Second Continental Congress charged three men with coming up with a document that officially notified Britain of the colonies separation from the crown. The three men chosen to write this proclamation were different from each other in almost every ways.

-John Adams was middle aged, very serious, and from Massachusetts, one of the northernmost colonies; he was a brilliant attorney and he was very pessimistic about most things.

-Benjamin Franklin was an old man; he was a free thinker who enjoyed the finer things in life such as wine, women, and song. Franklin was from Pennsylvania, one of the Mid-Atlantic colonies. He was an inventor, a publisher, and a diplomat. Franklin was the eternal optimist who was often accused of being a dreamer

-Thomas Jefferson was a young man, only 33 years old; he was a logical and practical thinker, an intellectual in every way. Jefferson was a man of high standards but of weak will. He was extremely shy and reserved. He was from Virginia, one of the southern colonies. Jefferson made his living as a plantation owner, and as a lawyer. He was a brilliant writer. He was a visionary!

-Franklin and Adams were extremely smart men, smart enough to know and admit that Jefferson was the smartest of the bunch. The older Franklin and Adams charged Jefferson with the duty of writing the document on his own. Jefferson was given free reign to write whatever he chose. Franklin and Adams would help him make revisions and make suggestions about what should stay in, and be left out of the document. Jefferson based his writing partly on the writings of the French philosopher Voltaire and other famous thinkers, but mostly on the works of the British philosopher John Locke.

-The Declaration of Independence was a brilliantly written document not only in a political sense but also in a literary sense. The declaration was written in three parts.

1. Jefferson basically states Locke’s theory that all men are
created equal and have the natural rights to life, liberty,
and property. He asserts that the colonists share in these
rights.

2. Jefferson goes on to present Locke’s assertion that a
government’s duty is to serve the interests of the people.
He then goes into detail, listing many of the violations the
British government was guilty of against the colonies.

3. In the final part of the declaration, Jefferson declares that
the colonies are formally separated from the British crown;
the colonies are no longer colonies, they are 13 independent
states united for the purpose of defense, and economics.

-Jefferson’s declaration is nearly perfect in presentation, style, and force. He asserts the rights of the colonies, then gives specific examples of how these rights have been violated, and then uses the examples to justify our secession from the United Kingdom and asserts that the colonies will wage a war of revolution to change the way that they were being governed.

-Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence is one of the most influential documents in the history of the world. Many groups of people throughout history have used the Declaration of Independence as justification for revolution and rebellion. The first group of people, other than the colonists, to use the document as justification for revolution were the French. The French Revolution began merely 13 years after the writing of this document; The Declaration of Independence directly inspired the French Revolution.