Declaration+of+Independence

**July 4, 1776 – [|The Declaration of Independence]**

[|The Declaration of Independence] was written to explain why the colonies felt it was necessary to separate from Britain. The Continental Congress appointed a committee of five men to write the Declaration of Independence. The committee consisted of [|John Adams], [|Benjamin Franklin], [|Thomas Jefferson], [|Robert R. Livingston], and [|Roger Sherman]. Out of these five, they chose Thomas Jefferson to write it because they said that he was the most eloquent writer of the five. The first draft was revised by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams before it was sent to Congress.

The Declaration was designed like a court case, with opening arguments, evidence, and a verdict. In the evidence, the colonists listed all the reasons they were separating from Great Britain and blamed the king of England for all their troubles. They probably blamed the king instead of Parliament because it is easier to blame just one person instead of a group of people for something. The colonists wrote the Declaration to prove to other countries that they had good reasons to split from England and gain the other countries' respect. The King was accused of the whole thing because he always had the power to stop it. They mainly accused the King not only because he had the power to stop it, he just plain didn't do anything about it. He just sat back and let his soldiers do what ever they wanted. He sure paid the price for that.

The Declaration talked about a social contract, mentioned by [|John Locke] in Enlightenment Figures, and stated that it had been broken. The founding fathers believed that the British had broken the social contract and it was their responsibility to break from the government.

More and more of the colonies were being convinced that the separation from Great Britain was unavoidable. Thomas Paine's book, __//Common Sense//__, which was published in January 1776, was sold by thousands of book shops around the world. By the middle of May, at least eight colonies had decided that they would support the prospect of Independence.

Congress then took out the part on slavery because if there was a ban slavery, it would have a bad affect on almost everyone. Finally, on July 4, 1776, the final copy of the Declaration was approved and printed on paper on July 5, 1776. On July 19, the congress decided on a new name “The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America.” [|John Hancock] was the first signer on August 2nd and was eventually signed by 56 delegates.



The Declaration of Independence is one of the most important documents ever made. It is mostly important to the United States because it was the document that first declared our independence from Britain. This document was signed finally on July 4, 1776. That means that the document is exactly 232 years old! That is one old document! It is located in the National Archives in Washington DC. The declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson. Even though all the ideas in the Declaration of Independence were not all his ideas, he was the primary author. The many months that were before the signing of the Declaration of Independence was full of activity, in which the signers of the document were preparing the document, and were doing lots of other stuff. In June of 1776, Thomas Jefferson was part of a Virginia delegation that was planning to ask the Second Continental Congress to break all of its ties with Great Britain. He was then signed over to a committee that asked Jefferson to be the author of a document that would list all of the causes that would soon lead to the United States Independence.
 * __More about the Declaration of Independence!__**

The Declaration of Independence was an act of the Second Continental Congress. This document declared that the United States (that was at the time made up of all the 13 colonies) was a free and independent country from Britain. This was first adopted on July 4, 1776. This document was originally named “The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America”. At the time in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was signed, all of the thirteen colonies at the time stood united as one, and declared their independence from Great Britain. In June 1776, a month before the first person signed the Declaration of Independence, 55 delegates from the Second Continental Congress was told to make a document to declare their independence. The committee was made up of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman. They all decided that Jefferson was the most suitable to write the document. There were many, many corrections made by the fellow congress members before it was ready to be presented. In was first presented to the Continental Congress on June 28. They then met in [|Independence Hall] in Philadelphia to finish correction the document, approve it, and sent it to the printer on July 4. John Hancock was, at the time, the President of the Congress, and was the only person to sign the declaration on July 4th. The other remaining 55 people signed the Declaration that following August 2nd. These 55 people were called delegates. Our countries 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, described and explained the real importance of the document in the [|Gettysburg Address] of 1863. In the first sentence of the Address, it stated that all men are created equal. This was also a main idea in the Declaration of Independence.