The Declaration of Independence is one of the most important documents in the history of the United States. It marked an official step taken by the American colonies toward independence from British rule. Show
Many colonists were unhappy with laws that collected taxes but did not give them a say in government. The Stamp Act of 1765, for example, collected taxes on items made of paper such as legal documents, newspapers, and even playing cards. The Townshend Acts of 1767 were a series of acts that involved taxing the colonies to raise revenue for Great Britain. The Boston Tea Party in 1773, when men boarded a ship full of British tea and dumped it into Boston Harbor, was a protest against taxation without representation. The discontent of the colonists, such as the colonial lack of participation in government, led to war with Great Britain. During the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), delegates to the Second Continental Congress met in the summer of 1776 to discuss independence from Great Britain. On June 7, Richard Henry Lee, a statesman from Virginia, appointed a committee to investigate how the colonies could become independent. Lee called for the drafting of an official statement of independence. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman were instructed to draft a resolution. On July 2, 1776, the Congress voted to declare independence from England. After two days of debate and some changes to the document, the Congress voted to accept the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. This action represented a formal separation of the American colonies from Great Britain.
Independence may have been approved in the summer of 1776, but the ramifications of the Declaration would extend far into the future. The authors had created something that had unintended audiences, and unintended consequences that would be felt during the Revolutionary Era and beyond. The immediate goals — a greater sense of unity among Revolutionaries and the acquisition of foreign allies — were met, but new goals have since been attached to the Declaration of Independence. Whether these have been met is a question for us all to discuss and debate in the present. Independence and RebuttalsWhen word of the decision on independence spread, Revolutionaries celebrated it while Loyalists considered it an act of betrayal. Others simply hoped that they would escape the war without loss or suffering. Regardless of what political position they held, they all felt the impact of the new goal of independence in some way. For Revolutionaries, independence was a possibility that many had not expected or even considered as recently as a year before. Protests to alter British policy had turned into full-blown rebellion. Some Revolutionaries were uneasy about this significant change. Imagine what it must have felt like to join a movement with one goal, only to watch it change into a different, more drastic one. Others embraced the idea of independence and began to find common ground with fellow Revolutionaries that they did not think they had. The Declaration of Independence had helped them see how British policy had impacted colonists throughout North America. Now many felt they were no longer just thirteen separate colonies protesting, they were self-governing states united behind a worthy cause. Loyalists, however, were distressed over how far Revolutionaries had gone. They wanted to remain part of the British Empire for all the benefits it offered, political or moral stances they held, or a variety of other reasons. Many of them felt that the Continental Congress’ actions were illegal and did not represent the views of most American colonists. As the Declaration spread throughout the states, people began to analyze its words. Some chose to publish their disagreements, citing what they considered to be lies and falsehoods in the document and disputing its logic. Former Governor of Massachusetts Thomas Hutchinson penned a rebuttal to the Declaration entitled Strictures Upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia. In it he accused the Continental Congress of hypocrisy for suggesting that man’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was inalienable while allowing so many enslaved people to be deprived of those same rights. He also disputed many of the grievances laid out in the Declaration, attempting to logically disprove them. Meanwhile, 547 Loyalists in New York signed a Declaration of Dependence, affirming their loyalty to the British Empire. The signers included farmers, merchants, and free people of African descent. These everyday people had many things in common with those celebrating independence, but they wanted no part of it themselves. A Treaty of AllianceResponses to the Declaration came from overseas as well, and no international response was as important to the Continental Congress as that of potential allies and world powers France and Spain. The Declaration made the case that the British Monarchy had given up its right to rule the American colonies based on King George III’s failures. Congress hoped this would convince other monarchies to assist the newly independent states without encouraging similar rebellions in their own countries. A Treaty of Alliance had been drafted at the same time as the Declaration. It was to be sent to France in the event that independence was declared, and members of Congress wasted little time in following through on this. On Monday, July 8, the Continental Navy brig Dispatch was tasked with carrying a copy of the Declaration to France. Further instructions were included that it should be shared with the other Courts of Europe. Kings Louis XVI and Carlos III were sympathetic to Americans but had to carefully weigh the risks to their own interests. Defeating Britain would be a prestigious victory after their own defeats in the French and Indian War and would reduce Britain’s power over the rest of the world, but war was expensive and dangerous. Ultimately, they both chose to go to war with Britain. Other nations formed a League of Armed Neutrality to contest Britain’s control of the sea and to protect neutral shipping. While only France entered a formal alliance with the United States, Britain still found itself fighting a global war against many European nations. Unintended AudiencesThe Declaration of Independence served its immediate political and military goals, but it did something else as well: it provided a clear rationale, directly from some of the leading men of the new states, for people who had been denied access to natural rights in the colonies to demand those rights. These arguments weren’t new when they were presented in the Declaration, and in fact, many educated people found them to be unremarkable by 1776. But the Declaration’s authors weren’t in agreement over whether, how, or when those arguments should apply to people in social classes beyond their own. For the people demanding rights, however, the answer was often “yes, to us, and as soon as possible.”
Imagine that you had heard the words of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Would you have found hope in it, too, or would you have been afraid that nothing would change? Life After IndependenceAfter the war, life did change, in big ways and in small ones, for many of the people mentioned above. For example, as the new states wrote their own constitutions — a necessary step now that they had renounced British authority — most reduced the barriers to voting for free, white men. They were now able to have a greater voice in how their communities were run. In New Jersey, women and free people of African descent were also able to vote for over 30 years, though they, like white men in their state, did need to own a certain amount of property to do so. However, the New Jersey state legislature took this ability away in 1807, expressing concerns about voter fraud, voter suppression. Discomfort around this major social and political changes was likely also to blame. Yet New Jersey was also one of the many northern states to pass gradual abolition acts, which slowly outlawed slavery in those states. In the south, however, slavery remained, and grew. Meanwhile, women were given more responsibility as the first educators of the new nation’s future leaders. Some women used this educational opportunity to prepare themselves and other women and girls for leadership roles as well. For Native peoples, like others, the outcomes of the war were complicated. Nations that had sided with the British suffered devastating losses in backcountry fighting during the war and lost much of their land closest to the independent states in the war’s aftermath. However, many did participate in diplomatic relationships with the new United States of America, hoping to do the best they could to regain power or survive. Joseph Brant, of the Mohawk people, for example, served as a diplomat and negotiator. Allies of the United States, such as the Oneida, fared better in the short term, but as the new nation grew, they too, saw their lands dwindle as they were pushed further north and west. However, they had been proud to stand together with the Revolutionaries in what they believed had been a noble fight. Religious minorities perhaps fared better. Some states, including Maryland, wrote their state constitutions to eliminate official religions, or like Pennsylvania, simply used their constitutions to make longstanding practice in this area official. Steps like these meant that people who were not Anglican, or broadly Protestant, were no longer taxed to support a religion that they did not practice. Rabbi Gershom Seixas, of Newport, Rhode Island, expressed to President George Washington over a decade after these early state constitutions were written, his hope that this state of affairs would continue to grow and improve in practice as well as on paper. Echoing Rabbi Seixas’s own words back to him, Washington replied “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.” These were aspirational words in 1790. Do you think they are today as well? An Ongoing RevolutionThe Declaration of Independence of 1776 was in many ways a war document. It was a political message to Revolutionaries in the British North American colonies and their potential allies in European nations. But it somewhat unexpectedly also became the center of various rallying cries for equality and liberty from its earliest moments, and it has continued to do so to this day. The women's suffrage and women’s rights movements have leaned on the Declaration to support their demands for equality under the law. For example, the attendees of the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 produced a Declaration of Sentiments that was modeled after, and used similar language to, the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. The abolitionist and anti-slavery movements also frequently referenced the words of the Declaration, as did later activists within the Civil Rights Movement. Yet some have seen the equality statement within the Declaration as less important than the idea of personal liberty or of personal property, allowing the same document to be used by people on different sides of the same issue to try to achieve their own goals. While abolitionists used the Declaration as a tool against slavery, the Confederacy during the Civil War used the Declaration’s justification of breaking away to form a new government as a rationale for doing the same. Some, like Mississippi, even published their own rationales for secession, modeled after the Declaration. The Declaration of Independence has even served as a model for independence and equality movements outside of the United States. Places as distant in geography and time as Vermont (1777), Flanders (1790), Haiti (1804), Argentina (1816), Liberia (1847), Vietnam (1945), and Bangladesh (1971) have issued independence documents that have echoed the themes, structure, and sometimes pieces of its exact language. Not all these movements have been successful or long-lasting. However, they demonstrate the power of the ideals of the Revolutionary movement and of the example of the United States of America, even as Americans have continued to wrestle with what those ideals mean in practice. What do you believe the ideals of the Declaration of Independence mean, or should, today? Learn MoreSeason of Independence Big IdeasExplore several short essays to put the Season of Independence interactive map and its documents into historical context. Season of Independence Teacher ResourcesExplore modular activities, worksheets, and more, aligned to national history standards, to help your students dig into the Season of Independence interactive. Read MoreSeason of Independence GlossaryThis glossary provides definitions to useful terms found throughout the Season of Independence interactive feature and its related teacher resources. Read MoreWhat was the impact of the Declaration of Independence on the world?And, as the first successful declaration of independence in world history, its example helped to inspire countless movements for independence, self-determination, and revolution after 1776.
Why was the Declaration of Independence so impactful?The importance of the Declaration of Independence can hardly be overstated. It established for the first time in world history a new nation based on the First Principles of the rule of law, unalienable rights, limited government, the Social Compact, equality, and the right to alter or abolish oppressive government.
What was the impact of the Declaration of Independence quizlet?Terms in this set (13)
The effect of the Declaration of Independence was to clearly communicate to the British what the colonists believe were the basic principles of freedom and the rights they felt all people should have.
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