What the Declaration Declared

By Thomas Sheppard

Thursday, July 02, 2026

 

Two hundred and fifty years ago, John Adams could barely contain his excitement. “I am apt to believe that [this day] will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival,” he wrote to his wife, Abigail. “It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.” He believed he was living on one of the greatest days in history, and he refused to let anyone dim his ardor. “You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not… The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.”

 

That Adams was slightly off on his date has long been a source of humor, but he was right in the main. While the Continental Congress did vote to declare America’s independence on July 2, it still needed time to finalize the wording of the official statement, and thus it was not until July 4 that the Declaration of Independence rolled off the printer’s presses. At the time, Adams was far from alone in seeing the actual vote as the crucial point and the declaratory document as something of an afterthought. The moment of declaring independence was history-making; no other colony had severed relations with its metropole and become a new nation before. But at the time, it competed for attention with multiple other dramatic events. The Continental Army was scrambling (ultimately without success) to hold onto New York, while many members of the Continental Congress wished they were back in their respective home states for what was seen as the more important work of drafting new constitutions for 13 now-autonomous states. With independence declared, political momentum focused on the much more immediate concerns of state building and war-fighting. It is probable that, if all the Declaration of Independence had done was announce separation from Great Britain, it would amount to little more than a historical footnote today.

 

Instead, this document has become the political heart of the American nation. The Declaration of Independence still matters a quarter of a millennium after its signing because it did more than state what “these united states” were not—appendages of the British Empire; it declared what the new nation is, arguably the first creedal nation in world history. A political entity born of Enlightenment ideals and then-radical beliefs about humanity, the Declaration of Independence matters not only because it announced a change in the relationship between the American colonies and London, but because it forever altered how the world perceives the connection between human beings and their governing institutions. It was a document that created an American nation, but it was also a document written for the world, and the world could never be the same once its words were promulgated.

 

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In May 1776, Adams believed the colonies had already effectively broken with Great Britain. No one could deny an open war existed on American soil—blood had been spilled at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill more than a year earlier, and George Washington’s army had just driven a British force out of Boston. Meanwhile, all of the British royal governors had been ousted from their capitals to new lodgings in Royal Navy ships offshore, and British rule on the ground was nonexistent. In light of these momentous events, Adams pressed through a resolution calling on all the colonies to “adopt such Government as shall in the Opinion of the Representatives of the People best conduce to the happiness and Safety of their Constituents in particular and America in General.”

 

If all the Continental Congress had wanted to achieve was declaring a separation from Britain, Adams’ resolution came incredibly close. The preamble to Adams’ resolution bluntly excoriated the British government for attempting “the destruction of the good people of these colonies,” and “hostile invasions and cruel depredations,” and called for new, American governments whose responsibility would include quashing any lingering vestiges of royal authority. This was the language of severed ties and independent action. For Adams, as far as the matter of independence was concerned, the Declaration itself was a bit superfluous.

 

Some members of the Continental Congress, still harboring dreams of rapprochement with the mother country, felt Adams had swindled them, slipping his preamble condemning Britain and essentially announcing independence into a straightforward bill to sustain governance in chaotic times. But the mood of the Congress, and much of public opinion, had moved beyond the reconciliationists. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense had swept through American culture like wildfire at the beginning of the year, and with every drop of American blood spilled, the reality became more inescapable that the 13 American colonies had become a distinct entity.

 

On June 7, Virginia made it official. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia put forward a resolution “that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states.” A few delegates dithered or requested time to receive official instructions from their respective legislatures, and the vote on Lee’s resolution was pushed to the following month. But Congress as a whole felt confident enough in the outcome to go ahead and name committees for managing foreign alliances and establishing plans for “the form of a confederation” of the soon-to-be independent states. As for the committee that has earned iconic status in American history, it seemed far less consequential at the time. Congress designated a Committee of Five to write up a statement to go with the forthcoming declaration of independence.

 

 The group tasked with drafting a statement of independence formed on June 11. Adams was obviously included, as were Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. The bulk of the writing fell to Jefferson, a man who had clearly distinguished himself as a gifted writer through his “A Summary View of the Rights of British America,” and having the bulk of the writing come from a Virginian would be helpful for all-important sectional unity. At the time, the Declaration was seen by virtually everyone as decidedly secondary to the vote itself and the formation of a confederated government, and no one seemed to attach much urgency to the words their colleague from Virginia was crafting. Jefferson worked quickly, completing most of the draft in only a few weeks.

 

Jefferson identified his first task as presenting “the causes which impel them to the separation.” He acknowledged that taking such a momentous step for “light and transient causes” would be a serious mistake. The grievances driving Americans to cut ties with the empire they had been loyal members of for well over a century were far from light and transient, though. They amounted to “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism.” In a series of fiery blasts against King George III, Jefferson drew on highly emotive language more suitable to describing the collapse of a marriage than a political severing; in his original draft, Jefferson said of Americans, “we must endeavor to forget our former love.”

 

The Declaration’s charges against the king were intended as a call to arms, not a dispassionate discussion of the political scene. As such, we must own that a few of those charges were more than a little dubious. In his biography of King George III, Andrew Roberts chips away at some of Jefferson’s overwrought language and vague accusations, sharply dissecting the ogre-like image of the British monarch that had come down through history. But even if he was a reasonably enlightened monarch, he had reduced his American subjects to a second-class status and deprived them of the basic rights and liberties that all Englishmen expected—indeed were entitled to under the British constitution. He had made the population of the 13 American colonies his enemies in practice, and now they would be his enemies on the battlefield.

 

However, the Declaration was not written with the king as its intended audience, nor was it written for the British people, though Jefferson addressed them explicitly in some passages. The document was not even written with an American audience primarily in mind—had he intended it only for his countrymen, Jefferson could easily have stopped with a discussion of the reasons the king was no longer fit to govern. There was ample precedent on that point, and he did draw on Britain’s own 1689 Declaration of Rights that had ousted King James II. Moreover, several states had already issued formal statements on the need to sever ties with the British government.

 

None of these were sufficient for Jefferson’s purposes, though. “State and local resolutions on Independence said nothing about the flaws of the British constitution, or the future of mankind, or the birthday of a new world,” as Pauline Maier notes in her study of the American Declaration’s origins. Jefferson was writing for the world, because he intended to rally global public opinion to the American cause, a cause of liberty that he considered universal. Thus, he drew not only on English precedents, but on Enlightenment principles, particularly the ideas of natural rights and government by consent. He especially pulled from John Locke, though Locke’s “life, liberty, and property” was ennobled to life, liberty, and “the pursuit of happiness.” The result was a statement of political philosophy more than a mere collection of grievances.

 

After completing the draft, Jefferson shared it with Adams, Franklin, and the rest of the committee, who suggested revisions. It was at this stage that “sacred and undeniable” truths became “self-evident” truths in the preamble, but overall the other four drafters were happy with Jefferson’s work. The same could not be said for the Congress as a whole, which set to work editing Jefferson’s draft once it was received from the committee. Delegates debated certain passages, removing or altering sections they found controversial. Jefferson’s line criticizing the fact that “Scotch and other foreign auxiliaries” were heading to American shores offended a few delegates proud of their Scottish heritage. The comment had to go.

 

More controversial in the eyes of later generations was the deletion of a clause criticizing the slave trade. The clause was cut in part because it made the absurd claim that King George had dispatched slave ships to seize Africans and then impose them as a labor force on an unwilling American population, a wildly implausible fiction that helped salve the consciences of Americans fighting for liberty while holding their fellow men in bondage—Jefferson himself prominent among these. His denunciations of slavery were unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of Southern delegates, who would never have signed a document that included such stark condemnations of slavery.

 

Jefferson reacted to all these changes in roughly the same manner as every writer throughout history whose work has been subjected to an editor. Years later, he still stewed over the repeated “depredations” and “mutilations” to his essay. Sensing his misery at the time, Franklin tried to console him with an amusing anecdote about a hat-maker who tried to get a sign for his shop designed by committee. Whether the tale did Jefferson any good in the moment, he appreciated the attempt. Adams likewise expressed a preference for Jefferson’s earlier version, but historians have generally endorsed Congress’ work. The final version of the Declaration was leaner, more focused, and more reflective of a broad consensus of opinion that could get 13 disparate colonies on board with a united war effort against the world’s preeminent military power.

 

On July 2, 1776, Congress voted itself free of the British Empire. Two days later, it officially adopted the Declaration of Independence. In the immediate aftermath, the primary effect was to crystallize the goals of the fight, to abandon forever any notions of salvaging the relationship with Great Britain. If that was all it had done, the document would be largely forgotten today, of as minor significance as its crafters initially suspected. The Declaration’s transcendent ideas have come down through history in words that even the critical Roberts concedes stand as “superb prose which will justly live for as long as democracy and self-government still matter in the world.”

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, 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.” With these opening lines, the Declaration became an American Scripture, a statement of national creed that made the nation far more than a mere breakaway of the British Empire, but a beacon of Enlightenment ideals for all the world.

 

The Declaration of Independence has no legal standing in the United States. It cannot be cited in court nor used as binding criteria for legislation. As a statement of political philosophy, though, it is the cornerstone of the nation. To be an American is not to hold a certain ethnic identity or to trace a certain lineage; it is to venerate the transcendent truth that human beings—regardless of race, class, capability, or social standing—all stand equal before their Creator. Their capacity to live, to live free, and to live well comes from a power above all human governments and can never be denied by institutions made up of mere mortals. To be an American is to believe that government exists for the people—all of them—and not the other way around. Governments are established to protect inalienable rights, not to give and take rights based on the whims of the ruler or even some conception of what those in power paternalistically decide is best for those under their boot. To be an American, in short, is to believe, affirm, and cherish a set of truths that plant the responsibility for a virtuous society squarely on the shoulders of its citizens and plant responsibility for keeping those rights safe and sacred on the shoulders of the people’s government.

 

It was Abraham Lincoln who best encapsulated this truth. Speaking at Independence Hall as the country was on the brink of a horrific civil war, Lincoln reminded the nation what its founding document stood for. “It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men. This is a sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”

 

Two hundred years ago, John Adams struggled for breath. He wheezed out his last words, “Thomas Jefferson survives,” just before passing into eternity. Once again, he was wrong on the details but right on substance. Jefferson had died hours earlier, memorably asking, “Is it the 4th yet?” before lapsing into his final coma. But he does survive. Two centuries after his death, he lives on in immortal words that split history. Through civil war, domestic discord, economic roiling, and seasons of terrifying global turmoil, the idea that birthed this nation and the experiment in liberty it inaugurated endures. Today, perhaps more than at any time since the Civil War, America’s standing as an exceptional inspiration for liberty and human rights, a shining “city on a hill,” is suffering under dire strain. May we all—native and newcomer, Democrat and Republican, contented and zealous—take up the ideals that Jefferson penned and dedicate ourselves anew to seeing that they remain a beacon of what is best in humanity for another 250 years.