The Déclaration of independence is a political text by which the Thirteen Colonies British of North America made secession of the the United Kingdom, the July 4th 1776. This text is marked by the influence of the philosophy of the Lumières and also draws the conclusions from the Glorieuse Revolution of 1688: according to the noted abuses, the delegates of the colonists estimate that they have the right and the duty to revolt against the British monarchy (in fact, British Parliament which voted the heavy taxes and taxes striking the colonies). Since, the July 4th became the national Festival the United States: the day of Independence ( Independence Day in English).
History
The declaration of independence is a major stage in the history of the Anglo-American relations: after a series of crises between the metropolis and the colonies, mainly on the questions of tax on the products, the text proclaims the birth of a new nation and represents a revolutionary act.
The war makes rage since 1775. In January 1776, Thomas Paine takes party for the American insurgents in its common Sens (1776) which gains a sharp success (approximately 500.000 sold specimens). Its book is a plea for the rupture with the Great Britain and would have inspired George Washington. Indeed, in this little book, it estimates ridiculous which a country so small that Great Britain controls and imposes laws on immense and remote America.
The June 12th 1776, the Virginia obtains a Declaration of the Droit S ( Virginia Declaration off Rights ). The Second Congress continental, composed of delegated Thirteen colonies joined together to Philadelphia, decides to write the Declaration of independence. The project is entrusted at a committee of five representatives ( Committee off Five : John Adams, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston and Thomas Jefferson). But it is finally Thomas Jefferson who works out an outline. It becomes in fact the principal author of the text. It finishes its work on June 21st 1776 and submits it to the committee which makes some modifications. The declaration is still amended during the debates of the Congress: the passages on the draft and slavery are removed, in order not to dissatisfy the areas of the South. The final document, writing on Parchment, is approved and signed on July 4th by 56 deputy joined together with the Independence Hall. The Declaration is then sent to printing works to be largely diffused.
The French text
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America assembled in Congress on July 4th, 1776: “ When in the course of the human events, it becomes necessary for people to dissolve the political bonds which attached it to another and to take, among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal place to which and the God natural laws of nature give him right, the respect due to the opinion of humanity obliges to declare the causes which determine it with separation.We hold for obvious for themselves the following truths: all the men are created equal; they are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these rights are the life, the freedom and the research of happiness. The governments are established among the men to guarantee these rights, and their right capacity emanates from the assent of controlled. All the times that the shape of government becomes destructive of this goal, the people have the right to change it or abolish it and establish a new government, by basing it on the principles and by organizing it in the form which will appear to him cleanest to give him safety and happiness. Prudence teaches, with the truth, that the governments established for a long time should not be changed for light and momentary causes, and the experiment of all times showed, indeed, that the men are been willing to tolerate bearable evils than to have justice with themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long continuation of abuse and usurpations, tending invariably to the same goal, mark the intention subjecting them to the absolute despotism, it is of their right, it is to have to them to reject such a government and to provide, by new safeguards, with their future safety. Such was the patience of these Colonies, and such is today the need which forces them to change their old systems of government. The history of the current king of Great Britain is the history of a series of injustices and repeated usurpations, the purpose of which all were direct the establishment of an absolute tyranny on these States. To prove it, let us subject the facts to the impartial world: It refused its sanction with the most salutary laws and most necessary to the public property. It defended with its governors to grant laws of importance immediate and urgent, unless their implementation was not suspended until obtaining its sanction, and of the laws thus suspended, it absolutely neglected to give attention to it.
It refused to sanction other laws for the organization of large districts, unless the people of these districts did not give up the right to be represented in the legislature, priceless right for people, which are frightening only to the tyrants.
It convened legislative Assemblies in uncommon places, inconvenient and moved away from the deposits of their public registers, in the only sight to obtain they, by tiredness, their adhesion with his measurements. With various recoveries, it dissolved Rooms of representatives because they were opposed with a male firmness to his encroachments on the rights of the people. After these dissolutions, he refused for a long time to make elect other Chambres of representatives, and the legislative power, which is not likely of destruction, is thus turned over to the entire people to be exerted by him, the remaining State, in the interval, exposed to all the dangers of invasions of the outside and convulsions with-inside. It sought to put obstacle at the increase in the population of these States. To this end, it put prevention at the execution of the laws for the naturalization from abroad; he refused to return others of them to encourage their emigration in these regions, and he raised the conditions for new acquisitions of grounds. He blocked the administration of justice by refusing his sanction with laws for the establishment of judicial powers. It made the judges dependant on his only will, for the duration of their offices and the rate and the payment of their salaries.
It created a multitude of employment and envoy in this country of the swarms of new employees to upset our people and to devour his substance. He maintained among us, in times of peace, of the standing armies without the assent of our legislatures. He has affected to make the capacity military independent of the civil authority and even higher than it. He united himself with others to subject to us to a jurisdiction foreign with our Constitutions and not recognized by our laws, by giving his sanction to acts of alleged legislation having for object: to put in district among us large body of armed troops; to protect them by an illusory procedure against the punishment from the murders which they would have made on the person of the inhabitants of these province; to destroy our trade with all the parts of the world; to impose taxes without our assent to us; to deprive to us in several cases of the benefit of the procedure by sworn; to transport us beyond the seas to be judged at a rate of alleged offenses; to abolish in a province close the liberal system to the English laws, to establish an arbitrary government and to move back its limits there, in order to make at the same time this province an example and an instrument suitable to introduce the same absolute government into these Colonies; to withdraw our charters, to abolish our most invaluable laws and to deteriorate in their gasoline the shapes of our governments; to suspend our own legislatures and to declare itself invested of the capacity to make obligatory laws for us in all the unspecified cases.
It abdicated the government of our country, by declaring us out of his protection and by making us the war. It plundered our seas, devastated our coasts, burned our cities and massacred our fellow-citizens. In this moment even, it transports large armies of foreign mercenaries to achieve the work of death, desolation and tyranny which was started with circumstances of cruelty and of perfidy whose one would have sorrow to find examples in the cruelest centuries, and who are completely unworthy of the chief of a civilized nation. He has excited among us the domestic insurrection, and he sought to attract on the inhabitants of our borders the Indians, these savages without pity, of which the well-known manner to make the war is all to massacre, without reference of age, sex nor of condition. In all the course of these oppressions, we asked for justice in the humblest terms; our repeated petitions received for answer only repeated injustices. A prince whose character is thus marked by the actions which can announce a tyrant is unsuitable controlling free people.
We either did not miss regards towards our brothers of Great Britain. We from time to time informed them attempts made by their legislature to extend on us an unjust jurisdiction. We pointed out to them the circumstances of our emigration and our establishment in these regions. We called upon their justice and their natural magnanimity, and entreated we them, in the name of the bonds of a common origin, to repudiate these usurpations which were to inevitably stop our connection and our positive ratios. They also were deaf with the consanguinity and voice of reason. We must thus return to us to the need which orders our separation and look at them, just as the remainder of humanity, like enemies in the war and of the friends in peace. Consequently, us, the representatives of the United States of America, assembled in general, fascinating Congress with witness the supreme Judge of the universe of the uprightness of our intentions, let us publish and declare solemnly with the name and by the authority of the good people of these Colonies, that these plain Colonies are and have the right to be free and independent States; that they are released from any obedience towards the Crown of Great Britain; that any political bond between them and the State of Great Britain east and must be entirely dissolved; that, like the free and independent States, they have full authority to make the war, to conclude peace, to contract alliances, to regulate the trade and to make all other acts or things which the independent States have right to make; and full with a firm confidence in protection with Divine Providence, we engage mutually with the support of this Declaration, our lives, our fortunes and our good more crowned, the honor. ”
(Translation of Thomas Jefferson)
Analyzes
The author
See also: Thomas Jefferson
It took three weeks for Thomas Jefferson to write the first text. Even if at the time, one wanted to make think that the Declaration was a collective work, research of the historians and lawyers showed that Jefferson was well the principal writer. Jefferson was a Virginia N 33 years old in 1776. It was formed with the lawyer trade, like good of other actors of the American Revolution. Man of the Lights, it had much read and remained influenced by the thought of the philosophers John Locke and Henry Home. Jefferson was also a grower who had slaves.
The plan
The declaration of American independence can be cut out in three parts:- a Preamble which enumerates the basic rights
- the list of objections: British attacks with these rights
- the conclusion which is essential: rupture with England and the creation of a new country
Influences
The Act of $the Hague, written by the General states of the Netherlands on July 26th 1581, proclaiming de facto the independence of the United Provinces, was one of the sources of inspiration of the Declaration. Thomas Jefferson also rested on the Second Treaty on the Government of John Locke; but it replaced the property right by that of the research of happiness. The text takes again also the republican English tradition, which had been expressed during the Revolutions of the 17th century.Thomas Jefferson was also influenced by the League of Iroquois, peaceful confederation organized around a constitution, the “Great law of the Unit” or Gayanashagowa: in 1787, Jefferson declared in connection with Iroquois: " I am convinced that the Indian companies which live without government enjoy overall a degree of happiness quite higher than those which live under the modes européens."
Principal ideas
- natural rights
- tyranny: it comes from the rupture of the contract between the king of England and the American colonists
- the text has also its limits, comprehensible in the context of the XVIIIe century: if the equality is proclaimed, it is not applied in the facts, because slavery is not abolished.
Range
In the American history
The Declaration of Independence had a great repercussion in North America. The text was used as propaganda to the American patriots during the war of independence. It belongs to the texts founders of the American nation, at the sides of the Constitution and the Bill off Rights . July 4th marks “the true birth certificate of the United States”. The declaration of independence was used as model with the Déclaration of the Feelings ( Declaration off Feelings ) in 1848, signed by the delegates of the first convention on the women's rights, in Seneca Falls, New York. During the American Civil War, in its speech of the Gettysburg Address (1863), the US president Abraham Lincoln emphasized the importance of the Declaration in the history of the country: " Furnace unintermitting score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth one this, has new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposal that all men are created equal. " The text was also taken again by Martin Luther King, in her famous speech I cuts has dream . The original text is preserved at the Public records of the United States, with Washington DC.
In the world
The Declaration of American independence founded also the first decolonized nation of the World, although independence was officially recognized only in 1783 with the Traité of Paris. It influenced the writers of the Déclaration of the human rights and the citizen of 1789. At the 20th century, it was used as reference to the independence leaders like Ho Chi Minh during the Décolonisation.
In the popular culture
The musical comedy of 1969 entitled 1776 , evokes the debates around slavery at the time of the Declaration of American independence. In the film Benjamin Gates and the Treasury of Templiers of Jon Turtletaub (2004), the hero incarnated by Nicolas Cage steals the Declaration of independence.
Signatories
NEW HAMPSHIRE :Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
MASSACHUSETTS :
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
RHODE ISLAND :
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
CONNECTICUT :
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
NEW YORK :
William Floyd, Philipp Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
NEW JERSEY :
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
PENNSYLVANIA :
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
DELAWARE :
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
MARYLAND :
Samuel Drives out, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll de Carollton
VIRGINIA :
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson Jr, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Braxton Casing, James Murray
NORTH CAROLINA :
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John PEN
SOUTH CAROLINA :
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward Jr, Thomas Lynch Jr, Arthur Middleton
GEORGIA :
Short prop Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
See too
Source
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