In his autobiography, Thomas Jefferson gives us his take on the Declaration of Independence story. You can find an excerpt here.
Everybody knows that the U.S. Declaration Independence was signed on July 4, 1776. But where did the declaration come from? And what were the signers actually signing?
One of the most interesting things we find in Jefferson’s narrative is that the Declaration of Independence was not the first document of this sort that Thomas Jefferson wrote. In July of 1774 he wrote a preliminary document known as “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” [source: Liberty Online]. It laid out a fundamental premise: that Britain should have no authority over the American colonies. This went way beyond the “no taxation without representation” idea, and it summarized the basic beliefs of many colonists. They wanted to be free of British rule. Jefferson’s document put those beliefs into print for the first time.
Fast-forward to 1776. Jefferson writes:
Why were people thinking this way? One reason is a man named John Locke, who wrote about the role of government. For example, Locke’s “Second Treatise of Civil Government contains many of the ideas that made their way into the Declaration of Independence [source: Oregon State University].
Congress created a committee on June 11, 1776, to write an official declaration of independence. On the committee were John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman. The committee asked Jefferson to write the Declaration and he worked on it to create a rough draft between June 12 and June 27. This document was read to Congress on June 28, and debates and revisions ensue over the next several days. The declaration was adopted by congress on July 4, 1776. Printed versions were sent out to the colonies on July 5. A newspaper version was printed for the first time in a Pennsylvania newspaper on July 6. It was read to the members of George Washington’s Army on July 8. And so on.
It was an amazing time, and an amazing document, that gave birth to the United States of America.
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