Eighth Grade Social Studies: Drafting and Ideology of the Declaration of Independence
In the summer of 1776, as British warships massed in New York Harbor to crush the colonial rebellion, fifty-six delegates to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia took a radical, irreversible step that permanently severed their ties to King George III and the British Empire. Adopted on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence transformed a provincial military rebellion over taxes and charters into a world-historical crusade for human liberty and popular sovereignty. Drafted by thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson, the document synthesized European Enlightenment political philosophy with American colonial experience, articulating the revolutionary proposition that all human beings are created equal and endowed with unalienable natural rights. Understanding the ideological architecture, grievances, and global legacy of the Declaration of Independence illuminates the foundational creed of the American republic.
The Second Continental Congress and the Hesitant Road to Independence
When the Second Continental Congress convened at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, blood had already been spilled at Lexington and Concord, and a colonial army was besieging British troops in Boston.
The Dual Strategy of Congress (Summer 1775)
Second Continental Congress (May 1775)
|
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| |
[ Military Preparation ] [ Diplomatic Reconciliation ]
Created the Continental Army (June 1775); Adopted the Olive Branch Petition;
Appointed George Washington General & Pledged personal loyalty to King George III;
Commander-in-Chief of all forces. Begged him to halt ministerial aggression.
The Olive Branch Petition vs. The Prohibitory Act
Despite the outbreak of war, a majority of delegates—led by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania—remained deeply reluctant to break with Great Britain. They viewed themselves as loyal British subjects fighting solely to defend their constitutional rights against an overreaching Parliament.
In July 1775, Congress pursued a dual-track strategy. On one hand, it adopted the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, established the Continental Army, and appointed George Washington of Virginia as its supreme commander. On the other hand, Congress approved the Olive Branch Petition, written by Dickinson. The petition professed unwavering personal loyalty to King George III, blamed Parliament for the bloodshed, and begged the monarch to intervene personally to broker a peaceful reconciliation.
King George III refused even to look at the Olive Branch Petition. Instead, on August 23, 1775, he issued the Proclamation of Rebellion, officially declaring the American colonies to be in open, armed rebellion against the Crown. In December 1775, Parliament passed the American Prohibitory Act, which placed all American colonies under a total naval blockade, declared all American ships and cargoes subject to seizure as enemy property, and authorized the hiring of nearly thirty thousand German mercenary soldiers, known to Americans as Hessians. By declaring economic and military war on the colonies, King George III dissolved the bonds of allegiance before Congress ever declared independence.
The Catalyst: Thomas Paine's Common Sense (January 1776)
While political elites debated constitutional theory, the broad American public was swept by a literary phenomenon that shattered traditional reverence for the British monarchy: Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Paine, an impoverished English corset-maker, teacher, and political radical who had emigrated to Philadelphia in late 1774 with letters of introduction from Benjamin Franklin, published the forty-seven-page pamphlet anonymously in January 1776.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Core Arguments of Thomas Paine's *Common Sense* |
+-------------------+---------------------------------------------+
| Attack on | Hereditary monarchy is absurd, tyrannical, |
| Monarchy | and contrary to Scripture; King George is |
| | a "Royal Brute" soaking the world in blood. |
+-------------------+---------------------------------------------+
| Economic | America will thrive far better in free trade|
| Independence | with all of Europe without British control. |
+-------------------+---------------------------------------------+
| Geographic | It is preposterous that a tiny island rule |
| Absurdity | an entire continent 3,000 miles away. |
+-------------------+---------------------------------------------+
| Moral Mission | America must serve as an asylum for human |
| | freedom: "We have it in our power to begin |
| | the world over again." |
+-------------------+---------------------------------------------+
Paine wrote not in the dense Latinate prose of classical scholars, but in plain, direct, and fiery language accessible to common farmers, artisans, and sailors. He dismantled the myth of the benevolent king, branding King George III the "Royal Brute of Great Britain." Paine argued that hereditary monarchy was inherently ridiculous, asking why an empire should allow an idiot or child to rule an entire people simply because of birth.
Paine emphasized the geographical absurdity of the relationship: "There is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island." He insisted that America's true economic destiny was free global trade with all nations, which was currently shackled by British mercantilism.
Common Sense sold an astonishing 150,000 to 500,000 copies in a colonial population of two and a half million, making it the most widely read publication per capita in American history. It was read aloud in taverns, town greens, and military camps, turning a hesitant population into fervent advocates for complete national independence.
The Committee of Five and the Drafting Process
On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia rose in the Continental Congress and introduced a historic resolution on behalf of his colony: "Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."
The Committee of Five (June 1776)
[ Thomas Jefferson ] [ John Adams ] [ Benjamin Franklin ] [ Roger Sherman ] [ Robert Livingston ]
(Virginia) (Massachusetts) (Pennsylvania) (Connecticut) (New York)
|
+---> Thomas Jefferson Selected to Draft the Text
(Eloquent Pen, Virginian Statesman, Southern Representation)
Debate on Lee's resolution was postponed for three weeks to allow reluctant middle colonies (Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland) to consult their legislatures. In the interim, Congress appointed a five-man committee—the Committee of Five—to draft a formal declaration justifying the separation to the world: Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and Robert R. Livingston of New York.
Adams persuaded Jefferson to write the initial draft. When Jefferson asked Adams why he should not write it himself, Adams gave three reasons: "First, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Third, you can write ten times better than I can."
Working in his rented second-floor apartment at Seventh and Market Streets in Philadelphia, thirty-three-year-old Jefferson drafted the document over seventeen days without consulting reference books, drawing fluidly upon the deep currents of Enlightenment philosophy and Virginia constitutional law.
The Ideological Architecture of the Declaration
The Declaration of Independence is organized into five distinct structural sections, moving logically from universal moral axioms to legal indictment and formal sovereign decree.
Structural Sections of the Declaration
1. The Preamble: "When in the Course of human events..."
|
v
2. The Statement of Human Rights: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..."
|
v
3. The Grievances Against King George III: "He has refused his Assent to Laws..."
|
v
4. The Denunciation of the British People: "Nor have We been wanting in attentions..."
|
v
5. The Formal Resolution of Independence: "...Free and Independent States..."
The Preamble and the Law of Nations
The Preamble states the diplomatic necessity of the document: "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another... a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." Jefferson recognized that under eighteenth-century international law, the American colonies could not secure desperately needed military alliances and loans from France and Spain as long as they remained mere British rebels. The Declaration was a legal instrument designed to establish sovereign standing before the community of nations.
The Statement of Universal Human Rights
The philosophical core of the Declaration resides in its second paragraph, which presents what historians call the American Creed:
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| The American Creed |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are |
| created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with |
| certain unalienable Rights, that 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..." |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
Drawing directly upon John Locke's Two Treatises of Government, Jefferson adapted Locke's triad of "life, liberty, and property," substituting "the pursuit of Happiness." Jefferson asserted that these rights are unalienable—inherent to human nature and incapable of being surrendered, bargained away, or confiscated by any government.
Jefferson established the foundational democratic principle of popular sovereignty: governments do not exist by divine right or ancestral power, but are human constructs created through a social contract solely to protect natural rights, deriving their just authority strictly from the consent of the governed. Whenever any government destroys these ends, the people possess the unalienable right to alter or abolish it.
The Indictment: Grievances Against King George III
The longest portion of the Declaration is an exhaustive legal indictment containing twenty-seven specific grievances directed squarely at King George III. By targeting the King rather than Parliament, Jefferson emphasized that the colonies owed no allegiance to an English legislature they had never elected, and demonstrated that the monarch had personally broken the social contract.
The grievances fall into three broad categories:
First, executive abuses of law and representative government: The King had refused to approve essential colonial legislation, repeatedly dissolved colonial assemblies when they protested royal tyranny, and suspended colonial self-government.
Second, military oppression and intimidation: The King had kept standing armies in the colonies in peacetime without the consent of their legislatures, quartered armed troops in private homes, protected soldiers from murder trials, and made the military superior to civil law.
Third, economic and judicial tyranny: The King had combined with Parliament "for cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world" (the naval blockades), "imposing Taxes on us without our Consent" (the Stamp Act and Townshend duties), and "depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury" (the Vice-Admiralty courts).
Congressional Edits and the Slavery Clause Debate
On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted twelve colonies to zero (with New York abstaining) to adopt Richard Henry Lee's resolution of independence. For the next two days, Congress subjected Jefferson's draft to intense line-by-line editorial scrutiny, cutting roughly twenty-five percent of the text.
The Deleted Antislavery Clause
In his original draft, Jefferson included a scathing 168-word condemnation
of King George III for perpetuating the African slave trade:
"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred
rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended
him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere..."
|
v
DELETED by Congress at the insistence of South Carolina and Georgia,
supported by Northern merchants who profited from slave shipping.
The most contentious deletion was Jefferson's impassioned clause attacking the African slave trade. Jefferson had accused King George III of waging "cruel war against human nature itself" by capturing and enslaving innocent Africans, and then inciting them to armed rebellion against their American masters (referencing Lord Dunmore's 1775 proclamation offering freedom to enslaved people who fought for the Crown).
Delegates from South Carolina and Georgia, whose plantation economies depended entirely on importing enslaved labor, refused to sign the Declaration unless the clause was expunged. Furthermore, Northern merchants from Rhode Island and Massachusetts who profited from financing slave ships were uneasy with the passage. To preserve essential continental unity in the face of imminent British invasion, Congress struck the entire clause.
This compromise left a profound, tragic contradiction at the heart of the American founding: a nation declaring that "all men are created equal" while preserving the enslavement of one-fifth of its human population.
Signing and Global Significance
On July 4, 1776, Congress formally approved the final text of the Declaration of Independence, ordering it printed on broadsides by John Dunlap and distributed across the colonies. Most delegates signed the official engrossed parchment copy on August 2, 1776, headed by John Hancock, President of Congress, who signed in bold, flourishing script so that "King George can read it without his spectacles."
The Declaration fundamentally transformed the conflict. It united the colonies into the United States of America, provided the legal justification for entering a formal military alliance with France in 1778, and established a revolutionary moral standard that future generations of Americans—including abolitionists, women's suffragists, and civil rights leaders—would continually invoke to expand the boundaries of freedom and human equality.
Chapter Exercises
Exercise 1: Analyze the strategic and political objectives of Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense. Explain how Paine's arguments and writing style helped convince the broad American public to abandon hope of reconciliation with Great Britain.
Exercise 2: Deconstruct the philosophical arguments in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. How did Thomas Jefferson adapt John Locke's Social Contract Theory, and what does the document establish regarding the source of legitimate governmental power?
Exercise 3: Explain the controversy surrounding the antislavery clause in Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence. Why did Congress strike this section, and what historical contradiction did this deletion establish in the new American republic?
Solutions and Explanations
Solution 1: Thomas Paine's Common Sense, published in January 1776, was designed to persuade the American public to abandon their traditional reverence for the British monarchy and embrace immediate, complete national independence. Written in clear, accessible, and passionate language rather than classical academic jargon, Paine dismantled the foundational assumptions of hereditary aristocracy. He branded King George III the "Royal Brute of Great Britain," demonstrating that hereditary monarchy was absurd, corrupt, and contrary to biblical scripture. Paine emphasized the geographic absurdity of a small island ruling a vast continent three thousand miles away and demonstrated that America's agricultural economy would flourish far better in open global trade without British mercantilist restrictions. By framing the conflict as a historic moral mission to create an asylum for human liberty, Common Sense reached hundreds of thousands of common citizens, turning colonial hesitation into revolutionary fervor.
Solution 2: The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence articulates the core philosophy of popular sovereignty and natural rights derived directly from John Locke. Jefferson asserts as a self-evident truth that all human beings are created equal and endowed by nature with unalienable rights—rights intrinsic to human existence that cannot be surrendered or confiscated—identifying them as "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Jefferson establishes that the sole, legitimate purpose of civil government is to act as a fiduciary agent that secures these natural rights. Critically, Jefferson declares that governments derive their just powers exclusively from the "consent of the governed." When any form of government becomes destructive of these fundamental human rights, it has breached the social contract, and the people hold the unalienable constitutional and moral right to alter, resist, or abolish it and institute a new government to ensure their safety and happiness.
Solution 3: In his original draft, Thomas Jefferson included a passionate 168-word condemnation of King George III, accusing the monarch of waging "cruel war against human nature itself" by maintaining the transatlantic slave trade and violating the sacred life and liberty of Africans. This clause sparked intense debate in Congress and was ultimately deleted at the insistence of delegates from South Carolina and Georgia, who refused to approve independence if it threatened their plantation labor supply, supported by Northern merchants whose shipping firms profited from the slave trade. Congress struck the clause to maintain fragile continental unity on the eve of British invasion. This calculated political compromise embedded an enduring contradiction into the foundation of the United States: the creation of a constitutional republic dedicated to universal equality and natural rights, while simultaneously codifying and protecting the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of African Americans.