The Declaration of Independence

The **Declaration of Independence**, headed **The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America**, is the founding document of the United States. It was adopted on July 4, 1776 by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, later renamed Independence Hall. The declaration explains to the world why the Thirteen Colonies regarded themselves as independent sovereign states no longer subject to British colonial rule. The Declaration of Independence was signed by 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress, who came to be known as the nation's Founding Fathers. The 56 included delegates from New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The declaration became one of the most circulated and widely reprinted documents in early American history.

The Committee of Five drafted the declaration to be ready when Congress voted on independence. John Adams, a leading proponent of independence, persuaded the Committee of Five to charge Thomas Jefferson with writing the document's original draft, which the Second Continental Congress then edited. The declaration was a formal explanation of why the Continental Congress voted to declare American independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, a year after the American Revolutionary War began in April 1775. The Lee Resolution for independence was passed unanimously by the Congress on July 2, 1776.

After ratifying the text on July 4, Congress issued the Declaration of Independence in several forms. It was initially published as the printed Dunlap broadside that was widely distributed and read to the public. Jefferson's original draft is currently preserved at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., complete with changes made by Adams and Benjamin Franklin, and Jefferson's notes of changes made by Congress. The best-known version of the Declaration is the signed copy now displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., which is popularly regarded as the official document. This copy, engrossed by Timothy Matlack, was ordered by Congress on July 19 and signed primarily on August 2, 1776.

The declaration justified the independence of the United States by listing 27 colonial grievances against King George III and by asserting certain natural and legal rights, including a right of revolution. Its original purpose was to announce independence, and references to the text of the declaration were few in the following years. Abraham Lincoln made it the centerpiece of his policies and his rhetoric, as in the Gettysburg Address of 1863. Since then, it has become a well-known statement on human rights, particularly its second sentence: "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."

The declaration was made to guarantee equal rights for every person. Stephen Lucas called it "one of the best-known sentences in the English language", with historian Joseph Ellis writing that the document contains "the most potent and consequential words in American history". The passage came to represent a moral standard to which the United States should strive. This view was notably promoted by Lincoln, who considered the Declaration to be the foundation of his political philosophy and argued that it is a statement of principles through which the United States Constitution should be interpreted.

The Declaration of Independence inspired many similar documents in other countries, the first being the 1789 *Declaration of United Belgian States* issued during the Brabant Revolution in the Austrian Netherlands. It also served as the primary model for numerous declarations of independence in Europe, Latin America, Africa (Liberia), and Oceania (New Zealand) during the first half of the 19th century.