was a formal declaration of independence. On July 1, 1776, Richard Henry Lee, one of Virginia’s delegates to the Continental Congress, presented a draft proposal for a document asserting that “these United Colonies are, and of a right ought to be, free and independent States.” Congress passed the draft document but sent it to a committee for discussion, debate, and amendment. Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, who had a fine reputation as a writer, was selected to revise the committee’s draft. He ended up wholly rewriting it.
The Declaration of Independence, like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, cast the American struggle for independence in a noble light as a profound gesture “in the course of human events,” Inspired by the great English political philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), Jefferson listed the “inalienable rights” of humankind. These included life and liberty, but where Locke had listed property as the third right, Jefferson specified “the pursuit of happiness.” The purpose of government, Jefferson declared, was “to secure these rights,” and the authority of government to do so derived “from the consent of the governed.” When a government ceased to serve its just purpose, it was the right and duty of “the governed” to withdraw their allegiance. And that is precisely what the colonies had done. Jefferson’s document was adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776.
The Least You Need to Know
Unfair taxation, limits on westward settlement, and the involuntary quartering of British soldiers united the colonies in rebellion.
Thomas Paine (Common Sense) and Thomas Jefferson (The Declaration of Independence helped elevate a colonial revolution to the status of a momentous world event.
American troops were citizen soldiers, fighting at home and committed to their cause. The British soldiers were a professional army doing a grim job in a distant land.
Real Life
Samuel Adams (1722-1803) inherited a one-third interest in his father’s prosperous brewery but lost most of his fortune through mismanagement. If he was not very adept at handling money, Adams was highly skilled at politics; after attending Harvard, he attracted a wide following among members of Boston’s many political clubs. Adams was instrumental in creating the most influential and radical of the clubs, the Sons of Liberty. In 1765, Adams organized the protest against the Stamp Act.
Elected to the lower house of the Massachusetts legislature, Adams served from 1765 to 1774 and composed the great protest documents of the era, including the Circular Letter (1768) against the Townshend Acts. He fanned the flames of resistance and rebellion in the popular press, and after 1770, was chief architect of intercolonial “committees of correspondence,” which coordinated the developing revolution. Adams was a prime mover behind the Boston Tea Party of 1773.
A principal member of the First Continental Congress, Samuel Adams participated in drafting the 1781 Articles of Confederation, preecursor of the Constitution.
Main Event
First to die in the cause of American liberty was the leader of the Boston mob, Crispus Attucks (born about 1723). He was almost certainly a black man, perhaps of partly Indian descent.
Stats
The protesters dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. The cargo was valued at Ј9,000—a tremendous amount of money in a day when a man earning E100 a year was considered moderately wealthy.
Voice from the Past
Stats
Of the 2,500 British troops engaged at Bunker Hill, 1,000 perished, a devastating casualty rate of 42 percent—the heaviest loss the British would suffer during the long war.
Voice from the Past
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.”
The Fires of Liberty
(1776-1783)
