DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Declaration of Independence



Declaration of Independence

Introduction

The statement of Declaration of independence was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. It was announced in that statement that 13 American colonies would participate in war with Great Britain and would not be considered as a part of British Empire. A resolution was then putting forth by John Thomas due to which the formal declaration was made inevitable. Thomas Jefferson played an important role in formulating the original draft for the Declaration. When the declaration was adopted in 1776, the 13 colonies and Britain had been in war for more than one year. Since the end of end of 1763, the relationship of the mother country had been deteriorating. The effects of war were such that they led to the British Government to debt. This declaration led to the freedom declaration of America and changed the views followed at that time.

Values of the Declaration

The values as highlighted in the declaration of independence mainly focus on the human beings equality. Every person has rights which no other person can remove. The duty of the government holds in providing these rights to the people. The people have a right to elect for a new government if the government applies unjust policies and they are against the citizens. The people have political and civil freedom, and they can exercise it until they are not harming others. In the context of authorized theory, English-speaking Atlantic, the document parted with the long tradition of the English common law and argued instead that the universal possession of inalienable rights customary law was the central pillar of legitimate government. Written mainly by Jefferson, the Declaration was at once brief and complex, reflecting the influence of both the public law and natural rights traditions. It also resonates with the English constitutional tradition and documents such as Magna Carta, the Nineteen Propositions, and the Bill of Rights, as well as the theories of the political philosophers John Locke (1632-1704) and Thomas Paine (1737- 1809) (Looby, 1996, p. 295). The Declaration of Independence listed the crimes of George III (1760- 1820), and forwarded the case that these crimes violated the natural rights of those living in the colonies and, therefore, freed them from all obligation to the Crown.

Foundation of Declaration of Independence

The foundational document of the Western Hemisphere's first republic, the first genuinely republican government of the modern era, the U.S. Declaration of Independence emerged amid an escalating war as one culmination of a long process of struggle between the American colonists and Great Britain and from a protracted process of compromise and negotiation between factions of the propertied white males who drafted and ratified it.

The document itself contained little that was original. Most of the sentiments it expressed and theories of republican government it propounded had deep roots in the French and English Enlightenment, British-American history, and English common law.

It nonetheless captured the spirit of an era, articulating in a single statement of uncommon eloquence the reasons behind the ...