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Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776
Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776, by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin were named to a committee to prepare a declaration of independence. Jefferson (standing) did the actual writing because he was known as a good writer. Congress deleted Jefferson's most extravagant rhetoric and accusations.
The Declaration of Independence -- mostly the work of Thomas Jefferson -- reflected the duality of the American Revolution as an anti-colonial struggle for independence and a revolution in thinking about the nature of government.
As a propaganda document, it indicted the king for the separation rather than Parliament because it was easier to hate an individual than an institution. It is remembered, however, for making "the pursuit of happiness" by ordinary people the chief object of government; for vesting sovereignty in the people rather than in kings; and for its assertion that all men were created equal, which reversed thousands of years of class presumptions. Although it meant white men, even that was revolutionary in 1775, and the new nation's founding on principles of liberty and equality ultimately doomed conditions that oppressed women and blacks. |