HEROES OF INDEPENDENCE

• GEORGE WASHINGTON

• JOHN ADAMS

• THOMAS PAINE

• BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

• THOMAS JEFFERSON

• BENEDICT ARNOLD

• Towards Freedom– 1st Continental Congress--plan resistance

– 2nd Continental Congress--already at war

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

• PREAMBLE – When in the Course of human events, it becomes

necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare

the causes which impel them to the separation.

• DECLARATION OF RIGHTS – 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.

– Whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government.

– Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;

– But when a long train of abuses ….evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new Guards to their future security.

• GRIEVANCES – Such has been the patience sufferance of these Colonies.

– The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

• GRIEVANCES– The “Dirty Deeds”

• Refused his Assent to laws• Dissolved legislatures• Prevented expansion• Standing armies• Cut off trade• Taxes w/o consent• No trial by jury• Abolished charters• Promoted domestic insurrection• + 17 OTHERS

• FAILED APPEALS – In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for

Redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

• DECLARE INDEPENDENCE– We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of

America, ….appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare. 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 for support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

WHAT GOT LEFT OUT AND WHY?

• Criticism of Parliament and British people• Slavery

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, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither

SIGNIFICANCE

• Announce formal separation from Britain• Convince the colonists• Convince other nations• State basic principles/common values• Transition point and attack on old ideas

WHY WAS INDEPENDENCE A MIRACLE?

• PROBLEMS– British military power– Washington’s “army”– Lack of colonial support

WHY WAS INDEPENDENCE A MIRACLE?

• MIRACLES– New York

– Trenton

– Saratoga

– Washington’s survival

– Washington’s surrender

MILITARY AND DIPLOMATIC VICTORY

• Yorktown, VA (1781)

• Treaty of Paris (1783)