Summary
Up until this declaration, colonists have used non-violent means, such as petitions, to protest the abuses of King George III. Each attempt to request peaceful negotiations was met by neglect and more abuse.
Additionally, colonists tried to appeal to Parliament and other British citizens for help. These attempts were ignored. Colonists appealed to British citizens' sense of justice, to their shared heritage and culture, and to their economic connection. These attempts failed, however, and the colonies have no other choice but to declare separation. In doing so, the new separate nation will view British citizens as enemies during wartime, and as friends in peacetime.
Commentary
Between 1763 and 1776, American colonists made many attempts to organize in protest against the acts of Parliament. The Declaration of Independence represents the last in a long chain of declarations that began with the declaration of the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, which stated colonists were entitled to the same rights as Englishmen. This document also affirmed that taxing the colonists without their consent was a violation of their rights as British Citizens and that Parliament had no right to tax colonists. In 1774, after the passage of the Intolerable Acts, these themes would surface again in a document written by the First Continental Congress called the Declaration of Rights and Grievances. This document clarified the Stampt Act Congress declaration by stating only colonial legislatures had the right to tax the colonists. Additionally, this document declared the Intolerable Acts unconstitutional and criticized the King and Parliament for dissolving colonial assemblies, maintaining a standing army in peacetime, and for enforcing heavy taxation. Meeting again as the Second Continental Congress in May of 1775, the delegates understood that things had only worsened between the colonists and the British government. Although fighting had already broken out between minutemen and British troops, many delegates still pressed for a peaceful reconciliation. This congress issued a Declaration of Causes of Taking-up Arms and sent an Olive-Branch Petition to the King to humbly request that he negotiate a peaceful reconciliation. Once again, the King ignored the requests of the colonists and responded instead by sending an additional 20,000 troops to the colonies.
Throughout the struggle to assert their rights, colonial leaders understood the importance of maintaining unity between the 13 colonies. Samuel Adams knew that the people would have to be persuaded to view an attack on one colony as an attack on all colonies. To help maintain a unified protest, Samuel Adams organized Committees of Correspondence in 1772 to ensure that colonies could stay informed about new developments regarding the British King and Parliament. This information network proved crucial when the First Continental Congress agreed to boycott trade with Great Britain and to refuse to use British goods until a resolution was reached. During the Second Continental Congress, patriot leaders carefully waited to declare independence until all delegations unanimously supported it. Although the colonies were technically at war with Great Britain for most of the time the congress met, it took them 14 months to write the formal declaration of war. After the rejection of the Olive Branch Petition, the publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and the hiring of German mercenaries, all of which took place in early 1776, the themes stated in earlier declarations were finally put to use to justify separation rather than reconciliation.
The Declaration of Independence relied on the content and claims of earlier declarations, but firmly stated that ten years of peaceful political and economic actions had failed to reach the desired effect. Therefore, as concluded in this section, the King and Parliament left the colonists no other choice but to seek separation through military means.
Benjamin Franklin and John Adams meeting with Thomas Jefferson, standing, to study a draft of the Declaration of Independence.
When the first skirmishes of the Revolutionary War broke out in Massachusetts in April 1775, few people in the American colonies wanted to separate from Great Britain entirely. But as the war continued, and Britain called out massive armed forces to enforce its will, more and more colonists came to accept that asserting independence was the only way forward.
And the Declaration of Independence would play a critical role in unifying the colonies for the bloody struggle they now faced.
The Road to Revolution Was Paved with Taxes
Over the decade following passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, a series of unpopular British laws met with stiff opposition in the colonies, fueling a bitter struggle over whether Parliament had the right to tax the colonists without the consent of the representative colonial governments. This struggle erupted into violence in 1770 when British troops killed five colonists in the Boston Massacre.
Three years later, outrage over the Tea Act of 1773 prompted colonists to board an East India Company ship in Boston Harbor and dump its cargo into the sea in the now-infamous Boston Tea Party.
In response, Britain cracked down further with the Coercive Acts, going so far as to revoke the colonial charter of Massachusetts and close the port of Boston. Resistance to the Intolerable Acts, as they became known, led to the formation of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1774, which denounced “taxation without representation” - but stopped short of demanding independence from Britain.
Would Colonists Reconcile or Separate?
Then the first shots rang out between colonial and British forces at Lexington and Concord, and the Battle of Bunker Hill cost hundreds of American lives, along with 1,000 killed on the British side.
Some 20,000 troops under General George Washington faced off against a British garrison in the Boston Siege, which ended when the British evacuated in March 1776. Washington then moved his Continental Army to New York, where he assumed [correctly] that a major British invasion would soon take place.
Meanwhile, many in the Continental Congress still clung to the assumption that reconciliation with Britain was the ultimate goal. This would soon change, thanks in part to the actions of King George III, who in October 1775 denounced the colonies in front of Parliament and began building up his army and navy to crush their rebellion.
In order to have any hope of defeating Britain, the colonists would need support from foreign powers [especially France], which Congress knew they could only get by declaring themselves a separate nation.
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Thomas Paine Disavowed the Monarchy
In his bestselling pamphlet, “Common Sense,” a recent English immigrant named Thomas Paine also helped push the colonists along on their path toward independence.
“His argument was that we had to break from Britain because the system of the British constitution was hopelessly flawed,” the late Pauline Maier, professor of history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT], said in a 2013 lecture on “The Making of the Declaration of Independence.”
“[Britain] had hereditary rule, it had kings—you could never have freedom so long as you had hereditary rule.”
After Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced a motion to declare independence on June 7, 1776, Congress formed a committee to draft a statement justifying the break with Great Britain.
READ MORE: How Thomas Paine's 'Common Sense' Helped Inspire the American Revolution
The initial draft of the Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson and was presented to the entire Congress on June 28 for debate and revision.
In addition to Jefferson’s eloquent preamble, the document included a long list of grievances against King George III, who was accused of committing many “injuries and usurpations” in his quest to establish “an absolute tyranny over these States.”
The Declaration of Independence United the Colonists
After two days of editing and debate, the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, even as a large British fleet and more than 34,000 troops prepared to invade New York. By the time it was formally signed on August 2, printed copies of the document were spreading around the country, being reprinted in newspapers and publicly read aloud.
While the road to independence had been long and twisted, the effect of its declaration made an impact right away.
“It changed the whole character of the war,” Maier said. “These were people who for a year had been making war against a king with whom they were trying to effect a reconciliation, to whom they were publicly professing loyalty. Now heart and hand, as one person said, could move together. They had a cause to fight for.”