Write an essay discussing how well the United States is upholding the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Use your Reading Notes, Handout A, your personal
experiences and opinions, and your knowledge of current events for information to
write your essay.

As it always has, the USA has some difficulties with some of the aspirations (and they are more aspirations than principles) expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and it has some success with some others. The trend, as President Obama described, is generally toward progress, but isn’t smooth and regular. One ought to remember that the Declaration is not a set of laws, it is not a Constitution, it is not really expressing a set of principles. The first paragraph expresses a philosophy which is mainstream 18th century Enlightenment, and famously states that “all men are created equal”, a phrase put there by slave-owners who did not acknowledge that their black slaves were fully “men”, and did not extend that alleged equality to their wives and daughters. Since 1776 the USA freed its slaves, after a brutal Civil War, and it enfranchised its women (after a long and difficult campaign). Objectively US society is closer to the ideals of that first paragraph than it was in the 1790s. It still has a ways to go; but the fact that the USA has an expressed intent to strive toward those ideals is more than one sees in most nations.

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Declaration of Independence, in U.S. history, document that was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, and that announced the separation of 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain. It explained why the Congress on July 2 “unanimously” by the votes of 12 colonies (with New York abstaining) had resolved that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free and Independent States.” Accordingly, the day on which final separation was officially voted was July 2, although the 4th, the day on which the Declaration of Independence was adopted, has always been celebrated in the United States as the great national holiday—the Fourth of July, or Independence Day.

John Trumbull: Declaration of Independence

John Trumbull: Declaration of Independence

Declaration of Independence, oil on canvas by John Trumbull, 1818; in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, Washington, D.C.

Architect of the Capitol

Toward independence

Learn how the Declaration of Independence was drafted, reviewed by Congress, and adopted

Learn how the Declaration of Independence was drafted, reviewed by Congress, and adopted

Dramatization of events surrounding the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which was written by Thomas Jefferson and approved by the Continental Congress and signed on July 4, 1776.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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On April 19, 1775, when the Battles of Lexington and Concord initiated armed conflict between Britain and the 13 colonies (the nucleus of the future United States), the Americans claimed that they sought only their rights within the British Empire. At that time few of the colonists consciously desired to separate from Britain. As the American Revolution proceeded during 1775–76 and Britain undertook to assert its sovereignty by means of large armed forces, making only a gesture toward conciliation, the majority of Americans increasingly came to believe that they must secure their rights outside the empire. The losses and restrictions that came from the war greatly widened the breach between the colonies and the mother country; moreover, it was necessary to assert independence in order to secure as much French aid as possible.

On April 12, 1776, the revolutionary convention of North Carolina specifically authorized its delegates in the Congress to vote for independence. On May 15 the Virginia convention instructed its deputies to offer the motion—“that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States”—which was brought forward in the Congress by Richard Henry Lee on June 7. John Adams of Massachusetts seconded the motion. By that time the Congress had already taken long steps toward severing ties with Britain. It had denied Parliamentary sovereignty over the colonies as early as December 6, 1775, and on May 10, 1776, it had advised the colonies to establish governments of their own choice and declared it to be “absolutely irreconcilable to reason and good conscience for the people of these colonies now to take the oaths and affirmations necessary for the support of any government under the crown of Great Britain,” whose authority ought to be “totally suppressed” and taken over by the people—a determination which, as Adams said, inevitably involved a struggle for absolute independence.

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