Who is the declaration of independence directed at

The Declaration does not attack the way in which George III ruled Britain, advocate the overthrow of the British regime outside the American Colonies, or call for the other peoples of the British Empire similarly to rise up. The second paragraph locates the specific indictments against the Crown into a broader framework of contractual government. The text is unclear as to whether they are united only in their grievances and their act of independence, or whether a more permanent political or legal form of union exists.

The Articles of Confederation and the U. Constitution would later define the relationship among the states with greater clarity. This article was originally published in Douglas C. Dow, Ph. By "property," Locke meant more than land and goods that could be sold, given away, or even confiscated by the government under certain circumstances. Property also referred to ownership of one's self, which included a right to personal well being.

Jefferson, however, substituted the phrase, "pursuit of happiness," which Locke and others had used to describe freedom of opportunity as well as the duty to help those in want. The purpose of government, Locke wrote, is to secure and protect the God-given inalienable natural rights of the people. For their part, the people must obey the laws of their rulers. Thus, a sort of contract exists between the rulers and the ruled.

But, Locke concluded, if a government persecutes its people with "a long train of abuses" over an extended period, the people have the right to resist that government, alter or abolish it, and create a new political system. Jefferson adopted John Locke's theory of natural rights to provide a reason for revolution. He then went on to offer proof that revolution was necessary in to end King George's tyranny over the colonists. Since , no words in the Declaration of Independence have received more attention than Jefferson's phrase, "All men are created equal.

Some slave owners argued that slaves would become equal and worthy of natural rights only when they became civilized. For Jefferson, a life-long owner of slaves, this was a much more complex issue.

At an early age, Jefferson concluded that slavery was wrong. To his credit, he attempted to denounce slavery, or at least the slave trade, in the Declaration of Independence. Some scholars believe that Jefferson agreed with the Scottish philosopher, Francis Hutcheson , that all men are born morally equal to one another and that "Nature makes none masters, none slaves.

It appears that while Jefferson opposed slavery in principle, he saw no obvious way to end it once it became established. If the slaves were freed all at once, Jefferson feared that white prejudice and black bitterness would result in a war of extermination that the whites would win. He fretted that if slaves were individually emancipated they would have nowhere to go and no means to survive on their own.

Of course, Jefferson along with most other Southern plantation owners were also economically dependent on slave labor. The best Jefferson could come up with was a plan to take slave children from their parents and put them in schools to be educated and taught a trade at public expense. Upon becoming adults, they would be transported to a colony somewhere and given tools and work animals to start a new life as a "free and independent people.

Nothing ever came of Jefferson's fanciful plan. Slavery in the new United States of America would last another 89 years until the end of the Civil War. But even then, the equality promised in the Declaration of Independence was denied not only to African Americans, but also to other minorities and women. Even today, Americans are still not certain what equality means in such areas as affirmative action, sex discrimination, and gay rights.

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:. For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:. For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:.

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

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. Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.

We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. Over the decade following passage of the Stamp Act in , 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 when British troops killed five colonists in the Boston Massacre.

Three years later, outrage over the Tea Act of 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. 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, killed on the British side.

Some 20, troops under General George Washington faced off against a British garrison in the Boston Siege, which ended when the British evacuated in March Washington then moved his Continental Army to New York, where he assumed correctly that a major British invasion would soon take place.