Declaration of Independence

Context

In 1774 the American colonies established the First Continental Congress. This Congress first met in Philadelphia from September 5 to October 26 of that year, with the chief goal of settling the dispute with Britain, not separating from the motherland. The Congress passed resolutions aimed at gaining certain political and economic rights and presented the request to the king of England.

King George III, however, refused to grant the requests made by the colonies. The colonies thus agreed to form another congress, but on April 19, 1775, even before the Second Continental Congress could meet, fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, between colonial minutemen and British troops. Several colonial minutemen were killed, and the losses inflamed the passions of the colonists and put additional pressure on the Congress to become bolder. When the Second Continental Congress met on May 10, 1775, the delegates were more radicalized and inclined toward revolution. George Washington was named commander of the fledging militia, and war seemed a possibility.

By later in the mid-1770s the colonists had grown impatient with British intransigence. Efforts at accommodation had failed utterly, as the colonial efforts to persuade the British to accept the American colonies as a full part of the British government were soundly rejected. The colonists felt they had no choice but to revolt against Great Britain.

The case for revolution was starkly established by the pamphleteer Thomas Paine, who in January 1776 published his famous broadside Common Sense. In that brief but powerfully argued pamphlet, Paine boldly articulates both the need for revolutionary fervor and the intellectual underpinnings for what would indeed become the American Revolution. Such ideas had been percolating in the colonies for several decades, and Paine demonstrated a talent for articulating the revolutionary sentiment in a manner that proved both compelling and convincing.

Paine largely made the case for independence using language accessible to the average citizen, attacking the British monarchy and inciting the colonists to separate: “Everything that is right, pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cried, ‘’Tis time to part.’” Common Sense created a firestorm. Over 120,000 copies of the pamphlet were sold in the first three months of publication alone—the equivalent of nearly 20 million in the modern-day United States. Roughly one in every thirteen adult colonists owned a copy, with most citizens who lacked a copy reading someone else’s. To Paine, the king of England was “the Royal Brute of Great Britain.” In America, Paine asserted, “the law is king.” Paine called for the colonies to declare their independence and establish a republic.

Last-ditch efforts to repair the breach with Britain failed, and on July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence. Thus, with the impact of Common Sense being followed shortly by the Declaration of Independence, a wave of revolutionary sentiment swept the colonies. Reconciliation was no longer possible; becoming a full part of England was not an option. The only choice was revolution.