U.s. Declares Independence:

[cato2]

Just in case we forgot our beginnings.

U.S. DECLARES INDEPENDENCE
July 4, 1776
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In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress adopts the Declaration
of Independence, which proclaims the independence of the United States of
America from Great Britain and its king. The declaration came 442 days after the
first volleys of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord in
Massachusetts and marked an ideological expansion of the conflict that would
eventually encourage France's intervention on behalf of the Patriots.The first
major American opposition to British policy came in 1765 after Parliament passed
the Stamp Act, a taxation measure to raise revenues for a standing British army
in America. Under the banner of "no taxation without representation," colonists
convened the Stamp Act Congress in October 1765 to vocalize their opposition to
the tax. With its enactment in November, most colonists called for a boycott of
British goods, and some organized attacks on the customhouses and homes of tax
collectors. After months of protest in the colonies, Parliament voted to repeal
the Stamp Act in March 1766.Most colonists continued to quietly accept British
rule until Parliament's enactment of the Tea Act in 1773, a bill designed to
save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and
granting it a monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East
India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and
many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. In
response, militant Patriots in Massachusetts organized the "Boston Tea Party,"
which saw British tea valued at some ý18,000 dumped into Boston
harbor.Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of
destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the
Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping,
established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British
officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to
quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental
Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.With the other
colonies watching intently, Massachusetts led the resistance to the British,
forming a shadow revolutionary government and establishing militias to resist
the increasing British military presence across the colony. In April 1775,
Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, ordered British troops to
march to Concord, Massachusetts, where a Patriot arsenal was known to be
located. On April 19, 1775, the British regulars encountered a group of American
militiamen at Lexington, and the first shots of the American Revolution were
fired.Initially, both the Americans and the British saw the conflict as a kind
of civil war within the British Empire: To King George III it was a colonial
rebellion, and to the Americans it was a struggle for their rights as British
citizens. However, Parliament remained unwilling to negotiate with the American
rebels and instead purchased German mercenaries to help the British army crush
the rebellion. In response to Britain's continued opposition to reform, the
Continental Congress began to pass measures abolishing British authority in the
colonies.In January 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, an influential
political pamphlet that convincingly argued for American independence and sold
more than 500,000 copies in a few months. In the spring of 1776, support for
independence swept the colonies, the Continental Congress called for states to
form their own governments, and a five-man committee was assigned to draft a
declaration.The Declaration of Independence was largely the work of Virginian
Thomas Jefferson. In justifying American independence, Jefferson drew generously
from the political philosophy of John Locke, an advocate of natural rights, and
from the work of other English theorists. The first section features the famous
lines, "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." The second part
presents a long list of grievances that provided the rationale for rebellion.On
July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to approve a Virginia motion
calling for separation from Britain. The dramatic words of this resolution were
added to the closing of the Declaration of Independence. Two days later, on July
4, the declaration was formally adopted by 12 colonies after minor revision. New
York approved it on July 19. On August 2, the declaration was signed.The
American War for Independence would last for five more years. Yet to come were
the Patriot triumphs at Saratoga, the bitter winter at Valley Forge, the
intervention of the French, and the final victory at Yorktown in 1781. In 1783,
with the signing of the Treaty of Paris with Britain, the United States formally
became a free and independent nation.