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America Proclaims Her Independence
The first draft of The Declaration of Independence was read before Congress on a hot day in Philadelphia; the same day British soldiers attempted to take Charleston. The men who had crafted this monumental document, now awaited the debate, which lasted for six days. The debate ended at 3 P.M. on July 4, 1776. The Revolution had begun. On July 3, 9,000 British soldiers had already landed on Staten Island. What the writers had drafted was treason. The penalty was death. Because of their leadership in this treasonous document, they knew they would likely be drawn and quartered, their families hung. Yet, they wrote it. Their country’s fate, as well as their own, was hanging in certain balance.
Who were they? Why were they selected for this task? They represented conservatives and liberals, Northerners and Southerners, old and young: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. Fifty-five members of Congress debated, and finally agreed to the words, and ratified this first draft. Benjamin Franklin encouraged the unity. “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately,” he said.
After 175 years of loyalty to the British crown, this document severed the colonists’ relationship with Britain, and set her afloat on her own with guaranteed rights and protection written in their Declaration of Independence. Their vision for the new country was a lofty one, greater than the people of their own time could even imagine. These Founding Fathers believed in the potential of mankind endowed by their Creator who, with their vision of governance, could be motivated to achieve great purpose, individually and unified. They believed every life was created by God with innate liberties that could never be revoked. So they listed their grievances and asserted their dreams.
And so, it began. Thousands of lives were lost, property destroyed, and the evolution of a nation greater than anyone imagined in 1776. Or did they? That document is still a masterpiece.
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
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.