1776
U.S. Declares Independence
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 18,000 pounds 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.