who are the authors of the declaration of independence

#Who are the authors of the declaration of independence series#

After some more revisions by the Congress, the Declaration was adopted on July 4. Franklin and Adams helped to edit Jefferson’s draft. Considered by his peers in the Congress and the committee as one of the most highly educated and most eloquent members of the Congress, Jefferson accepted the leadership of the committee.įor days, he labored over the draft, working meticulously late into the evenings at his desk in his lodging on Market Street in Philadelphia, carefully laying out the charges against His Majesty King George III, of Great Britain and the justification for separation of the colonies. In June 1776, when it became clear that pleas and petitions to the King and Parliament were useless, the members of the Continental Congress assigned the task of drafting a 'declaration of independence' to a committee that included Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.

In the succeeding years, similar taxes were levied by Parliament and protested by many Americans. shall be imposed., unless by common counsel.” American resistance forced the British Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act in 1766. In protesting the act, they cited the following prohibition against taxation without consent from the Magna Carta, written five hundred and fifty years earlier, in 1215: “No scutage. For example, opponents of the Stamp Act of 1765 declared that the act-which was designed to raise money to support the British army stationed in America after 1763 by requiring Americans to buy stamps for newspapers, legal documents, mortgages, liquor licenses, even playing cards and almanacs-was illegal and unjust because it taxed Americans without their consent.

The above video on the Prelude to Revolution addresses the numerous issues that were pushing some in the colonies toward revolution. On its 50th anniversary, Jefferson wrote that the object of the Declaration was “ot to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.” Guiding Questions The organization of the Declaration of Independence reflects what has come to be known as the classic structure of argument-that is, an organizational model for laying out the premises and the supporting evidence, the contexts and the claims for argument.Īccording to its principal author, Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration was intended to be a model of political argument. In fact, a list of grievances comprises the longest section of the Declaration of Independence.

#Who are the authors of the declaration of independence series#

Long before the first shot was fired, the American Revolution began as a series of written complaints to colonial governors and representatives in England over the rights of the colonists.