![]() Indeed, several members of Congress, including John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, openly admired limited monarchy. Boyd, the founding editor of “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson,” pointed out, the Declaration of Independence “bore no necessary antagonism to the idea of kingship in general.” The Declaration of Independence does not actually denounce monarchyĪs Julian P. And even British officials like those who cracked down on Colonial smuggling worked not for George III but for his Cabinet, which was in effect a creature of Parliament.īy targeting only the king – who played a purely symbolic role in the Declaration of Independence, akin to modern America’s Uncle Sam – Congress reinforced its novel argument that Americans did not need to cut ties to Parliament, since they had never had any. John Trumbull via Wikimedia Commons The complaints weren’t actually about the kingīritain’s king is the subject of 33 verbs in a declaration that never once says “Parliament.” But nine of Congress’ most pressing grievances actually were about parliamentary statutes. The drafters of the Declaration of Independence present their document to the Continental Congress. The Second Continental Congress was talking about Dunmore and other British officials when it claimed, in the final draft of the Declaration, that George III had “ excited domestic insurrection amongst us.” That brief euphemism was all that remained of Jefferson’s 168-word diatribe against the British for sending Africans to America and then inciting them to kill their owners. ![]() It freed all rebel- (patriot-) owned slaves who could reach his lines and would fight to suppress the patriot rebellion. Initially the British turned down African Americans’ offer to fight for their king, but the slaves kept coming, and on November 15, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the last British governor of Virginia, finally published an emancipation proclamation. In November 1774, James Madison became the first white American to report that slaves were plotting to take advantage of divisions between the colonies and the mother country to rebel and obtain their own freedom. Numerous other white Southerners joined Jefferson in venting their rage at the mother country for, as one put it, “ pointing a dagger to their Throats, thru the hands of their Slaves.”īritain really had forged an informal alliance with African Americans – but it was the slaves who initiated it. In an objection to which he gave 168 words – three times as many as any other complaint – Jefferson said George III had encouraged enslaved Americans “to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them.” In that early draft, Jefferson’s single biggest grievance was that the mother country had first foisted enslaved Africans on white Americans and then attempted to incite them against their patriot owners. Constitution, the final version of the Declaration never uses the word “slave.” But African Americans loomed large in the first draft, written by Thomas Jefferson. Edward Austin Abbey, Harper's Magazine, via Library of Congress American independence is due in part to African Americans Pennsylvania assemblymen required their congressional delegates to oppose independence – until Philadelphians gathered outside the State House, later named Independence Hall, and threatened to overthrow the legislature, which then dropped this instruction.Ī depiction of the reading of the Declaration of Independence by John Nixon, from the steps of Independence Hall, Philadelphia, July 8, 1776. In Maryland, county conventions demanded that the provincial convention tell Maryland’s congressmen to support independence. ![]() Historian Pauline Maier discovered that by July 2, 1776, when the Continental Congress voted to separate from Britain, 90 provincial and local bodies – conventions, town meetings and even grand juries – had already issued their own declarations or instructed Congress to. The Declaration of Independence was written by wealthy white men, but the impetus for independence came from ordinary Americans. In celebration of the United States’ birthday, Holton offers six surprising facts about the nation’s founding document – including that it failed to achieve its most immediate goal and that its meaning has changed from the founding to today. His 2021 book “ Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution” shows how independence and the Revolutionary War were influenced by women, Indigenous and enslaved people, religious dissenters and other once-overlooked Americans. Editor’s note: Americans may think they know a lot about the Declaration of Independence, but many of those ideas are elitist and wrong, as historian Woody Holton explains.
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