The Declaration of Independence is the founding document that formally announced the American colonies' break from British rule. Adopted on July 4, 1776, it laid the philosophical and moral foundation for American self-governance, asserting that individuals possess inherent rights and that governments must be accountable to the people. While it didn’t create a government or legal framework, the Declaration marked the birth of the United States as a sovereign nation.
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This podcast explores how July Fourth evolved from an ordinary day into a national holiday, tracing its radical origins, the shifting interpretations of the Declaration, and how later generations claimed its language of liberty and equality.
This piece traces the Declaration’s 200-year journey from its creation in 1776 through repeated relocations, risky copying methods, light damage, fires, wartime evacuation, and shifting federal custody—long before modern archival protections existed.
Thomas Jefferson included a passage in his original draft denouncing slavery. This explainer from the Henry Ford Museum explores why Congress removed it to preserve colonial unity and how that decision shaped the nation’s earliest political compromises.
When Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration, he wrote that its truths were “sacred and undeniable.” Benjamin Franklin urged replacing that phrase with “self-evident,” grounding the document in reason rather than religious authority and sharpening its Enlightenment logic.
This Library of Congress collection comprises early arguments for colonial rights, protests against British authority, draft constitutions, and multiple working drafts of the Declaration of Independence. It traces the ideas and language that preceded the final document adopted in 1776.
Today, the Constitution and Declaration are displayed at the National Archives. Still, for more than a century, they were kept by other federal institutions—including the State Department and the Library of Congress—before gaining a permanent home in the 1930s.
The iconic handwritten Declaration displayed at the National Archives was written by Thomas Matlack, the Continental Congress’s assistant secretary, chosen for his exceptional penmanship to prepare the formal copy signed by the delegates.
In this episode of "Ben Franklin's World," historians Danielle Allen, Patrick Spero, and Peter Onuf examine why Congress pursued a declaration, how they chose the drafters, and how Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin shaped its language and revolutionary intent.
At the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention—the first women’s rights convention in US history—Elizabeth Cady Stanton drafted the Declaration of Sentiments, consciously modeled on the Declaration of Independence, to argue that women were denied fundamental rights and justified in demanding legal and political equality.
This article examines how Martin Luther King Jr. drew on the language and ideals of the Declaration of Independence to frame the civil rights movement as a continuation of the nation’s founding promises.
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