The Declaration of Independence, Lesson 1: The Road to Independence, 1763 to 1776

After the War: The Peace of 1763

The Declaration of Independence was written in June 1776, but its argument took twelve years to assemble. A reader who starts in June sees a sudden decision. A reader who starts in 1763 sees a long dispute about three questions: who may tax the colonies, who governs the places where the colonists live, and who decides when the two disagree. This lesson follows that dispute through the documents each side produced, in order, so that when Congress took up Richard Henry Lee's resolution on June 7, 1776, the reader knows what the delegates were carrying into the room.

The starting point is the end of a war. On February 10, 1763, a Definitive Treaty of Peace was concluded at Paris, ending the war in which Britain gained territory that had belonged to France. The Royal Proclamation of October 7, 1763, issued eight months later, cites that treaty in its first sentence and sets up four new governments in the territory Britain had gained: Quebec, East Florida, West Florida and Grenada.¹

The same proclamation did something the older colonies felt directly. It declared that "the several Nations or Tribes of Indians" who lived under royal protection should not be disturbed in land they had not ceded, and it told colonial governors not to issue survey warrants or land patents beyond their governments' bounds "until our further Pleasure be known." Private persons were forbidden to buy reserved land, and any purchase was to be made only "for Us, in Our Name," at a public meeting held by the governor.¹ By its terms the Crown reserved to itself the decision about who could buy western land and on what terms. That is an early example of a pattern this lesson traces: a power that colonial governments had been using was claimed by the government in London, by proclamation and statute, with no vote in any colonial assembly.

The peace also left the Crown with a larger territory to defend and administer. The statutes that followed say so in their own preambles, which speak of "defending, protecting, and securing" the colonies and of raising money in America for that purpose, and they are the next stage of the story.²³

Revenue Acts: The Sugar Act and the Stamp Act

Parliament passed the Sugar Act on April 5, 1764. Its preamble, as quoted in modern summaries, says that "new provisions and regulations should be established for improving the revenue of this Kingdom" and that "it is just and necessary that a revenue should be raised" in America for "defending, protecting, and securing" the colonies.² The act replaced the Molasses Act of 1733, which had set a high duty on foreign molasses that was widely evaded; the new act aimed at collecting a lower duty in fact.² The words "raising a revenue" matter for what follows. Earlier trade laws had regulated commerce. The colonists argued that this kind of law taxed them.

The Stamp Act followed on March 22, 1765. Its preamble repeats the point: "it is just and necessary, that provision be made for raising a further revenue within your Majesty's dominions in America, towards defraying the said expences."³ The act required stamped paper for legal and commercial documents, and its penalty clauses run from "the first day of November, one thousand seven hundred and sixty-five."³ The schedule of duties reached licences for lawyers and for retailers of liquor and wine, almanacs and calendars, and sheets of paper "on which shall be ingrossed, written, or printed" many other documents.³ A tax on paper fell on people who dealt in law, commerce and print.

The colonists objected to the cost, and said so; the Stamp Act Congress called the duties "extremely burthensome and grievous."⁴ Their larger objection concerned authority. Two principles lay behind it, and each had a long English pedigree: that taxes require the consent of the people taxed, given through their own representatives, and that trial by jury cannot be taken away. The Stamp Act Congress also objected that the Stamp Act and other acts extended the jurisdiction of the Admiralty courts beyond their ancient limits, and the First Continental Congress later listed the same acts as depriving colonists of trial by jury.⁴⁵ The sections below show how the colonial side stated these principles in 1765, and then how Parliament answered.

The Stamp Act Congress of 1765

In June 1765 the Massachusetts Assembly sent a letter to the other colonies' legislatures proposing that they "consult together on the present circumstances of the colonies." Nine colonies eventually chose delegates. The Stamp Act Congress met in New York City from October 7 to October 25, 1765, and on October 19 it adopted a Declaration of Rights and Grievances. It also drafted an address to the King, a memorial to the House of Lords and a petition to the House of Commons.⁶ The list of resolutions the delegates produced was short, specific and carefully worded.

The resolutions open with loyalty. The delegates declared that the colonists "owe the same allegiance to the Crown of Great-Britain, that is owing from his subjects born within the realm, and all due subordination to that august body the Parliament of Great Britain."⁴ They went on to claim that the colonists were "entitled to all the inherent rights and liberties of his natural born subjects within the kingdom of Great-Britain." Then came the central claim: "it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives."⁴

The next resolutions apply that claim to America. The people of the colonies "are not, and from their local circumstances cannot be, represented in the House of Commons," so "the only representatives of the people of these colonies, are persons chosen therein by themselves," and "no taxes ever have been, or can be constitutionally imposed on them, but by their respective legislatures." The delegates added that "trial by jury is the inherent and invaluable right of every British subject in these colonies," and they named both the Stamp Act and the extension of Admiralty jurisdiction "beyond its ancient limits" as a "manifest tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of the colonists."⁴

Two features of the 1765 resolutions are easy to miss. First, the delegates accepted "due subordination" to Parliament. They did not deny Parliament's authority altogether; they denied its authority to tax them. Second, the rights they claimed were those of British subjects: "the inherent rights and liberties of his natural born subjects" and "the undoubted right of Englishmen." The resolutions of that year do not argue from a right of all people. The 1774 Resolves, below, add "the immutable laws of nature" to the sources of the colonists' rights, and the Declaration of 1776 states a claim for all men. A reader who says the argument was always about universal rights, or never was, has skipped some of these documents.

Repeal and the Declaratory Act, March 18, 1766

Parliament repealed the Stamp Act on March 18, 1766. The repeal act gives a commercial reason and no constitutional one: continuing the Stamp Act "would be attended with many inconveniencies, and may be productive of consequences greatly detrimental to the commercial interests of these kingdoms."⁷

On the same day, Parliament passed the Declaratory Act. The act recites that some colonial assemblies had "claimed to themselves, or to the general assemblies of the same, the sole and exclusive right of imposing duties and taxes" and that this was "derogatory to the legislative authority of parliament." It then declares that the colonies "have been, are, and of right ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown and parliament of Great Britain," and that Parliament has "full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever."⁸

Put the two documents of 1765 and 1766 side by side and the whole dispute is on the page. The Stamp Act Congress says no tax without consent through a representative the colonists choose. Parliament says it can bind the colonies "in all cases whatsoever." Each side had written down a principle that excluded the other's. For ten years the practical question was whether either side would press its principle to the end. The repeal let colonists celebrate a victory and let Parliament keep its claim, and both sides treated the settlement as proof that they had been right.

The Townshend Duties and the Argument Over Revenue

The next test came in 1767, when Parliament passed the Townshend Act. Its preamble states that "it is expedient that a revenue should be raised in your Majesty's dominions in America, for making a more certain and adequate provision for defraying the charge of the administration of justice, and the support of civil government."⁹ The schedule of duties taxed items such as glass, painters' colours and tea, with tea at three pence a pound.⁹

The preamble points to a second grievance that grew in these years. Money raised in America would pay the salaries of governors and judges. In colonies where the assembly had paid those officials, the assembly's control of the purse was a check on them. A revenue that paid them from outside took that check away. The First Continental Congress listed the same concern in 1774, saying that "judges, who before held only estates at will in their offices, have been made dependant on the crown alone for their salaries."⁵ The Declaration of Independence repeats the grievance in 1776, as Lesson 5 shows.

This lesson did not read the later statute that changed the Townshend duties, so it does not describe that step. The tea duty did stay in force. When Parliament passed the Tea Act in May 1773, which let the East India Company ship tea directly to North America, the Townshend tax on tea "collected in the colonies remained in force."¹⁰ That duty is the background to the next set of documents.

The Coercive Acts of 1774

On the night of December 16, 1773, members of the Sons of Liberty boarded the Dartmouth in Boston and threw hundreds of chests of East India Company tea into the harbor.¹¹ Parliament's answer, passed in the spring of 1774, took the form of several statutes that the colonists called the Intolerable Acts. Three of them, and the Quebec Act that passed in the same session, matter here.

The Boston Port Act of March 31, 1774 recites that "dangerous commotions and insurrections have been fomented and raised in the town of Boston" and that "valuable cargoes of teas, being the property of the East India Company" were destroyed, and it discontinues the landing and shipping of goods at the town and harbour of Boston.¹² The preamble blames "divers ill-affected persons," and the remedy closed the port of the whole town.¹²

The Massachusetts Government Act of May 20, 1774 changed the way the province was governed. Under its terms the councillors who had been chosen under the 1691 charter would hold office "during the pleasure of his Majesty," the governor would appoint sheriffs, and the way juries were drawn changed. Section VII addressed the town meeting directly. Because "the inhabitants have, contrary to the design of their institution, been misled to treat upon matters of the most general concern, and to pass many dangerous and unwarrantable resolves," the act provided that "no meeting shall be called by the select men, or at the request of any number of freeholders" without the governor's written leave, except for the annual election meeting.¹³ For colonists who thought of the town meeting as the base of self-government, a rule that required a royal governor's permission to discuss public affairs was a plain attack on that base.

The Quebec Act of 1774, passed in the same session, made provision for the government of the Province of Quebec through a legislative council chosen by the Crown, with no elected assembly, and barred the council from levying taxes other than local rates. It kept French civil law and the property of Canadian Catholics.¹⁴ The act's preamble presents it as a settlement for a conquered province under the Proclamation of 1763. Many colonists read it as proof that Parliament could set up a government with no assembly beside their own colonies. The First Continental Congress described it as "establishing the Roman Catholic religion, in the province of Quebec, abolishing the equitable system of English laws, and erecting a tyranny there."⁵ That is the colonists' reading, and a historian should present it as theirs.

The Declaration of Independence returns to these acts almost directly. Its grievance list says the King has combined with others "to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution," and goes on to quartering troops, cutting off trade, imposing taxes without consent, depriving colonists of jury trial, and "abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province."¹⁵ The clause-by-clause comparison is in Lesson 5. For now, note how many items in the 1776 list were already written down in the 1774 Resolves discussed next.

The First Continental Congress, 1774

The colonies' answer to the Coercive Acts was a Congress. Delegates from twelve colonies, all but Georgia, met in Philadelphia, and on October 14, 1774 they adopted a Declaration and Resolves.⁵ The text names the colonies one by one, including "Newcastle, Kent, and Sussex on Delaware," and says they had "severally elected, constituted, and appointed deputies to meet, and sit in general Congress, in the city of Philadelphia, in order to obtain such establishment, as that their religion, laws, and liberties, may not be subverted."⁵

The Resolves claim a three-part source of rights. The colonists have these rights, the text says, "by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts." The first right listed is "life, liberty and property," which "they have never ceded to any foreign power whatever" without their consent. The second and third say that the first settlers "were at the time of their emigration from the mother country, entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and natural-born subjects," and that they did not lose them by emigrating.⁵

The later resolves state that "the foundation of English liberty, and of all free government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council." Because the colonists "are not represented, and from their local and other circumstances, cannot properly be represented in the British parliament," they claimed "a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several provincial legislatures, where their right of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and internal polity." Resolve 4 then added a concession: "from the necessity of the case, and a regard to the mutual interest of both countries, we cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British parliament, as are bonafide, restrained to the regulation of our external commerce," while "excluding every idea of taxation internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects, in America, without their consent."⁵ The line the Congress drew in 1774 ran between regulating trade, which it accepted, and taxing for revenue, which it did not. Other resolves claim the common law and trial by jury, the benefit of English statutes and royal charters, the right "peaceably to assemble, consider of their grievances, and petition the king," and a ban on peacetime standing armies without the consent of the colony's legislature.⁵ The list of rights reads like a draft of the state declarations of rights that would follow, which Lesson 7 covers.

The Congress then listed the acts it called "infringements and violations of the rights of the colonists." The list runs from the revenue acts of George III's reign through the three Boston acts, the Quebec Act and the quartering act.⁵ A reader comparing this list to the Declaration's grievances will find many of the same statutes.

On October 20, 1774 the Congress adopted the Articles of Association. The delegates pledged a non-importation, non-consumption and non-exportation agreement. Article 1 bars imports from Great Britain and Ireland from December 1, 1774, and article 4 suspends non-exportation until September 10, 1775.¹⁶ Article 2 is a surprise to anyone who expects the Revolution to begin with the slave trade settled: "We will neither import nor purchase, any slave imported after the first day of December next; after which time, we will wholly discontinue the slave trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it."¹⁶ The Association was adopted by a Congress that included delegates from South Carolina, whose delegates, according to Jefferson's later account, objected in 1776 to a passage on the slave trade in his draft. Lesson 3 returns to that passage and to what Congress did with it.

Article 11 of the Association is the one that did the most work on the ground. It called for "a committee... in every county, city, and town, by those who are qualified to vote for representatives in the legislature," to watch the conduct of everyone in the matter of the Association.¹⁶ Those committees, elected by voters in thousands of places, became a form of local government that had no royal commission. They are the base from which the local declarations of 1776 grew.

War and Petitions, 1775

The next year brought fighting. The Congress's declaration of July 1775 states that General Gage, on "the 19th day of April," sent a detachment out of Boston that "made an unprovoked assault on the inhabitants" at Lexington.¹⁷ The Second Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia in May 1775, acted on two tracks at once.¹⁸

The first track was the petition. The Congress adopted what is called the Olive Branch Petition on July 5, 1775, and delegates signed it on July 8.¹⁸ John Dickinson of Pennsylvania was its primary author, according to a secondary account, and his name appears among the signers in the Journal.¹⁹¹⁸ The petition asked the King to settle the dispute. It said the colonists' "breasts retain too tender a regard for the kingdom from which we derive our origin, to request such a reconciliation as might in any manner be inconsistent with her dignity or her welfare."¹⁹ A petition in these terms did not claim independence. It claimed the opposite.

The second track was an explanation to the world. The Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, dated July 6, 1775, is credited primarily to Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson.¹⁸¹⁷ Jefferson wrote in his Autobiography in 1821 that his own draft "was too strong for Mr. Dickinson," who was asked "to take the paper, and put it into a form he could approve" and who prepared "an entire new statement, and preserving of the former only the last four paragraphs and half of the preceding one."²⁰ It declared: "Our cause is just. Our union is perfect." It denied the aim of independence in plain terms: "We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great-Britain, and establishing independent states."¹⁷ The text also said the colonists meant "not to dissolve that union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us."¹⁷ A reader should hold those sentences next to the Declaration of July 4, 1776. In twelve months the same Congress, with many of the same delegates, moved from "we have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating" to a declaration that the colonies "are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States." The documents explain why.

The Arms declaration also shows an early version of a method the 1776 document used: a narrative of what the King's ministers and army had done, told to the public. It is worth reading in full alongside the Declaration.

The King Answers: Rebellion and Blockade

The petition did not arrive in a friendly climate. The King's Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition, issued on August 23, 1775, was a response to news of the Battle of Bunker Hill, and it was drafted before Lord Dartmouth had received the Olive Branch Petition. The King refused to receive the petition.²¹ The colonial agents who delivered it to Dartmouth, Richard Penn and Arthur Lee, reported on September 2, 1775 that "as his Majesty did not receive it on the throne, no answer would be given."¹⁸

The sequence is worth setting out. Congress signed the petition on July 8. Forty-six days later, on August 23, the Crown issued a proclamation that declared parts of the colonies to be in rebellion.²¹ On December 22, 1775, Parliament gave royal assent to the Prohibitory Act, which prohibited "all manner of trade and commerce" with the colonies and made ships found trading liable to forfeiture.²² In the view of many colonists that statute ended the old relationship: the Crown had stopped protecting them and begun making war on their commerce. The Rhode Island General Assembly would put the point in its May 1776 act of renunciation in the terms that allegiance and protection are reciprocal.²³

This lesson could not confirm the clause of the Prohibitory Act on seized crews, which the Declaration appears to refer to when it says the King "has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country." A Wikisource copy of the statute was not available to this lesson, so the text of the clause is left for a reader to check against the statute itself.²²

Congress had not yet moved to independence. Its own July 1775 texts still disclaimed it. The next document to push the public in that direction was a pamphlet.

Common Sense, January 1776

Robert Bell of Philadelphia published Common Sense on January 10, 1776.²⁴²⁵ Its author, Thomas Paine, had arrived in the colonies in November 1774, and the pamphlet appeared without his name. Wikipedia dates the official public connection of his name to the independence controversy to March 30, 1776, a date this lesson could not trace to a primary source, so treat it as approximate.²⁴ It was short, about 46 or 47 pages depending on the source.²⁵²⁴

Paine's introduction made a claim about style that is also a claim about politics: "In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession."²⁶ He opened the main argument by separating society from government: "Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one."²⁶

The key moves for independence come later in the pamphlet. Paine told readers that the cause was larger than their province: "The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. 'Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent."²⁶ He argued from interest as well as principle: "Every thing that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'Tis time to part."²⁶ And he gave the colonies a right in language that echoes through the next six months: "A government of our own is our natural right."²⁶

How many people read it is unknown. The figures that are often repeated come from a handful of sources, and no sales records survive. Paine himself gave 120,000 in April 1776, 150,000 in a 1779 letter and 100,000 in a footnote to The Rights of Man in 1791; Paine's biographer Moncure Conway gave 500,000 in 1892, which Ray Raphael calls an unsubstantiated guess; and the historian Trish Loughran places the upper limit at 75,000.²⁷ A general-audience history site summarizes the range as "70,000 to 500,000," with most estimates between 100,000 and 150,000.²⁵ This lesson treats every figure as a claim. What can be said with confidence is narrower: the pamphlet was read aloud in taverns and meeting places and borrowed from hand to hand, and it moved independence from a conversation among legislators to one among their constituents.²⁵

The passages quoted above argue from general considerations: the nature of government, the distance across the Atlantic, the interest of a continent. They do not rest on a list of statutes. The Declaration of July 4 rests on such a list. The two texts reach the same conclusion by different roads, and a reader should keep them apart.

Spring 1776: Colonies and Towns Move First

The Declaration was not the first declaration. Between January and July 1776 colonial conventions, assemblies, counties and towns passed resolutions that went further than the Congress did. The record for the colonies is clearest in the cases below, and each one is documented by a text this lesson opened.

North Carolina's Fourth Provincial Congress at Halifax, on April 12, 1776, empowered its delegates "to concur with the other delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency, and forming foreign Alliances." The Halifax Resolves say that the delegates would reserve to the colony "the Sole, and Exclusive right of forming a Constitution and Laws."²⁸ NCpedia says 83 delegates adopted the resolve unanimously, and calls it the first official colonial action to call for independence.²⁸ That claim of priority is NCpedia's own, not a settled ranking, and Rhode Island's act of May 4, 1776, which repealed its act securing allegiance to the King and replaced the King's name in writs and commissions, is also a candidate for the earliest formal break.²³

On May 15, 1776 the Virginia Convention resolved unanimously to instruct its delegates "to propose to that respectable body to declare the United Colonies free and independent States." That resolution is the subject of Lesson 2.²⁹

The record below the colony level is larger and less tidy. Pauline Maier, in American Scripture, studied state and local declarations of independence from the spring and summer of 1776. A 1998 MIT news article says her book examines roughly 90 of them and quotes her argument that they "made a better case for independence than Jefferson's Declaration."³⁰ An essay in the Commonwealth Beacon reports a lower count: Maier's appendix lists 58 "declarations" adopted from May 13 to July 4, 1776, and the essay quotes Maier as saying that "the greater part" came from Massachusetts, with Barnstable the one town that voted against endorsing independence.³¹ This lesson could not reconcile the figures of about 90 and 58. They may count different things, since a town vote and a printed appendix entry are not obviously the same unit. The safe wording is that Maier documented dozens of local declarations, with a count of about 90 in one account of her work and 58 in her appendix according to another.

One of the best-known local texts carries a warning. The Charlotte Town Resolves of May 31, 1775, adopted by a committee in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, resolved that "all Commissions, civil and military, heretofore granted by the Crown, to be exercised in these Colonies, are null and void."³² That document is solid. A separate "Mecklenburgh Resolutions" text dated May 20, 1775, which includes the pledge "our Lives, our Fortunes, and our most Sacred Honor," appears on the Avalon Project from an 1875 book, and Avalon's own note says it was adopted "(as it is claimed)" on that date.³³ Treat the May 20 text as a claim that could not be confirmed here. It does not belong in a list of documented 1775 declarations.

What the local documents show is a sequence: the committees of 1774 and 1775 set up a government that took orders from no royal officer, and in spring 1776 they said so in writing. When Jefferson's committee began its work in June, delegates in the Congress were carrying instructions from towns and conventions that had already declared themselves free.

Where the Rights Language Came From

A common mistake is to treat the Declaration's language as new in 1776. Its pieces were already in public use, in the documents above and in older books. The First Continental Congress claimed rights "by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts."⁵ That sentence names three sources: natural law, the English constitution and the colonial charters. The English Bill of Rights of 1689 supplies a fourth set of phrases. It declares, for example, "That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law," and the First Continental Congress's ninth resolve makes the same claim for the colonies, with "the consent of the legislature of that colony" in place of Parliament.³⁴⁵

Thomas Jefferson's A Summary View of the Rights of British America of 1774 puts the natural-rights claim in terms close to the one he would write in 1776. The colonists, he wrote, make their claims "with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate," and "kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people."³⁵

Behind these documents stand writers whom the delegates knew. John Locke wrote in his Second Treatise of Government that the law of nature teaches "all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."³⁶ William Blackstone wrote, in the Introduction to his Commentaries on the Laws of England, that "This law of nature, being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other."³⁷ These passages show where the vocabulary of "life, liberty and property" had been used before. They do not show that the Congress copied any one author. Jefferson wrote in a letter of May 8, 1825 that the Declaration aimed "Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of," but "to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent," and that it was "intended to be an expression of the American mind."³⁸ That is a recollection written almost fifty years later, and Lesson 5 treats it as one.

The point for a reader is to attribute accurately. When someone says the Declaration "comes from" Locke, or from Blackstone, or from the charters, the careful response is to ask which sentence, and to look at the text. Lesson 5 sets the Declaration's key phrases against each of these sources one at a time.

The Pattern: Claim, Petition, Answer

Read in order, the documents of 1763 to 1776 show a pattern that repeats. The Crown or Parliament makes a claim of power, by proclamation or statute. The colonists object in language that borrows from English law. They petition. London answers with a firmer assertion of the original claim. The colonists then escalate, and the cycle begins again at a higher level.

In 1765 the claim was the Stamp Act and the colonial answer was the Stamp Act Congress's resolutions. In 1766 the answer from London was repeal plus the Declaratory Act. In 1774 the claim was the Coercive Acts and the colonial answer was the Continental Congress's Declaration and Resolves and the Association. In 1775 the colonial answer was the Olive Branch Petition and the Arms declaration, and London's answer was the Proclamation of Rebellion and then the Prohibitory Act. In January 1776 Common Sense gave ordinary readers a vocabulary for what was happening, and in the months after, colonies and towns began to declare themselves free.

The Declaration of Independence relies on this pattern. Its famous grievance section says, near its end, "In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury."¹⁵ The passage is a summary of the documents above. A reader who knows them can check each part of that sentence, and a reader who does not has to take it on faith.

Key Documents

This table lists the documents read for this lesson in date order. Each one was opened and read in a published text.

Why This Matters to Idaho Officials and Voters

No part of present-day Idaho was under any of the colonial governments described here. The link is in the text of Idaho's own constitution, which carries the vocabulary of the documents in this lesson. Article I, section 1 reads: "All men are by nature free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing and protecting property; pursuing happiness and securing safety."³⁹ Section 2 reads: "All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their equal protection and benefit, and they have the right to alter, reform or abolish the same whenever they may deem it necessary."⁴⁰ A reader who has just seen the 1774 Resolves ("life, liberty and property") can see the lineage in the wording, though this lesson does not trace Idaho's drafting history and makes no claim about which source Idaho's delegates used.

Section 10 protects the right "to assemble in a peaceable manner, to consult for their common good; to instruct their representatives, and to petition the legislature for the redress of grievances."⁴¹ That sentence has a direct counterpart in the Massachusetts Government Act of 1774, which required a governor's written leave for town meetings, and in the colonists' resolve that they had "a right peaceably to assemble, consider of their grievances, and petition the king."¹³⁵ An Idaho county commissioner, city council member or school trustee who is asked why public bodies must meet openly and hear petitions has a historical answer as well as a legal one.

Using This in Reporting and Civic Life

A reporter checking a quotation

Reporter Elena Brandt of an invented newspaper is writing about a county meeting where a speaker says the colonists wanted independence from the start. She wants one line from 1775 to answer the speaker. She finds the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, which says "We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great-Britain." She opens the Avalon Project text, copies the sentence exactly, and notes the date, July 6, 1775, and that the text is credited to Jefferson and Dickinson. She does not rely on a quotation site.¹⁷¹⁸

A city clerk answering a citizen

City Clerk Marcus Teller of an invented Idaho town gets a call from a resident who says "no taxation without representation" means no one can be taxed without a vote on each tax. Marcus does not argue. He points the caller to the 1765 resolutions, which say that no taxes may be imposed "but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives," and explains that the colonial claim was about representation in the body that taxes. That is the sense the resolutions give the phrase.⁴

A citizen tracing a famous claim

Voter Maria Delgado hears on a podcast that Common Sense sold "half a million copies in a few months." She checks. She finds that no sales records survive and that the figure of 500,000 comes from an 1892 biography and is called an unsubstantiated guess by a historian who studied the question.²⁷ She tells a friend that the real range is unknown, and she cites her source.

A board member explaining local government

School board member Gwen Hartley of an invented district is asked why the board holds its meetings in public. She avoids a long speech and says that in 1774 Parliament told Massachusetts towns that they could meet only with the governor's written leave, and that colonists treated that as an attack on self-government.¹³ She does not claim the colonists wrote any modern meeting law. She offers it as background for why the public has cared about who controls local meetings.

Related Modules

• Declaration, Lesson 2: The Lee Resolution and the Committee of Five: Virginia's instructions, the June 7 motion and the committee.
• Declaration, Lesson 3: The Drafts: Jefferson's rough draft, the Adams and Franklin changes and the passages Congress struck.
• Declaration, Lesson 4: The Debates Day by Day: the Journal entries from June 7 to August 2, 1776.
• Declaration, Lesson 5: The Text, Clause by Clause: the grievances set against the statutes in this lesson.
• Declaration, Lesson 6: Colony Charters and the First State Constitutions: the charters behind the Resolves of 1774.
• Declaration, Lesson 7: State Declarations of Rights: the rights lists that followed the 1774 Resolves.
• Module 1: Origins of the Constitution: the road from the Declaration to Philadelphia in 1787.

Sources & Further Reading

Primary Sources

• Avalon Project, The Royal Proclamation, October 7, 1763
• Avalon Project, The Stamp Act, March 22, 1765
• Avalon Project, Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress, October 19, 1765
• Avalon Project, An Act Repealing the Stamp Act, March 18, 1766
• Avalon Project, The Declaratory Act, March 18, 1766
• Avalon Project, The Townshend Act
• Avalon Project, The Boston Port Act, March 31, 1774
• Avalon Project, The Massachusetts Government Act, May 20, 1774
• Avalon Project, The Quebec Act, 1774
• Avalon Project, Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, October 14, 1774
• Avalon Project, The Articles of Association, October 20, 1774
• Avalon Project, Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms
• Avalon Project, Journals of the Continental Congress, Petition to the King, July 8, 1775
• Avalon Project, Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America
• Avalon Project, The Charlotte Town Resolves, May 31, 1775
• Avalon Project, The Mecklenburgh Resolutions, May 20, 1775 (disputed text)
• Avalon Project, Preamble and Resolution of the Virginia Convention, May 15, 1776
• Avalon Project, English Bill of Rights, 1689
• Avalon Project, Blackstone, Commentaries, Introduction
• Project Gutenberg, Thomas Paine, Common Sense
• Project Gutenberg, John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
• Rhode Island State Archives, Act of Renunciation, May 4, 1776
• NCpedia, The Halifax Resolves

Secondary Sources and Further Reading

• Wikipedia, Sugar Act
• Wikipedia, Stamp Act Congress
• Wikipedia, Olive Branch Petition
• Wikipedia, Proclamation of Rebellion
• Wikipedia, Prohibitory Act
• Wikipedia, Common Sense
• Teaching American History, Common Sense: The Book of the Year in 1776
• Ray Raphael, Thomas Paine's Inflated Numbers, All Things Liberty
• MIT News, 1998, on Pauline Maier's American Scripture
• Commonwealth Beacon, All politics is local, even the Declaration of Independence

Footnotes

1. Royal Proclamation of October 7, 1763, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/proc1763.asp. The preamble cites the Definitive Treaty of Peace "concluded at Paris, the 10th Day of February last" and names the four new governments (Quebec, East Florida, West Florida and Grenada). The text forbids Governors from granting survey warrants or patents beyond their bounds, forbids private purchases of reserved Indian lands, and says purchases may be made only "for Us, in Our Name" at a public meeting.
2. Sugar Act (American Revenue Act), 4 Geo. 3 c. 15, royal assent April 5, 1764, summarized in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Act. The article quotes the preamble ("it is just and necessary that a revenue should be raised ... for defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same") and notes that it replaced the Molasses Act of 1733. This lesson read a secondary summary, not the statute text; confirm the preamble against the statute before quoting it.
3. The Stamp Act, March 22, 1765, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/stamp_act_1765.asp. The preamble reads: "it is just and necessary, that provision be made for raising a further revenue within your Majesty's dominions in America, towards defraying the said expences." Penalty provisions in the text run from "the first day of November, one thousand seven hundred and sixty-five."
4. Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress, October 19, 1765, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/resolu65.asp. Quotations in this lesson are from the resolutions on allegiance and "due subordination" to Parliament, consent to taxes, representation in the House of Commons, trial by jury, and the Admiralty courts.
5. Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, October 14, 1774, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/resolves.asp. The text names twelve colonies (Georgia is not listed), claims rights "by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts," lists ten numbered resolves beginning with "life, liberty and property," and lists the acts it calls infringements, including the three Boston acts, the Quebec Act and the quartering act.
6. Stamp Act Congress, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_Act_Congress. The article gives October 7 to 25, 1765, in New York City; delegates from nine colonies; and adoption of the Declaration of Rights and Grievances on October 19, with separate addresses to the King, the Lords and the Commons.
7. An Act Repealing the Stamp Act, March 18, 1766, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/repeal_stamp_act_1766.asp. The preamble says continuing the Stamp Act "would be attended with many inconveniencies, and may be productive of consequences greatly detrimental to the commercial interests of these kingdoms."
8. The Declaratory Act, March 18, 1766, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/declaratory_act_1766.asp. The act declares the colonies "subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown and parliament of Great Britain" and that Parliament had "full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America ... in all cases whatsoever."
9. The Townshend Act, Avalon Project (page dated November 20, 1767), https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/townsend_act_1767.asp. The preamble states "it is expedient that a revenue should be raised in your Majesty's dominions in America, for making a more certain and adequate provision for defraying the charge of the administration of justice, and the support of civil government." The rate schedule includes glass, painters colours and tea at "three pence" per pound. The page title gives November 20, 1767; this lesson uses only the year because that date may be an effective date and not the date of passage.
10. Tea Act, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Act. The article gives royal assent on May 10, 1773, and says the act let the East India Company ship tea directly to North America while "the tax imposed by the Townshend Acts and collected in the colonies remained in force."
11. Boston Tea Party, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party. The article gives the night of December 16, 1773, the boarding of the Dartmouth by the Sons of Liberty and the dumping of 340 or 342 chests of East India Company tea.
12. The Boston Port Act, March 31, 1774, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/boston_port_act.asp. The preamble recites that "valuable cargoes of teas, being the property of the East India Company" were destroyed in Boston and the act discontinues the landing and shipping of goods at the town and harbour of Boston.
13. The Massachusetts Government Act, May 20, 1774, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/mass_gov_act.asp. Sections II and III make councillors hold office "during the pleasure of his Majesty" and give the governor power to appoint; section V gives the governor power to appoint sheriffs; section VII bars town meetings, except the annual meeting for choosing officers, without the governor's written leave; section VIII changes how juries are selected.
14. The Quebec Act, 1774, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/quebec_act_1774.asp. The preamble recites the Proclamation of October 7, 1763 and the Treaty of Paris of February 10, 1763; the act sets up a legislative council appointed by the Crown, bars that council from levying taxes other than local rates, and keeps French civil law and Catholic property rights. The Avalon page title reads "October 7, 1774"; that date matches the 1763 Proclamation and not the act, so this lesson gives only the year.
15. Declaration of Independence, National Archives transcription, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript.
16. The Articles of Association, October 20, 1774, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/contcong_10-20-74.asp. Article 1 bars imports from December 1, 1774; article 2 bars importing slaves after that date and ends participation in the slave trade; article 4 suspends non-exportation until September 10, 1775; article 11 calls for a committee "in every county, city, and town," chosen by those qualified to vote for representatives.
17. Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/arms.asp. The text says General Gage sent troops "on the 19th day of April" and that they "made an unprovoked assault on the inhabitants" at Lexington; it says "Our cause is just. Our union is perfect"; and "We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great-Britain, and establishing independent states." A note on the page credits primarily Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson.
18. Olive Branch Petition, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Branch_Petition. The article gives July 5, 1775 (adoption), July 8 (signing) and July 6 for the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, and reports that the colonial agents were told on September 2 that "as his Majesty did not receive it on the throne, no answer would be given."
19. Petition to the King, July 8, 1775 (the Olive Branch Petition), Journals of the Continental Congress, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/contcong_07-08-75.asp. The petition says "our breasts retain too tender a regard for the kingdom from which we derive our origin"; the Journal records that the petition, "being engrossed, was compared, and signed by the several members," and John Dickinson's name appears among the signers.
20. Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1 (Washington edition), Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45847. The memoir begins "JANUARY 6, 1821." This passage is Jefferson's recollection of how the Arms declaration was drafted and is not a document of 1775.
21. Proclamation of Rebellion, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_Rebellion. The article gives August 23, 1775, as the issue date and says the proclamation followed news of Bunker Hill and was drafted before the Olive Branch Petition reached Lord Dartmouth; it also says the King refused to receive the petition.
22. Prohibitory Act, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibitory_Act. The article gives royal assent on December 22, 1775, says it prohibited "all manner of trade and commerce" with the colonies and says ships found trading would be forfeited. A search of the Wikisource text of the act failed, so this lesson did not confirm the act's provision on seized crews that later appears in the Declaration of Independence.
23. Rhode Island Act of Renunciation, May 4, 1776, Rhode Island State Archives transcription, https://docs.sos.ri.gov/documents/civicsandeducation/teacherresources/Act-of-Renunciation.pdf, as summarized in the research for this lesson. The act repeals the earlier act securing allegiance to the King, says allegiance and protection are reciprocal, and replaces the King's name in writs and commissions with "The Governor and Company of the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." The PDF was read through a summarizing fetch tool, not line by line.
24. Common Sense, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense. The article gives publication by Robert Bell in Philadelphia on January 10, 1776, a population of about 2.5 million in the colonies, and March 30, 1776 as the date Paine's name became officially connected with the independence controversy. The article cites a secondary work for that date, and this lesson did not find a primary record of it. Other sources give 46 and 47 as the page count.
25. Teaching American History, "Common Sense: The Book of the Year in 1776," https://teachingamericanhistory.org/common-sense-the-book-of-the-year-in-1776/. The page says Bell published the 46-page pamphlet on January 10, 1776, that "Estimates range from 70,000 to 500,000" with most between 100,000 and 150,000, and that Paine "never made a penny" from it.
26. Thomas Paine, Common Sense (Philadelphia, 1776), Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/147/pg147.txt. The quotations are from the introduction ("simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense," "The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth"), from the opening on society and government ("necessary evil"), from the passage that "Every thing that is right or natural pleads for separation" and "'Tis time to part," and from "A government of our own is our natural right."
27. Ray Raphael, "Thomas Paine's Inflated Numbers," All Things Liberty, March 20, 2013, https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/03/thomas-paines-inflated-numbers. The article says no sales records survive; it lists 120,000 (Paine, April 8, 1776), 150,000 (Paine, January 14, 1779), 100,000 (Paine, 1791) and 500,000 (Conway, 1892), and reports Trish Loughran placing the upper limit at 75,000.
28. The Halifax Resolves, April 12, 1776, NCpedia, https://www.ncpedia.org/history/usrevolution/halifax-resolves. The page says the Fourth Provincial Congress authorized North Carolina's delegates on April 12, 1776, and quotes the resolve empowering them "to concur with the other delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency, and forming foreign Alliances." It says 83 delegates adopted it unanimously.
29. Preamble and Resolution of the Virginia Convention, May 15, 1776, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/const02.asp.
30. MIT News, "Maier," June 3, 1998, https://news.mit.edu/1998/killian-0603. The article says Pauline Maier's American Scripture examines roughly 90 state and local declarations of independence from the spring and summer of 1776, and quotes her argument that they "made a better case for independence than Jefferson's Declaration." The page was read through a summarizing fetch tool.
31. Commonwealth Beacon, "All politics is local, even the Declaration of Independence," https://commonwealthbeacon.org/opinion/all-politics-is-local-even-the-declaration-of-independence/. The article says Maier's appendix lists 58 "declarations" adopted from May 13 to July 4, 1776, from roughly 200 Massachusetts town seats, and that Barnstable was the one town to vote against endorsing independence. Read through a summarizing fetch tool.
32. The Charlotte Town Resolves, May 31, 1775, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/charlott.asp. The committee resolved that "all Commissions, civil and military, heretofore granted by the Crown ... are null and void," and set up companies and select men to keep order until the Provincial Congress provided laws.
33. The Mecklenburgh Resolutions, May 20, 1775, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/nc06.asp. The page reprints a text from an 1875 book and its own footnote says the declaration was adopted "(as it is claimed)" at Charlotte on May 20, 1775. This lesson could not confirm a surviving 1775 manuscript of that text.
34. English Bill of Rights, 1689, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/england.asp. The declaration of rights states "That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law."
35. Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/jeffsumm.asp. The text claims "rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate," and says "kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people."
36. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7370/pg7370.txt, sec. 6: "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."
37. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Introduction, sec. 2, Avalon Project, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_intro.asp: "This law of nature, being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other." (Avalon's transcription uses long-s spellings in places; the quotation is normalized.)
38. Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825, Teaching American History, https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-to-henry-lee/. The quotations are those given on the page.
39. Idaho Constitution, art. I, sec. 1, Idaho Legislature, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtI/Sect1/.
40. Idaho Constitution, art. I, sec. 2, Idaho Legislature, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtI/Sect2/.
41. Idaho Constitution, art. I, sec. 10, Idaho Legislature, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtI/Sect10/.