This copy, engrossed by Timothy Matlack, was ordered by Congress on July 19 and signed primarily on August 2, 1776. The best-known version of the Declaration is the signed copy now displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., which is popularly regarded as the official document.
Jefferson's original draft is currently preserved at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., complete with changes made by Adams and Benjamin Franklin, and Jefferson's notes of changes made by Congress. It was initially published as the printed Dunlap broadside that was widely distributed and read to the public. The Lee Resolution for independence was passed unanimously by the Congress on July 2, 1776.Īfter ratifying the text on July 4, Congress issued the Declaration of Independence in several forms.
The declaration was a formal explanation of why the Continental Congress voted to declare American independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, a year after the American Revolutionary War began in April 1775. John Adams, a leading proponent of independence, persuaded the Committee of Five to charge Thomas Jefferson with writing the document's original draft, which the Second Continental Congress then edited. The Committee of Five drafted the declaration to be ready when Congress voted on independence. The declaration became one of the most circulated and widely reprinted documents in early American history. The signatories include delegates from New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The Declaration of Independence was signed by 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress, who came to be known as the nation's Founding Fathers. The declaration explains to the world why the Thirteen Colonies regarded themselves as independent sovereign states no longer subject to British colonial rule. It was adopted on Jby the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, later renamed Independence Hall. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.The Declaration of Independence, headed The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, is the founding document of the United States. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. “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.
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