The Declaration of Independence

Principally authored by Thomas Jefferson, and adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence announced that the 13 American colonies now considered themselves sovereign states—separate from the power of the British crown—and a new nation, the United States of America.

It was John Adams who was first asked to draft the Declaration of Independence, at which he famously quipped that it should be Thomas Jefferson, not himself, writing the Declaration. Adams provided three reasons: Jefferson was a Virginian, Adams was “obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular” while Jefferson was “very much otherwise,” and “you [Jefferson] can write ten times better than I [Adams] can.” Seventeen days later Jefferson produced the first draft of what would become one of history’s best-known documents on political philosophy and human rights. It has inspired numerous national declarations of independence throughout the world. Particularly its second sentence—“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”—was immensely important to the development of a burgeoning American nation, and remains one of the most well-known statements in the English language.

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