 Who issued it? The Congress that was gathered in Philadelphia in July of 1776. The so-called Continental Congress. Who were they? They were a bunch of men who had been elected or appointed by individuals within the 13 colonies to meet together to discuss their opposition to the existing legitimate government of the colonies, the British government. This carried the weight of an official proclamation from this new government of the United States. So it was written in a formal language and an illiterate farmer or a sailor or a farmwoman would not necessarily understand the meaning of all the terms or charges. However, the fact that a lot of them would have it read to them meant that the reign of the declaration was just the point of departure. It was the first point of a larger public debate and discussion about what was going on. There's this very powerful language that would have an impact, an emotional impact on an audience and then the people would be standing around and say, well, what does that mean, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? What does it mean he's forbidden as governor to pass laws of media and pressing importance? This was a bold experiment and a lot of people could get very excited by that. It was an important device to mobilize the people and to get them excited. The Continental Army had a hard time getting people. The Continental Congress was always short of money. The states were always very slow to pass taxes and to send the money to the Continental Congress. So the reality fell short of the grand ideals that were expressed in the declaration. Events had been building up to the declaration for over a decade. At the end of the French and Indian war in 1763, most people assumed that the North American British colonies were happy to be part of the British Empire. They were prospering under British rule. The people of the colonies considered themselves the loyal subjects of the Crown. But after the French and Indian war, Britain initiated a whole series of policies and laws that from the colonists perspective changed the relationship that had existed between Britain and the colonies. Prior to the Stamp Act crisis of 1765, when Britain wanted money from the colonists, they would go to the colonies individually. In each of the 13 colonies there was a legislature that was elected by the people and Britain would ask those legislators to pass taxes on the people of that particular colony that would then be submitted to England. After the French and Indian war, there was a change in British policy. The leaders in Britain, because they had gone into so much debt fighting the French and Indian war, and the people in Britain itself were already heavily taxed, were looking for new sources of revenue. So they started making policies which involved parliament passing taxes that were imposed on the colonists. And from the colonist point of view, this was changing the rules of the game. Parliament was taxing them and they elected no members to parliament. So from their point of view, they were being taxed without their consent. From the point of view of Britain, parliament legislated and passed taxes for the empire as a whole. The colonists were represented virtually in parliament even though they elected no particular representatives. The colonists feared that if they allowed any of these taxes passed by parliament, then there would be one tax after another. They would be deprived of their property completely. There was a substantial minority by 1774, 1775 who already believed that it was impossible to remain in the British empire and remain a free people. But the process of convincing larger numbers of people took more time. A key moment there was the publication in January of 1776 of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. That pamphlet really reached out to large numbers of people and explained it in terms that they could understand why independence was necessary. I think it needs to be understood in terms of the order of July 1775. It's a document called A Declaration of the Causes and Necessities for Taking Up Arms. That was passed by the Continental Congress in that setup, the Continental Army. That explains why the colonists are upset and I think it's very interesting to see what changed in their language. Jefferson wrote that as well. So I think it's really interesting to see why in 1775 they were willing to take up arms but not declare independence and they were willing to do that a year later. In the 1775 document they don't blame the king, they only blame parliament and his ministers for these problems. And that's the big difference between 1775 and 1776. And there's another document written by Jefferson in 1774 called A Summary View of the Rights of British America. That was not an official document of the Continental Congress but it was issued as a pamphlet. That represents the thinking of the most radical of the delegates in 1774 who were already anticipating independence and seeing why it was becoming increasingly untenable for the colonies to remain in the British Empire. The Continental Congress first met in 1774, then disassembled, then reassembled in the spring of 1775 but did not declare independence until July of 1776 in an era before public opinion polls. These delegates had to go by their personal sense of the people via letters, via newspapers, via word of mouth. Only then by the summer of 1776 did they feel that the people were going to back up their Declaration of Independence with the taking up of arms and with support of this cause. What was the official status of the Continental Congress? They had none. The Continental Congress was an extra-legal or illegal assembly. The only authority they had was the authority that the people in the colonies gave them. They were not operating within the existing boundaries of the colonial charters or of any rule of law that the British government recognized. They knew that if they declared independence without having a substantial proportion of the population supportive of them, they would hang. They were committing treason. They were not interested in leading a revolution that no one wanted to follow. It was really important that they waited as long as they did. The stakes were very high. What people don't like to think about is that these delegates were becoming outlaws. They were operating outside the official rules that governed the legal system of Britain. They were establishing a separate nation. Looking back, we can put this patriotic halo around it, but from Britain's point of view, what the colonies were doing was disloyal, seditious, wrong, treasonable. I think because we won, Americans think it was right from the start, but it depends on your perspective. From the British point of view, it wasn't.