 Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed the resolutions to Congress in June of 1776 that said these colonies should be free and independent. So the Continental Congress then appointed a committee of five to draft the articles of independence. The committee of five consisted of Robert Liebrunsten, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was a very young member of the delegation. He had drafted a number of previous documents related to the Continental Congress. He was known to be a very good writer, so that's why the committee of five decided to delegate the task of writing the draft to Jefferson. He wrote the draft, which was then submitted to the committee of five for editing, which was then vetted by the entire Continental Congress. A lot of the changes that were made were basically editorial, but some of the changes were more substantial. They took out some of the exaggerated language that Jefferson was prone to use that was trying to stir up people against Great Britain. But they also took out a key paragraph where it accused the king of waging cruel war against human nature itself by enslaving people, by carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere. This whole paragraph was excised from the final declaration because it was understood that the southern states would never support the declaration if there was this diatribe against slavery in it. I think that's the most important editorial change that was made by the Congress in the draft that Jefferson wrote. It's a document that has several audiences. One audience is the people of Great Britain telling the people of Great Britain and the government of Great Britain that the people of the United States are a separate nation and should be treated as a separate nation. Henceforth, another audience is the foreign nations of Europe. The Americans needed to let these foreign nations know that they were an independent nation to get loans and military assistance, especially from France, so that they could wage this war against Britain. Finally, the last audience was the people of the United States themselves. It was an official statement to the people of the United States that we're no longer resisting the policies of Britain by staying within the boundaries of this nation, but we are now a whole separate country and we're a separate people. It's a hard document to come to without background. I think reading aloud is a good tool. And starting with the responses of the students, how does this make you feel? What is it inspiring you? Do any phrases stand out? Then talking about the curiosities, why they're blaming the king, he, he, he, he, he, and then talking about the phrases that seem curious or obvious to us today. The document has to be understood both as a rhetorical tool and official statement that it's creating a new government and that over time its meaning has changed a lot. I think taking it phrase by phrase, certain things become apparent like why do they keep phrasing it in terms of necessity compels us. That's something you can get by just reading it, looking at the fact that they blame so much on the king, looking at the rhetorical tricks that are used. We're submitting these facts to the candid world, looking at what different parts of the declaration are doing, the one part appealing to the people of Britain, another part talking about the functions of government, the beginning part making these broad general sweeping statements that pertain across time and place. What are the laws of nature? How do we know what nature's laws are? What are unalienable rights? Why is it important that government ensures these unalienable rights? What if people held revolutions every time they got dissatisfied with government? When is a government just and when is it unjust? How do we decide? Can you rebel against a government which is based on the people that is a constitutional form of government rather than a government in which there's a king? What kinds of protest should they engage in before they take up arms and try to overthrow a government? What makes the government legitimate? Why do we consider our government legitimate? What if you don't? What's the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution? When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another and to assume among the powers of the nation the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's got entitled them. First of all, there's an invocation here of the laws of nature and of nature's God. That's a reference to laws that are higher than the laws of Great Britain that are higher than the British Parliament that are higher than the British King. You're appealing to a higher authority and I think that's really necessary to justify and legitimate what they're about to say and do. And then they say a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation. So they're going to explain to the world why they are separating. We hold these truths to be self-evident. This is a very typical enlightenment concept. The self-evident truths are truths of nature and by studying nature a reasonable person can discover what is true. And one of these truths is that all men are created equal. This is the phrase that provokes incredible discussion. What do they mean by all men are created equal? In America, you don't have inherited ranks and privileges. You don't have a hereditary monarch. All people in America are equal before the law and I think that's the most fundamental meaning of equal that they're talking about here. They're endowed by their created with certain unalienable rights. So there are these God-given rights that reasonable people can find in nature. It was a very common political construct derived from John Locke's second treatise on government. All men are born free and equal. But you have to understand what equal meant in those terms. In a state of nature, men are equal. They have the equal right to give their consent to be governed. What's powerful about this statement is that it is so unqualified and so open to interpretations. John Locke talked about life, liberty and property. There's a lot of discussion about why it was changed in the declaration from property to pursuit of happiness. Property is obviously a much more restrictive term. It's confined to those usually white males who could own property. Pursuit of happiness is a much broader term that opens up this possibility to men, women, children, even black people theoretically. By choosing the phrase pursuit of happiness rather than property, there's an immediate implication that this government isn't just for men of property. It's for all people who have rights, then the question becomes, well, who has rights? So the document itself is written in a way that opens it up to multiple interpretations. It worked as a rhetorical strategy in fighting British tyranny as an appeal to a large number of people in the United States and abroad. That's why they use those terms. Whether they anticipated extending all of the privileges of citizenship to women and black people at the time is definitely not the case, but they definitely wanted the benefits of government to extend beyond those who owned property.