Position:Home>History> Why is the Declaration of Independence so important?

it declared our independence from britain!. it also defines our freedoms today!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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~Sorry!. This is not the whole story but a simple paragraph is simply not enough - assuming you want an honest answer!.

Truth be told, at the time it was written it wasn't very important at all!.

As a legal document, it was meaningless!. Saying it didn't make it so!. The colonies did not achieve independence until the French fleet trapped Cornwallis at Yorktown and the French Army, supplemented by about an equal number of Continental Army and Militia forces laid siege!. When Cornwallis surrendered, Parliament voted to stop prosecution the war!. Two years later, the colonies were granted independence by the Treaty of Paris, 1783!.

The Second Continental Congress actually "declared independence" on July 2, 1776, by means of the Lee Resolution!. [Rhode Island had already declared independence unilaterally on May 4, 1776!.] The Declaration was intended to explain the reasons for the treason and to enlist support at home and abroad for the cause!. At home, only about 20% of the colonists supported the independence movement in 1776!. In fact, Robert Livingston, one of the Committee of Five charged with drafting the propaganda document, refused to sign it because he didn't believe in the cause, although he would join the rebels eventually!. At the peak of the movement, about 1/3 of the colonists supported independence!. That is why the proposition was never put to popular vote!. "We, the People" were never heard from because "We the People" would have voted overwhelmingly against it!. The Canadian colonists were invited to join and flatly refused!. Counting Canada, the percentage in support shrinks to an even smaller fraction!.

Abroad, the Declaration was met with a great yawn!. It had no legal effect whatsoever!. It contained no original political or philosophical thought (as was admitted by Jefferson and the rest of the committee)!. It was a lame excuse to justify treason - bombastic rhetoric and nothing more!. The French, seeing an opportunity, jumped in two years later!. After the colonials won at Saratoga, the French thought they might have a shot at getting back some of what they lost after the Seven Years War and they saved the rebellion!. The troops they sent were critical, but the muskets, bayonets and cannon were they donated to the cause were equally vital!. The French brought the Dutch, who pretty much financed the war, and the Spanish with them!. Each of those 'allies' was philosophically opposed to the colonial position, but that was not why they got involved!. The Declaration had nothing to do with their participation!.

The document itself was not deemed terribly important either!. The original sent to Timothy Matlock for engrossing on July 19, after the title was changed to include the word "unanimous" ) New York finally cast an affirmative vote on the Lee Resolution and on the Declaration on July 9) was lost or destroyed!. The Congress never got it back from Matlock!. When the engrossed copy was delivered on August 2, there is no record that there was a formal signing ceremony!. The Congress had ordered that all delegates present in Congress on July 4 were to sign!. However, in a display of democracy in action, several delegates who had voted 'Nay' were discharged and replaced!. They were never allowed to sign )not that they would have) but their replacements, who had nothing whatsoever to do with it were allowed to sign!. Some, like Livingson, refused!. It took almost a year to get all the signatures!. When the Goddard Broadside was commissioned in January 1777, some signatures still were not affixed!.

The myth of John Hancock's signature is nothing more than myth!. There is no contemporaneous record that he signed during a session of the Congress and certainly no reliable account of the time that he said anything about King George and his spectacles!. He used his normal and customary signature!. That says something about his ego, his lust for attention and his basic insecurities, but it says nothing about his belief in the principals laid out in the document!. Likewise, the "quote" from Ben Franklin about hanging separately or hanging together was never reported until years after Franklin's death and Franklin himself probably never said it!.

It has become important because of the mythology surrounding the rebellion!. The war was not a revolution!. The goal was separation from the British, not the overthrow of the British government!. Since the victors write the history, insignificant event are turned into legend!. The Declaration absolutely failed in its intended purposes, it was redundant and it borrowed all of its stated ideals from many sources, not the least of which was British law!. The authors admitted it had no force of law, but would lock them into their treason and insure that North America would be ravaged by war to satisfy the greed and lust for power of a handful of tax cheats, smugglers and traitors!.

Research what the draftsmen did when they took control!. Their hypocrisy screams to us through the mists of history!. When 13 new nations were created in North America in 1783, the formed an alliance, first under the Articles of Confederation and then under the Constitution of the United States of America!. Those nations never surrendered their hard fought independence when they acceded to (not ratified) the constitution!. Aricle IV was intended to guarantee that and Amendments IX and X were intended to bolster that guarantee!. New York, Massachusetts and Virginia specifically reserved the right to opt out in their formal accessions and the delegates of the other nine nations told them that that was unnecessary, the right was a given!. The New England States threatened to secede in 1803 and again in 1812-14!. No one challenged the right, and many of the framers were still alive then and spoke to the issue!. However, in 1860/61 when the CSA states seceded, history was forgotten and the rules changed!. Each of the CSA states relied heavily on the precepts of the Declaration, claiming that the government no longer served them or their interests and no longer protected their interests or their rights!. The USA decided otherwise and invaded the CSA in a war of aggression, causing the government of the people, by the people and for the people of the CSA to perish from the earth!.

As a piece of propaganda, the Declaration is still a good read!. As a legal document, it wasn't worth the parchment it was engrossed on!. As a democratic statement, it is a fraud and a sham, since it expresses the agenda of a tiny minority!. As a building block of American democracy, it was ignored completely by Abe Lincoln and the norther Republicans of 1860!. As groundbreaking political and philosophical dogma, it is nothing!. As the stuff from which legend and myth is made (if one can be made to close one's eyes to historical fact) it is the Holy Grail of US society!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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