Thursday, July 4, marks the 248th anniversary of signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

The Second Continental Congress voted two days earlier, on July 2, 1776, to pursue independence with the Lee Resolution, which read: “Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

Twelve of the 13 colonies voted for the resolution, with only the New York delegation abstaining because they had not received direct instructions from their legislature to pursue independence.

The Second Continental Congress directed Massachusetts representative John Adams, Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson, Pennsylvania’s Benjamin Franklin, Connecticut’s Roger Sherman and New York’s Robert Livingston to draft what became the Declaration of Independence, approved on July 4, 1776.

It was this document that became the focus of America’s annual celebrations.

The declaration is an essay in four parts: The preamble, the Declaration of Natural Rights, the List of Grievances and the Resolution of Independence.

The declaration of natural rights begins, “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.”

It was not a proclamation to the American people — it was a letter from the elected leaders of the American colonists to their British cousins, telling them about the offenses to the 13 colonies by King George III, and rhetorically argued so that no Briton would accept such mistreatment. After all, only 127 years earlier, the English Parliament had fought with and executed the English monarch Charles I for similar abuses.

While we cite the phrase “ … all men are created equal … ” in our modern political discourse, “all men” as written in 1776 did not include all Americans as we interpret it now, nor did it just include all English-born white colonists and their American descendants, but rather all white men over age 21 who owned land. Many states also prohibited Jews, Quakers and atheists from voting on colonial issues even if they owned property because they could not swear an oath on a Christian Bible. There were only 3.9 million people in the United States in 1790, and of those, only about 4% to 6% percent had full voting rights when the Constitution was ratified.

The majority of soldiers in the Continental Army did not enjoy the voting rights for which they fought, although they and non-property-owning “inhabitants” — also only white freemen — could vote on their hometown officials in public assemblies. However, they did believe that having local control and being able to speak was preferable to being ruled by nobles from oversees.

This year will likely be one of the most contentious elections of the modern era. We face a choice for president between two geriatric candidates with abysmal negative popularity — the lowest in history — and a Congress that spends more time raising money and bickering over culture war nonsense than passing legislation.

The only functional branch is repeatedly issuing rulings that can best be summarized as “Congress, do your job,” and “Executive branch, stop making up rules because Congress doesn’t do its job.”

We Americans, who hated the ineffective Parliament deaf to our concerns, now have national politicians who mislead us to believe that “other Americans” are the enemy. But their rationale is spin to win reelection or collect campaign donations and keep us divided so we don’t keep the powerful in check.

We have more in common than our leaders want us to believe: We want good schools, safe communities, free speech instead of censorship, lean bureaucracies that spend our tax dollars wisely, a military that acts defensively and only when necessary, regulations that make sense and are not overly burdensome, a stable and healthy economy, care for our young, old and poor, fewer homeless living on the street, robust institutions that can rebuff efforts by bad actors to destabilize the social order and fair and equal treatment under the law, regardless of wealth, class, race, national original or language we speak at home. We want a government that helps us with the vast resources of our collective when needed, but largely stays out of our lives in the day-to-day. As you celebrate the Fourth of July, remember that this is what unites us — not homogenous uniformity, but our wondrous variety and diverse ideas about how to improve our communities and our country.

It’s up to us to bend history toward justice and ensure “all people are created equal and treated equally” under the law. The Framers wrote in the Constitution’s preamble that the document’s purpose was conceived “in order to form a more perfect union.” We are not a static people. We must change our laws, government, leaders and structures as we mature and give everyone equal opportunity to reach their full potential. Do it not for the founders long dead, but for Americans 100 years from now.

Christopher Fox Graham

Managing Editor

The Declaration of Independence

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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. — 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 to 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. 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. 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.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
• He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
• He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
• He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
• He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
• He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
• For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
• For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
• For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
• For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
• For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
• He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
• He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
• He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
• He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish [sic] brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

56 Signatories:

Georgia

• Button Gwinnett
• Lyman Hall
• George Walton

North Carolina

• William Hooper
• Joseph Hewes
• John Penn

South Carolina

• Edward Rutledge
• Thomas Heyward Jr.
• Thomas Lynch Jr.
• Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts

• John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress

Maryland

• Samuel Chase (future associate justice of the United States Supreme Court)
• William Paca
• Thomas Stone
• Charles Carroll of Carrollton (the only Catholic signer and the last survivor, dying in 1832)

Virginia

• George Wythe
• Richard Henry Lee
• Thomas Jefferson (future third president of the United States)
• Benjamin Harrison V (father of William Henry Harrison, future ninth president of the United States; and great-grandfather of Benjamin Harrison, future 23rd president of the United States)
• Thomas Nelson Jr.
• Francis Lightfoot Lee
• Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania

• Robert Morris
• Benjamin Rush
• Benjamin Franklin
• John Morton
• George Clymer
• James Smith
• George Taylor
• James Wilson
• George Ross

Delaware

• Caesar Rodney
• George Read
• Thomas McKean

New York

• William Floyd
• Philip Livingston
• Francis Lewis
• Lewis Morris

New Jersey

• Richard Stockton
• John Witherspoon
• Francis Hopkinson
• John Hart
• Abraham Clark

New Hampshire

• Josiah Bartlett
• William Whipple

Massachusetts

• Samuel Adams
• John Adams (future second president of the United States)
• Robert Treat Paine
• Elbridge Gerry (future fifth vice president of the United States under President James Madison)

Rhode Island

• Stephen Hopkins
• William Ellery

Connecticut

• Roger Sherman (the only person to sign all four great state papers of the United States: the Continental Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution)
• Samuel Huntington
• William Williams
• Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire

• Matthew Thornton