Declaration Of Independence Summary

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 1776, the continental congress adopts the declaration of independence, which states the independence of a new United States of America from Great Britain and its king. Four hundred and forty-two days after the shots of the American Revolution shots were fired at Lexington and concord, came the declaration. This marked an ideological expansion of the conflict that would eventually involve France’s intervention on behalf of the Americans.
The first major American opposition to British policy came in 1765, right after parliament decided to pass the stamp act, a taxation measure designed to raise revenues for a standing British army in America. With its enactment in November, most colonists called for a boycott of British goods, and some organized attacks on customhouses and homes of tax collectors. Parliament finally voted to repeal the stamp act in March 1766, after months of protesting in the colonies. Most of the colonists went on peacefully and accepted it until parliament’s enactment of the Tea Act in 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering British east India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it monopoly on the American tea trade.
In retaliation, the colonists in Massachusetts planned “The Boston Tea Party”, which involved dumping British tea into the Boston harbor. Parliament was so
Support for independence swept the colonies in the spring of 1776, and the continental congress called for states to form their own governments and a five-man committee was assigned to draft a declaration. To justify American independence, Thomas Jefferson incorporated some of the ideas of john Locke, an advocate of natural rights. The declaration features the immortal lines, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all