A year after the outbreak of hostilities between the North American colonies and the British government, the Continental Congress reconvened in Philadelphia. The fighting had hardened positions, and in June, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia moved the resolution for independence. His fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, drafted the declaration itself, basing it on his earlier Summary View of the Rights of British Americans. The declaration was adopted on 4 July 1776 and became the Ark of the Covenant of the new republic.
Subsequent generations have focused on the grand principles of the preamble, with its ringing assertion (written by a slave owner, of course) that all men, being born free and equal, have the right to determine how and by whom they are governed. Contemporaries were more interested in its violent and highly personal repudiation of allegiance to George III as a tyrant and 'unfit to be the ruler of a free people'.
But the immediate importance of the declaration lay elsewhere, in the claim that, as free and independent states, the united colonies were entitled to contract what alliances they pleased. And there was no doubt where their best hope of allies lay: with Britain's old enemy, France.
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 Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776
www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/jefferson.ht
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The Declaration of Independence is often seen as one of the noblest of US official documents. In 1822, the second president of the United States, John Adams, wrote a letter explaining why Thomas Jefferson had been asked to write it. This is that letter.
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Tour the Public Vaults to see the US Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights up close and discover why records matter. Located between 7th and 9th Sts, NW, with a research centre entrance on Pennsylvania Avenue and an exhibit entrance on Constitution Avenue.
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