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Author: Barry Alan Shain
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2014-06-10
Total Pages: 784
ISBN-13: 0300158742
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Letters, papers, petitions and proclamations from the mid-18th century in the American colonies, provide a different historical perspective on the Declaration of Independence.
Author: David Armitage
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2007-01-15
Total Pages: 332
ISBN-13: 9780674022829
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In a stunningly original look at the American Declaration of Independence, David Armitage reveals the document in a new light: through the eyes of the rest of the world. Not only did the Declaration announce the entry of the United States onto the world stage, it became the model for other countries to follow. Armitage examines the Declaration as a political, legal, and intellectual document, and is the first to treat it entirely within a broad international framework. He shows how the Declaration arose within a global moment in the late eighteenth century similar to our own. He uses over one hundred declarations of independence written since 1776 to show the influence and role the U.S. Declaration has played in creating a world of states out of a world of empires. He discusses why the framers’ language of natural rights did not resonate in Britain, how the document was interpreted in the rest of the world, whether the Declaration established a new nation or a collection of states, and where and how the Declaration has had an overt influence on independence movements—from Haiti to Vietnam, and from Venezuela to Rhodesia. Included is the text of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and sample declarations from around the world. An eye-opening list of declarations of independence since 1776 is compiled here for the first time. This unique global perspective demonstrates the singular role of the United States document as a founding statement of our modern world.
Author: Pauline Maier
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2012-02-15
Total Pages: 337
ISBN-13: 0307791955
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Pauline Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation. It is truly "American Scripture," and Maier tells us how it came to be -- from the Declaration's birth in the hard and tortuous struggle by which Americans arrived at Independence to the ways in which, in the nineteenth century, the document itself became sanctified. Maier describes the transformation of the Second Continental Congress into a national government, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, and with more authority than the colonists would ever have conceded to the British Parliament; the great difficulty in making the decision for Independence; the influence of Paine's []Common Sense[], which shifted the terms of debate; and the political maneuvers that allowed Congress to make the momentous decision. In Maier's hands, the Declaration of Independence is brought close to us. She lets us hear the voice of the people as revealed in the other "declarations" of 1776: the local resolutions -- most of which have gone unnoticed over the past two centuries -- that explained, advocated, and justified Independence and undergirded Congress's work. Detective-like, she discloses the origins of key ideas and phrases in the Declaration and unravels the complex story of its drafting and of the group-editing job which angered Thomas Jefferson. Maier also reveals what happened to the Declaration after the signing and celebration: how it was largely forgotten and then revived to buttress political arguments of the nineteenth century; and, most important, how Abraham Lincoln ensured its persistence as a living force in American society. Finally, she shows how by the very act of venerating the Declaration as we do -- by holding it as sacrosanct, akin to holy writ -- we may actually be betraying its purpose and its power.
Author: Allan Morey
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group
Published: 2014-11-01
Total Pages: 52
ISBN-13: 1467736406
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →By the 1760s, most American colonists had become fed up with British rule. They were tired of the unfair taxes and not being able to create their own laws, and cries for revolution were ringing out across the land. As the revolution took hold, Thomas Jefferson drafted a document that formally declared the colonies' independence. The adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, marked an important turning point in US history. Over the next five years, the colonists would fight to make their independence a reality. Explore the history of this important document. Track the events and turning points that led the colonies to declare their independence from Great Britain.
Author: Garry Wills
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2017-02-15
Total Pages: 398
ISBN-13: 0385542836
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →From one of America's foremost historians, Inventing America compares Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence with the final, accepted version, thereby challenging many long-cherished assumptions about both the man and the document. Although Jefferson has long been idealized as a champion of individual rights, Wills argues that in fact his vision was one in which interdependence, not self-interest, lay at the foundation of society. "No one has offered so drastic a revision or so close or convincing an analysis as Wills has . . . The results are little short of astonishing" —(Edmund S. Morgan, New York Review of Books)
Author: Danielle Allen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2014-06-23
Total Pages: 320
ISBN-13: 0871408139
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize, Society of American Historians “A tour de force. . . . No one has ever written a book on the Declaration quite like this one.”—Gordon Wood, New York Review of Books Featured on the front page of the New York Times, Our Declaration is already regarded as a seminal work that reinterprets the promise of American democracy through our founding text. Combining a personal account of teaching the Declaration with a vivid evocation of the colonial world between 1774 and 1777, Allen, a political philosopher renowned for her work on justice and citizenship reveals our nation’s founding text to be an animating force that not only changed the world more than two-hundred years ago, but also still can. Challenging conventional wisdom, she boldly makes the case that the Declaration is a document as much about political equality as about individual liberty. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Our Declaration is an “uncommonly elegant, incisive, and often poetic primer on America’s cardinal text” (David M. Kennedy).
Author: Thomas Paine
Publisher: The Capitol Net Inc
Published: 2011-06-01
Total Pages: 72
ISBN-13: 9781587332296
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, on the Following Interesting Subjects, viz.: I. Of the Origin and Design of Government in General, with Concise Remarks on the English Constitution. II. Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession. III. Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs. IV. Of the Present Ability of America, with some Miscellaneous Reflections
Author: Scott Syfert
Publisher: McFarland
Published: 2014-01-07
Total Pages: 259
ISBN-13: 0786475595
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This is a comprehensive history of one of the greatest mysteries in American history--did Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, declare independence from Great Britain more than a year before anyone else? According to local legend, on May 20, 1775, in a log court house in the remote backcountry two dozen local militia leaders met to discuss the deteriorating state of affairs in the American colonies. As they met, a horseman arrived bringing news of the battles of Lexington and Concord. Enraged, they unanimously declared Mecklenburg County "free and independent" from Great Britain. It was known as the "Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence" ("MecDec" for short). A local tavern owner named James Jack delivered the MecDec to the Continental Congress, who found it "premature." All of this occurred more than a year before the national Declaration of Independence. But is the story true? The evidence is mixed. John Adams believed the MecDec represented "the genuine sense of America" while Thomas Jefferson believed the story was "spurious." This book sets out all of the evidence, pro and con.
Author: Carl Lotus Becker
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Published: 2017
Total Pages: 268
ISBN-13: 3849649784
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In this long essay Becker analyzed the structure, drafting, and philosophy of the Declaration. He recognizes that it was not intended as an objective historical statement of the causes of the Revolution, but merely furnished a moral and legal justification for rebellion. Step by step, the colonists modified their theory to suit their needs. Whenever men become sufficiently dissatisfied with the existing regime of positive law and custom, they will be found reaching out beyond it for the rational basis of what they conceive ought to be. This is what the Americans did in their controversy with Great Britain.
Author: John R. Vile
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2018-11-26
Total Pages: 490
ISBN-13: 1440863032
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This A-to-Z encyclopedia surveys the history, meaning, and enduring impact of the Declaration of Independence by explaining its contents and concepts, profiling the Founding Fathers, and detailing depictions of the Declaration in art, music, and literature. A comprehensive resource for understanding all aspects of the Declaration of Independence, which marked the formal beginning of the colonies' march toward the creation of the United States of America, this encyclopedia contains more than 200 entries examining various facets of the Declaration of Independence and its enduring impact on American law, politics, and culture. It details key concepts, principles, and intellectual influences that informed the creation of the document, reviews charges leveled in the Declaration against the British crown, summarizes the events of the first and second Continental Congresses, profiles influential architects and signers of the Declaration, discusses existing copies of the Declaration, explains the document's influence on other governments/nations, covers historic sites related to the document, and discusses depictions of the document and its architects in American art, music, and literature over time.
