The Declaration of Independence was made in 1776 by the 13 English colonies in North America breaking away from all allegiance to the British Crown. The Declaration was mainly the work of Thomas Jefferson. Already in December 1775 the Congress had declared itself independent of the English parliament and by this declaration had repudiated allegiance to the Crown.
Absolute separation from Great Britain was not at first contemplated by the colonies. New England favoured it, but the Southern States were opposed. The transfer of the war to the southward in May and June, 1776, brought them to this view. The North Carolina Convention took the first step toward independence by a resolution 'to concur with those in the other colonies in declaring independence', April 22, 1776. Virginia, May 17, 1776, prepared the title of the document by directing her Representatives to propose in Congress a 'Declaration of Independence'. Such a resolution was offered by Richard Henry Lee on June the 7th, 1776. This resolution was adopted on July the 2nd. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert R Livingston were the committee appointed to draft the Declaration. The draft was formulated almost entirely by Jefferson. Before July the 1st, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey had instructed their delegates to vote against the Declaration. This instruction was rescinded, South Carolina came over to the majority, and Delaware's vote, at first divided, was in the affirmative. The Declaration was, therefore, adopted by the unanimous vote of twelve States, New York alone not voting, on July the 4th, 1776. The New York Convention afterward ratified the Declaration. The engrossed copy was signed on August the 2nd. The Declaration sets forth the rights of man and of the colonists, enumerates their grievances against the British Government, and declares 'that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States'.
Historically the Democratic Party was the most important of the American political parties, having been in continuous existence since the end of the 18th century. The rise of such a party, as soon as national politics began under the new Constitution, was natural. The love of individual liberty rather than strong government, was native in the minds of most Americans. Those who felt this most strongly would be likely to look with apprehension upon the Federal Government, and the possibility of its encroaching upon the States under cover of the new Federal Constitution. They were therefore likely to be advocates of strict construction of the Constitution and of States' rights. To these elements of party feeling, which had drawn the Anti-Federalists together in 1788, was added a few years later the strong sympathy of many Americans with the French Revolution, and the desire that Government should aid France in her contest with England.
Thomas Jefferson put himself at the head of the party drawn together by agreement in these sentiments, and led them in opposition to the Federalists. The party took the name of Democratic-Republican. Before Monroe's administration its members were more commonly called Republicans, since then most commonly Democrats. From the first the party was strongest in the Southern States. From its origin in 1792 to 1801, it was in opposition. In 1798 and 1799, upon the passage of the Alien and Sedition laws, it took strong ground for States' rights in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. The election of Jefferson. in 1801 brought it into power. The chief tenets of the party were, belief in freedom of religion, of politics, of speech and of the press, in popular rule, in peace, in economical government, in the utmost possible restriction of the sphere of government, in hospitality to immigrants, and in the avoidance of foreign complications.
Placed in control of the government, the majority of the party drifted away from its strict constructionist ground, and supported measures of a nationalizing character. After the War of 1812, the Federalist party went out of existence, and the Democratic party had complete possession of the field. In 1820, Monroe was re-elected without opposition. But opposing tendencies in the nation and in the party were already showing themselves, and preparing the way for a new party division, between the Whigs, advocates of protection and other nationalizing measures, and those Democrats who held to the old programme of States' rights and free trade and restricted government. With the accession of Jackson in 1829, new social strata came into power in the Democratic party, the widening of the suffrage giving it a more popular character. Managed by skilful politicians, not without the aid of the spoils system, the party won every Presidential election but two (1840, 1848) from this time to 1860, destroyed the US bank, annexed Texas, and carried the country through the war with Mexico. But meanwhile the slavery question, coming into increasing prominence, was gradually forcing a division between the Democrats of the South and the great body of those in the North, who were unwilling to go so far in the protection of slavery by national authority as was desired by their Southern allies. The final split came in the nominating convention of 1860.
Two candidates were nominated, Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans won the election, and the American Civil War broke out. Though many War Democrats aided the administration in preserving the Union, the party was discredited in the eyes of many by its previous connection with the Southern leaders and the pro-slavery cause, and won no Presidential election until that of 1884, when in the minds of many the war issues were extinct and economic questions had taken their place. Defeated in 1888, it was again successful in 1892. By the end of the 19th century the party was hardly more strict-constructionist than the Republican, nor more marked by devotion to States' rights and the party was mostly noted as the opponent of a high tariff.
By the end of the 20th century the differences between the Democratic party and Republicans had become blurred, though the Democratic party was generally perceived - not always accurately - as more left-wing or liberal than the Republicans. Research Democratic Party
The Kentucky Resolutions were the outgrowth, together with the Virginia Resolutions, of a feeling in the United States that the Federal party was making a strained and illegitimate use of the powers granted to the Federal Government by the American Constitution. The resolutions were directly due to the passage of the Alien and Sedition laws. The Kentucky Resolutions were framed by Thomas Jefferson, and introduced, in 1798, into the Kentucky Legislature by John Breckenridge. They were passed for the purpose of defining the strict construction view of the relative powers of State and Government.
There were nine in number. They declared that the Union was not based on the principle of unlimited submission to the General Government; that the Constitution was a compact, to which each State was a party as over against its fellow States; and that, in all cases not specified in the compact each party had a right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress. They proceeded to set forth the unconstitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts, and invited other States to join in declaring them void. No favourable response was evoked. In 1799 the Kentucky Legislature went further, and declared a nullification of a Federal law by a State to be the rightful remedy in cases of Federal usurpation. Upon these resolutions the doctrines of nullification and secession in the USA were later founded. Research Kentucky Resolutions
The Mazzei letter was a private business letter written by Thomas Jefferson to an Italian named Mazzei in 1796. The paragraph therein contained, to the effect that 'an Anglican monarchical aristocratical party' had sprung up in America, whose avowed object was 'to draw over us the substance, as they had already done the forms, of the British Government', did much toward arousing animosity against Thomas Jefferson, when the letter became public property in 1797. It had been translated into Italian, then into French, and finally appeared in an English paper. An allusion in it to men who had been 'Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council' was construed as an attack on George Washington. Research Mazzei Letter
The committee reported various devices during several years. William Barton, of Philadelphia, was appointed to submit designs. Sir John Prestwich, an English antiquarian, suggested a design to John Adams in 1779.
Combining the various designs of William Barton and John Prestwich, a seal was adopted on June the 20th, 1782. Arms: Paleways of thirteen pieces argent and gules; a chief azure; the escutcheon on the breast of the American eagle displayed proper, holding in his dextertalon an olive branch and in his sinister a bundle of thirteen arrows; and in his beak a scroll with the motto: E Pluribus Unum. Crest: a glory breaking through a cloud proper and surrounding thirteen stars. Reverse: A pyramid unfinished. In the zenith an eye in a triangle, surrounded with a glory proper, over the eye the words, Annuit Coeptis. Beneath the pyramid, MDCCLXXVI, and the words, Novus Ordo Seculorum. Research Seal of the United States
Aaron Burr was an American lawyer and politician. He was born in 1756 at Newark, New Jersey and died in 1836. After graduating from Princeton in 1772 he joined the army at the outbreak of the revolution and served in Arnold's expedition through Maine to Canada, afterwards rising to the rank of colonel. He was a Republican Senator for New York from 1791 until 1797 and later a member of the New York Assembly. He was Vice-President to Thomas Jefferson from 1801 to 1805, having achieved the same number of votes for President as Thomas Jefferson, but having not been chosen for President by the House of Representatives which preferred Thomas Jefferson. In 1804 he fought a duel with Hamilton which resulted in Hamilton being mortally wounded. After retiring from the position of Vice-President he allegedly plotted the formation of an independent state in the Southwest, and was arrested and charged with treason, but was acquitted and subsequently left the USA for Europe, returning some years later to obscurity and poverty. Research Aaron Burr
John Trumbull was an American jurist and poet. He was born in 1750 and died in 1831. In 1772 he published 'The Progress of Dullness', a satire on the prevailing mode of education in the USA. In 1773 appeared his 'Elegy on the Times', a poem on the Boston Port Bill and other colonial topics. In 1774 he published the first two cantos of 'McFingal', in which he described the American character and customs and satirized their extravagances. The popularity of this poem was enormous. With Humphreys, Barlow and Hopkins he wrote 'Anarchiad'. He was Judge of the Connecticut Supreme Court from 1801 to 1819.
John Trumbull was an American painter. He was born in 1756 and died in 1843. He is noted for his historical paintings, such as 'The Declaration of Independence', 'The Battle of Bunker Hill', and 'Death of Montgomery'. He also painted portraits of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Research John Trumbull
Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the USA. He was born in 1743 at Shadwell, Virginia and died in 1826. He was graduated at William and Mary College, studied law, and entered upon its practice and the care of his estate.
In 1769 he entered the House of Burgesses, and became active in the Revolutionary agitation; but his activity then and later was as a writer rather than as a speaker. He drafted the instructions to the Virginia delegates to the first Continental Congress, and was in consequence proscribed in Great Britain. As a delegate to the second Continental Congress he is of course chiefly remembered for his draft of the American Declaration of Independence. Soon after signing that document he left Congress to re-enter the Virginia Legislature, where he laboured strenuously for democratic reforms in the laws respecting the church and the descent of landed property.
While Governor of Virginia, 1779-1781, he was called upon to resist the British invasion of the State. He was again in the Legislature, and for a short time in Congress. In 1784 he went to France as Plenipotentiary, and there wrote his 'Notes on Virginia', and observed the outbreak of the French Revolution. At the end of 1789 Jefferson returned to America, and entered upon his duties as Secretary of State in George Washington's first Cabinet.
In the ensuing years he became the central figure in the Democratic-Republican party which was forming in opposition to the Federalists. Hamilton, ablest of the Federalist leaders, was also in the Cabinet, and between the two divergence of views developed into continual disputes. Jefferson finally resigned in 1794. The great party of which he was the head gave him, in 1796, almost as many electoral votes as were given to Adams. He became accordingly Vice-President. At this epoch he prepared a 'Manual of Parliamentary Practice', was president of the Philosophical Society, and drafted the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.
In the election of 1800-1801 Jefferson's party defeated Adams and the Federalists, but the defective provisions of the Constitution gave to Jefferson and Burr seventy-three electoral votes each, and there was no election; the House of Representatives accordingly took up the matter, and a bitter struggle ended in the choice of Jefferson for first place. In his Cabinet Madison was Secretary of State, Gallatin of the Treasury, Dearborn of War, Robert Smith of the Navy, and LincolnAttorney-General.
His administration was marked by the abolition of some usages of an aristocratic nature, by the Tripolitan War, the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark expedition, the Chesapeake incident, and the Embargo. President Jefferson was re-elected in 1804, and retired from office in 1809, but continued to be regarded as the adviser of the party. He was interested in later life in plans for education in Virginia, and superintended the planting of the University of Virginia. He died at Monticello in his native State. His political theories had great influence upon the public life of America. Research Thomas Jefferson
Abbreviations
Research Declaration of Independence
