Approved on July 4th 1776 by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Signing took several weeks. The Declaration became America's first great statement of liberal principle, proclaiming that "all men are created equal" — though many of its signatories owned slaves. With rare exceptions, white women and black people were excluded from voting, as were many poor white men. Indigenous nations were ignored or exploited.
The Declaration was drafted by Thomas Jefferson and edited by Benjamin Franklin. John Adams claimed there was "not an idea in it but what had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before". Jefferson said the object was "not to find out new principles, or new arguments" but to express "the common sense of the subject" as "an expression of the American mind". In England, Jeremy Bentham dismissed it as "contemptible and extravagant". Samuel Johnson questioned colonial hypocrisy: "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?"
The Declaration has served as a kind of north star for Americans, especially in hours of strife. Frederick Douglass called it in 1852 "the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny", urging Americans to stand by its principles "against all foes, and at whatever cost" — remarkable given that he had escaped enslavement and was not included in its assertion of equality.
Abraham Lincoln described it at Gettysburg in 1863 as the foundation of the Union cause: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Franklin D. Roosevelt invoked it in 1943 when dedicating the Jefferson Memorial, linking Jefferson and the American Revolution to the second world war. Martin Luther King Jr quoted it at the March on Washington in 1963: "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed."
Lincoln observed in 1857 that the equality clause "was placed in the Declaration, nor for that, but for future use". Its authors "knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair land…they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack."
A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.