The Declaration of Independence – July 4, 1776
Editor’s Note: In American Scripture, eminent scholar Pauline Maier characterizes the July 4, 1776 Declaration originally as “a workaday document” that came to be “in the grubby world of 18th century politics.” Maybe so, but it has long since come to be seen as “a statement of values that more than any other expresses not why we […]
Declaration of Independence — Reported Draft, Submitted by Committee of Five to Second Continental Congress (1776)
Editor’s note: This draft of our Declaration of Independence is the one submitted by the Committee of Five — John Adams of Massachusetts and Roger Sherman of Connecticut; Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and Robert R. Livingston of New York; and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia — to the Second Continental Congress, which then made significant changes. A […]
Declaration of Interdependence by the Socialist Labor Party (1895)
Editor’s Note: Crafted by Daniel De Leon, a leading socialist of the era and founder of the Socialist Labor Party of America, it is clear from this declaration that genuinely revolutionary change was sought. To De Leon, the recognition of interdependence was paramount — “throughout the civilized world the wage workers are asserting their interdependence—the […]
Declaration of Mental Independence (1826)
Editor’s Note: Robert Owen, a British utopian socialist, entrepreneur and industrialist who created humane working conditions and paid fair wages to his employees, moved in 1824 to the U.S., where he established a collective farm in New Harmony, Indiana (Owen is considered a father of the co-op movement). In this declaration, he issued a call […]
Negro Declaration of Independence, 1876
Editor’s Note: Crafted and issued on February 28, 1876 by the National Independent Political Union, headed by Garland H. White, a Baptist Minister and political activist from Weldon, North Carolina, this declaration was printed as a four-age leaflet in the immediate post-Civil War aftermath at a time when Black Americans were already becoming increasingly embittered […]
Declaration of Rights — Equal Rights Party (a.k.a. Loco-Foco), 1836
Editor’s Note: This Jefferson-inspired declaration was composed in 1836 in Utica, New York, where a convention of mechanics, farmers, and working men was held and led to the creation of the Equal Rights Party (also known as Loco-Foco), a segment of the Democratic party. Declaration of Rights, by Equal Rights Advocates and Anti-Monopolists of New York We hold […]
The Working Men’s Declaration of Independence (1829)
Editor’s Note: This declaration was authored in December 1829 by George Henry Evans, a ‘Jacksonian Democratic’ who condemned slavery and who railed against land monopolies, since he believed this practice prevented the realization of a democracy that represented equally all the people, rather than just the landed elite. Evans founded the first labor-centered newspaper, The Working […]
Farmers’ Declaration of Independence (1873)
Editors Note: An adaptation of our July 4, 1776 declaration, this document was published on July 4, 1873, a day that was known as the “Farmers’ Fourth of July,” since this had become a day for farmers and their families to gather and discuss (among other things) pressing political events. This declaration was the outgrowth […]
“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” – Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852
Editor’s Note: Black Americans did not celebrate the 4th of July until the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. In this no-holds-barred essay, Frederick Douglass, who became one of our great intellectuals, social reformers, and abolitionist leaders after escaping slavery, spells out why Independence Day was a mockery to […]
A Declaration of Gay Independence (2012)
Editor’s note: Tracy Baime prefaces her Declaration with this: “We know that the original signers of the Declaration of Independence didn’t really live by their own words. Very few people in this country’s early years actually had the full rights of citizenship. But those forefathers had a dream, and that dream has been slowly fulfilled […]
