Presentments by the Grand Jury of Cheraws District, in South-Carolina (May 20, 1776)
Editor’s Note: If ever a compelling case can be made that the Declaration of July 4, 1776 was in fact evocative of declarations at the state and local level that preceded it, one need look no further than the opening section of this at-times rather poetic ‘presentment’ issued in May 1776 in the Cheraws District […]
Buckingham County, VA, Declaration of Independence (June 14, 1776)
Editor’s Note: This declaration of independence was one of scores that was issued by states and localities in the months following the publication of Thomas Paine’s influential and rabble-rousing Common Sense. These declarations in turn informed our July 4, 1776 document. This statement, or declaration, was published in the Virginia Gazette on June 14, 1776, and was likely issued […]
Declaration of Czecho-Slovak Independence (1918)
Editor’s Note: On October 18, 1918, from their base in Paris, the Czecho-Slovak Provisional Government issued a declaration of independence. The declaration came out after the historic ‘Pittsburgh Agreement,’ in which key Czech and Slovak expatriates, who convened shortly after World War I, and in the face of the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, agreed […]
Palestinian Declaration of Independence (1988)
Editor’s note: Composed by poet Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian Declaration of Independence was approved at an Algiers gathering of the Palestinian National Council on November 15, 1988. The declaration calls for an independent State of Palestine, which is described in the document as “the state of Palestinians wherever they may be.” Declaration of Independence (1988) (UN Doc) […]
Declaration of Independence, Argentina – July 9, 1816
Editor’s note: Argentina’s struggle for independence from Spain had begun a decade before the adoption of this Declaration of Independence, approved on July 9, 1816, six years after the Argentine War for Independence was launched and led by the likes of Juan Jose Castelli, Manuel Belgrano, and Jose de San Martin. The declaration represented a complete break […]
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 […]
