The Declaratory Act of the British Parliament (1766)
Editor’s note: Great Britain’s powers that be tried their own hand at declaration crafting during the revolutionary era. Parliament’s aim was to put the colonists in their place — but their Declaratory Act only served to make them more unified against king and parliament over the longer haul. After repealing the loathed Stamp Act of 1765, Britain […]
‘Declarations of our humble opinion respecting the most essential rights and liberties of the colonists’ (Declaration of Rights of Stamp Act Congress) — Declaration of Rights and Grievances, October 19, 1765
Editor’s Note: These resolutions are described by the First Continental Congress as tantamount to “declarations of our humble opinion, respecting the most essential rights and liberties Of the colonists, and of the grievances under which they labour, by reason of several late Acts of Parliament.” The aim is “to procure the repeal of the Act […]
Declaration of Rights and Grievances, October 14, 1774
Editor’s Note: Well over a year and a half before our July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence was issued, our First Continental Congress came out with a declaration — of rights and grievances — that was prepared and sent to King George III in England, where it promptly fell upon deaf ears, and as a […]
New Hampshire Declaration of Independence (June 15, 1776)
Editor’s Note: With the inauspicious title of “Committee,” New Hampshire’s chambers declared independence “with the example of several of the most respectable of our sister Colonies before us for entering upon that most important step, of a disunion from Great Britain, and declaring ourselves free and independent of the Crown”, impelled as they were “by the […]
Talbot County, Maryland, Instructions for Independence (June 7, 1776)
Editor’s Note: If ever there was a declaration that shows how sentiments for independence at the most local level can drive its state delegates to do the right thing and join the other colonies in breaking from Britain, this is it. When the Second Continental Congress first considered, on June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee’s […]
Anne Arundel County, MD, Resolves of Independence (June 22, 1776)
Editor’s Note: Describing themselves as ‘Associators’ (which brings to mind the sundry clusters of voluntary associations that banded together in the years preceding the march toward revolution — formed to combat effective the increasingly onerous acts imposed by King and Parliament — this resolve for independence in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, aims in part to generate a […]
Charles County, MD, declaration to declare independence (June 1776)
Editor’s Note: A first glance at the grievances enumerated here, and the language and tone in which they are presented, and you might think that Charles County took its cue from our July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence — yet it was issued about a month before that famous document. Charles County, in the convention […]
Declaration of Independence – Town of Wrentham, Mass. (June 5, 1776)
Editor’s Note: This eloquent declaration was issued by the denizens of Wrentham, MA, who possessed a “zeal for the common rights of mankind,” and were dismayed that the same “spirit of oppression” that prompted them to leave Britain in the first place has now pursued them in their new habitat.” And so they declared themselves “independent […]
Gageborough, MA, Declaration of Independence from Britain (June 7, 1776)
Editor’s Note: Prizing both brevity and independence as virtues in composition, Gageborough, MA, joins the 1776 declaration bandwagon on June, 7, 1776 Gageborough, MA, Declaration of Independence At a meeting of the inhabitants of the town of Gageborough, agreeable to a resolve of the House of Representatives, of June 7, 1776, requesting the several Towns […]
Natick, MA, Declaration of Independence, June 20, 1776
Editor’s Note: Short and sweet, this declaration of independence from Britain, by the town of Natick, Massachusetts, preceded our July 4, 1776 Declaration by a little over two weeks. The concise document packs quite a punch, slamming Britain for “the glaring impropriety, incapacity, and fatal tendency… at the distance of three thousand miles, to legislate […]
