Declaration Project

Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (1775)

Editor’s note:  Thomas Jefferson took his first stab at bona fide ‘Declaration creation’ with this document. Issued on July 6, 1775 by the Second Continental Congress, this declaration presaged in some ways the Declaration that the same Congress would proclaim on July 4, 1776. Credit for this declaration’s more temperate final version is given to John Dickenson, […]