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English literature

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17 July 2006

The Declaration of Independence and the "Duty " to Rebel

Most scholars today approach the Declaration of Independence with the primary purpose of studying the political and philosophical meaning of the Preamble . At the time it was written , however , the accusations against King George III were viewed as having primary importance . Today the opposite is true . Political philosophers , professional historians and teachers and students of history view the Declaration of Independence as a philosophical document . The accusations against

King George III make up the greater part of the declaration , but most people would have a difficult time relating the accusations to an actual event or group of events that occurred in the pre-revolution colonies (Maier 123-4

It is clear that colonial loyalists to the crown recognized no need for the material of the Declaration of Independence beyond the list of alleged misconduct . The primary concern for the loyalist defenders of the crown was the accusations and they spent the bulk of their time responding to these charges . At the time , John Lind , author of An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress , wrote in 1776 "[o]f the preamble [to the Declaration of Independence] I have taken little or no notice . [t]he truth is , little or does it deserve (quoted in Maier 123 . Thomas Hutchinson , a loyalist historian and former Governor of Massachusetts wrote a pamphlet at the same time , Strictures upon the Declaration of Congress at Philadelphia , that took a similar approach to his defense of the king 's behavior . He wrote only a paragraph about the Preamble before addressing "the facts which are alleged to be the evidence of injuries and usurpations (quoted in Maier 123

A long history of presenting formal , written accusations against English monarchs by the English people exists . Between 1327 and the time of writing of the American Declaration of Independence the reigns of seven living English monarchs were brought to an end . In each of these cases "official statements of one sort or another were always explained and justified the change of regime (Maier , 51 . Essentially these statements were indictments against the king 's behavior . The implicit consequence of the acts specified in the statements was that the king deserved to be deposed solely because of his actions . There was no attempt to justify removing the king from the throne beyond the indictment . However the history of recognition of the misconduct of a king and consequently removing him from offices is a considerable distance from the duty of citizens to remove a government that fails to govern properly as Thomas Jefferson specifies in the Declaration of Independence

These documents affected the outlook of the American Colonists and were used in the process of declaring intendance . Chief among the statements that indicted English kings , based on its influence in the Colonies is the English Declaration of Rights of 1689 . This document ended the reign of James II and established the reign of...

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