AP® United States History · Unit 3 · Topic 3.4
The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration justifies breaking from Britain by stating that government rests on consent, then proving King George III broke that compact through a long, specific list of abuses.
The Declaration of Independence, adopted July 4, 1776, has four parts, each doing a different job. The preamble lays out the philosophy: people have natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and governments get their power only from the consent of the governed. The statement of wrongs is a list of roughly 27 grievances against King George III, things like dissolving colonial legislatures and quartering troops among civilians. The denunciation accuses the colonists' British brethren of failing to object. The final section formally declares the colonies free and independent states.
The real legal argument lives in the gap between the preamble and the grievances. Natural rights philosophy says a government that stops protecting people's rights can be replaced, but that is an abstract claim anyone could make. The long list of specific, documented complaints turns that abstraction into a court case: here is exactly how this king broke the compact, abuse by abuse. That is why the grievances take up most of the text. They are the evidence, not padding.
This is also why the Declaration is not law. It is a statement of political philosophy and a public justification for a decision already made, not a legal code with enforceable provisions, unlike the Constitution written eleven years later. And its principles were compromised from the start. Jefferson's draft blamed the king for the slave trade; Congress deleted that passage to keep southern delegates and slave-trading interests on board. The deletion shows the new nation choosing unity over confronting slavery, a tension the Constitution would also dodge and the country would spend generations fighting over.
Key terms
- Natural rights
- Rights people are born with, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that no government grants or can rightly take away.
- Consent of the governed
- The idea that a government's authority is valid only because the people agree to be ruled by it.
- Grievances
- The Declaration's list of specific abuses by King George III used as evidence that he had broken the social compact.
- Social compact
- An unwritten agreement in which people accept government authority in exchange for protection of their rights.
Watch it explained
- How it worksWalk me through the four parts of the Declaration and the job each part is doing.
- How it worksHow does the document build a legal case for revolution out of natural rights and consent?
- Common mistakeWhy isn't the Declaration of Independence part of American law the way the Constitution is?
- Going furtherWhat changes about the document once the passage attacking the slave trade is struck out?
Check yourself
End of topic.