Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'



Declaration of Independence   Listen
noun
Declaration of Independence  n.  (Amer. Hist.) The document promugated, July 4, 1776, by the leaders of the thirteen British Colonies in America that they have formed an independent country. See note below. Note: The Declaration of Independence of The United States of America When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers. He has made judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free People. Nor have We been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words


Share |




"Declaration of Independence" Quotes from Famous Books



... my children say if I deprive them of so much estate? These are difficulties, but not insuperable. I will do as much as I can in my time, and leave the rest to a better hand."[2] Stronger than all else, however, were the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Within the years to come these words were to be ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... paid; commendation of press; Centennial Resolutions at Washington Convention; establishing Centennial headquarters at Philadelphia; Republicans again recognize Woman in National platform; Miss Anthony and others present Woman's Declaration of Independence at Centennial celebration; eloquent description; History of Woman Suffrage begun; writes articles for ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... The Declaration of Independence did not better the aspect of the servant question. The Providence Gazette advertised in 1796 that a reward of five hundred dollars and the "warmest blessings of abused householders" would be given to any restoring ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... appealed to the "God of Battles," and are no doubt shouting on all hands that "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God;" and "Millions for defence; not a cent for tribute." Look out for their forthcoming declaration of independence; and why shouldn't they have their "Whereases" as well as your even Christian? The only trouble is that when monarchs fight nothing is settled as a rule; what one loses to-day, he tries to win back to-morrow, and so the masses are ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... and of adopting measures of resistance to the claims of the British government. The first great continental congress met on the 4th of September, 1774. Another congress assembled in May, 1775. This congress adopted sundry measures having reference to war, and finally made the declaration of independence, July 4th, 1776. The continental congress, the members of which were chosen by the state legislatures, conducted the affairs of the nation until near ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... think on thet, gentlemen! I, a white boy, and, 'cordin' to the Declaration of Independence, jest as good blood as the old Cunnel, bein' larned to read by an old slave, and that old slave a'most worked to death, and takin' his nights, when he orter hev been a restin' his old bones, to larn me! I'm d—d ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... of the diamond cross is a sparkling sapphire, while in front of the crown is a large ruby which was worn by the Black Prince. Well, Charley, my boy, I would rather go to Washington and look at our old copy of the Declaration of Independence than gaze for a whole day at this vast collection of treasure. There is more to be proud of in that old camp equipage of Washington's up in the patent office than in all the crown jewels of England—at least, so I think, and ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... know, that while we profess ourselves the subjects of Great Britain, and yet hold arms against her, they have a right to treat us as rebels, and that, according to the laws of nature and nations, no other state has a right to interfere in the dispute? But, on the other hand, on our declaration of independence, the maritime states, at least, will find it their interest (which always secures the question of inclination) to protect a people who can be so advantageous to them. So that those shortsighted politicians, who conclude ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... them put into practical effect. The late Cecil Chesterton, in his penetrating "History of the United States," showed how Andrew Jackson came to power by that route. Jackson, he said, was simply a man so naive that he accepted the lofty doctrines of the Declaration of Independence without any critical questioning whatever, and "really acted as if they were true." The appearance of such a man, he goes on, was "appalling" to the political aristocrats of 1825. They themselves, of course, enunciated those doctrines daily and based their whole politics ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... his great fortune and his head, and sided with his countrymen. His bold signature heads the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Riches and honours came to him. Year after year he was chosen governor ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... in this Republic were-and are—free men, heirs of the American Revolution, dedicated to the truths of our Declaration of Independence: ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... used chiefly for reference is placed in the appendix. Attention is asked to the amount of information which, by means of tabulations and other modes of condensation, is therein contained. Documents easily obtainable, such as the Declaration of Independence, are omitted to make room for typical and other ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of 'seventy-six' did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and the Laws let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor; let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... to escape, unobserved, on Saturday afternoon? And, even if she managed to get away, what of the inevitable return? Why not, for once, make a bold declaration of independence, and say, calmly: "Grandmother, I am going to Mrs. Marsh's Saturday afternoon at four, and I am going to wear my white dress." Not "May I go?" or "May I wear it?" but "I am going," and "I am going ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... pleasantly. He had been measuring the growth of various plants, during stated periods, and with different fertilizers, and was recording these facts in his neat handwriting, such as four years later was to appear on the famous Declaration of Independence. ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... large for their fall not to have been a fatal blow to the common cause. The most familiar case is that of the line of the Hudson, where the Bay of New York was held from the first by the British, who also took the city in September, 1776, two months after the Declaration of Independence. The difficulties in the way of moving up and down such a stream were doubtless much greater to sailing vessels than they now are to steamers; yet it seems impossible to doubt that active and capable men wielding the great sea power of England could ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... daughter is not the law of love: it is the law of revolution, of emancipation, of final supersession of the old and worn-out by the young and capable. I tell you, the first duty of manhood and womanhood is a Declaration of Independence: the man who pleads his father's authority is no man: the woman who pleads her mother's authority is unfit to bear citizens to a ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... these, had they been judicially weighed, must, it would seem, all have told powerfully against slavery. Not to raise the question whether the black was a man, with the inalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, the South's own economic and moral weal, and further—what one would suppose should alone have determined the question—its social peace and political stability loudly demanded every possible effort and ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... for the existence of slavery in their midst. As already stated, the introduction of slaves had commenced in 1620, 156 years before the declaration of independence, and the institution had under the patronage of the British government, insidiously grown up and strengthened itself, especially in the Southern States, which were adapted to negro labor. There it had ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton
... Assembly as a reformer. Mr. Bidwell was a man of very considerable ability. He was eloquent, and his ideas of civil and religious liberty were liberal. Born a British subject, during the period of the revolution, but too young to take a part in it, he remained in the United States, after the declaration of independence. It was not long before he attained an elevated station in Congress. His talents, however, coupled with his independence of spirit and love of truth made him enemies. A hostility so vindictive was raised against him by his political enemies, that he removed to ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... justice, of honor, of benevolence, with which from his earliest infancy he had hitherto walked through life, in the presence of all his brethren; a spear, studded with the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence; a sword, the same with which he had led the armies of his country through the war of freedom to the summit of the triumphal arch of independence; a corselet and cuishes of long experience and habitual intercourse ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... sprinkle the passers-by. Door-bells are rung and mysterious raps sounded on doors, things thrown into halls, and knobs stolen. Such sports mean no more at Hallowe'en than the tricks played the night before the Fourth of July have to do with the Declaration of Independence. We see manifested on all such occasions the spirit of "Free-night" of which George von Hartwig speaks so enthusiastically in St. ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... justices? The Congress has always had, and will have, that power. The number of justices has been changed several times before, in the administration of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson— both signers of the Declaration of Independence—Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... put my faith in God." In 1777 he was elected chaplain of Congress, and held the office (except when Congress met in New York) until the capital was removed to Washington. Francis Hopkinson, a distinguished signer of the Declaration of Independence, and other loyal sons of the country, were among those who ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... the imprisonment of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, in the following language: "Suffering and woe held terrible sway after Cornwallis and his army swept over the plains of New Jersey. Like others of the signers of the great Declaration, Richard Stockton was marked for peculiar ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... in the life of the third President; and the times and men of the republic's beginnings are here portrayed in a glowing and genial light. The author, in referring to the death-scenes of Jefferson, reports sentiments from his lips which contradict the current opinion that the writer of the Declaration of Independence was an infidel. We are glad to make this record in behalf of truth. Young people would find this book both entertaining and instructive. Its style is fresh and compact. Its pages are full of tender memories. The great man whose career is ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... the latter term, in the thought and speech of the day, is indicated by the comprehensive adjective "Continental," familiarly applied to the Congress, troops, currency, and other attributes of sovereignty, assumed by the revolted colonies after their declaration of independence. Each group had special commercial characteristics—in itself, and relatively to Great Britain. The islands, whatever their minor differences of detail, or their mutual jealousies, or even their remoteness from ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... he, leaning on his wooden gun, and looking around him persuasively. "'All men are born free and equal.' I s'pose you know that? It's put down so in the Declaration of Independence!" ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... demonstration of surprise on the part of the audience. He paused a moment, as if questioning the cause. Sir Mathew's aid was again called into service; reminding his lordship that his history was at fault, he added, in a tone most prudent, 'Not yet one hundred, my lord; 1776 marks the date of the declaration of independence.' Thanking Sir Mathew for the kindly hint, he apologized to his hearers, and proceeded. 'One hundred years, then have hardly rolled around, and we find that wonderful country presided over by a commoner—the choice of a free people, who raise him to that proud eminence once every eight years—vieing ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... than their generals had done by the sword. The Canadians seemed, content enough to wear the British yoke. In the spring, when a British fleet arrived with reenforcements, the American troops retired in haste and, before the Declaration of Independence had been proclaimed, Canada was free from the last of ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... of freedom and equality which were embodied in the bills of rights and the Declaration of Independence were destined in time to triumph over slavery, though not without bloodshed. It is interesting to trace their influence on the status of the slave. The doctrine of human rights found in the Declaration of Independence and in the bills of rights of the State constitutions, despite its metaphysical ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... adoption of a resolution against the importation of slaves into any of the thirteen colonies (April 6, 1776), Jefferson's fervid paragraph condemning the slave trade, and by implication slavery, was struck out of the Declaration of Independence in deference to South Carolina and Georgia, and a member from South Carolina declared that "if property in slaves should be questioned there must be an end to confederation." The resolution of Congress itself against the slave trade ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... all men to be free and equal, as saith our Declaration of Independence. Hence, every negro child that is born is as free before God as the white child, having precisely the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as the white child. The law which denies him that right does not destroy it. It may enable the man who claims him as a ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... Fifteenth Amendment stands, the rights of colored citizens are ultimately secure. There were would-be despots in England after the granting of Magna Charta; but it outlived them all, and the liberties of the English people are secure. There was slavery in this land after the Declaration of Independence, yet the faces of those who love liberty have ever turned to that immortal document. So will the Constitution and its principles outlive the prejudices which would seek ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... pictures over both sides of his slate, exulting in the squeaking sounds he produced. Still the teacher did not interfere. But when, tired of his scratching, he concluded the time had arrived for his grand demonstration, his crowning declaration of independence, he rose, carelessly shoved his books aside, strode to the door, intending masterfully to leave the room, and—discovered he was securely locked and bolted in. In a flash he was across the room, tearing at the lock of the second door with frantic fingers. That, too, had been made ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... sez Josiah. "It takes a man's mind to grapple with it; wimmen's minds are too weak to tackle it It is jest as it is with that word 'men' in the Declaration of Independence. Now that word 'men', in that Declaration, means men some of the time, and some of the time men and wimmen both. It means both sexes when it relates to punishment, taxin' property, obeyin' the laws strictly, etc., etc., and then ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... on three cheers (that joke was not intentional and I do not endorse it), and then the President, throned behind a cable locker with a national flag spread over it, announced the "Reader," who rose up and read that same old Declaration of Independence which we have all listened to so often without paying any attention to what it said; and after that the President piped the Orator of the Day to quarters and he made that same old speech about our national greatness which we ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... children. The opening of the first grammar-school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in church and state; the first row of trammels and pothooks which the little Shearjashubs and Elkanahs blotted and blubbered across their copy-books, was the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. The men who gave every man the chance to become a landholder, who made the transfer of land easy, and put knowledge within the reach of all, have been called narrow-minded, because they were intolerant. But intolerant of what? Of what they believed to be dangerous nonsense, which, if ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Robertson's History of America; Bancroft's History of America; Winthrop's Journal; Ramsay's American Revolution; Marshall's Life of Washington; with the Biographies of Penn, Jay, Hamilton, Henry, Greene, Otis, Quincy, Morris, the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, Sparks' American Biography, with the Lives of any other distinguished ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... dead, not the living, that I was about to speak. Nearly opposite the college Campus we find Witherspoon Street, named after that brave and good man who was president of the college in the days of the Revolution, and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Following this street a short distance, we come to the city of the dead. It is situated on an eminence, commanding a fine view of the surrounding country, embracing the village of Kingston, the distant spires of Trenton, and the blue range of hills ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... people want, or they will be replaced by men who will. We have the sentiments of the people, backed by the influence of religion, all tending to complete independence. Who's going to prevent it? We'll have a Declaration of Independence on Saint Patrick's Day, 1897, at latest. Who'll stop it? Mr. Gladstone? Why long before that time we'll convert him, and ten to one he'll draw up the document. What'll you bet that he doesn't come over to Dublin and read ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Safety; visited Washington at Cambridge; went to Montreal to do what he could for the cause of independence in Canada; presided over the convention which framed a constitution for Pennsylvania; was a member of the committee appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence and of the committee sent on the futile mission to New York to discuss terms of peace ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... in 1765. The first and last had been compatriots with Washington in the Congress of 1774, and Sherman, Livingston, Read, and Wythe, had shared the same honors. The two latter, with Franklin, Sherman, Gerry, Morris, Clymer, and Wilson, had signed the Declaration of Independence. Washington, Mifflin, Hamilton, and Cotesworth Pinckney, represented the continental army; and the younger members, who became prominent after the Declaration of Independence, were Hamilton, Madison, and Edmund ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... people of that State are now ready to cooperate with the National Government in bringing it again into such relations to the Union as it ought as soon as possible to establish and maintain, and to give to all its people those equal rights under the law which were asserted in the Declaration of Independence in the words of one of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... South America, since the declaration of independence, has suffered more from anarchy than Peru. At the time of our visit, there were four chiefs in arms contending for supremacy in the government: if one succeeded in becoming for a time very powerful, the others coalesced against ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... before sunrise he came into my bedroom, hair and moustache on end, and in full uniform, and attempted to read the Declaration of Independence to me—or maybe it was the Constitution—I don't remember—but I began to cry, and that ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... intelligence by professing that he "was most ignorantly and innocently made to hold the candle" to Hamilton's "game." In reality the public service Jefferson then performed was the most useful in all his long and fruitful career. But for this action, the Declaration of Independence, to the drafting of which he owes his greatest fame, might now be figuring among the historical documents of lost causes, like similar elaborate statements of principle made during the Commonwealth period in England. Had the national forces failed at the critical ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... whose attitude in this matter will make them a shame to their children, and a laughing stock to their grandchildren. We are proud to exhibit name and portrait of the great-grandfather who signed the Declaration of Independence, but our descendants will forget as soon as possible those asinine ancestors who are to-day so writing themselves down—in their attitude in regard to women teachers, married ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... of fact, France's help to America precipitated her own great crisis. The Declaration of Independence was the spark that set her ablaze. If the king was right in America he was utterly wrong at home. Lafayette went back from America convinced that "resistance is the ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... work was done by the Socialists, who quickly formed the Council of Workmen and Soldiers' Deputies and formulated the programme which has come to be the Russian Declaration of Independence. They consented to support the Duma if it adopted their democratic programme. There was nothing else for the Duma to do, and the main issues of the new Government were worked out before Tuesday morning, within twenty-four hours of the beginning ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... Lady Wellesley's father and mother. They are just now in deep mourning for Mrs. Caton's father, the venerable Mr. Carroll, who was upward of ninety-five years old when he died, and was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. I saw a lovely picture by Lawrence of the eldest of the three beautiful sisters, the daughters of Mrs. Caton, who have all married Englishmen of rank. [The Marchioness of Wellesley, the Duchess of Leeds, and Lady Stafford. The fashion of marrying in England seems to be traditional in this family. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... an American, and this separates her from the problem in a special way, because the drink question in America is entirely different from the drink question in England. But I wish the Duchess of Marlborough would pin up in her private study, side by side with the Declaration of Independence, a document recording the following simple truths: (1) Beer, which is largely drunk in public-houses, is not a spirit or a grog or a cocktail or a drug. It is the common English liquid for quenching the thirst; it is so still among innumerable gentlemen, and, until very lately, was so ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... in the days of the Revolution the people of the hills were of the best. All of them who could serve their country then, did it nobly and well. Some of them signed the Declaration of Independence and then returned to their homes with the dignity and courage of men in whose veins flowed aristocratic blood as well as that of adventurous freemen. There they waited for the recognition they expected and deserved. But the new-born republic was too busy and breathless to seek them out ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... the supposed 'Declaration of Independence,' on the model of the American one, is a gratuitous falsehood, which must have originated from some well-disposed for, or well-affected ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... Revolutionary war Smith was a farmer in Monroe, New York, and being prosperous enough to feel the king's taxes no burden, to say nothing of his jealousy of the advantage that an independent government would be to the hopes of his poorer neighbors, he declared for the king. After the declaration of independence had been published, his sympathies were illustrated in an unpleasantly practical manner by gathering a troop of other Tories about him, and, emboldened by the absence of most of the men of his vicinage in the colonial army, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... of the American Revolution expressly staked their lives, their fortunes and their "sacred honor" in signing the Declaration of Independence. They were noble gamblers, working for the welfare of ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... to show this "by the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence"; and after referring to the laws of two or three Colonies restricting intermarriage of races, and affirming that, though freed, colored persons were in all the Colonies held to be no part of the people, and declaring that "in no nation was this opinion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... said he would rather talk with me than hear an oration from Fisher Ames. Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, proposed to me when I was old enough to be your grandmother, and after Susan Decatur, the commodore's widow, had tried in vain to get an offer from him. Said I, 'Carroll, is this another Declaration of Independence? No,' said I, 'Carroll, I won't reduce the last signer, it may be, to obedience on a wife going blind. That would be worse slavery than George the Third's!' He said ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... grafted on Kosciuszko's personal observation of the American Declaration of Independence, but only in part. Kosciuszko's own intensely Polish soul speaks through the document—the anguish of a Pole at the sight of his country's wrongs, the cry of a desperate but undespairing patriotism, the breathing of the spirit ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... ungovernable, and must have vent. He resolved that he must again have control of a newspaper. He accordingly established The Constitution, a weekly paper, the first number of which made its appearance in Toronto on the sixtieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the United States—namely, the 4th of July, 1836. Its tone was such as might have been anticipated from the mood of its editor. It was more outspoken than the Advocate had ever been under his management, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... as showing the personal bitterness of politics here. It reminded me of Dr. Duche's description in his famous letter to Washington of the party which carried the Declaration of Independence through the Continental Congress. But it had a special interest for me as confirming the inferences I have often drawn as to Mr. Parnell's relations with his party, from his singular and complete isolation among them. I remember the profound astonishment of my young friend Mr. D——, of ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... not be denied that the documents, whether for piracy or for privateering, show a considerable variety of origins. Their authors range from a Signer of the Declaration of Independence to an Irishwoman keeping a boarding-house in Havana, from a minister of Louis XIV. or a judge of the High Court of Admiralty to the most illiterate sailor, from Governor John Endicott, most rigid of Puritans, to the keeper of a rendezvous ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... Stanton's claims in the first place, and not having signed it, he endeavored to give to this criticism a tone which should indicate, without its being specifically stated, that he had not written the former paper. He understood perfectly well that Mrs. Staggchase would regard his position as a declaration of independence, and indeed when the lady read the Observer that morning she smiled with an air ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... of the settlement of America, the frontier regions have exercised a steady influence toward democracy. In Virginia, to take an example, it can be traced as early as the period of Bacon's Rebellion, a hundred years before our Declaration of Independence. The small landholders, seeing that their powers were steadily passing into the hands of the wealthy planters who controlled Church and State and lands, rose in revolt. A generation later, in the governorship ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... on the committee to draft a Declaration of Independence; chosen president of the Constitutional Committee of Pennsylvania; sent to France as agent ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... snake on the first American flag, with the motto "Don't tread on me." It was on February 13, 1778, in the harbor of Quiberon, that the American flag received its first recognition by a foreign government, an incident represented by one of these paintings; thirteen years elapsed between the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the inauguration of the first President, General Washington, in 1789; and the Louisiana purchase from France includes the area prospectively covered by thirteen States, as soon as Oklahoma and Indian Territories ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."— (Declaration of Independence, from the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Emperor moves a national capital to pacify submerged discontent; and even in far Cathay, the mystery land of Marco Polo, immobile, phlegmatic, individualistic China, men have been waging war for the philosophy incorporated in the first ten lines of our Declaration of Independence. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... neighbor, in being surmounted by a small tower or cupola, in which a bell of moderate size hung suspended, permitted to speak only on such important occasions as the opening of court, sabbath service, and the respective anniversaries of the birthday of Washington and the Declaration of Independence. This building, thus distinguished above its fellows, served also all the purposes of a place of worship, whenever some wandering preacher found his way into the settlement; an occurrence, at the time we write, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... defeats of the Continental army wonderfully cooled many of the townspeople who but a few months before had vigorously applauded and saluted the glowing lines of the Declaration of Independence, when it had been read aloud to them by the Rev. Mr. McClave. One of the first evidences of this alteration of outward manner, if not of inward faith, was shown in the sudden change adopted by the community ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... City, in commemoration of the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, fired twenty-one guns, and a copy of the Declaration of Independence was read to the officers and crew of the Valley City by Captain J. A. J. Brooks. On the 5th, the Valley City got under weigh, and proceeded ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... Bunker Hill, and was cheered by it. He arrived on July 2 in Watertown, where the Massachusetts congress was sitting, and received a congratulatory address. He then pressed on to Cambridge, which he reached on the same day. On the 3d, a year and a day before the Declaration of Independence, and according to tradition under the great elm still standing near Cambridge Common, he took command of ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... grandfather, he became, like George Washington, the Father of his Country. Born of a father who could not write his name, he himself had written the Proclamation of Emancipation, the fourth great state paper in the history of the Anglo-Saxon race,—the others being Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If we accept the statement of Cicero that the days on which we are saved should be as illustrious as the days on which we are born, then Lincoln the Savior must always remain coordinate with Washington, the Father ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... he discovered that he was standing with folded arms staring blankly at the Declaration of Independence which, framed in walnut and gilt, adorned the wall of the sitting-room. How long he had been standing there he didn't know. He swung around in sudden uneasiness and examined the room carefully. Then he gave a deep sigh of relief. It was all right this time; this was his own house! ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... among the principal leaders in the political life of the nation. Fifty-eight per cent. of the chief national offices have been filled by them. Thomas Jefferson, author of the "Declaration of Independence," was a college man. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, who took such a prominent part in the framing of the Constitution of the United States, were college-trained men. Three-fourths of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were college ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... acquainted, and, excepting Madison and Marshall, that it embraced as much talent and knowledge as any Congress from 1795 to 1812, beyond which his personal knowledge did not extend. Among its members were Thomas McKean, signer of the Declaration of Independence and president of the Continental Congress, Thomas Mifflin and Timothy Pickering, of the Revolutionary army, and Smilie and Findley, Gallatin's political friends. ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... a long talk before retiring. The captain derived some satisfaction from the talk; it seemed to him that their daughter's declaration of independence had startled Serena somewhat. She even went so far as to admit that, in spite of Mrs. Black's explanations and gracious commendations, she, herself, had not been impressed by Miss Canby's guests. She and Gertrude would have an interview in ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Oration was our intellectual Declaration of Independence. Nothing like it had been heard in the halls of Harvard since Samuel Adams supported the affirmative of the question, "Whether it be lawful to resist the chief magistrate, if the commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved." It was easy to find fault with an expression here ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... women of to-day, who cast their ballots for Harding and Coolidge will be held by posterity to have signed our Second Declaration of Independence." ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... they go to smash in the Union with the same go-ahead velocity as they go to caucus, and seem to care as little about the matter. John Bull often calculates much more sedately and to the purpose than his restless offspring, who seem to hold it as a first principle of the declaration of independence that a man has a right to be blown up or ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... duplicate; we may have an inaccurate copy, but never an inaccurate duplicate. A facsimile is like the original in appearance; a duplicate is the same as the original in substance and effect; a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence is not a duplicate. A facsimile of a key might be quite useless; a duplicate will open the lock. A counterpart exactly corresponds to another object, but perhaps without design, while a copy is intentional. An imitation is always thought of as inferior ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... in New York City in 1895 and served continuously until his nomination for Governor of New York in 1912. All these years he was known as a Tammany man. During his campaign for Governor he made many promises for reform, and after his election he issued a bombastic declaration of independence. His words were discounted in the light of his previous record. Immediately after his inauguration, however, he began a house-cleaning. He set to work an economy and efficiency commission; he removed a Tammany superintendent of prisons; made unusually good ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... and evenings almost entirely to herself. These hours, heretofore taken up with functions and the discharge of obligations, dragged not a little during the week that followed upon her declaration of independence. Wednesday afternoon, however, was warm and fine, and she went to the Park with Snooky. Without looking for it or even expecting it, Blix came across a little Japanese tea-house, or rather a tiny Japanese garden, set with almost toy Japanese houses and pavilions, ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... exclaimed Miss Celia indignantly. "I thought you were such a good hand at history. Why, haven't you ever heard of our glorious Declaration of Independence, when the free states of America severed the hated yoke that bound them under the thraldom of the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... law at this date, it is neither vague nor general. It is to be noticed also, that the practical character of the Anglo-Saxon race rules in this first charter of its liberties. It is as business-like and clean cut as the Bill of Rights, or as the American Declaration of Independence when this last gets to the business ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... afterward attained to a fortune which he never could have foreseen even in his most ambitious dreams. John Adams, the second President of the United States and the equal of crowned kings, was once a schoolmaster and country lawyer. Hancock, the first signer of the Declaration of Independence, served his apprenticeship with a merchant. Samuel Adams, afterwards governor of Massachusetts, was a small tradesman and a tax-gatherer. General Warren was a physician, General Lincoln a farmer, and General Knox a bookbinder. General ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... should attempt to live on top of an adobe hill one mile from a small town which has been brought up on the Declaration of Independence, without previously taking a course in plain and fancy wheedling. This is the mature judgment of a lady who has tried ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... sense which no doubt Mr. Jefferson affixed to the term in his own mind, "all men are created free and equal." The "noble Oracle" himself had long before as explicitly asserted the natural equality of man. In 1739, thirty-seven years before the Declaration of Independence was penned, Lord Chesterfield wrote: "We are of the same species, and no distinction whatever is between us, except that which arises from fortune. For example, your footman and Lizette would be your equals ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... patent. A legislative body was first assembled during the reign of Charles II., in 1683; from which it will be seen that parliamentary representation was introduced into the American colonies at a very early date. The Declaration of Independence was made by the revolted colonies in 1776, and in 1777 the first constitution was adopted by the State of New York. In 1822 this was changed for another; and the one of which I now purport to state ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... Declaration of Independence" issued from those conventions startled and amused her, and she laughed heartily at the novelty and presumption of the demand. But, on returning home to spend her vacation, she was surprised to find that her sober Quaker parents and sister, having attended the Rochester meetings, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Thomas Chalmers, with Personal Recollections; Nature and Functions of Ruling Elders; Nature and Functions of Deacons; The Rite of Confirmation examined; Bereaved Parents Consoled; Union to Christ and His Church; The True Origin and Source of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, with a Continuation on Presbyterianism, the National Declaration, and the Revolution; Denominational Education; Pastoral Memento; Life and Character of Calvin; The Westminster Assembly; and the Unity of the Human Races proved to be ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... Reed is located; but I do know that his statements, so far as I have investigated them, are arrant falsehoods. He affirms that the American Republic is the handiwork of Episcopalian patriots; that more than two-thirds of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and an equal proportion of our generals, statesmen and presidents have been members of that denomination. As the sources of information regarding the religious views of most prominent Americans are shamefully meagre, I ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... that at the time of the Declaration of Independence there were three kinds of government in the colonies. Connecticut and Rhode Island had always been true republics, with governors and legislative assemblies elected by the people. Pennsylvania, Delaware, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... translation reads: "Who was he that did not know that knights-errant are independent of all jurisdictions, that their law is their sword, their charter their prowess, and their edicts their will?" This Spanish declaration of independence was frequently used as a slogan by the Romanticists. Espronceda is here making the quotation apply more particularly to ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... with him, a reply to the conciliatory propositions of Lord North, to be offered in the House of Burgesses. His youthful ears were stunned by the firing of the guns of the Virginia regiments drawn up in Waller's Grove, when the news of the passage by Congress of the Declaration of Independence of the Fourth of July, 1776, reached Williamsburgh; and, as he was beginning to walk, he was startled by the roar of cannon when the victory of Saratoga was celebrated with every demonstration of joy throughout the land. As a boy of seven he ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... are appended the Constitution of the State of New York as amended at the election of 1880, the Constitution of the United States, and the Declaration of Independence. ...
— Civil Government for Common Schools • Henry C. Northam
... from the vantage of a throne in the shoe-blacking parlor, it is a matter of pleased wonder to observe what the mind has found to do with the feet; nor is the late invention of shoe-polish (hardly earlier than the Declaration of Independence) the least surprising item. For the greater part of his journey man has gone about his businesses in unshined footwear, beginning, it would appear, with a pair of foot-bags, or foot-purses, each containing a valuable foot, and tied round the ankle. Thus we ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... man is unquestioned obedience and loyalty to the government, and it makes no difference whether he approves of that government or not." Thus Funston stamps the true character of allegiance. According to him, entrance into the army abrogates the principles of the Declaration of Independence. ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... of American Independence, West, remaining true to his native country, enjoyed the continued confidence of the King, and was actually engaged upon his portrait when the Declaration of Independence was handed to him. Mr. Morse received the facts from the lips of West himself, and communicated them to me ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... than those of France and America. It compares advantageously with the second par. of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) by the Representatives of the U.S., which declares, "these truths to be self-evident:—that all men are created equal," etc. It is regretable that so trenchant a state-paper should begin with so gross and palpable a fallacy. Men are ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... through all the tame obedience years of servitude had taught him, I could see that the proud spirit his father gave him was not yet subdued, for the look and gesture with which he repudiated his master's name were a more effective declaration of independence than any Fourth-of-July orator ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... allusion has just been made, and which formed a subject so full of interest and anxiety for Selwyn. He has time, however, to give his friend news of the political and social events of London. The American question was becoming more and more important, the Declaration of Independence had startled England in 1776, and in 1774 Charles Fox had finally left the Administration of Lord North, soon to become the leader of the Whig party and the champion ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... "Poor Richard's Almanac" for 1753. Franklin was born at Boston, Mass., in 1706. By his talents, prudence, and honesty he rose from humble beginnings to be one of the foremost men of his time. He was one of the committee of five chosen by Congress to prepare the "Declaration of Independence" which he with other patriots afterwards signed. Towards the close of the year 1776 he was sent as ambassador to the French Court, and remained in Europe some time. He returned home in 1785, and died at Philadelphia on ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... for the occasion. The address was a stirring denunciation of slavery and a rebuke to the nation for its pretentious devotion to liberty. The speaker was accused by a Boston paper of slandering his country and blaspheming the Declaration of Independence. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... book, suggested by Dr. Benjamin Rush and Franklin, and called "Common Sense," was published in 1776. Hildreth, writing of the year 1802, says that "Paine, instead of being esteemed as formerly, as a lover of liberty, whose pen has contributed to hasten the Declaration of Independence, was now detested by large numbers as the libeler of Washington." In 1795 the Aurora put out the following language, which seems to be that to which Hildreth alludes: "If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation was debauched by Washington; ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... opposite reasons: because it is a consummate expression of republican cultivation, of a fine old American home, and of the fine old American gentleman who built it, and whose descendants inhabit it to-day: Charles Carroll of Carrollton, last to survive of those who signed the Declaration of Independence. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... power, are essential to the existence of the Constitution of the United States. At the very commencement, when we assumed a place among the powers of the earth, the Declaration of Independence was adopted by States; so also were the Articles of Confederation; and when "the people of the United States" ordained and established the Constitution it was the assent of the States, one by one, which gave it vitality. In the event, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... not only puts a high value on British conservatism and a low one on the French Revolution and the Declaration of Independence, but declares that no change whatever in the mere structure of government can aid idealists and reformers in any way, and expects politics and parties to be much the same in the future as they are at the present moment. It is this attitude that Mr. Hobson has ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... should seem expedient. Any attempt to deny to the people of the State the right of self-government in a matter which peculiarly affects themselves will infallibly be regarded by them as an invasion of their rights, and, upon the principles laid down in our own Declaration of Independence, they will certainly be sustained by the great mass of the American people. To assert that they are a conquered people and must as a State submit to the will of their conquerors in this regard will ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... statesman who advocated and established the democratic principle and sentiment which essentially modified and moulded the political character and career of the Republic, and he was the author of that memorable Declaration of Independence which became the charter of free nationality. From 1606, when three small vessels, with a hundred or more men, sailed for the shores of Virginia under the command of Christopher Newport, and Smith planned Jamestown, to the last pronunciamento of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... democracy exists in the secret heart of the people, all the people, but it is a thing so new, so strange, so secret and sacred—the ideal of brotherhood—that it is unmanifest yet in time and space. It is a thing born not with the Declaration of Independence, but only yesterday, with the call to a new crusade. The National Army is its cradle, and it is nurtured wherever communities unite to serve the sacred cause. Although menaced by the bloody sword of Imperialism in Europe, it perhaps stands in no less danger from the secret poison of graft ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... people gave us, teaches us that we are men. The Declaration of Independence, which we behold them wearing over their hearts, tells us that all men are created equal. If, as the Bible says, we are men; if, as Jefferson says, all men are equal; if, as he further states, governments derive all just powers from the consent of the ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... will be frank. Fate HAS brought within my orbit a second chance, or what would have been a second chance had my heart not been so full of you. She was a girl well worth thinking about. When an employee introduces herself to you with a declaration of independence you may know that you have met with someone out of the ordinary. I am not speaking of these days of labor scarcity; it takes no great moral quality to be independent when you have the whip-hand. But in ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... Business, however, still sulked. The defiance to its principles was too flagrant to be passed over. If the "Clarion" pulled through, the press would lose respect for the best interests and the vested privileges of commercial Worthington. Indeed, others of the papers, since the "Clarion's" declaration of independence, had exhibited a deplorable tendency to disregard hints hitherto having the authority of absolutism ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... chuckle of his Yankee comrade? Should he now keep the gabardine of his forefathers, yes, and the credulities and ceremonies of a circumscribed and persecuted people? Why not absorb that wholesome ruddiness, denied him so long, that breathes of open American prairies, fair play, and the Declaration of Independence? ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... President, the Chancellor, Zimmermann and me, because, as Zimmermann frankly told me, they are afraid of attacks. Mueller on the 4th of July hung out the American flag in mourning and circulated copies of the Declaration of Independence charged with a bloody hand and a black cross. I have filed in vain affidavits with the Foreign Office, by people who say he has threatened to ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... strutting cockerel, that lordly and despotic bird stopped fairly in the middle of a crow, and his voice gurgled away in a spasm of astonishment. As for the old farmhouse, it grew so dim I could scarcely see it at all! Having thus published abroad my Declaration of Independence, nailed my defiance to the door, and otherwise established myself as a free person, I turned over in my bed and took ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... folks are fed on Plymouth Rock and the Declaration of Independence from the cradle to the grave. ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... acquisition of his instincts. There is preserved in a law library in New York the much-worn copy of the statutes of Indiana enacted in the first years of the existence of that State. It is stated that he learned these statutes by copying extracts from them—and from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Ordinance of the Northwest, included in the same volume—on a shingle when paper was scarce, using ink made of the juice of brier-root and a pen made from the quill of a turkey-buzzard, and shaving the ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... was bought by George W. Childs, Esq., for one hundred and fifteen dollars. A letter of Abraham Lincoln to General McClellan fetched nearly one hundred dollars. There were also signed autograph letters of all the governors of Pennsylvania, of all the Presidents, and of all the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The latter group is rarely met with complete; and three of the scarcest names alone sold for as much as all the others put together. There were signatures also of about forty generals of the Revolutionary war, of both the British and American armies, and including ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... Republican Court; reminiscences of boyhood in New England; my revolutionary grandfathers and other relatives, and such men as the last survivor of the Boston Tea-party (I also saw the last signer of the Declaration of Independence); an account of my early reading; my college life at Princeton; three years in Europe passed at the Universities of Heidelberg, Munich, and Paris, in what was emphatically the prime of their quaint student-days; ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... organization of republican National, State, and municipal governments, all constructed with reference to each, and each to all. This is the American programme, not for classes, but for universal man, and is embodied in the compacts of the Declaration of Independence, and, as it began and has now grown, with its amendments, the Federal Constitution—and in the State governments, with all their interiors, and with general suffrage; those having the sense not only of what is in themselves, but that their certain several ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... abundant fruit, to the great gain of the English government. All the appointments made by the crown were expected to be in harmony with the plans to be carried out in the colonies. From the settlement of Jamestown down to the breaking out of the war, and the signing of the Declaration of Independence, not a single one of the royal governors ever suffered his sense of duty to the crowned heads to be warped by local views on "the right of slavery." The Board of Trade was untiring in its attention to the colonies. And no subject occupied ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... few respects men are equal among themselves, e.g., before law courts or voting polls, it seems idle to trouble ourselves with a discussion on the equality of sexes. When, the American Declaration of Independence said that all men were created equal, it had no reference to their mental or physical gifts: it simply repeated what Ulpian long ago announced, that before the law all men are equal. Legal rights were ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... and art loom human sympathy and sacrifice as characteristic of Negro womanhood. Long years ago, before the Declaration of Independence, Kate Ferguson was born in New York. Freed, widowed, and bereaved of her children before she was twenty, she took the children of the streets of New York, white and black, to her empty arms, taught them, found them homes, and with Dr. Mason of ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... boyars, through whose intermediate agency he intended to assert and maintain his unlimited and supreme authority over the fallen city. But not alone did he possess himself of the private property of some of the principal persons who had rendered themselves prominent in the recent declaration of independence, but he demanded a surrender of a great part of the territories that belonged by charter to the public. He also further enriched himself, and impoverished the Novgorodians, by seizing upon all the gold and valuables to which he could, with any show of propriety, lay claim. He is said to have ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... King. The stadholderate over Holland and Zealand, to which the Prince had been appointed in 1559, he now reassumed. Upon this fiction reposed the whole provisional polity of the revolted Netherlands. The government, as it gradually unfolded itself, from this epoch forward until the declaration of independence and the absolute renunciation of the Spanish sovereign power, will be sketched in a future chapter. The people at first claimed not an iota more of freedom than was secured by Philip's coronation oath. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... law of nations? Verily not; for it is a system of rules deducible from reason and natural justice, and established by universal consent, to regulate the conduct and mutual intercourse between independent States. The Declaration of Independence? Far from it; because the prologue of that incomparable instrument recites: "We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all MEN are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... guests. Nothing from the outside world reached us but one newspaper, and that brought the startling news of the death of Adams and Jefferson on the fourth of July, just fifty years after their signing the Declaration of Independence. ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... that it was only early summer the Fourth of July, the second anniversary of the Declaration of Independence-and that the foliage was heavy and green on the slopes of the mountain. In this mass of greenery the desolate column was now completely hidden from any observer in the valley, and he believed that other crowds of fugitives would be hidden in the same manner. He felt sure that no ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... developed two striking pictures of the inconsistency of human nature. The author of the Declaration of Independence lays down at the very first this axiom: "We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." And yet this man, with members of others who signed the ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... The declaration of independence, which you celebrate every fourth of July, was received with mingled emotions of joy and sorrow. It was severing an old tie which had once been sweet; but yet it promised us, through the doubtful conflict, ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... the era that begins its cycle with the memorable year of 1776: the Declaration of Independence, the steam engine, and Adam Smith's book, "The Wealth of Nations." The Declaration gave birth to a new nation, whose millions of acres of free land were to shift the economic equilibrium of the world; the engine multiplied man's productivity a thousandfold and uprooted in ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... in the country, if they could only, like these sons and daughters of Dartmouth and Northampton, consent to serve. We wish some one would explain to us how a sewing machine is any more respectable than a churn, or a yard stick is better than a pitchfork. We want a new Declaration of Independence, signed by all the laboring classes. There is plenty of work for all kinds of people, if they were not too proud to do it. Though the country is covered with people who can find nothing to do, we would be willing to open a bureau to-morrow, warranting ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... or that it should be encouraged in the territories. It was looked upon as exclusively local in its character, the creature of State law, a relation of society that was to be regulated like any other municipal institution. It is not to be presumed that the authors of our government would, in the Declaration of Independence, assert the natural rights of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and then contradict this cardinal principle of the revolution in the Constitution. They found slavery existing in the Southern States; they simply left it as it was before the Revolution, with the idea that in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... Absalom. Tillie thought she could not bear it at all if Miss Margaret were sent away. Poor Miss Margaret did not seem to realize her own danger. Tillie felt tempted to warn her. It was only this morning that the teacher had laughed at Absalom when he said that the Declaration of Independence was "a treaty between the United States and England,"—and had asked him, "Which country, do you think, hurrahed the loudest, Absalom, when that treaty was signed?" And now this afternoon she "as much as said Absalom's ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... nation builders. No sooner had he made the Declaration of Independence a reality than the eager pathfinder turned his face towards the setting sun and, prompted by the instincts of conquest, he plunged into the wilderness. Within a few years western New York and Pennsylvania were settled; Kentucky ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... the larger part of the portraits, already hung up, are of men of high rank,—the Duke of Sussex, for instance; Lord Durham, Lord Grey; and, indeed, I remember no commoner. In one room, I saw on the wall the fac-simile, so common in the United States, of our Declaration of Independence. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by inheritance of the first class of New-England men, numbering in his family a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a President of the Continental Congress, and several other persons honorably distinguished in affairs. He is a native of Lebanon, in New Hampshire, where his father is still living—the centre of a circle bound to him by their respect for every public ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... you may lose some votes from the 'near-silk stocking' class, yet for every vote so lost hundreds will rally to you. That all men are created equal is still a truth held to be self-evident. The spark of the spirit that prompted the Declaration of Independence is always ready to be fanned to a flame, and the Democrats have furnished us the ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... room was a museum of gifts from great folks all over the world. But, best of all, he, with his devoted friend Anthony Drexel, had founded the Drexel Institute, which was their magnificent educational legacy to the historic town. I saw the Liberty Bell in Chicago—the bell that rang out the Declaration of Independence, and cracked soon after—which is cherished by all good Americans. It had had a triumphant progress to and from the World's Fair, and I was present when once again it was safely landed in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. I think the Americans liked me, because I thought their traditions reputably ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... diametrically opposed to each other as right and wrong, truth and error. The Bible declaration, that God hath made of one blood all the nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, so beautifully set forth in our Declaration of Independence, and teaching the great lesson of universal equality and universal freedom, forms the corner-stone of our institutions. But a plague spot is found in the opposing doctrine of caste and privileged classes, which finds illustration in ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... doctrine that the masses of the people were slaves by nature. By definition, they made slaves creatures void of will and personality, and they conveniently ignored them in matters of state. But Americans living in States founded in the era of the Declaration of Independence could not be good democrats and at the same time uphold and defend the institution of slavery, for the Declaration gives the lie to all such assumptions of human inequality by accepting the cardinal axiom that all men are created ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... the King's and Queens. At the time, they often reminded me of the two principal streets in the village I came from in America, which streets once rejoiced in the same royal appellations. But they had been christened previous to the Declaration of Independence; and some years after, in a fever of freedom, they were abolished, at an enthusiastic town-meeting, where King George and his lady were solemnly declared unworthy of being immortalized by the village of L—. A country antiquary once told me, that a committee of ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... such gross injustice, as to warrant the assumption that all their boasted virtues are pretence. I refer to their not liberating their slaves. They have given the lie to their own assertions in their Declaration of Independence, in which they have declared all men equal and born free, and we cannot expect the Divine blessing upon those who, when they emancipated themselves, were so unjust as to hold their fellow-creatures in bondage. The time will come, I have ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... may constantly detect in American writing the accents of democratic radicalism. Partly, no doubt, it was a heritage of the sentiment of the French Revolution. "My father," said John Greenleaf Whittier, "really believed in the Preamble of the Bill of Rights, which re-affirmed the Declaration of Independence." So did the son! Equally clear in the writings of those thirty years are echoes of the English radicalism which had so much in common with the democratic movement across the English Channel. The part which English thinkers and English ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... bad opinion of "the British," and he told the whole story of the Revolution, relating very wonderful and patriotic stories about the villainy of the enemy and the bravery of the Revolutionary heroes, and he even generously repeated part of the Declaration of Independence. ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... protect their homes and families, their property, their constitution and their laws, that had been guaranteed to them as a heritage forever by their forefathers. They died for the faith that each state was a separate sovereign government, as laid down by the Declaration of Independence and the ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... have been put together! what strings of tropes, metaphors, and allegories, have been used on this day! what varieties and gradations of eloquence! There are at least fifty thousand cities, towns, villages, and hamlets, spread over the surface of America—in each the Declaration of Independence has been read; in all one, and in some two or three, orations have been delivered, with as much gunpowder in them as in the squibs and crackers. But let me describe what ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... was either insult or wrong to call the Marshpees citizens, for such they never were, from the declaration of independence up to the session of the ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... But negro slavery, just in so far as it became an issue, tended to make the alliance precarious. The national organization embodied in the Constitution authorized not only the existence of negro slavery, but its indefinite expansion. American democracy, on the other hand, as embodied in the Declaration of Independence and in the spirit and letter of the Jeffersonian creed, was hostile from certain points of view to the institution of negro slavery. Loyalty to the Constitution meant disloyalty to democracy, and an active interest in the triumph of democracy seemed to bring with ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... elicits it groan of spiteful lamentation. Where are the united heart and crown, the loyal emblem, that used to hallow the sheet on which it was impressed, in our younger days? In its stead we find a continental officer, with the Declaration of Independence in one hand, a drawn sword in the other, and above his head a scroll, bearing the motto, "WE APPEAL TO HEAVEN." Then say we, with a prospective triumph, let Heaven judge, in its own good time! The material of the sheet attracts our scorn. It is a fair specimen of rebel manufacture, ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to live her own life, and was he, Wander, meaning this for a rebuke? But she knew that could not be. Honora would have kept her counsel; she was not a tattler. Karl was merely congratulating her on a piece of good fortune, apparently. It threw a new light on the declaration of independence that had seemed to her to be so fine. Was old-time sentiment right, after all? The ancient law, "Honor thy father and thy mother," did not put in the proviso, "if they are according to thy notion of what ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... which many of our soberest citizens protested. They alleged that as a doctrine it contradicted the fundamental principles on which our nation was built. Since the Declaration of Independence, America had stood before the world as the champion and example of Liberty, and by our Civil War she had purged her self of Slavery. Imperialism made her the mistress of peoples who had never been consulted. Such moral inconsistency ought not to be tolerated. In addition to it was the political ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer


Words linked to "Declaration of Independence" :   resolution


Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com