![]() Fifty-six Delegates signed the document created by the “Committee of Five”: Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, John Adams of Massachusetts, Robert Livingston of New York, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. The Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, with 12 of the 13 colonies voting in favor and New York abstaining. Delegate Richard Henry Lee of Virginia had earlier introduced a measure whereby the Congress resolved, “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.” Two days after Congress approved the resolution, it approved the formal document, the “Declaration of Independence,” on July 4, 1776. On this date, the Continental Congress agreed to declare independence from Great Britain. The American Revolution, which began in 1775, would continue until 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris.Image courtesy of Library of Congress A Member of the Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia became one of the first Senators from the "Old Dominion" state. The final document was passed on Jand ratified on July 4, 1776. His changes were believed to have been minimal, but, when the document went before the entire Continental Congress, the draft was more thoroughly changed by the larger body from Jefferson’s original text. The reason for this being that the French and Indian War, and the larger and more global Seven Years’ War of which it was a part, was expensive and the British Parliament chose to impose new tax regulations on its colonies in order to pay off their war debts.įurther, the French and Indian War had done much to galvanize the idea of an American identity and set up the basic military framework for what would eventually become the Continental Army.īenjamin Franklin primarily served as the editor of the Declaration of Independence. To the New Republic of the United States Transcribed by Mark Baughman from Parchment Paper from Original. The idea of American independence was indeed controversial in the 1770s, but was in large part driven by the aftermath of the French and Indian War, which was a significant reason why many of the founding fathers seemed to have such a complete shift in their opinion on the idea of being subjects of the Crown. A 2nd Declaration of Independence, By the 50 United States of America Signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2020. ![]() ![]() Joined by John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston and the primary author of the document Thomas Jefferson, this so-called Committee of Five was tasked with putting to words the feelings of many of the colonists at the time that independence from Britain had become necessary, something that might have been unthinkable just a few years earlier. The pro-Britain cartoon is usually attributed to Benjamin Franklin himself, and yet, just twenty two years after its publication, on June 11, 1776, a then-seventy-year-old Benjamin Franklin was appointed to a group that would go on to create the Declaration of Independence. One of the oldest known political cartoons, this image was originally designed to rally the American colonies to behind the British cause in the French and Indian War (1754-1763). ![]() On May 9, 1754, Benjamin Franklin published the political cartoon “Join, or Die” in the Pennsylvania Gazette, a Philadelphia-based newspaper that he owned.
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