Independence

The Declaration of Independence, adopted July 4, 1776, and drafted principally by Thomas Jefferson, did two jobs. It listed grievances against George III, and it stated a political theory: that governments are instituted to secure unalienable rights, and that they derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Those rights, as the Declaration names them, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The document did not free the enslaved, include women in political life, or treat Native nations as equals. It still became the measuring stick later generations used against the country that claimed it.

Winning the war took years, French alliance, and a 1783 treaty. Governing took longer. The Articles of Confederation proved too weak; the 1787 convention in Philadelphia produced a new Constitution, ratified after a hard public argument recorded in the Federalist Papers (Madison, Hamilton, Jay) and the Anti-Federalist replies.