1776–2026: The Declaration at 250

On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted for independence from Great Britain. Two days later, on July 4, it approved the final text of the Declaration of Independence — the date Americans have celebrated ever since. Copies were printed and carried by rider and ship throughout the colonies, read aloud in town squares to cheering crowds.

The Declaration's second paragraph is among the most famous passages in political history: "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."

It goes on to state that governments are instituted among men to secure these rights, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That idea — that rights come first, and government exists to protect them — runs straight through the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that followed.

Much of the Declaration is a list of grievances against the Crown. Among them were complaints about standing armies kept in times of peace without the consent of the colonial legislatures, and about rendering the military independent of and superior to civil power. Those concerns shaped the founding generation's thinking about militias and the citizen's role in defending a free state.

The Declaration did not, of course, settle every question. The promise that all men are created equal took generations of struggle to extend more fully. But Americans who fought to expand liberty repeatedly appealed to the Declaration's own words — proof of how strong a foundation it laid.

The semiquincentennial is a chance to reread it slowly. It takes only a few minutes, and it explains, in the founders' own words, why the nation exists at all.