discussion questions The Declaration of Independence

March 31, 2018 | Author: Anonymous | Category: History, European History, Renaissance (1330-1550), Feudalism
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The Declaration of Independence Seminar/Discussion questions How is the Declaration’s idea about why governments are formed still important to our country today? How does the language in the list of charges (paragraphs 3-30) against the king appeal to people’s emotions? What do you think “tyrant” means in paragraph 30? Whose authority does Congress use to declare independence in paragraph 32? From whom did the declarations signers receive their authority to declare independence in paragraph 32? The Following is part of a passage that the Congress removed from Jefferson’s original draft: “He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.” Why do you think the Congress deleted this passage? “…[the] Declaration [gave] liberty not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence.” --Abraham Lincoln, Independence Hall Speech, February 22 1861. How would Lincoln respond to the statement that the Declaration of Independence grew in importance to become the embodiment of American democracy? “In this preamble however it is, that they attempt to establish a theory of government; a theory, as absurd and visionary, as the system of conduct in defense of which it is established, is nefarious. Here it is, that maxims [sayings] are advanced in justification of their enterprises against the British Government. To these maxims, adduced for this purpose, it would be

sufficient to say, that they are repugnant to the British Constitution. But beyond this they are subversive of every actual or imaginable kind of government…What they call self-evident truths, “All men,” they tell us, “are created equal.” This surely is a new discovery; now for the first time, we learn that a child, at the moment of his birth, has the same quantity of natural power as the parent, the same quantity of political power as the magistrate. The rights of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”—by which, if they mean anything, they must mean the right to enjoy life, to enjoy liberty, and to pursue happiness— they ‘hold to be unalienable.’ At the same time, to secure these rights, they are content that governments should be instituted. They perceive not, or will not seem to perceive, that nothing which can be called government ever was, or ever could be, in any instance, exercised, but at the expense of one or another of those rights.—That, consequently, in as many instances as Government is ever exercised, some one or other of these rights, pretended to be unalienable is actually alienated. ...But rather surprising it must certainly appear, that they should advance maxims so incompatible with their own present conduct. If the right of enjoying life be unalienable, whence came their invasion of his Majesty’s province of Canada? Whence the unprovoked destruction of so many lives of the inhabitants of that province? If the right of enjoying liberty be unalienable whence came so many of his Majesty’s peaceable subjects among them, without offence, without so much as a pretended offence, merely for being suspected not to wish well to their [rebellion], to be held by them in [custody]? If the right of pursuing happiness be unalienable, how is it that so many others of their fellow-citizens are by the same injustice and violence made miserable, their fortunes ruined, their persons banished and driven from their friends and families?...is it that among acts of coercion, acts by which life and liberty are taken away, and the pursuit of happiness restrained, those only are unlawful, which their delinquency has brought upon them, and which are exercised by regular, long established accustomed governments?” --John Lind, An Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress, London, 1776 pp 117-119

Contrast these remarks by a British lawyer to the theory of government advanced in paragraph 2 of the Declaration. How would you as a patriot answer these criticisms of the ideals expressed in the Declaration?

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