I have sold items to coutries such as Afghanistan * Albania * Algeria * American Samoa (US) * Andorra * Angola * Anguilla (GB) * Antigua and Barbuda * Argentina * Armenia * Aruba (NL) * Australia * Austria * Azerbaijan * Bahamas * Bahrain * Bangladesh * Barbados * Belarus * Belgium * Belize * Benin * Bermuda (GB) * Bhutan * Bolivia * Bonaire (NL)  * Bosnia and Herzegovina * Botswana * Bouvet Island (NO) * Brazil * British Indian Ocean Territory (GB) * British Virgin Islands (GB) * Brunei * Bulgaria * Burkina Faso * Burundi * Cambodia * Cameroon * Canada * Cape Verde * Cayman Islands (GB) * Central African Republic * Chad * Chile * China * Christmas Island (AU) * Cocos Islands (AU) * Colombia * Comoros * Congo * Democratic Republic of the Congo * Cook Islands (NZ) * Coral Sea Islands Territory (AU) * Costa Rica * Croatia * Cuba * Curaçao (NL)  * Cyprus * Czech Republic * Denmark * Djibouti * Dominica * Dominican Republic * East Timor * Ecuador * Egypt * El Salvador * Equatorial Guinea * Eritrea * Estonia * Ethiopia * Falkland Islands (GB) * Faroe Islands (DK) * Fiji Islands * Finland * France * French Guiana (FR) * French Polynesia (FR) * French Southern Lands (FR) * Gabon * Gambia * Georgia * Germany * Ghana * Gibraltar (GB) * Greece * Greenland (DK) * Grenada * Guadeloupe (FR) * Guam (US) * Guatemala * Guernsey (GB) * Guinea * Guinea-Bissau * Guyana * Haiti * Heard and McDonald Islands (AU) * Honduras * Hong Kong (CN) * Hungary * Iceland * India * Indonesia * Iran * Iraq * Ireland * Isle of Man (GB) * Israel * Italy * Ivory Coast * Jamaica * Jan Mayen (NO) * Japan * Jersey (GB) * Jordan * Kazakhstan * Kenya * Kiribati * Kosovo * Kuwait * Kyrgyzstan * Laos * Latvia * Lebanon * Lesotho * Liberia * Libya * Liechtenstein * Lithuania * Luxembourg * Macau (CN) * Macedonia * Madagascar * Malawi * Malaysia * Maldives * Mali * Malta * Marshall Islands * Martinique (FR) * Mauritania * Mauritius * Mayotte (FR) * Mexico * Micronesia * Moldova * Monaco * Mongolia * Montenegro * Montserrat (GB) * Morocco * Mozambique * Myanmar * Namibia * Nauru * Navassa (US) * Nepal * Netherlands * New Caledonia (FR) * New Zealand * Nicaragua * Niger * Nigeria * Niue (NZ) * Norfolk Island (AU) * North Korea * Northern Cyprus * Northern Mariana Islands (US) * Norway * Oman * Pakistan * Palau * Palestinian Authority * Panama * Papua New Guinea * Paraguay * Peru * Philippines * Pitcairn Island (GB) * Poland * Portugal * Puerto Rico (US) * Qatar * Reunion (FR) * Romania * Russia * Rwanda * Saba (NL)  * Saint Barthelemy (FR) * Saint Helena (GB) * Saint Kitts and Nevis * Saint Lucia * Saint Martin (FR) * Saint Pierre and Miquelon (FR) * Saint Vincent and the Grenadines * Samoa * San Marino * Sao Tome and Principe * Saudi Arabia * Senegal * Serbia * Seychelles * Sierra Leone * Singapore * Sint Eustatius (NL)  * Sint Maarten (NL)  * Slovakia * Slovenia * Solomon Islands * Somalia * South Africa * South Georgia (GB) * South Korea * South Sudan * Spain * Sri Lanka * Sudan * Suriname * Svalbard (NO) * Swaziland * Sweden * Switzerland * Syria * Taiwan * Tajikistan * Tanzania * Thailand * Togo * Tokelau (NZ) * Tonga * Trinidad and Tobago * Tunisia * Turkey * Turkmenistan * Turks and Caicos Islands (GB) * Tuvalu * U.S. Minor Pacific Islands (US) * U.S. Virgin Islands (US) * Uganda * Ukraine * United Arab Emirates * United Kingdom * United States * Uruguay * Uzbekistan * Vanuatu * Vatican City * Venezuela * Vietnam * Wallis and Futuna (FR) * Yemen * Zambia * Zimbabwe and major cities such as Tokyo, Yokohama, New York City, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Mexico City, Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, Manila, Mumbai, Delhi, Jakarta, Lagos, Kolkata, Cairo, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Shanghai, Karachi, Paris, Istanbul, Nagoya, Beijing, Chicago, London, Shenzhen, Essen, Düsseldorf, Tehran, Bogota, Lima, Bangkok, Johannesburg, East Rand, Chennai, Taipei, Baghdad, Santiago, Bangalore, Hyderabad, St Petersburg, Philadelphia, Lahore, Kinshasa, Miami, Ho Chi Minh City, Madrid, Tianjin, Kuala Lumpur, Toronto, Milan, Shenyang, Dallas, Fort Worth, Boston, Belo Horizonte, Khartoum, Riyadh, Singapore, Washington, Detroit, Barcelona,, Houston, Athens, Berlin, Sydney, Atlanta, Guadalajara, San Francisco, Oakland, Montreal, Monterey, Melbourne, Ankara, Recife, Phoenix/Mesa, Durban, Porto Alegre, Dalian, Jeddah, Seattle, Cape Town, San Diego, Fortaleza, Curitiba, Rome, Naples, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Tel Aviv, Birmingham, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Manchester, San Juan, Katowice, Tashkent, Fukuoka, Baku, Sumqayit, St. Louis, Baltimore, Sapporo, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Taichung, Warsaw, Denver, Cologne, Bonn, Hamburg, Dubai, Pretoria, Vancouver, Beirut, Budapest, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Campinas, Harare, Brasilia, Kuwait, Munich, Portland, Brussels, Vienna, San Jose, Damman , Copenhagen, Brisbane, Riverside, San Bernardino, Cincinnati and Accra

1The 1976 Silver Dollar Coin is the Bicentennial Eisenhower Dollar, minted from 1975–1976 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of American independence. The clad version, made of a copper-nickel alloy, is common and generally worth its face value in circulated condition. Higher values are possible for uncirculated or Proof versions, depending on the mint and variety. 
Bicentennial dollar coin overview
Obverse: Features a portrait of Dwight D. Eisenhower. The date is shown as "1776–1976".
Reverse: An image of the Liberty Bell superimposed on the moon, designed by Dennis R. Williams.
Composition: The copper-nickel clad version consists of outer layers of 75% copper and 25% nickel over a pure copper core.
Mint marks: Bicentennial clad dollars were produced at the Philadelphia (no mint mark) and Denver ("D") mints. Proof coins with an "S" mint mark were made in San Francisco.
Varieties: Coins can be distinguished as Type 1 or Type 2, based on the appearance of the lettering on the reverse.
Type 1: The lettering on the reverse is blockier and more sans-serif in style.
Type 2: The lettering is more refined, with distinct serifs. All 1976 Proof sets contained Type 2 coins. 
Value of 1976 clad Eisenhower dollars 
The value of a 1976 clad Eisenhower dollar depends on its condition, mint mark, and variety. 
Clad coins for circulation (P or D mint)
These coins were released into circulation in 1975 and 1976, and over 220 million were struck. 
In circulated condition: The value is typically its face value of $1.
In uncirculated condition: The value is slightly higher to collectors, particularly for the scarcer Type 2 version from the Philadelphia mint. 
Clad Proof coins (S mint)
Proof coins were specially made for collectors and bear the "S" mint mark from the San Francisco Mint.
Uncirculated Type 1 (S): Littleton Coin Company lists this prized Variety 1 issue for collectors.
Clad Proof Type 2 (S): This coin has a deep cameo finish and is more valuable than its circulated counterparts. 
What to look for
To help determine a more accurate value for a specific coin, you should:
Check for a mint mark: Look on the front side of the coin, below Eisenhower's bust. The presence of a "D" or "S" mark will identify the mint. No mark means it was minted in Philadelphia.
Examine the condition: The more a coin has been handled and circulated, the less it is typically worth to a collector.
Identify the variety: Look closely at the lettering on the reverse side to determine if it is a Type 1 or Type 2 coin. 

Dollar coin (United States)

    Article
    Talk

    Read
    Edit
    View history

Tools

Appearance
Text

    Small
    Standard
    Large

Width

    Standard
    Wide

Color (beta)

    Automatic
    Light
    Dark

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A modern "Golden" dollar

The dollar coin is a United States coin with a face value of one United States dollar. Dollar coins have been minted in the United States in gold, silver, and base metal versions. Dollar coins were first minted in the United States in 1794.

Dollar coins have almost never been popular in circulation since their inception. Despite efforts by the U.S. government to promote their use to save the cost of printing one dollar bills, the Anthony Dollar, the Sacagawea Dollar and the Presidential Dollar Series are all seldom seen in circulation, since most Americans prefer to use the dollar bill.[1] For this reason, since December 11, 2011, the Mint has not produced dollar coins for general circulation, and all dollar coins produced after that date have been specifically for collectors. These collector coins can be ordered directly from the Mint, while pre-2012 circulation dollars can be obtained from most U.S. banks.[2][3]
Popularity
An AirBART machine that accepts dollar coins

One-dollar coins, both in silver and base-metal forms, have never been popular in circulation from the 19th century to the present, despite several attempts to increase their usage since the 1970s, for various reasons:

    From 1792 to 1803 the $1 coin compared favorably with the Spanish dollar and was accepted at par for overseas purchases. Its coinage was suspended in 1803 since it did not remain long in domestic circulation.
    During the 1850s California gold rush the silver dollar of 371.25 grains (24.057 g) was internationally worth more than the gold dollar of 23.22 grains (1.505 g) and was therefore exported (see Gresham's law). Likewise, the gold dollar of 1849–1889 was a tiny coin measuring only 13–15 millimetres (0.51–0.59 in) in diameter, making it difficult to grasp and easy to lose, a serious problem when one dollar was about a day's wage.
    While substantial numbers of silver Morgan dollars were minted from 1878 pursuant to the Bland-Allison Act, there also existed an option to hold silver certificates fully backed by silver dollars kept in reserves. The majority of citizens, therefore, opted to use silver certificates while most silver dollars languished inside treasury and bank vaults.

Succeeding base-metal $1 coins minted from 1971 onwards did not circulate widely as well, the most important reason being the continued circulation of the $1 bill.[4]

    The copper-nickel clad Eisenhower dollar minted from 1971 to 1978 was not popular due to its large size relative to its gradually diminishing value;
    The smaller-sized Susan B. Anthony dollar coin minted from 1979 to 1981 and again in 1999, was highly unpopular because they were often mistaken for quarters, due to their nearly equal size, color and reeded edge;
    Sacagawea dollars and Presidential dollar coins have been issued since 2000. These coins have a distinct weight, gold color, and smooth edge. Despite these remedies, golden dollars continue to circulate poorly since the $1 bill continues to be produced.

The non-acceptance of $1 coins in the United States contrasts with the practice in most other developed countries where denominations of similar value exist only in coins; for example, the lowest-value pound sterling, euro and Japanese yen notes are the £5 note, €5 note and 1000 yen note respectively; each is worth more than US$5. These high-value coins (such as the €2 coin, Canadian "toonie" or 5 Swiss francs) have largely succeeded because of the removal (or lack) of their corresponding paper issues,[5] whereas the U.S. government has taken no action to remove the $1 bill. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has stated that discontinuing the dollar bill in favor of the dollar coin would save the U.S. government approximately $5.5 billion over thirty years primarily through seigniorage.[5][6] The Federal Reserve has refused to order the coin from the mint for distribution citing a lack of demand, according to ex-Mint director Philip Diehl in November 2012.[7]

Whatever the reason, a U.S. Mint official claimed in a November 2012 meeting that most of the 2.4 billion dollar coins minted in the previous five years were not in circulation.[8]

In 2019, the GAO re-estimated the cost of replacing the $1 bill and found for the first time that it would cause the government to lose between $611 million and $2.6 billion because physical money was being used less, resulting in dollar bills remaining in circulation longer compared to the 2011 analysis.[9]
Mint marks

The list below is of all mint marks used on the dollar coin:

    C: Charlotte, North Carolina (gold coins only; 1838–1861).
    CC: Carson City, Nevada (1870–1893).
    D: Dahlonega, Georgia (gold coins only; 1838–1861).
    D: Denver, Colorado (1906 to date).
    O: New Orleans, Louisiana (1838–1861; 1879–1909).
    P: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (produced from 1793 to date, mint mark introduced in 1979).
    S: San Francisco, California (1854 to date).
    W: West Point, New York (1984 to date).

History

The term “dollar” comes originally from a tolar minted in the Kingdom of Bohemia since 1520s which standardized its size and silver content in Europe. Other tolars were later minted in many European countries (i.e. Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Spain …).
Bohemia, Joachimsthaler 1525. Obverse, picturing St. Joachim.
Bohemia, Joachimsthaler 1525. Reverse, picturing the Bohemian Lion.
Early dollar coins
The Spanish dollar was the basis of the United States silver dollar.

Before the American Revolutionary War, coins from many European nations circulated freely in the American colonies, as did coinage issued by the various colonies. Chief among these were the Spanish silver dollar coins (also called pieces of eight or eight reales) minted in Mexico and other colonies with silver mined from North, Central and South American mines. These coins, along with others of similar size and value, were in use throughout the colonies, and later the United States, and were legal tender until 1857.

In 1776, several thousand pewter Continental Currency coins were minted. Although unconfirmed, many numismatists believe these to have been pattern coins of a proposed silver dollar coin authorized by the Continental Congress to prop up the rapidly failing Continental Currency—the first attempt by the fledgling U.S. at paper currency.[10] Several examples were also struck in brass and silver, but a circulating coin was not produced, in large part because of the financial difficulties of running the Revolutionary War. The Continental Currency dollar coin bears the date 1776, and while its true denomination is not known, it is generally the size of later dollars, and the name has stuck. The failure of the Continental Currency exacerbated a distrust of paper money among both politicians and the population at large. The letters of Thomas Jefferson indicate that he wished the United States to eschew paper money and instead mint coins of similar perceived value and worth to those foreign coins circulating at the time.[11]
1795 Flowing Hair dollar
1795 Flowing Hair dollar

The Coinage Act of 1792 authorized the production of dollar coins from silver. The United States Mint produced silver dollar coins from 1794 to 1803, then ceased regular production of silver dollars until 1836. The first silver dollars, precisely 1,758 of them, were coined on October 15, 1794, and were immediately delivered to Mint Director David Rittenhouse for distribution to dignitaries as souvenirs.[12] Thereafter, until 1804, they were struck in varying quantities. There are two obverse designs: Flowing Hair (1794–1795) and Draped Bust (1795–1804). There are also two reverse designs used for the Draped Bust variety: small eagle (1795–1798) and heraldic eagle (1798–1804). Original silver dollars from this period are highly prized by coin collectors and are exceptionally valuable, and range from fairly common to incredibly rare. Because of the early practice of hand engraving each die, there are dozens of varieties known for all dates between 1795 and 1803.

It is also one of only two denominations (the other being the cent) minted every year from its inception during the first decade of mint operation. Though a new Spanish dollar or 8-real minted after 1772 theoretically contained 417.7 grains of silver of fineness 130/144 (or 377.1 grains fine silver), reliable assays of the period confirmed a fine silver content of 370.95 grains (24.037 g) for the average Spanish dollar in circulation. [13] The new US silver dollar of 371.25 grains (24.057 g) therefore compared favorably and was received at par with the Spanish dollar for foreign payments, and in 1803 President Thomas Jefferson halted new silver dollars made out of the US Mint's limited resources since it failed to stay in domestic circulation. The less-exportable half dollar therefore became the largest US-made silver coin in domestic use for the next several decades. It was only after Mexican independence in 1821 when their peso's fine silver content of 377.1 grains was firmly upheld, which the US later had to compete with using a heavier Trade dollar coin of 378.0 grains (24.49 g) fine silver.
The 1804 dollar
Main article: 1804 dollar
The 1804 silver dollar

The 1804 dollar is one of the rarest and most famous coins in the world.[14] Its creation was the result of a simple bookkeeping error, but its status as a highly prized rarity has been established for nearly a century and a half. The silver dollars reported by the mint as being struck in 1804 were dated 1803. (With die steel being very expensive in the early 19th century, dies were used until they were no longer in working condition. This is why many early U.S. coins exhibit various kinds of die cracks, occlusions, cuds, clash marks, and other late-state die wear. Nearly every coin the U.S. struck from 1793 to 1825 has an example that was struck in a year other than that which it bears.) No dollars bearing the date 1804 were ever struck in 1804, though this was unknown to mint officials at the time the 1804 dollar came to be.

The 1804 silver dollar was actually produced in 1834, when the U.S. Department of State decided to produce a set of U.S. coins to be used as gifts to rulers in Asia in exchange for trade advantages. Since 1804 was the last recorded year of mintage for both the dollar and $10 Eagle, it was decided that the set would contain examples of those coins dated 1804, as well as the other denominations currently being produced. Mint officials, not realizing that the 19,000+ dollars recorded as being produced in 1804 were all dated 1803, proceeded to make new dies bearing the date 1804. Only 15 silver dollars with the date of 1804 are known to exist; in 1999, one of them sold at auction for more than $4 million. There are 8 Class I dollars, struck in 1834 for the aforementioned sets, 1 Class II dollar, struck over an 1857 Swiss Shooting Thaler (and now residing in the U.S. Coin Collection at the Smithsonian Institution), and 6 Class III dollars, struck surreptitiously sometime between 1858 and 1860 to meet collector demand for the coin.
Seated Liberty dollar (1836–1873)
Main article: Seated Liberty dollar
The Seated liberty dollar
The Seated liberty dollar

Seated Liberty dollars were introduced in 1836 and were minted in lesser quantities than the sparsely minted Gobrecht dollar that preceded it. The dollars were used in general circulation until 1873. The production of large numbers of U.S. gold coins (The first $1 and $20 gold coins were minted in 1849) from the new California mines lowered the price of gold, thereby increasing the value of silver. By 1853, the value of a U.S. silver dollar contained in gold terms, $1.04 of silver, equal to $39.31 today. With the Mint Act of 1853, all U.S. silver coins, except for the U.S. silver dollar and new 3-cent coin, were reduced by 6.9% as of weight with arrows on the date to denote reduction. The U.S. silver dollar continued to be minted in very small numbers mainly as a foreign trade coin with the Orient.

The international trading partners did not like the fact that U.S. coins were reduced in weight. The use of much more common half dollars became problematic since merchants would have to separate higher value pre-1853 coins from the newer reduced ones. From 1853 onward, trade with Asia was typically done with Mexican coins that kept their weight and purity in the 19th century. This ended in 1874 when the price of silver dropped so that a silver dollar had less than $1.00 worth of silver in it (because of huge amounts of silver coming from the Nevada Comstock Lode mines). By 1876, all silver coins were being used as money and by 1878, gold was at par with all U.S. paper dollars. Beginning in 1878, huge amounts of the Morgan silver dollars were produced but few were used as money. The size was too large to carry on business so Silver Certificates were used instead. The mint made the coins, placed them in their vaults, and issued the Silver Certificates instead. This is the reason so many Morgan and Peace dollars can be purchased in AU or UNC condition (near perfect) since they sat in bank or U.S. Treasury vaults most of the time.

Each Seated Liberty dollar is composed of 0.77344 troy oz of silver. They were minted at Philadelphia, New Orleans, Carson City, and San Francisco. A silver dollar would be worth $1 in silver if the price of silver is $1.29 per troy ounce. The current silver price (January 29, 2021) is $27.03 per troy ounce so a silver dollar is worth, in melt value of about US$20.90.
Gold dollar coins (1849–1889)
Main article: Gold dollar
The Gold dollar ("Type I")
The Gold dollar ("Type I")

The gold dollar weighing 1.672 g produced from 1849 to 1889 in 90% gold 10% copper. 1849 to 1853 gold dollar coins were 13 mm across and are called Type I. Type II gold dollars were thinner but larger at 15 mm diameter and were produced from 1854 to 1855. The most common gold dollar is the Type III, struck from 1856 until 1889. Production of US$1 gold dollars was high until the Civil War and by 1863, only the larger value gold coins were produced in large quantities. Most gold coins produced from 1863 and onward were produced for imports to pay for enormous amounts of war material and interest on some U.S. Government bonds. Many of these coins from the Civil War and after (silver coins included) are in excellent condition since they saw very limited circulation with greenbacks and postage currency taking their place.

Composed of 90% pure gold, it was the smallest denomination of gold currency ever produced by the United States federal government. When the U.S. system of coinage was originally designed there had been no plans for a gold dollar coin, but in the late 1840s, two gold rushes later, Congress was looking to expand the use of gold in the country's currency.[15][16] The gold dollar was authorized by the Act of March 3, 1849, and the Liberty Head type began circulating soon afterward.[17] Because of the high value of gold, the gold dollar is the smallest coin in the history of U.S. coinage.

While true gold dollars are no longer minted, the Sacagawea, Presidential, and American Innovation dollars are sometimes referred to as golden dollars because of their color.
Trade dollar (1873–1885)
Main article: Trade dollar (United States coin)
The Trade dollar
The Trade dollar

The trade dollar was produced in response to other Western powers, such as Great Britain, Spain, France, and particularly Mexico, to compete with these trade coins for use in trade in Asia. While the previous Spanish dollar of 370.95 grains (24.037 g) contained less fine silver than the standard dollar coin of 371.25 grains (24.057 g),[13] Mexican pesos minted after Mexican independence contained a full 377.1 grains (24.44 g) of fine silver. The American trade dollar therefore had to contain more silver, at 420 grains of 90% fine silver, fine content 378.0 grains (24.49 g), or 0.44 g more fine silver than the regular circulation Seated Liberty Dollars and Morgan Dollars. Most trade dollars ended up in China during their first two years of production, where they were very successful. Many of them exhibit holes or chopmarks which are counterstamps from Asian merchants to verify the authenticity of the coins. Many trade coins of the western powers and large silver coins from China, Korea, and Japan also bear these chopmarks. While most chopmarked coins are generally worth less than those without, some of the more fascinating chopmarks can give the coin a modest premium.

Trade dollars did not circulate in the United States initially, but were legal tender for up to $5. Things changed, however, in 1876, when the price of silver spiraled downward as western producers dumped silver on the market, making the trade dollar worth more at face value than its silver content. That resulted in trade dollars pouring back into the United States, as they were bought for as little as the equivalent of 80 US cents in Asia, and were then spent at $1 in the United States. This prompted Congress to revoke their legal tender status, and restrict their coinage to exportation demand only. However, this did not stop unscrupulous persons from buying trade dollars at bullion value, and using them for payment as $1 to unsuspecting workers and merchants.

Production of the trade dollar was officially discontinued for business strikes in 1878, and thereafter from 1879 to 1885, produced only as proof examples of the coin. The issues of 1884 and 1885 were produced surreptitiously and were unknown to the collecting public until 1908.

In February 1887, all non-mutilated, non-chopmarked outstanding trade dollars were made redeemable to the United States Treasury for $1, and approximately 8 million of them were turned in.
Morgan dollar (1878–1904, 1921, 2021-present)
Main article: Morgan dollar
The Morgan silver dollar

Morgan silver dollars, all composed of 90% silver and 10% copper (slightly less silver than sterling silver, 92.5%) weighing 412.5 grains total (0.859375 ozt), and thus 0.7734375 ozt pure silver,[18][19], were struck between 1878 and 1904, with a minting in 1921 and a commemorative minting in 2021.[20] The 1921-dated coins are the most common, and there exists a substantial collector market for pristine, uncirculated specimens of the rarer dates and mint marks. Morgan dollars are second only to Lincoln Cents in collector popularity. The coin is named after George T. Morgan, its designer. Morgan dollars were minted at Philadelphia (no mint mark), New Orleans ("O" mint mark), San Francisco ("S" mint mark), Carson City ("CC" mint mark), and (in 1921 only) Denver ("D" mint mark). The mint mark is found on the reverse below the wreath, above the "O" in "DOLLAR". Production of the Morgan Dollar began again in 2021 and US Mint officials announced an intention to continue producing them in 2023 and beyond.[21]
Peace dollar (1921–1928, 1934–1935, 2021-present)
Main article: Peace dollar
The Peace silver dollar
The Peace silver dollar

Introduced in December 1921 and having the same ratio of silver-to-copper as the Morgan dollar, the Peace dollar, designed by medalist Anthony de Francisci, was promulgated to commemorate the signing of formal peace treaties between the Allied forces and Germany and Austria.[22] These treaties officially ended the Allies' World War I hostilities with these two countries. In 1922 the Mint made silver dollar production its top priority, causing other denominations to be produced sparingly if at all that year. Production ceased temporarily after 1928; original plans called for only a one-year suspension, but this was extended by the Great Depression. Mintage resumed in 1934, but for only two years.

In May 1965, 316,000+ Peace dollars were minted, all at the Denver Mint and dated 1964-D; however, plans for completing this coinage were abandoned, and most of those already minted were melted, with two known trial strike specimens being preserved (for assay purposes) until 1970, when they too were melted, and none released either for circulation or collection purposes. It is rumored that one or more pieces still exist, most notably any examples obtained by key members of Congress, the president, or mint officials. However, this coin, much like the 1933 $20 gold double eagle (aside from the "exception", sold in 2002 for over $7 million and the 10 found later), is illegal to own and would be subject to confiscation.[23]

Minting of the Peace Dollar began again in 2021. US Mint officials have announced an intention to continue minting Peace Dollars in 2023 and beyond.[21]
Release of dollars by the U.S. Treasury: the GSA sale

Because of the size and weight of the dollar coins, they circulated minimally throughout their history, except in the West (especially at casinos in the early-to-mid-20th century, where they were commonly used both at the tables and at slot machines.) As a result, the coins were generally shipped to Washington and stored in the vaults of the U.S. Treasury; at times these stores numbered into the hundreds of millions.[citation needed]

They were very popular as Christmas gifts, however, and from the 1930s to the early 1960s, many bags were annually released to banks nationwide to be distributed as presents. In November 1962, during this annual distribution, it was discovered that there were some rare and valuable dates, still sealed in their original mint bags, all in uncirculated condition, among the millions of dollar coins still in the Treasury vaults. Collectors/investors/dealers lined up to purchase them in $1,000 bags, trading silver certificates for the coins. Before this event, the great rarity of the Morgan series was 1903-O, which was by far the most expensive of the entire set. It was discovered that there were millions of this specific date and mint in the Treasury vaults; an estimated 84% of the entire mintage sat in these bags, untouched for 60 years, all in uncirculated condition. While still relatively expensive in circulated grades, uncirculated examples can be had for a modest amount over common dates.[24]

On March 25, 1964, Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillon announced that Silver Certificates would no longer be redeemable for silver dollars.[25] Subsequently, another act of Congress dated June 24, 1967, provided that Silver Certificates could be exchanged for silver bullion for a period of one year, until June 24, 1968.[26]

Following this, the Treasury inventoried its remaining stock of dollar coins and found approximately 3,000 bags containing 3 million coins. Many of the remaining coins were Carson City mint dollars, which even then carried a premium. The coins were placed in special hard plastic holders and the General Services Administration (GSA) was given authorization to sell them to the public in a series of mail-bid sales. Five sales were conducted in 1973 and 1974, but sales were poor, and the results unspectacular. There was much complaining among the coin-buying public, many stating that the United States government should not be in the "coin business", especially considering that the government had spent little more than a dollar to mint and store each coin. After these sales, more than a million coins were still left unsold.

These sat again until 1979–1980, where, amidst an extraordinarily volatile precious metals market (the attempt by the 3 Hunt brothers to corner the silver market), the remaining coins were sold under chaotic conditions. The GSA, having published minimum bids in November 1979, announced on January 2, 1980, that those minimum bids were no longer valid, and that prospective bidders would have to "call in" to a toll-free number to get current minimum bids. Then, on February 21, 13 days after the bidding process officially began, the maximum number of coins per bidder was changed from 500 to 35. Many bidders, under these confusing conditions, ended up with no coins at all. Complaints again flooded into Congress, but the damage had already been done, and the last silver dollars held by the United States Treasury were gone.[27][28][29]

Over the years, many of these GSA dollars have been broken out of their special holders for purposes of grading or otherwise, and now GSA dollars still in the unbroken original holders carry a small premium. Some third-party grading companies have begun to grade coins still in their GSA holders, as a means of preservation, though this is not without controversy.[30]
Eisenhower dollar (1971–1978)
Main article: Eisenhower dollar
The Eisenhower dollar (obverse)
1975/1976 Bicentennial Commemorative coin (reverse)

From 1971 to 1978, the U.S. Mint issued dollar coins with the obverse depicting President Dwight David Eisenhower and the reverse the insignia of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, both designed by Chief Engraver Frank Gasparro.[31] The 1976 Bicentennial commemorative design, produced in 1975 and 1976, featured the Liberty Bell and the Moon on the reverse (designed by Dennis R. Williams) while retaining the Eisenhower obverse, and the dual dates 1776–1976. The Eisenhower dollars minted for general circulation contained no silver or gold but were instead composed of the same copper-nickel clad composition used for the dime, quarter, and half dollar. This made the circulation coins extremely resistant to wear and, like the smaller denominations, they still retain a good deal of shine even when subject to mass usage.

From 1971 through 1976, the Mint also produced dollars composed of 40% silver aimed at the collector market. The 1971–1974 issues appeared in brown boxes or blue packages, depending on whether they were proof or uncirculated. Somewhat different Bicentennial sets were produced in the following two years. All issues remain very common.

The coins were never very popular, primarily because of their large size and weight which made them inconvenient to carry, and the fact that very few vending machines were designed to accept them. They saw the greatest use in casinos, and one-dollar tokens in many United States casinos still approximate the size and weight of the coins. Prior to the withdrawal of the coins, which remain legal tender (and are sometimes available at banks by request), many casinos did not strike their own tokens, but instead used the Eisenhower dollar.
Susan B. Anthony dollar (1979–1981; 1999)
Main article: Susan B. Anthony dollar
The Anthony clad dollar, 1979
The Susan B. Anthony dollar, 1999

From 1979 to 1981, and again in 1999, the Mint produced Anthony Dollars depicting women's suffrage activist Susan B. Anthony (also designed by Frank Gasparro). Anthony thus became the first historic woman portrayed on circulating U.S. coinage. Many earlier circulating coins had featured images of women via allegorical figures such as Peace or Liberty; Spain's Queen Isabella appeared on the 1893 Columbian Exposition quarter dollar but the coin was not intended for general circulation. The Anthony dollars, like the Eisenhower dollars, were made from a copper-nickel clad copper core. The 1981 coins were issued for collectors only but occasionally show up in circulation.

The Anthony dollar, because of its color, size, and design, was often confused with the quarter. It was never popular and production was suspended after 1981. In 1999, it was struck again when Treasury reserves of the coin were low and the Sacagawea dollar was still a year away from production.[32] While reserves of the coins were high, the coins were most often seen in vending machines, transit systems, and post offices.
American Silver Eagle (1986–present)
Main article: American Silver Eagle
The American Silver Eagle

The American Silver Eagle is the official silver bullion coin of the United States. It was designed by Adolph A. Weinman and John Mercanti and it was first released by the United States Mint on November 24, 1986. It is struck only in the one troy ounce size, which has a nominal face value of one dollar and is guaranteed to contain one troy ounce of 99.9% pure silver. It is authorized by Title II of Public Law 99-61 (Liberty Coin Act, approved July 9, 1985) and codified as 31 U.S.C. § 5112(e)-(h). Its content, weight, and purity are certified by the United States Mint. In addition to the bullion version, the United States Mint has produced a proof version and an uncirculated version for coin collectors. The Silver Eagle has been produced at three mints: the Philadelphia Mint, the San Francisco Mint, and the West Point Mint. The American Silver Eagle bullion coin may be used to fund Individual Retirement Account investments.[33]
Sacagawea dollar (2000–present)
Main article: Sacagawea dollar
United States Dollar coin
Obverse: Sacagawea with her son Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, US national motto, year and Liberty on top     Reverse: Eagle in flight, country name, face value and E pluribus unum (Out of many, one)
Coin popularly known as the Sacagawea dollar

The Sacagawea dollar was authorized by Congress in 1997 because the supply of Anthony dollars in inventory since their last mintage in 1981 was soon expected to be depleted. These coins have a copper core clad in manganese brass. Delays in increasing Sacagawea dollar production led to a final 1999-dated mintage of Susan B. Anthony dollars. Dollar coins are used infrequently in general commerce. They used to be given as change by United States Postal Service (USPS) stamp vending machines, which created a relatively small but significant demand, but the USPS eliminated all those machines by 2011. They were also used in certain subway and public transit systems, such as the Boston subway and New York City Subway ticketing machines.

In 1998, the U.S. Mint conducted a limited design competition for the new dollar, inviting 23 artists to submit designs portraying Sacagawea on the obverse ("heads") side and an American bald eagle on the reverse ("tails") side. In November 1998, an exhibit of 123 submitted designs was held at the Casa Italiana Hall in Washington, D.C., to solicit public and private comment.[34] Design concepts were submitted in the form of drawings, renderings, sculpture, and die-struck prototypes.[35]

The obverse was designed by artist Glenna Goodacre. Since no verifiable image of Sacagawea exists, Goodacre used Randy'L He-dow Teton, a University of New Mexico college student and a Shoshone Indian, as a model for the coin.[36]

There are approximately 1 billion Sacagawea coins in circulation and about 250 million in reserve. The U.S. Mint greatly reduced production of Sacagawea dollars after the 2001 minting, citing sufficient inventory. From 2002 to 2008, the Sacagawea dollar was still minted for collectors and was available in uncirculated rolls, mint sets, and proof sets, but it was not released for general circulation again until the introduction of the Native American series in 2009.

The Mint took great care to create the coin with the same size, weight, and electromagnetic properties as the Anthony dollar, but with a golden color. Unlike most other coins in circulation, the selected alloy has a tendency to tarnish quite severely in circulation, as is the case with most brasses, resulting in a loss of the golden shine, except on raised areas where the "patina" is more frequently rubbed off.[37] While some consider the blackening an undesirable quality, the Mint suggests the uneven tarnishing effect gives the coins an "antique finish" that "accentuate[s] the profile and add[s] a dimension of depth to the depiction of Sacagawea and her child".[37]

The coin featured a plain edge through 2008, but starting in 2009, incused lettering was applied. The year and mint mark moved from the coin's obverse (front) to its edge.

As of 2022, dollar coins are not widely encountered in U.S. commerce, except in vending machines for rides on mass transit, some pay and display machines, some laundromats, and old-fashioned slot machines. On the other hand, the Sacagawea dollar has achieved popularity in El Salvador, Ecuador,[38] and Panama, where the U.S. dollar is also the official currency.[32]
Native American Coin Program
Main article: Sacagawea dollar § Native American redesign (2009–present)
The first Native American dollar reverse, issued in 2009, representing agriculture

With the passage of the Native American $1 Coin Act[39] on September 20, 2007, the U.S. Mint began designing a series of Sacagawea dollars with modified reverses to further commemorate "Native Americans and the important contributions made by Indian tribes and individual Native Americans to the development of the United States and the history of the United States". Four designs were to be minted, each for one year from 2009 to 2012. The first Native American series coin was released in January 2009 and had a reverse that depicted a Native American woman sowing seeds of the Three Sisters, symbolizing the Indian tribes' contributions to agriculture.

Like the Presidential Dollar, the year of issue, mint mark, and motto E Pluribus Unum are found on the edge of the coin instead of on the obverse or reverse, which allows for more room for the design.[40] Unlike the Presidential $1 coins from before 2009, "In God We Trust" remains on the obverse and the vacant space on the edge lettering has been taken up by thirteen stars, symbolizing the Thirteen Colonies. Also, unlike any other denomination of circulating U.S. coinage (but in common with the Presidential $1 coins), the value is inscribed in numerals on the reverse. The act passed by Congress requires that 20% of the total dollar coins minted in any year during the Presidential $1 Coin Program be Sacagawea dollars bearing the new design.

In January 2010, the second reverse design in the series was released which has the theme of "Government" and the "Great Tree of Peace". The 2010 Sacagawea reverse depicts the Hiawatha Belt and five arrows bound together representing unity with the inscription "Haudenosaunee", a synonym for the Iroquois Confederacy meaning "People of the Longhouse". Another inscription is found along the lower edge of the reverse spelling "Great Law of Peace" (an English translation of Gayanashagowa, the Iroquois Confederacy constitution). The Great Law of Peace was used as a model for the Constitution of the United States. The four links on the belt are meant to symbolize four of the five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, namely the Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga and Seneca Nations. The Eastern White Pine tree in the middle of the belt represents the fifth Nation, the Onondaga, and is a depiction of the Tree of Peace.


Presidential Dollar Coins (2007–2016; 2020)
Main article: Presidential dollar coins
Obverse (left) and reverse (right) of the George Washington (#1) dollar coin

In December 2005, Congress decided to create a new series of $1 coins that would honor the former U.S. presidents. In 2007, Presidential coins of four different designs were produced. Another four designs will be produced each year, honoring the presidents in order of service. (Grover Cleveland is on two coins since he served two non-consecutive terms.) The Presidential $1 Coin Act is intended to create renewed interest in dollar coins, like that seen during the 50 State Quarters program.[41] At least one-third of all dollar coins produced are still Sacagawea coins, with the remaining coins making up the four presidential coins produced annually. Under federal law (31 U.S.C. § 5112), no coins may be issued featuring a living president, or a president who died less than two years earlier.

The presidential dollar coin is the same size and composition as the Sacagawea dollar. "In God We Trust", the issue year, and the mint mark appear on the edge.[42] The first dollar, honoring George Washington, was released into circulation on February 15, 2007. However, H.R. 2764 became law on December 26, 2007, which moved "In God We Trust" from the edge to the obverse.

A common minting error on this coin, estimated at 80,000, from a mintage of 300,000,000 coins, is the omission of the edge lettering causing a plain outside edge.[43][44] Because the omission includes the words "In God We Trust", some in the popular media have dubbed it the "godless" coin.[45] A false (although at one time widely reported) error is the report that the edge lettering is upside down. The edge lettering does not occur at the same time as the minting of the coins, allowing for the natural occurrence of the lettering in either orientation,[46] except Proof Coins where the date and lettering are all "right-side-up".[46]

Because of budget constraints and increasing stockpiles of these relatively unpopular coins, the production of new presidential dollar coins for circulation was suspended on December 11, 2011, by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. Further minting of these coins was reserved solely for collectors.[47]
American Innovation Dollar Coins (2018–2032)
Main article: American Innovation dollars

On July 20, 2018, President Donald Trump signed the American Innovation $1 Coin Act into law.[48] The program calls for the release of four new coins each year from 2019 through 2032 "to honor innovation and innovators by issuing $1 coins for each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the five U.S. territories – Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands". An introductory coin, commemorating George Washington signing the country's first patent into law, was released in December 2018.[49] The coins are currently only being minted for collectors.
Designs

Silver dollar coins

    Flowing Hair dollar 1794–1795
    Draped Bust dollar 1795–1803
        Draped Bust, Small Eagle 1795–1798
        Draped Bust, Heraldic Eagle 1798–1803, 1804 (not a regular issue)
    Gobrecht dollar 1836–1839
    Seated Liberty dollar 1840–1873
        Seated Liberty, no motto 1840–1865
        Seated Liberty, with motto 1866–1873
    Trade dollar 1873–1878 (Business & Proofs struck), 1879–1885 (Proofs only)
    Morgan dollar 1878–1904, 1921
    Peace dollar 1921–1935
        Peace dollar (high relief) 1921
        Peace dollar (low relief) 1922–1928, 1934–1935
    American Silver Eagle 1986–present


    

Gold dollar coins

    Liberty Head (Small Size) 1849–1854
    Indian Head (Large Size) 1854–1889
        Small Indian Head 1854–1856
        Large Indian Head 1856–1889

Copper-nickel clad dollar coins

    Eisenhower dollar 1971–1974, 1977–1978
        Eisenhower Bicentennial 1975–1976 (all dated 1976)
    Susan B. Anthony dollar 1979–1981, 1999

Manganese brass "golden" dollar coins

    Sacagawea dollar (eagle reverse) 2000–2008
        Sacagawea dollar (Native American series) 2009–present
    Presidential dollar coins 2007–2016, 2020
    American Innovation dollars 2018–2032

United States dollar coin production timeline

    vte

United States dollar coin production timeline (1792–1849)
                    
                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
                    
                        
                                
                    
                        
                    

    vte

United States dollar coin production timeline (1850–1899)
                
                                                                                                                                                                                                    
            
                    
            
                    
        

    vte

United States dollar coin production timeline (1900–1949)
                
                                                                                                                                                                                                    
                            
                                
                    
                                        

    vte

United States dollar coin production timeline (1950–1999)
                
                                                                                                                                                                                                    
                        
                        
                        
                
                        

    vte

United States dollar coin production timeline (2000–present)
        
                                                                                
            
    
            
        
See also

    iconMoney portalNumismatics portalflagUnited States portal

    Modern United States commemorative coins
    United States $1 Coin Act of 1997
    United States Mint coin production

References

Anderson, Gordon T. (April 25, 2005). "Congress tries again for a dollar coin". CNN Money. Retrieved June 26, 2012.
"presidential-dollar-coins". United States Mint. Retrieved April 10, 2016.
"native-american-coins". United States Mint. Retrieved April 10, 2016.
Anderson, Gordon T. April 25, 2005. "Congress tries again for a dollar coin Archived 2022-03-21 at the Wayback Machine." CNN Money.
"U.S. Coins: Replacing the $1 Note with a $1 Coin Would Provide a Financial Benefit to the Government". U.S. Government Accountability Office. Retrieved August 16, 2011.
Northrup, Laura (April 23, 2012). "Dollar Coins Save The Government Money Because You'll Just Throw Them In A Jar". Consumerist.
"Testimony of Philip Diehl before House Financial Services Committee, Nov. 29, 2012" (PDF).
Straw, Joseph; Lysiak, Matthew; Murray, Rheana (November 30, 2012). "Congress considers getting rid of dollar bills for $1 coins to save money". New York Daily News. Retrieved January 7, 2013.
Office, U. S. Government Accountability (March 21, 2019). "U.S. Currency: Financial Benefit of Switching to a $1 Coin Is Unlikely, but Changing Coin Metal Content Could Result in Cost Savings". gao. Retrieved September 24, 2021.
"1776 $1 Continental Dollar, CURRENCY, Silver, EG FECIT MS63 NGC. | Lot #30423". Heritage Auctions. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
Rothbard, Murray (2002). A History of Banking in the United States (PDF). Auburn. ISBN 978-0-945466-33-8. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
"First United States Silver Dollar, 1794". Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History. Archived from the original on June 28, 2011. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
Sumner, W. G. (1898). "The Spanish Dollar and the Colonial Shilling". The American Historical Review. 3 (4): 607–619. doi:10.2307/1834139. JSTOR 1834139.
NGC Photo Proof (1994). "1798–1804 Silver Dollar Draped Bust Heraldic Eagle". CoinSite. ROKO Design Group, Inc. Archived from the original on March 14, 2009. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
CoinFacts: Liberty Head Gold Dollars Archived September 25, 2010, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved September 9, 2006.
Coin Community: Gold Dollar Liberty Head Type 1 History Archived October 23, 2020, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved September 9, 2006.
Yeoman, Richard and Kenneth Bressett (ed.), A Guide Book of United States Coins (56th edition), (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002. ISBN 978-1-58238-188-6.) 196–198.
Bland–Allison Act
Coinage Act of 1834
NGC Photo Proof (1994). "1878–1921 Silver Dollar Morgan". CoinSite. ROKO Design Group, Inc. Archived from the original on March 21, 2009. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
"Morgan and Peace dollars will be back in 2022". CoinWorld. Retrieved November 15, 2021.
NGC Photo Proof (1994). "1921–35 Silver Dollar Peace". CoinSite. ROKO Design Group, Inc. Archived from the original on March 21, 2009. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
The '64 Dollar Question Archived January 11, 2010, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved August 27, 2010.
What are the best known denominations of the dollar? (in Spanish) Archived April 18, 2022, at the Wayback Machine[permanent dead link]
"FAQs: Buying, Selling & Redeeming Currency". U.S. Treasury. June 25, 2007. Archived from the original on March 11, 2009. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
"Text of December 20, 1968 Letter to the President from Secretary of the Treasury Henry H. Fowler". U.S. Mint, Department of the Treasury (Press release). December 30, 1968. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
Bryan Sonnier (1993). "GSA Carson City Silver Dollars: A History as Tumultuous as That of the Morgan Silver Dollar Itself". CoinResource. Archived from the original on February 10, 2009. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
"Morgan Silver Dollar Coins". GFL. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
Susan Headley. "The 1895 Morgan Dollar – The King of Morgans – The Most Valuable Morgan Dollar". About. Archived from the original on July 17, 2011. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
"NGC to Grade Dollars in GSA Holders". Collectors Society. January 2, 2003. Archived from the original on February 3, 2009. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
NGC Photo Proof (1994). "1971–78 Dollar Eisenhower". CoinSite. ROKO Design Group, Inc. Archived from the original on August 30, 2013. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
Mitch, Sanders (March 2006). "Modern Dollar Coins". Numismatist: 114. Archived from the original on February 26, 2012. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
"Publication 590: Individual Retirement Arrangements" (PDF). United States Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service. January 7, 2010. p. 47. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 5, 2010. Retrieved January 12, 2010.
"U.S. Mint Coin and Medal Programs - U.S. Mint". usmint. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved March 8, 2014.
"Other Suggested Designs For The Golden Dollar". smalldollars.
"The Golden Dollar Coin Featuring Sacagawea". United States Mint. Archived from the original on December 14, 2004. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
"US Mint: Dollar Coin FAQ". U.S. Mint, Department of the Treasury. Archived from the original on May 28, 2010. Retrieved November 3, 2010.
Wyss, Jim. "Where did all the Sacagawea dollar coins go? In Ecuador, they're everywhere". Miami Herald. Retrieved July 17, 2023.
"Coin and Medal Programs" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on November 23, 2015. Retrieved November 3, 2010.
GovTrack.us. H.R. 2358—110th Congress (2007): Native American $1 Coin Act, GovTrack.us (database of federal legislation) [1] Archived November 30, 2008, at the Wayback Machine (accessed September 28, 2007)
Anderson, Gordon T. (April 27, 2005). "Congress tries again for a dollar coin". CNN. Retrieved May 1, 2010.
CNN Archived November 22, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
Susan Headley (April 3, 2007). "Washington Dollar Update". About. Archived from the original on July 7, 2012. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
"Flaw Is Found in Some Coins of New Dollar". The New York Times. Associated Press. March 8, 2007. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
Morgan, David S. (March 7, 2007). ""Godless" Dollar Coins Slip Through Mint". CBSNews. Associated Press. Retrieved July 6, 2010.
"U.S. Mint Coin and Medal Programs - U.S. Mint". usmint.[dead link]
"The United States Mint Coins and Medals Program". Department of the Treasury. Archived from the original on December 5, 2010. Retrieved August 1, 2012.
"Actions - H.R.770 - 115th Congress (2017-2018): American Innovation $1 Coin Act". July 20, 2018.

    "American Innovation $1 Coin Program". USMint. United States Mint. December 6, 2018. Retrieved March 8, 2019.

Further reading

    The Comprehensive U. S. Silver Dollar Encyclopedia by John W. Highfill, ISBN 0-9629900-0-0
    Comprehensive Catalog and Encyclopedia of Morgan and Peace Dollars, ISBN 978-0-9660168-2-6
    Financial Impact of Issuing the New $1 Coin Archived June 9, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, GAO/GGD-00-111R, April 7, 2000.
    New coin unlikely change?, Steve Cranford, Charlotte Business Journal, July 21, 2000.
    Elizabeth White (December 14, 2005). "New coins will depict dead former presidents". The Boston Globe. Retrieved March 13, 2009.
    Barbara Hagenbaugh (December 15, 2005). "Dollar coin series will feature presidents". USA Today. Retrieved March 13, 2009.

External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dollar coins of the United States.

    Exhibition: Legendary Coins & Currency (National Museum of American History) Archived June 10, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
    United States Mint

    vte

Circulating coinage of the United States
Half cent (1⁄2¢)    

    Nova Constellatiox (1783) Liberty Cap (1793–1797) Draped Bust (1800–1808) Classic Head (1809–1836) Braided Hair (1840–1857) 

Large cent and
penny (1¢)    

    Fugio (Franklin) (1787) Silver centerx (1792) Chain (1793) Wreath (1793) Liberty Cap (1793–1796) Draped Bust (1796–1807) Classic Head (1808–1814) Matron Head (1816–1839) Braided Hair (1839–1857, 1868) Ringx (1850–1851, 1853, 1884–1885) Flying Eagle (1856–1858, patterns struck in 1854–1855) Indian Head (1859–1909, patterns struck in 1858) Lincoln (1909–present) 

Two cents (2¢)    

    Billonx (1836) Bronze (1864–1873, patterns struck in 1863) 

Three cents (3¢)    

    Silver (1851–1873) Bronze (Coronet Head)x (1863) Nickel (Liberty Head) (1865–1889) 

Half dime and
nickel (5¢)    

    Half disme (1792) Flowing Hair (1794–1795) Draped Bust (1796–1797, 1800–1805) Capped Bust (1829–1837) Washingtonx (1866; 1909–1910) Seated Liberty (1837–1873) Shield (1866–1883) Liberty Head (1883–1913) Buffalo (Indian Head) (1913–1938) Jefferson (1938–present) 

Dime (10¢)    

    Nova Constellatiox (1783) Dismex (1792) Draped Bust (1796–1807) Capped Bust (1809–1837) Seated Liberty (1837–1891) Barber (1892–1916) Mercury (1916–1945) Roosevelt (1946–2025) Semiquincentennial (2026) 

Twenty cents (20¢)    

    Seated Liberty (1875–1878) 

Quarter (25¢)    

    Draped Bust (1796–1807) Capped Bust (1815–1838) Seated Liberty (1838–1891) Barber (1892–1916) Standing Liberty (1916–1930) Washington (eagle reverse) (1932–1998) Washington (bicentennial) (1975–1976) Washington (50 State) (1999–2008) Washington (D.C. and U.S. Territories) (2009) Washington (America the Beautiful) (2010–2021) Washington (crossing the Delaware reverse) (2021) Washington (American Women) (2022–2025) Semiquincentennial (2026) Washington (youth sports) (2027–2030) 

Half dollar (50¢)    

    Nova Constellatiox (1783) Flowing Hair (1794–1795) Draped Bust (1796–1807) Capped Bust (1807–1839) Seated Liberty (1839–1891) Barber (1892–1915) Walking Liberty (1916–1947) Franklin (1948–1963) Kennedy (1964–2025) Kennedy (bicentennial) (1975–1976) Semiquincentennial (2026) 

Dollar ($1)    

    Continental Currency (Fugio or Franklin)x (1776) Nova Constellatiox (1783) Flowing Hair (1794–1795) Draped Bust (1795–1804) Gobrechtx (1836–1839) Seated Liberty (1840–1873) Trade (1873–1885) Morgan (1878–1904; 1921; 2021–present) Peace (1921–1935; 2021–present; patterns struck in 1964) Eisenhower (1971–1978) Eisenhower (bicentennial) (1975–1976) Susan B. Anthony (1979–1981; 1999) Sacagaweac (2000–present) Presidential (2007–2016; 2020) American Innovationc (2018–2032) 

Gold    
Gold dollar ($1)    

    Liberty Head (1849–1854) Indian Princess (1854–1889) 

Quarter eagle ($2.50)    

    Draped Bust (1796–1807) Capped Bust (1808–1834) Classic Head (1834–1839) Liberty Head (1840–1907) Indian Head (1908–1929) 

Three dollars ($3)    

    Indian Princess (1854–1889) 

Half eagle ($5)    

    Draped Bust (1795–1807) Capped Bust (1808–1834) Classic Head (1834–1838) Liberty Head (1839–1908) Indian Head (1908–1929) 

Eagle ($10)    

    Capped Bust (1795–1804) Liberty Head (1838–1907) Indian Head (1907–1933) 

Double eagle ($20)    

    Liberty Head (1850–1907, pattern struck in 1849) Quintuple Stellax (1879) Saint-Gaudens (1907–1933) 

Other canceled
denominations    

    Two and a half cent piece (2.5¢)x (not minted) Two dollar piece ($2)x (not minted) Stella ($4)x (1879–1880) Half union ($50)x (1877) Union ($100)x (not minted) 

    (italics) Obsolete x Canceled (bold) Currently in production c Currently produced for collectors only (bold and italics) Planned but production not commenced

    vte

Coinage of the United States
Circulating    

    1¢ 5¢ 10¢ 25¢ 50¢ $1

Obsolete    

    1⁄2¢ 1¢ (Fugio) 1¢ (large size) 2¢ 3¢ (silver) 3¢ (nickel) 5¢ (silver) 20¢ $1 (gold) $2.5 $3 $5 $10 $20

Canceled    

    2¢ (billon) 2+1⁄2¢ 3¢ (bronze) $2 $4 $50 $100

Commemorative    

    1800s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s

Bullion    

    Silver Eagle (1986–present) Gold Eagle (1986–present) Platinum Eagle (1997–present) Gold Buffalo (2006–present) First Spouse (gold) (2007–2016; 2020) Palladium Eagle (2017–present) America the Beautiful silver bullion coins (2010–2021) American Liberty high relief gold coin (2015–present)

Special sets    

    Proof Set (1936–present) Mint Set (1947–present) Special Mint Set (1964–1967) Souvenir Set (1972–1998) Silver Proof Set (1976, 1992–present) Prestige Set (1983–1997)

Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata
International    

    FAST

National    

    United StatesIsrael

Other    

    NARAYale LUX

Category:

    United States dollar coins

United States Declaration of Independence

Article
Talk
Read
View source
View history

Tools
Appearance hide
Text

Small

Standard

Large
Width

Standard

Wide
Color (beta)

Automatic

Light

Dark
This is a good article. Click here for more information.
Page semi-protected
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
United States
Declaration of Independence

The 1823 facsimile of the engrossed copy of the Declaration of Independence
Created    June–July 1776
Ratified    July 4, 1776; 249 years ago
Location    Engrossed copy: National Archives Building
Rough draft: Library of Congress
Author(s)    Thomas Jefferson, Committee of Five
Signatories    56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress
Purpose    To announce and explain separation from Great Britain[1]: 5 
Part of a series on the
American Revolution
Declaration of Independence (painting)
The Committee of Five presents their draft of the Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia
TimelineMilitary leadersBattles
Origins
Context
Thirteen ColoniesSalutary neglectFrench and Indian WarGeorge III
Ideas
American EnlightenmentRepublicanismLiberalism"No taxation without representation"
Conflict over taxation
Sugar ActCurrency ActQuartering ActsStamp Act 1765Sons of LibertyStamp Act CongressDeclaratory ActTownshend ActsVirginia AssociationTea ActBoston MassacreBoston Tea PartyEdenton Tea PartyPhiladelphia Tea PartyIntolerable ActsCommittees of CorrespondenceFirst Continental CongressContinental Association
Revolutionary War
Continental ArmyContinental NavyMinutemenBritish ArmyBritish Royal NavyFranceSpainBattlesDiplomacyIntelligenceTreaty of ParisFinancial costs
Political developments
LoyalistsPatriotsRole of womenRole of African AmericansSecond Continental Congress27 colonial grievancesOlive Branch PetitionLee ResolutionDeclaration of Independence
(DraftingSigning)
Forming a republic
Confederation period
Articles of Confederation Perpetual UnionCongress of the ConfederationNorthwest Ordinance
Dissent and rebellions
Newburgh ConspiracyPennsylvania Mutiny of 1783Shays' RebellionPaper Money Riot
Constitution
Annapolis Convention
Philadelphia Convention
The Federalist Papers
Anti-Federalist Papers
Raftification
Bill of Rights
Legacy
United States
Atlantic Revolutions
American nationalism
American civil religion
Bicentennial
Prospect Hill Flag Debate
flag United States portal
vte
The Declaration of Independence, formally The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America in the original printing, is the founding document of the United States. On July 4, 1776, it was adopted unanimously by the Second Continental Congress, who were convened at Pennsylvania State House, later renamed Independence Hall, in the colonial city of Philadelphia. These delegates became known as the nation's Founding Fathers. The Declaration explains why the Thirteen Colonies regarded themselves as independent sovereign states no longer subject to British colonial rule, and has become one of the most circulated, reprinted, and influential documents in history.

The American Revolutionary War commenced in April 1775 with the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Amid the growing tensions, the colonies reconvened the Congress on May 10. Their king, George III, proclaimed them to be in rebellion on August 23. On June 11, 1776, Congress appointed the Committee of Five (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman) to draft and present the Declaration. Adams, a leading proponent of independence, persuaded the committee to charge Jefferson with writing the document's original draft, which the Congress then edited. Jefferson largely wrote the Declaration between June 11 and June 28, 1776. The Declaration was a formal explanation of why the Continental Congress voted to declare American independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. Two days prior to the Declaration's adoption, Congress passed the Lee Resolution, which resolved that the British no longer had governing authority over the Thirteen Colonies. The Declaration justified the independence of the colonies, citing 27 colonial grievances against the king and asserting certain natural and legal rights, including a right of revolution.

The Declaration was unanimously ratified on July 4 by the Second Continental Congress, whose delegates represented each of the Thirteen Colonies. In ratifying and signing it, the delegates knew they were committing an act of high treason against The Crown, which was punishable by torture and death. Congress then issued the Declaration of Independence in several forms. Two days following its ratification, on July 6, it was published by The Pennsylvania Evening Post. The first public readings of the Declaration occurred simultaneously on July 8, 1776, at noon, at three previously designated locations: in Trenton, New Jersey; Easton, Pennsylvania; and Philadelphia.[2]

The Declaration was published in several forms. The printed Dunlap broadside was widely distributed following its signing. It is now preserved at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.[3] The signed copy of the Declaration is now on display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and is generally considered the official document; this copy, engrossed by Timothy Matlack, was ordered by Congress on July 19, and signed primarily on August 2, 1776.[4][5]

The Declaration has proven an influential and globally impactful statement on human rights. The Declaration was viewed by Abraham Lincoln as the moral standard to which the United States should strive, and he considered it a statement of principles through which the Constitution should be interpreted.[6]: 126  In 1863, Lincoln made the Declaration the centerpiece of his Gettysburg Address, widely considered among the most famous speeches in American history.[7] The Declaration's second sentence, "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", is considered one of the most significant and famed lines in world history.[8] Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis has written that the Declaration contains "the most potent and consequential words in American history".[9]

Background

Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration
Believe me, dear Sir: there is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But, by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose; and in this, I think I speak the sentiments of America.

— Thomas Jefferson, November 29, 1775[10]
By the time the Declaration of Independence was adopted in July 1776, the Thirteen Colonies and Kingdom of Great Britain had been at war for over a year. Relations had been deteriorating between the colonies and the mother country since 1763. In 1767, Parliament enacted a series of measures designed to increase revenue from the colonies, including the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts, which it believed were a legitimate means of having the colonies pay their fair share of the costs of remaining a part of the British Empire.[11]

In the Thirteen Colonies, however, perspectives varied on the British Empire. The colonies were not directly represented in Parliament, and colonists argued that Parliament had no right to levy taxes upon them. This tax dispute was part of a larger divergence between British and American interpretations of the British Constitution and the extent of Parliament's authority in the colonies.[12]: 162  The orthodox British view, dating from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, was that Parliament was the supreme authority throughout the empire, and anything that Parliament did was constitutional.[12]: 200–202  In the colonies, however, the idea had developed that the British Constitution recognized certain fundamental rights that no government could violate, including Parliament.[12]: 180–182  After the Townshend Acts, some essayists questioned whether Parliament had any legitimate jurisdiction in the colonies.[13] As a result of this ideological shift in the colonies, many colonialists participated in tax protests against the Royal authority such as the Pine Tree Riot in 1772 and the Boston Tea Party in 1773.[14][15]

Anticipating the arrangement of the British Commonwealth, by 1774 American writers such as Samuel Adams, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson argued that Parliament was the legislature of Great Britain only, and that the colonies, which had their own legislatures, were connected to the rest of the empire only through their allegiance to the Crown.[12]: 224–225 [16]

Continental Congress convenes
Further information: First Continental Congress and Second Continental Congress

The Thirteen Colonies as they existed on July 4, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress unanimously approved the text of the Declaration of Independence. (Most border disputes omitted. Some colonies had already declared independence; see Territorial evolution of the United States § 1776–1784 (American Revolution).)
In 1774, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, known as the Intolerable Acts in the colonies. This was intended to punish the colonists for the Gaspee Affair of 1772 and the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Many colonists considered the Coercive Acts to be in violation of the British Constitution and a threat to the liberties of all of British America. In September 1774, the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia to coordinate a formal response. Congress organized a boycott of British goods and petitioned the king for repeal of the acts. These measures were unsuccessful, however, since King George and His Majesties' prime minister, Lord North, were determined to enforce parliamentary supremacy over the Thirteen Colonies. In November 1774, King George, in a letter to North, wrote, "blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent".[17][18]

Most colonists still hoped for reconciliation with Great Britain, even after fighting began in the American Revolutionary War at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.[19][20] The Second Continental Congress convened at Pennsylvania State House, later renamed Independence Hall, in Philadelphia in May 1775. Some delegates supported eventual independence for the colonies, but none had yet declared it publicly, which was an act of treason punishable by death under the laws of the British monarchy at the time.[20]

Many colonists believed that Parliament no longer had sovereignty over them, but they were still loyal to King George, thinking he would intercede on their behalf. They were disabused of that notion in late 1775, when the king rejected Congress's second petition, issued a Proclamation of Rebellion, and announced before Parliament on October 26 that he was considering "friendly offers of foreign assistance" to suppress the rebellion.[21]: 25 [22] A pro-American minority in Parliament warned that the government was driving the colonists toward independence.[21]: 25 

Growing support for independence

The Assembly Room in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence
Despite this growing popular support for independence, the Second Continental Congress initially lacked the clear authority to declare it. Delegates had been elected to Congress by 13 different governments, which included extralegal conventions, ad hoc committees, and elected assemblies, and they were bound by the instructions given to them. Regardless of their personal opinions, delegates could not vote to declare independence unless their instructions permitted such an action.[23] Several colonies, in fact, expressly prohibited their delegates from taking any steps toward separation from Great Britain, while other delegations had instructions that were ambiguous on the issue;[21]: 30  consequently, advocates of independence sought to have the Congressional instructions revised. For Congress to declare independence, a majority of delegations would need authorization to vote for it, and at least one colonial government would need to specifically instruct its delegation to propose a declaration of independence in Congress.

Between April and July 1776, a "complex political war"[21]: 59  was waged to bring this about.[24]: 671 [25]

In January 1776, Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which described the uphill battle against the British for independence as a challenging but achievable and necessary objective, was published in Philadelphia.[26] Common Sense made a persuasive, impassioned case for independence, which had not been given serious consideration in the colonies. Paine linked independence with Protestant beliefs, as a means to present a distinctly American political identity, and he initiated open debate on a topic few had dared to discuss.[27][21]: 33 

As Common Sense was circulated throughout the Thirteen Colonies, public support for independence from Great Britain steadily increased. After reading it, Washington ordered that it be read by his Continental Army troops, who were demoralized following recent military defeats. A week later, Washington led the crossing of the Delaware in one of the Revolutionary War's most complex and daring military campaigns, resulting in a much-needed military victory in the Battle of Trenton against a Hessian military garrison at Trenton.[21]: 33–34  Common Sense was sold and distributed widely and read aloud at taverns and meeting places. In proportion to the population of the colonies at that time (2.5 million), it had the largest sale and circulation of any book published in American history.[citation needed] As of 2006, it remains the all-time best-selling American title and is still in print today.[citation needed]

In December 1776, Paine followed up with The American Crisis, in which he wrote the famed phrase:[28]

These are the times that try men's souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.[29][21]: 31–32 

— Thomas Paine, The American Crisis
While some colonists still hoped for reconciliation, public support for independence strengthened considerably in early 1776. In February 1776, colonists learned of Parliament's passage of the Prohibitory Act, which established a blockade of American ports and declared American ships to be enemy vessels. John Adams, a strong supporter of independence, believed that Parliament had effectively declared American independence before Congress had been able to. Adams labeled the Prohibitory Act the "Act of Independency", calling it "a compleat Dismemberment of the British Empire".[30][21]: 25–27  Support for declaring independence grew even more when it was confirmed that King George had hired German mercenaries to use against his American subjects.[31]

Revising instructions
In the campaign to revise Congressional instructions, many Americans formally expressed their support for separation from Great Britain in what were effectively state and local declarations of independence. Historian Pauline Maier identifies more than ninety such declarations that were issued throughout the Thirteen Colonies from April to July 1776.[21]: 48, Appendix A  These "declarations" took a variety of forms. Some were formal written instructions for Congressional delegations, such as the Halifax Resolves of April 12, with which North Carolina became the first colony to explicitly authorize its delegates to vote for independence.[24]: 678–679  Others were legislative acts that officially ended British rule in individual colonies, such as the Rhode Island legislature renouncing its allegiance to Great Britain on May 4—the first colony to do so.[24]: 679 [32][33] Many declarations were resolutions adopted at town or county meetings that offered support for independence. A few came in the form of jury instructions, such as the statement issued on April 23, 1776, by Chief Justice William Henry Drayton of South Carolina: "the law of the land authorizes me to declare ... that George the Third, King of Great Britain ... has no authority over us, and we owe no obedience to him."[21]: 69–72  Most of these declarations are now obscure, having been overshadowed by the resolution for independence, approved by Congress on July 2, and the declaration of independence, approved and printed on July 4 and signed in August.[21]: 48  The modern scholarly consensus is that the best-known and earliest of the local declarations is most likely inauthentic, the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, allegedly adopted in May 1775 (a full year before other local declarations).[21]: 174 

Some colonies held back from endorsing independence. Resistance was centered in the middle colonies of New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Advocates of independence saw Pennsylvania as the key; if that colony could be converted to the pro-independence cause, it was believed that the others would follow.[24]: 682  On May 1, however, opponents of independence retained control of the Pennsylvania Assembly in a special election that had focused on the question of independence.[24]: 683  In response, Congress passed a resolution on May 10 which had been promoted by John Adams and Richard Henry Lee, calling on colonies without a "government sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs" to adopt new governments.[24]: 684 [21]: 37 [34] The resolution passed unanimously, and was even supported by Pennsylvania's John Dickinson, the leader of the anti-independence faction in Congress, who believed that it did not apply to his colony.[24]: 684 

May 15 preamble
This Day the Congress has passed the most important Resolution, that ever was taken in America.

—John Adams, May 15, 1776[35]
As was the custom, Congress appointed a committee to draft a preamble to explain the purpose of the resolution. John Adams wrote the preamble, which stated that because King George had rejected reconciliation and was hiring foreign mercenaries to use against the colonies, "it is necessary that the exercise of every kind of authority under the said crown should be totally suppressed".[21]: 37 [24]: 684 [36] Adams' preamble was meant to encourage the overthrow of the governments of Pennsylvania and Maryland, which were still under proprietary governance.[37][24]: 684 [38] Congress passed the preamble on May 15 after several days of debate, but four of the middle colonies voted against it, and the Maryland delegation walked out in protest.[39][24]: 685  Adams regarded his May 15 preamble effectively as an American declaration of independence, although a formal declaration would still have to be made.[21]: 38 

Lee Resolution
Main article: Lee Resolution
On the same day that Congress passed Adams' preamble, the Virginia Convention set the stage for a formal Congressional declaration of independence. On May 15, the Convention instructed Virginia's congressional delegation "to propose to that respectable body to declare the United Colonies free and independent States, absolved from all allegiance to, or dependence upon, the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain".[40][21]: 63 [41] In accordance with those instructions, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia presented a three-part resolution to Congress on June 7.[42] The motion was seconded by John Adams, calling on Congress to declare independence, form foreign alliances, and prepare a plan of colonial confederation. The part of the resolution relating to declaring independence read: "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."[21]: 41 [43]

Lee's resolution met with resistance in the ensuing debate. Opponents of the resolution conceded that reconciliation was unlikely with Great Britain, while arguing that declaring independence was premature, and that securing foreign aid should take priority.[24]: 689–690 [21]: 42  Advocates of the resolution countered that foreign governments would not intervene in an internal British struggle, and so a formal declaration of independence was needed before foreign aid was possible. All Congress needed to do, they insisted, was to "declare a fact which already exists".[24]: 689 [44]: 33–34 [45] Delegates from Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, and New York were still not yet authorized to vote for independence, however, and some of them threatened to leave Congress if the resolution were adopted. Congress, therefore, voted on June 10 to postpone further discussion of Lee's resolution for three weeks.[21]: 42–43 [46] Until then, Congress decided that a committee should prepare a document announcing and explaining independence in case Lee's resolution was approved when it was brought up again in July.

Final push

Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776, a 1900 portrait by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris depicting Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson working on the Declaration[47]
Support for a Congressional declaration of independence was consolidated in the final weeks of June 1776. On June 14, the Connecticut Assembly instructed its delegates to propose independence and, the following day, the legislatures of New Hampshire and Delaware authorized their delegates to declare independence.[24]: 691–692  In Pennsylvania, political struggles ended with the dissolution of the colonial assembly, and a new Conference of Committees under Thomas McKean authorized Pennsylvania's delegates to declare independence on June 18.[48][24]: 691  The Provincial Congress of New Jersey had been governing the province since January 1776; they resolved on June 15 that Royal Governor William Franklin was "an enemy to the liberties of this country" and had him arrested.[24]: 692  On June 21, they chose new delegates to Congress and empowered them to join in a declaration of independence.[24]: 693 

As of the end of June, only two of the thirteen colonies had yet to authorize independence, Maryland and New York. Maryland's delegates previously walked out when the Continental Congress adopted Adams' May 15 preamble, and had sent to the Annapolis Convention for instructions.[24]: 694  On May 20, the Annapolis Convention rejected Adams' preamble, instructing its delegates to remain against independence. But Samuel Chase went to Maryland and, thanks to local resolutions in favor of independence, was able to get the Annapolis Convention to change its mind on June 28.[24]: 694–696 [49][21]: 68  Only the New York delegates were unable to get revised instructions. When Congress had been considering the resolution of independence on June 8, the New York Provincial Congress told the delegates to wait.[50][24]: 698  But on June 30, the Provincial Congress evacuated New York as British forces approached, and would not convene again until July 10. This meant that New York's delegates would not be authorized to declare independence until after Congress had made its decision.[51]

Draft and adoption
Main article: Physical history of the United States Declaration of Independence

The portable writing desk on which Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence

Declaration House, the reconstructed boarding house at Market and South 7th Streets in Philadelphia, where Jefferson wrote the Declaration in June 1776

The opening of the Declaration's original printing on July 4, 1776, under Jefferson's supervision, engrossed and signed in August 1776 includes slightly edited phrasing to its opening lines, including the pointed addition of the word "unanimous", reflecting that each of the 56 delegates of the Second Continental Congress signed it.[3]
Political maneuvering was setting the stage for an official declaration of independence even while a document was being written to explain the decision. On June 11, 1776, Congress appointed the Committee of Five to draft a declaration, including John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Robert R. Livingston of New York, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut.

The committee took no minutes, so there is some uncertainty about how the drafting process proceeded; contradictory accounts were written many years later by Jefferson and Adams, too many years to be regarded as entirely reliable, although their accounts are frequently cited.[21]: 97–105 [52] What is certain is that the committee discussed the general outline which the document should follow and decided that Jefferson would write the first draft.[53] The committee in general, and Jefferson in particular, thought that Adams should write the document, but Adams persuaded them to choose Jefferson and promised to consult with him personally.[54]

Jefferson largely wrote the Declaration of Independence in isolation between June 11, 1776, and June 28, 1776, from the second floor of a three-story home he was renting at 700 Market Street in Philadelphia, now called the Declaration House and within walking distance of Independence Hall.[55] Considering Congress's busy schedule, Jefferson probably had limited time for writing over these 17 days, and he likely wrote his first draft quickly.[21]: 104 

Examination of the text of the early Declaration drafts reflects the influence that John Locke and Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense had on Jefferson. He then consulted the other members of the Committee of Five who offered minor changes, and then produced another copy incorporating these alterations. The committee presented this copy to the Congress on June 28, 1776. The title of the document was "A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled."[1]: 4 

Congress ordered that the draft "lie on the table"[24]: 701  and then methodically edited Jefferson's primary document for the next two days, shortening it by a fourth, removing unnecessary wording, and improving sentence structure.[56] They removed Jefferson's assertion that King George III had forced slavery onto the colonies,[57] in order to moderate the document and appease those in South Carolina and Georgia, both states which had significant involvement in the slave trade.

Jefferson later wrote in his autobiography that Northern states were also supportive towards the clauses removal, "for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."[58] Jefferson wrote that Congress had "mangled" his draft version, but the Declaration that was finally produced was "the majestic document that inspired both contemporaries and posterity", in the words of his biographer John Ferling.[56]

Congress tabled the draft of the declaration on Monday, July 1 and resolved itself into a committee of the whole, with Benjamin Harrison of Virginia presiding, and they resumed debate on Lee's resolution of independence.[59] John Dickinson made one last effort to delay the decision, arguing that Congress should not declare independence without first securing a foreign alliance and finalizing the Articles of Confederation.[24]: 699  John Adams gave a speech in reply to Dickinson, restating the case for an immediate declaration.

A vote was taken after a long day of speeches, each colony casting a single vote, as always. The delegation for each colony numbered from two to seven members, and each delegation voted among themselves to determine the colony's vote. Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted against declaring independence. The New York delegation abstained, lacking permission to vote for independence. Delaware cast no vote because the delegation was split between Thomas McKean, who voted yes, and George Read, who voted no. The remaining nine delegations voted in favor of independence, which meant that the resolution had been approved by the committee of the whole. The next step was for the resolution to be voted upon by Congress itself. Edward Rutledge of South Carolina was opposed to Lee's resolution but desirous of unanimity, and he moved that the vote be postponed until the following day.[60][24]: 700 

On July 2, South Carolina reversed its position and voted for independence. In the Pennsylvania delegation, Dickinson and Robert Morris abstained, allowing the delegation to vote three-to-two in favor of independence. The tie in the Delaware delegation was broken by the timely arrival of Caesar Rodney, who voted for independence. The New York delegation abstained once again since they were still not authorized to vote for independence, although they were allowed to do so a week later by the New York Provincial Congress.[21]: 45  The resolution of independence was adopted with twelve affirmative votes and one abstention, and the colonies formally severed political ties with Great Britain.[43] John Adams wrote to his wife on the following day and predicted that July 2 would become a great American holiday.[24]: 703–704  He thought that the vote for independence would be commemorated; he did not foresee that Americans would instead celebrate Independence Day on the date when the announcement of that act was finalized.[21]: 160–161 

I am apt to believe that [Independence Day] will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.[61]

Congress next turned its attention to the committee's draft of the declaration. They made significant changes in wording during several days of debate including the removal of nearly a fourth of the text. The final wording of the Declaration of Independence was approved on July 4, 1776, and sent to the printer for publication.

There is a distinct change in wording from this original broadside printing of the Declaration and the final official engrossed copy. The word "unanimous" was inserted as a result of a Congressional resolution passed on July 19, 1776: "Resolved, That the Declaration passed on the 4th, be fairly engrossed on parchment, with the title and stile of 'The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America,' and that the same, when engrossed, be signed by every member of Congress."[62] Historian George Athan Billias says: "Independence amounted to a new status of interdependence: the United States was now a sovereign nation entitled to the privileges and responsibilities that came with that status. America thus became a member of the international community, which meant becoming a maker of treaties and alliances, a military ally in diplomacy, and a partner in foreign trade on a more equal basis."[63]

Annotated text of the engrossed declaration
The declaration is not divided into formal sections; but it is often discussed as consisting of five parts: introduction, preamble, indictment of King George III, denunciation of the British people, and conclusion.[64]

Introduction

Asserts as a matter of natural law the ability of a people to assume political independence; acknowledges that the grounds for such independence must be reasonable, and therefore explicable, and ought to be explained.

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen 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."[65]

Preamble

Outlines a general philosophy of government that justifies revolution when government harms natural rights.[64]

"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 shewn, 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."

Indictment

A bill of grievances documenting the king's "repeated injuries and usurpations" of the Americans' rights and liberties.[64]

"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 of 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 meantime 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 for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations 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 benefit 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 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."

Failed warnings

Describes the colonists' attempts to inform and warn the British people of the king's injustice, and the British people's failure to act. Even so, it affirms the colonists' ties to the British as "brethren."[64]

"Nor have We been wanting in attentions 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."

Denunciation

This section essentially finishes the case for independence. The conditions that justified revolution have been shown.[64]

"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."

Conclusion

The signers assert that there exist conditions under which people must change their government, that the British have produced such conditions and, by necessity, the colonies must throw off political ties with the British Crown and become independent states. The conclusion contains, at its core, the Lee Resolution that had been passed on July 2.

"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 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."

Signatures

The first and most famous signature on the engrossed copy was that of John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress. Two future presidents (Thomas Jefferson and John Adams) and a father and great-grandfather of two other presidents (Benjamin Harrison V) were among the signatories. Edward Rutledge (age 26) was the youngest signer, and Benjamin Franklin (age 70) was the oldest signer. The fifty-six signers of the Declaration represented the new states as follows (from north to south):[66]

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: George Read, Caesar Rodney, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward Jr., Thomas Lynch Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
The version of the signed document that people saw at the time was also signed by Mary Katherine Goddard. She was the postmaster of Baltimore and was tasked by the Continental Congress with printing the signed Declaration. Her normal signature, in her capacity as the owner of the Maryland Journal, was "M.K. Goddard," but she signed the Declaration of Independence with her full name.[67]

Influences and legal status

A 1697 portrait of English political philosopher John Locke
Historians have often sought to identify the sources that most influenced the words and political philosophy of the Declaration of Independence. By Jefferson's own admission, the Declaration contained no original ideas, but was instead a statement of sentiments widely shared by supporters of the American Revolution. As he explained in 1825:

Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion.[68]

Jefferson's most immediate sources were two documents written in June 1776: his own draft of the preamble of the Constitution of Virginia, and George Mason's draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Ideas and phrases from both of these documents appear in the Declaration of Independence.[69][21]: 125–126  Mason's opening was:

Section 1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.[70]

Mason was, in turn, directly influenced by the 1689 English Declaration of Rights, which formally ended the reign of King James II.[21]: 126–128  During the American Revolution, Jefferson and other Americans looked to the English Declaration of Rights as a model of how to end the reign of an unjust king.[21]: 53–57  The Scottish Declaration of Arbroath (1320) and the Dutch Act of Abjuration (1581) have also been offered as models for Jefferson's Declaration, but these models are now accepted by few scholars. Maier found no evidence that the Dutch Act of Abjuration served as a model for the Declaration, and considers the argument "unpersuasive".[21]: 264  Armitage discounts the influence of the Scottish and Dutch acts, and writes that neither was called "declarations of independence" until fairly recently.[44]: 42–44  Stephen E. Lucas argued in favor of the influence of the Dutch act.[71][72]

Jefferson wrote that a number of authors exerted a general influence on the words of the Declaration.[73] English political theorist John Locke is usually cited as one of the primary influences, a man whom Jefferson called one of "the three greatest men that have ever lived".[74]

In 1922, historian Carl L. Becker wrote, "Most Americans had absorbed Locke's works as a kind of political gospel; and the Declaration, in its form, in its phraseology, follows closely certain sentences in Locke's second treatise on government."[1]: 27  The extent of Locke's influence on the American Revolution has been questioned by some subsequent scholars, however. Historian Ray Forrest Harvey argued in 1937 for the dominant influence of Swiss jurist Jean Jacques Burlamaqui, declaring that Jefferson and Locke were at "two opposite poles" in their political philosophy, as evidenced by Jefferson's use in the Declaration of Independence of the phrase "pursuit of happiness" instead of "property".[75] Other scholars emphasized the influence of republicanism rather than Locke's classical liberalism.[76]

Historian Garry Wills argued that Jefferson was influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment, particularly Francis Hutcheson, rather than Locke,[77] an interpretation that has been strongly criticized.[78]

Legal historian John Phillip Reid has written that the emphasis on the political philosophy of the Declaration has been misplaced. The Declaration is not a philosophical tract about natural rights, argues Reid, but is instead a legal document—an indictment against King George for violating the constitutional rights of the colonists.[79] As such, it follows the process of the 1550 Magdeburg Confession, which legitimized resistance against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in a multi-step legal formula now known as the doctrine of the lesser magistrate.[80]

Historian David Armitage has argued that the Declaration was strongly influenced by de Vattel's The Law of Nations, the dominant international law treatise of the period, and a book that Benjamin Franklin said was "continually in the hands of the members of our Congress".[81] Armitage writes, "Vattel made independence fundamental to his definition of statehood"; therefore, the primary purpose of the Declaration was "to express the international legal sovereignty of the United States". If the United States were to have any hope of being recognized by the European powers, the American revolutionaries first had to make it clear that they were no longer dependent on Great Britain.[44]: 21, 38–40  The Declaration of Independence does not have the force of law domestically, but nevertheless it may help to provide historical and legal clarity about the Constitution and other laws.[82][83][84][85]

Signing
Main article: Signing of the United States Declaration of Independence

The signed Declaration of Independence, now badly faded because of poor preservation practices during the 19th century, is on display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

On July 4, 1776, Second Continental Congress President John Hancock's signature authenticated the Declaration of Independence.

The Syng inkstand used for the signing of the Declaration and the Constitution
The Declaration became official when Congress recorded its vote adopting the document on July 4; it was transposed on paper and signed by John Hancock, President of the Congress, on that day. Signatures of the other delegates were not needed to further authenticate it.[86] The signatures of fifty-six delegates are affixed to the Declaration, though the exact date when each person signed became debatable.[86] Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams all wrote that the Declaration was signed by Congress on July 4.[87] But in 1796, signer Thomas McKean disputed that, because some signers were not then present, including several who were not even elected to Congress until after that date.[86][88] Historians have generally accepted McKean's version of events.[89][90][91] History particularly shows most delegates signed on August 2, 1776, and those who were not then present added their names later.[92]

In an 1811 letter to Adams, Benjamin Rush recounted the signing on August 2 in stark fashion, describing it as a scene of "pensive and awful silence". Rush said the delegates were called up, one after another, and then filed forward somberly to subscribe what each thought was their ensuing death warrant.[93] He related that the "gloom of the morning" was briefly interrupted when the rotund Benjamin Harrison of Virginia said to a diminutive Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, at the signing table, "I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes and be with the Angels, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead."[93] According to Rush, Harrison's remark "procured a transient smile, but it was soon succeeded by the Solemnity with which the whole business was conducted."[93]

The signatories include then future presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, though the most legendary signature is John Hancock's.[94] His large, flamboyant signature became iconic, and the term John Hancock emerged in the United States as a metaphor of "signature".[95] A commonly circulated but apocryphal account claims that, after Hancock signed, the delegate from Massachusetts commented, "The British ministry can read that name without spectacles." Another report indicates that Hancock proudly declared, "There! I guess King George will be able to read that!"[96]

A legend emerged years later about the signing of the Declaration, after the document had become an important national symbol. John Hancock is supposed to have said that Congress, having signed the Declaration, must now "all hang together", and Benjamin Franklin replied: "Yes, we must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." That quotation first appeared in print in an 1837 London humor magazine.[97]

The Syng inkstand used at the signing was also used at the signing of the United States Constitution in 1787.

Publication and reaction

Johannes Adam Simon Oertel's portrait Pulling Down the Statue of King George III, N.Y.C., c. 1859, depicts citizens destroying a statue of King George after the Declaration was read in New York City on July 9, 1776.

William Whipple, signer of the Declaration of Independence, freed a person he had enslaved, believing that he could not both fight for liberty and own a slave.
After the Second Continental Congress unanimously approved the final wording of the Declaration on July 4, a handwritten copy was sent a few blocks away to the printing shop of John Dunlap. Throughout the night, Dunlap printed about 200 broadsides for distribution. The source copy used for this printing has been lost and may have been a copy in Thomas Jefferson's hand.[98] The first formal public readings of the document took place simultaneously on July 8, at noon in three locations: Philadelphia, where it was read by John Nixon in the yard of present-day Independence Hall, Trenton, New Jersey, and Easton, Pennsylvania.[2] The first newspaper to publish the Declaration was The Pennsylvania Evening Post, which published it on July 6.[21]: 156  A German translation of the Declaration was published in Philadelphia by July 9.[44]: 72  It was subsequently widely read and published throughout the Thirteen Colonies.

President of Congress John Hancock sent a broadside to General George Washington, instructing him to have it proclaimed "at the Head of the Army in the way you shall think it most proper".[21]: 155  Washington had the Declaration read to his troops in New York City on July 9, with thousands of British troops on ships in the harbor. Washington and Congress hoped that the Declaration would inspire the soldiers, and encourage others to join the army.[21]: 156  After hearing the Declaration, crowds in many cities tore down and destroyed signs or statues representing royal authority. An equestrian statue of King George in New York City was pulled down and the lead used to make musket balls.[21]: 156–157 

One of the first readings of the Declaration by the British is believed to have taken place at the Rose and Crown Tavern on Staten Island, New York in the presence of General Howe.[99] British officials in North America sent copies of the Declaration to Great Britain.[44]: 73  It was published in British newspapers beginning in mid-August, it had reached Florence and Warsaw by mid-September, and a German translation appeared in Switzerland by October. The first copy of the Declaration sent to France got lost, and the second copy arrived only in November 1776.[100] News of the Declaration managed to reach Russia on August 13 via a dispatch from the Russian chargé d'affaires in London, Nikita Panin.[101] It reached Portuguese America by Brazilian medical student "Vendek" José Joaquim Maia e Barbalho, who had met with Thomas Jefferson in Nîmes.

The Spanish-American authorities banned the circulation of the Declaration, but it was widely transmitted and translated: by Venezuelan Manuel García de Sena, by Colombian Miguel de Pombo, by Ecuadorian Vicente Rocafuerte, and by New Englanders Richard Cleveland and William Shaler, who distributed the Declaration and the United States Constitution among Creoles in Chile and Indians in Mexico in 1821.[102] The North Ministry did not give an official answer to the Declaration, but instead secretly commissioned pamphleteer John Lind to publish a response entitled Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress.[44]: 75  British Tories denounced the signers of the Declaration for not applying the same principles of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" to African Americans.[103] Thomas Hutchinson, the former royal governor of Massachusetts, also published a rebuttal.[104][44]: 74  These pamphlets challenged various aspects of the Declaration. Hutchinson argued that the American Revolution was the work of a few conspirators who wanted independence from the outset, and who had finally achieved it by inducing otherwise loyal colonists to rebel.[12]: 155–156  Lind's pamphlet had an anonymous attack on the concept of natural rights written by Jeremy Bentham, an argument that he repeated during the French Revolution.[44]: 79–80  Both pamphlets questioned how the American slaveholders in Congress could proclaim that "all men are created equal" without freeing their own slaves.[44]: 76–77 

William Whipple, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who had fought in the war, freed his slave Prince Whipple because of his revolutionary ideals. In the postwar decades, other slaveholders also freed their slaves; from 1790 to 1810, the percentage of free blacks in the Upper South increased to 8.3 percent from less than one percent of the black population.[105] Northern states began abolishing slavery shortly after the war for Independence began, and all had abolished slavery by 1804.

Later in late November 1776, a group of 547 Loyalists, largely from New York, signed a Declaration of Dependence in New York City at Fraunces Tavern in Manhattan pledging their loyalty to the Crown.[106]

History of the documents
Main article: Physical history of the United States Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on display in the Library of Congress prior to the removal to the National Archives, 13 December 1952

The National Archives' Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom where, between two Barry Faulkner murals, the original United States Declaration of Independence, United States Constitution, and other American founding documents are publicly exhibited

In March, 2025, President Donald Trump requested that a copy of the Declaration of Independence be hung in the Oval Office
The official copy of the Declaration of Independence was the one printed on July 4, 1776, under Jefferson's supervision. It was sent to the states and to the Army and was widely reprinted in newspapers. The slightly different "engrossed copy" (shown at the top of this article) was made later for members to sign. The engrossed version is the one widely distributed in the 21st century. Note that the opening lines differ between the two versions.[3]

The copy of the Declaration that was signed by Congress is known as the engrossed or parchment copy. It was probably engrossed (that is, carefully handwritten) by clerk Timothy Matlack.[107] A facsimile made in 1823 has become the basis of most modern reproductions rather than the original because of poor conservation of the engrossed copy through the 19th century.[107] In 1921, custody of the engrossed copy of the Declaration was transferred from the State Department to the Library of Congress, along with the United States Constitution.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the documents were moved for safekeeping to the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox in Kentucky, where they were kept until 1944.[108] In 1952, the engrossed Declaration was transferred to the National Archives and is now on permanent display at the National Archives in the "Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom".[109]

The document signed by Congress and enshrined in the National Archives is usually regarded as the Declaration of Independence, but historian Julian P. Boyd argued that the Declaration, like Magna Carta, is not a single document. Boyd considered the printed broadsides ordered by Congress to be official texts, as well. The Declaration was first published as a broadside that was printed the night of July 4 by John Dunlap of Philadelphia. Dunlap printed about 200 broadsides, of which 26 are known to survive. The 26th copy was discovered in The National Archives in England in 2009.[110]

In 1777, Congress commissioned Mary Katherine Goddard to print a new broadside that listed the signers of the Declaration, unlike the Dunlap broadside.[107][111] Nine copies of the Goddard broadside are known to still exist.[111] A variety of broadsides printed by the states are also extant, including seven copies of the Solomon Southwick broadside, one of which was acquired by Washington University in St. Louis in 2015.[111][112]

Several early handwritten copies and drafts of the Declaration have also been preserved. Jefferson kept a four-page draft that late in life he called the "original Rough draught".[113] Historians now understand that Jefferson's Rough draft was one in a series of drafts used by the Committee of Five before being submitted to Congress for deliberation. According to Boyd, the first, "original" handwritten draft of the Declaration of Independence that predated Jefferson's Rough draft, was lost or destroyed during the drafting process.[114] It is not known how many drafts Jefferson wrote prior to this one, and how much of the text was contributed by other committee members.

In 1947, Boyd discovered a fragment of an earlier draft in Jefferson's handwriting that predates Jefferson's Rough draft.[115] In 2018, the Thomas Paine National Historical Association published findings on an additional early handwritten draft of the Declaration, referred to as the "Sherman Copy", that John Adams copied from the lost original draft for Committee of Five members Roger Sherman and Benjamin Franklin's initial review. An inscription on the document noting "A beginning perhaps...", the early state of the text, and the manner in which this document was hastily taken, appears to chronologically place this draft earlier than both the fair Adams copy held in the Massachusetts Historical Society collection and the Jefferson "rough draft".[116] After the text was finalized by Congress as a whole, Jefferson and Adams sent copies of the rough draft to friends, with variations noted from the original drafts.

During the writing process, Jefferson showed the rough draft to Adams and Franklin, and perhaps to other members of the drafting committee,[113] who made a few more changes. Franklin, for example, may have been responsible for changing Jefferson's original phrase "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" to "We hold these truths to be self-evident".[1]: 1:427–28  Jefferson incorporated these changes into a copy that was submitted to Congress in the name of the committee.[113] The copy that was submitted to Congress on June 28 has been lost and was perhaps destroyed in the printing process,[117] or destroyed during the debates in accordance with Congress's secrecy rule.[118]

On April 21, 2017, it was announced that a second engrossed copy had been discovered in the archives at West Sussex County Council in Chichester, England.[119] Named by its finders the "Sussex Declaration", it differs from the National Archives copy (which the finders refer to as the "Matlack Declaration") in that the signatures on it are not grouped by States. How it came to be in England is not yet known, but the finders believe that the randomness of the signatures points to an origin with signatory James Wilson, who had argued strongly that the Declaration was made not by the States but by the whole people.[120][121]

Years of exposure to damaging lighting resulted in the original Declaration of Independence document having much of its ink fade by 1876.[122][123]

At the request of President Donald Trump, a copy of the Declaration of Independence was hung in the Oval Office in March 2025.[124]

Legacy
The Declaration was given little attention in the years immediately following the American Revolution, having served its original purpose in announcing the independence of the United States.[44]: 87–88 [21]: 162, 168–169  Early celebrations of Independence Day largely ignored the Declaration, as did early histories of the Revolution. The act of declaring independence was considered important, whereas the text announcing that act attracted little attention.[125][21]: 160  The Declaration was rarely mentioned during the debates about the United States Constitution, and its language was not incorporated into that document.[44]: 92  George Mason's draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights was more influential, and its language was echoed in state constitutions and state bills of rights more often than Jefferson's words.[44]: 90 [21]: 165–167  "In none of these documents", wrote Pauline Maier, "is there any evidence whatsoever that the Declaration of Independence lived in men's minds as a classic statement of American political principles."[21]: 167 

Global influence
Many leaders of the French Revolution admired the Declaration of Independence[21]: 167  but were also interested in the new American state constitutions.[44]: 82  The inspiration and content of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) emerged largely from the ideals of the American Revolution.[126] Lafayette prepared its key drafts, working closely in Paris with his friend Thomas Jefferson. It also borrowed language from George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights.[127][128] The declaration also influenced the Russian Empire, and it had a particular impact on the Decembrist revolt and other Russian thinkers.

According to historian David Armitage, the Declaration of Independence did prove to be internationally influential, but not as a statement of human rights. Armitage argues that the Declaration was the first in a new genre of declarations of independence which announced the creation of new states. Other French leaders were directly influenced by the text of the Declaration of Independence itself. The Manifesto of the Province of Flanders (1790) was the first foreign derivation of the Declaration;[44]: 113  others include the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence (1811), the Liberian Declaration of Independence (1847), the declarations of secession by the Confederate States of America (1860–61), and the Vietnamese Proclamation of Independence (1945).[44]: 120–135  These declarations echoed the United States Declaration of Independence in announcing the independence of a new state, without necessarily endorsing the political philosophy of the original.[44]: 104, 113 

Other countries have used the Declaration as inspiration or have directly copied sections from it. These include the Haitian declaration of January 1, 1804, during the Haitian Revolution, the United Provinces of New Granada in 1811, the Argentine Declaration of Independence in 1816, the Chilean Declaration of Independence in 1818, Costa Rica in 1821, El Salvador in 1821, Guatemala in 1821, Honduras in 1821, Mexico in 1821, Nicaragua in 1821, Peru in 1821, Bolivian War of Independence in 1825, Uruguay in 1825, Ecuador in 1830, Colombia in 1831, Paraguay in 1842, Dominican Republic in 1844, Texas Declaration of Independence in March 1836, California Republic in November 1836, Hungarian Declaration of Independence in 1849, Declaration of the Independence of New Zealand in 1835, and the Czechoslovak declaration of independence from 1918 drafted in Washington, D.C., with Gutzon Borglum among the drafters. The Rhodesian declaration of independence is based on the American one, as well, ratified in November 1965, although it notably omits the phrases "all men are created equal" and "the consent of the governed".[102][129][130][131] In a similar vein, the South Carolinian declaration of secession from December 1860 also mentions the U.S. Declaration of Independence, though it too omits references to "all men are created equal" and "consent of the governed".

Revival of interest
Interest in the Declaration was revived in the 1790s with the emergence of the United States's first political parties.[132] Throughout the 1780s, few Americans knew or cared who wrote the Declaration.[133] But in the next decade, Jeffersonian Republicans sought political advantage over their rival Federalists by promoting both the importance of the Declaration and Jefferson as its author.[134][21]: 168–171  Federalists responded by casting doubt on Jefferson's authorship or originality, and by emphasizing that independence was declared by the whole Congress, with Jefferson as just one member of the drafting committee. Federalists insisted that Congress's act of declaring independence, in which Federalist John Adams had played a major role, was more important than the document announcing it.[135][21]: 171  But this view faded away, like the Federalist Party itself, and, before long, the act of declaring independence became synonymous with the document.

A less partisan appreciation for the Declaration emerged in the years following the War of 1812, thanks to a growing American nationalism and a renewed interest in the history of the Revolution.[136]: 571–572 [21]: 175–178  In 1817, Congress commissioned John Trumbull's famous painting of the signers, which was exhibited to large crowds before being installed in the Capitol.[136]: 572 [21]: 175  The earliest commemorative printings of the Declaration also appeared at this time, offering many Americans their first view of the signed document.[136]: 572 [21]: 175–176 [137][138] Collective biographies of the signers were first published in the 1820s,[21]: 176  giving birth to what Garry Wills called the "cult of the signers".[139] In the years that followed, many stories about the writing and signing of the document were published for the first time.

When interest in the Declaration was revived, the sections that were most important in 1776 were no longer relevant: the announcement of the independence of the United States and the grievances against King George. But the second paragraph was applicable long after the war had ended, with its talk of self-evident truths and unalienable rights.[44]: 93  The identity of natural law since the 18th century has seen increasing ascendancy towards political and moral norms versus the law of nature, God, or human nature as seen in the past.[140] The Constitution and the Bill of Rights lacked sweeping statements about rights and equality, and advocates of groups with grievances turned to the Declaration for support.[21]: 196–197  Starting in the 1820s, variations of the Declaration were issued to proclaim the rights of workers, farmers, women, and others.[21]: 197 [141] In 1848, for example, the Seneca Falls Convention of women's rights advocates declared that "all men and women are created equal".[21]: 197 [44]: 95 

John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence (1817–1826)
Main article: Declaration of Independence (Trumbull)
About 50 men, most of them seated, are in a large meeting room. Most are focused on the five men standing in the center of the room. The tallest of the five is laying a document on a table.
John Trumbull's famous 1818 portrait is often identified as a depiction of the Declaration's signing, but it actually shows the drafting committee presenting its work to the Second Continental Congress.[142]

The reverse side of the United States two-dollar bill
John Trumbull's painting Declaration of Independence has played a significant role in popular conceptions of the Declaration of Independence. The painting is 12-by-18-foot (3.7 by 5.5 m) in size and was commissioned by the United States Congress in 1817; it has hung in the United States Capitol Rotunda since 1826. It is sometimes described as the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but it actually shows the Committee of Five presenting their draft of the Declaration to the Second Continental Congress on June 28, 1776, and not the signing of the document, which took place later.[143]

Trumbull painted the figures from life whenever possible, but some had died and images could not be located; hence, the painting does not include all the signers of the Declaration. One figure had participated in the drafting but did not sign the final document; another refused to sign. In fact, the membership of the Second Continental Congress changed as time passed, and the figures in the painting were never in the same room at the same time. It is, however, an accurate depiction of the room in Independence Hall, the centerpiece of the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Trumbull's painting has been depicted multiple times on U.S. currency and postage stamps. Its first use was on the reverse side of the $100 National Bank Note issued in 1863. A few years later, the steel engraving used in printing the bank notes was used to produce a 24-cent stamp, issued as part of the 1869 Pictorial Issue. An engraving of the signing scene has been featured on the reverse side of the United States two-dollar bill since 1976.

Slavery and the Declaration
Further information: Slavery in the colonial United States
The apparent contradiction between the claim that "all men are created equal" and the existence of slavery in the United States attracted comment when the Declaration was first published. Many of the founders understood the incompatibility of the statement of natural equality with the institution of slavery, but continued to enjoy the "Rights of Man".[144] Jefferson had included a paragraph in his initial rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence vigorously condemning the evil of the slave trade, and condemning King George III for forcing it onto the colonies, but this was deleted from the final version.[21]: 146–150 [57]

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he had deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.[145]

Jefferson himself was a prominent Virginia slaveowner, owning six hundred enslaved Africans on his Monticello plantation.[146] Referring to this contradiction, English abolitionist Thomas Day wrote in a 1776 letter, "If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves."[44][147] The African-American writer Lemuel Haynes expressed similar viewpoints in his essay "Liberty Further Extended", where he wrote that "Liberty is Equally as pre[c]ious to a Black man, as it is to a white one".[148]

In the 19th century, the Declaration took on a special significance for the abolitionist movement. Historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown wrote that "abolitionists tended to interpret the Declaration of Independence as a theological as well as a political document".[149] Abolitionist leaders Benjamin Lundy and William Lloyd Garrison adopted the "twin rocks" of "the Bible and the Declaration of Independence" as the basis for their philosophies. He wrote, "As long as there remains a single copy of the Declaration of Independence, or of the Bible, in our land, we will not despair."[150] For radical abolitionists such as Garrison, the most important part of the Declaration was its assertion of the right of revolution. Garrison called for the destruction of the government under the Constitution, and the creation of a new state dedicated to the principles of the Declaration.[21]: 198–199 

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech asking the question, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?".

The controversial question of whether to allow additional slave states into the United States coincided with the growing stature of the Declaration. The first major public debate about slavery and the Declaration took place during the Missouri controversy of 1819 to 1821.[151] Anti-slavery Congressmen argued that the language of the Declaration indicated that the Founding Fathers of the United States had been opposed to slavery in principle, and so new slave states should not be added to the country.[151]: 604  Pro-slavery Congressmen led by Senator Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina argued that the Declaration was not a part of the Constitution and therefore had no relevance to the question.[151]: 605 

With the abolitionist movement gaining momentum, defenders of slavery such as John Randolph and John C. Calhoun found it necessary to argue that the Declaration's assertion that "all men are created equal" was false, or at least that it did not apply to black people.[21]: 199 [12]: 246  During the debate over the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1853, for example, Senator John Pettit of Indiana argued that the statement "all men are created equal" was not a "self-evident truth" but a "self-evident lie".[21]: 200  Opponents of the Kansas–Nebraska Act, including Salmon P. Chase and Benjamin Wade, defended the Declaration and what they saw as its antislavery principles.[21]: 200–201 

John Brown's Declaration of Liberty
In preparing for his raid on Harper's Ferry, said by Frederick Douglass to be the beginning of the end of slavery in the United States,[152]: 27–28  abolitionist John Brown had many copies printed of a Provisional Constitution. When the seceding states created the Confederate States of America 16 months later, they operated for over a year under a Provisional Constitution. It outlines the three branches of government in the quasi-country he hoped to set up in the Appalachian Mountains. It was widely reproduced in the press, and in full in the Select Senate Committee report on John Brown's insurrection (the Mason Report).[153]

Brown did not have it printed, and his Declaration of Liberty, dated July 4, 1859, was found among his papers at the Kennedy Farm.[154]: 330–331  It was written out on sheets of paper attached to fabric, to allow it to be rolled, and it was rolled when found. The hand is that of Owen Brown, who often served as his father's amanuensis.[155]

Imitating the vocabulary, punctuation, and capitalization of the 73-year-old U.S. Declaration, the 2000-word document begins:

July 4th 1859

A Declaration of Liberty
By the Representatives of the slave Popolation [sic] of the United States of America

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for an Oppressed People to Rise, and assert their Natural Rights, as Human Beings, as Native & mutual Citizens of a free Republic, and break that odious Yoke of oppression, which is so unjustly laid upon them by their fellow Countrymen, and to assume among the powers of Earth the same equal privileges to which the Laws of Nature, & natures God entitle them; A moderate respect for the opinions of Mankind, requires that they should declare the causes which incite them to this just & worthy action.

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; & the persuit of happiness. That Nature hath freely given to all Men, a full Supply of Air. Water, & Land; for their sustinance, & mutual happiness, That No Man has any right to deprive his fellow Man, of these Inherent rights, except in punishment of Crime. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That when any form of Government, becomes destructive to these ends, It is the right of the People, to alter, Amend, or Remoddel it, Laying its foundation on Such Principles, & organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect the safety, & happiness of the Human Race.[156]

The document was apparently intended to be read aloud, but so far as is known Brown never did so, even though he read the Provisional Constitution aloud the day the raid on Harpers Ferry began.[157]: 74  Very much aware of the history of the American Revolution, he would have read the Declaration aloud after the revolt had started. The document was not published until 1894, and by someone who did not realize its importance and buried it in an appendix of documents.[154]: 637–643  It is missing from most but not all studies of John Brown.[158][157]: 69–73 

Lincoln and the Declaration

Then U.S. Congressman Abraham Lincoln, who believed the Declaration expressed the highest principles of the American Revolution, in 1846
The Declaration's relationship to slavery was taken up in 1854 by Abraham Lincoln, a little-known former Congressman who idolized the Founding Fathers.[21]: 201–202  Lincoln thought that the Declaration of Independence expressed the highest principles of the American Revolution, and that the Founding Fathers had tolerated slavery with the expectation that it would ultimately wither away.[6]: 126  For the United States to legitimize the expansion of slavery in the Kansas–Nebraska Act, thought Lincoln, was to repudiate the principles of the Revolution. In his October 1854 Peoria speech, Lincoln said:

Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a "sacred right of self-government". ... Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. ... Let us repurify it. Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. ... If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union: but we shall have saved it, as to make, and keep it, forever worthy of the saving.[6]: 126–127 

The meaning of the Declaration was a recurring topic in the famed debates between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in 1858. Douglas argued that the phrase "all men are created equal", which appears in the Declaration. referred to white men only. The purpose of the Declaration, he said, had simply been to justify the independence of the United States, and not to proclaim the equality of any "inferior or degraded race".[21]: 204  Lincoln, however, thought that the language of the Declaration was deliberately universal, setting a high moral standard to which the American republic should aspire. "I had thought the Declaration contemplated the progressive improvement in the condition of all men everywhere", he said.[21]: 204–205  During the seventh and last joint debate with Stephen Douglas at Alton, Illinois, on October 15, 1858, Lincoln said about the declaration:

I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal—equal in "certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all, constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere.[159]

According to Pauline Maier, Douglas's interpretation was more historically accurate, but Lincoln's view ultimately prevailed. "In Lincoln's hands," wrote Maier, "the Declaration of Independence became first and foremost a living document" with "a set of goals to be realized over time".[21]: 207 

[T]here is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man.

—Abraham Lincoln, 1858[160]: 100 
Like Daniel Webster, James Wilson, and Joseph Story before him, Lincoln argued that the Declaration of Independence was a founding document of the United States, and that this had important implications for interpreting the Constitution, which had been ratified more than a decade after the Declaration.[160]: 129–131  The Constitution did not use the word "equality", yet Lincoln believed that the concept that "all men are created equal" remained a part of the nation's founding principles.[160]: 145  He famously expressed this belief, referencing the year 1776, in the opening sentence of his 1863 Gettysburg Address: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

Lincoln's view of the Declaration became influential, seeing it as a moral guide to interpreting the Constitution. "For most people now," wrote Garry Wills in 1992, "the Declaration means what Lincoln told us it means, as a way of correcting the Constitution itself without overthrowing it."[160]: 147  Admirers of Lincoln such as Harry V. Jaffa praised this development. Critics of Lincoln, notably Willmoore Kendall and Mel Bradford, argued that Lincoln dangerously expanded the scope of the national government and violated states' rights by reading the Declaration into the Constitution.[160]: 39, 145–146 [161][162][163][164]

Women's suffrage and the Declaration

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her two sons in 1848
In July 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York, the first women's rights convention. It was organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann McClintock, and Jane Hunt. They patterned their "Declaration of Sentiments" on the Declaration of Independence, in which they demanded social and political equality for women. Their motto was that "All men and women are created equal", and they demanded the right to vote.[165][166] Excerpt from "Declaration of Sentiments":

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal

— The Declaration of Rights and Sentiments 1848
Civil Rights Movement and the Declaration
In 1963, at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. This speech was meant to inspire the nation, to take up the causes of the Civil Rights Movement. King uses quotations from the Declaration of Independence to encourage equal treatment of all persons regardless of race.

Excerpt from King's speech:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

— Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963
In 1966, Black Panther Party founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale quoted the Declaration's preamble in its entirety in the party's Ten-Point Program—for the tenth point, "We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people's community control of modern technology". The Black Panthers were dedicated to community organizing for self-defense and mutual benefit among working-class Black people, and the Ten-Point Program was intended to serve as a concise statement of what the Panthers organization hoped to achieve for Black people, including full employment, decent housing, freedom from compulsory military service, and an end to police brutality.

LGBTQ+ rights movement and the Declaration
In 1978, at the Gay Pride Celebration in San Francisco, activist and later politician Harvey Milk delivered a speech. Milk alluded to the Declaration of Independence, emphasizing that the inalienable rights established by the Declaration apply to all persons and cannot be hindered because of one's sexual orientation.

Excerpt from Milk's speech:

All men are created equal and they are endowed with certain inalienable rights... that's what America is. No matter how hard you try, you cannot erase those words from the Declaration of Independence.

— Harvey Milk, 1978
20th century and later
The Declaration was one of the first texts to be made into an ebook (1971).[167]

The Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence was dedicated in 1984 in Constitution Gardens on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where the signatures of all the original signers are carved in stone with their names, places of residence, and occupations.

The new One World Trade Center building in New York City (2014) is 1776 feet high to symbolize the year that the Declaration of Independence was signed.[168][169][170]

Popular culture
The adoption of the Declaration of Independence was dramatized in the 1938 Academy Award-winning short film Declaration of Independence, the 1969 Tony Award-winning musical 1776, the 1972 film version, and the 2008 television miniseries John Adams.[171][172] In 1970, The 5th Dimension recorded the opening of the Declaration on their album Portrait in the song "Declaration". It was first performed on the Ed Sullivan Show on December 7, 1969, and it was taken as a song of protest by some opposed to the Vietnam War.[173]

The original handwritten and signed Declaration of Independence is a plot device in the 2004 American film National Treasure.[174]

Fallout 3 involves a quest where the playable character acquires the Declaration of Independence from the National Archives. The player is tasked with bringing the document back to a history lover who wants to reclaim pieces of America following a nuclear war.[175]

After the 2009 death of radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, Focus Today aired a clip of Harvey speaking about the lives of all the signers of the Declaration of Independence.[176]

See also
Influence of the American Revolution on the French Revolution
Journals of the Continental Congress
Signers Monument
References
 Becker, Carl L. (1970) [1922]. The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (Revised ed.). New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-394-70060-0.
 "The Declaration of Independence in Easton", Historical Marker Datatbase
 Julian P. Boyd, "The Declaration of Independence: The Mystery of the Lost Original" Archived February 12, 2015, at the Wayback Machine. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 100, number 4 (October 1976), p. 456.
 "Did You Know ... Independence Day Should Actually Be July 2?" (Press release). National Archives and Records Administration. June 1, 2005. Archived from the original on June 26, 2012. Retrieved July 4, 2012.
 "The Declaration of Independence: A History". The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. January 17, 2010. Archived from the original on September 17, 2008. Retrieved January 15, 2022.
 McPherson, James (1991). Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505542-X.
 Hirsch, David; Van Haften, Dan (2017). The ultimate guide to the Declaration of Independence (First ed.). El Dorado Hills, California. ISBN 978-1-61121-374-4. OCLC 990127604.
 Lucas, Stephen E. (1989). "Justifying America: The Declaration of Independence as a Rhetorical Document". In Benson, Thomas W. (ed.). American Rhetoric: Context and Criticism. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press. p. 85.
 Ellis, Joseph (2007). American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic. New York: Knopf. pp. 55–56. ISBN 978-0-307-26369-8.
 Hazelton, Declaration History, 19.
 Christie and Labaree, Empire or Independence, 31.
 Bailyn, Bernard (1992) [1967]. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Enlarged ed.). Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-44302-0.
 Middlekauff, Glorious Cause, 241.
 Murrow, Pamela (February 4, 2013). "The Pine Tree Riot". Journal of the American Revolution. Retrieved July 3, 2024.
 "The Weare NH Historical Society". wearehistoricalsociety. Retrieved July 3, 2024.
 Middlekauff, Glorious Cause, 241–42. The writings in question include Wilson's Considerations on the Authority of Parliament and Jefferson's A Summary View of the Rights of British America (both 1774), as well as Samuel Adams's 1768 Circular Letter.
 Middlekauff, Glorious Cause, 168
 Ferling, Leap in the Dark, 123–24
 Hazelton, Declaration History, 13
 Middlekauff, Glorious Cause, 318
 Maier, Pauline (1997). American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-679-45492-6.
 The text of the 1775 king's speech is online Archived January 19, 2020, at the Wayback Machine, published by the American Memory project
 Friedenwald, Interpretation, 77.
 Jensen, Merrill (1968). The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763–1776. New York: Oxford University Press.
 Friedenwald, Interpretation, 78.
 Rakove, Beginnings of National Politics, 88–90.
 Rakove, Beginnings of National Politics, 89
 Paine, Thomas (1776). The American crisis (No. 1). Printed Ephemera Collection (Library of Congress). Boston: Sold opposite the court house Queen Street. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
 Christie and Labaree, Empire or Independence, 270
 Hazelton, Declaration History, 209
 Friedenwald, Interpretation, 67.
 Friedenwald, Interpretation, 92–93.
 "Treasures from the Archives: The Act of Renunciation". Rhode Island Department of State. Archived from the original on July 29, 2019. Retrieved July 29, 2019. Rhode Island was the first colony to renounce allegiance to Great Britain's King George III by an official legislative act.
 "Journals of the Continental Congress". March 29, 2019. Archived from the original on March 29, 2019.
 Burnett, Continental Congress, 159. The text of Adams's letter is online Archived March 29, 2019, at the Wayback Machine.
 May 15 preamble Journals of the Continental Congress Archived March 29, 2019, at the Wayback Machine.
 Rakove, National Politics, 96
 Friedenwald, Interpretation, 94.
 Rakove, National Politics, 97
 Boyd, Evolution, 18
 The text of the May 15 Virginia resolution is online Archived June 20, 2008, at the Wayback Machine at Yale Law School's Avalon Project.
 Jefferson, Thomas (July 4, 1776). "Declaration of Independence. In Congress, July 4, 1776, a Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled". World Digital Library. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Retrieved July 1, 2013.
 Boyd, Evolution, 19.
 Armitage, David (2009) [2007]. The Declaration of Independence: A Global History. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02282-9. Retrieved January 16, 2022. United States Declaration of Independence at Google Books.
 Boyd, Papers of Jefferson, 1:311
 Friedenwald, Interpretation, 106.
 Dupont and Onuf, 3.
 Friedenwald, Interpretation, 106–07
 Friedenwald, Interpretation, 96
 Friedenwald, Interpretation, 118
 Friedenwald, Interpretation, 119–20.
 Boyd, Evolution, 21.
 Boyd, Evolution, 22.
 "Explorations: The Revolution". Digital History. University of Houston. May 4, 2015. Archived from the original on May 4, 2015. Retrieved January 15, 2022. From Adams's notes: "Why will you not? You ought to do it." "I will not." "Why?" "Reasons enough." "What can be your reasons?" "Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can." "Well," said Jefferson, "if you are decided, I will do as well as I can." "Very well. When you have drawn it up, we will have a meeting."
 "Visit the Declaration House", National Park Service official website
 John E. Ferling, Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the American Revolution, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-513409-4. OCLC 468591593, pp. 131–37
 Shipler, David K., The Paragraph Missing From The Declaration of Independence Archived July 8, 2020, at the Wayback Machine, The Shipler Report, July 4, 2020
 "A Closer Look at Jefferson's Declaration". New York Public Library. Retrieved July 6, 2020.
 Burnett, Continental Congress, 181.
 Burnett, Continental Congress, 182
 As quoted in Adams, John (2007). My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams. Harvard University Press. p. 125. ISBN 978-0-674-02606-3.
 "Journals of the Continental Congress – Friday, July 19, 1776". memory.loc. Archived from the original on January 22, 2020. Retrieved April 27, 2020.
 George Billias American Constitutionalism Heard Round the World, 1776–1989 (2011) p 17.
 Lucas, Stephen E. "The Stylistic Artistry of the Declaration of Independence". National Archives and Records Administration. Archived from the original on June 30, 2012. Retrieved July 4, 2012.
 "Declaration of Independence: A Transcription". National Archives. November 1, 2015. Archived from the original on July 6, 2019. Retrieved July 6, 2019.
 "Index of Signers by State". ushistory – Independence Hall Association in Philadelphia. Archived from the original on September 29, 2006. Retrieved October 12, 2006.
 Trickey, Erick. "Mary Katharine Goddard, the Woman Who Signed the Declaration of Independence". Retrieved July 12, 2024.
 To Henry Lee – Thomas Jefferson The Works, vol. 12 (Correspondence and Papers 1816–1826; 1905). May 8, 1825.
 Malone, Jefferson the Virginian, 221
 see "Virginia Declaration of Rights" Archived July 4, 2021, at the Wayback Machine
 Lucas, Stephen E. (1994). Hofte, Rosemarijn; Kardux, Johanna C. (eds.). "The 'Plakkaat van Verlatinge': A Neglected Model for the American Declaration of Independence". Connecting Cultures: The Netherlands in Five Centuries of Transatlantic Exchange. Vol. 31. Amsterdam. pp. 189–207. OCLC 808030037.
 Wolff, Barbara (June 29, 1988). "Was the Declaration of Independence Inspired by the Dutch?". University of Wisconsin Madison News. Archived from the original on December 13, 2007. Retrieved July 3, 2013.
 Boyd, Evolution, 16–17.
 "The Three Greatest Men". Library of Congress. Archived from the original on June 1, 2009. Retrieved June 13, 2009. Jefferson identified Bacon, Locke, and Newton as "the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception". Their works in the physical and moral sciences were instrumental in Jefferson's education and world view.
 Ray Forrest Harvey, Jean Jacques Burlamaqui: A Liberal Tradition in American Constitutionalism (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1937), 120.
 A brief, online overview of the classical liberalism vs. republicanism debate is Alec Ewald, "The American Republic: 1760–1870" (2004) Archived May 17, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.Historian Robert Middlekauff argues that the political ideas of the independence movement took their origins mainly from the "eighteenth-century commonwealthmen, the radical Whig ideology", which in turn drew on the political thought of John Milton, James Harrington, and John Locke. See Robert Middlekauff (2005), The Glorious Cause, pp. 3–6, 51–52, 136
 Wills, Inventing America, especially chs. 11–13. Wills concludes (p. 315) that "the air of enlightened America was full of Hutcheson's politics, not Locke's".
 Hamowy, "Jefferson and the Scottish Enlightenment", argues that Wills gets much wrong (p. 523), that the Declaration seems to be influenced by Hutcheson because Hutcheson was, like Jefferson, influenced by Locke (pp. 508–09), and that Jefferson often wrote of Locke's influence, but never mentioned Hutcheson in any of his writings (p. 514). See also Kenneth S. Lynn, "Falsifying Jefferson", Commentary 66 (Oct. 1978), 66–71. Ralph Luker, in "Garry Wills and the New Debate Over the Declaration of Independence" Archived March 25, 2012, at the Wayback Machine (The Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1980, 244–61) agreed that Wills overstated Hutcheson's influence to provide a communitarian reading of the Declaration, but he also argued that Wills's critics similarly read their own views into the document.
 Reid, John Phillip (1981). "The Irrelevance of the Declaration". In Hartog, Hendrik (ed.). Law in the American Revolution and the Revolution in the Law. New York University Press. pp. 46–89. ISBN 978-0-8147-3413-1.
 Whitford, David, Tyranny and Resistance: The Magdeburg Confession and the Lutheran Tradition, 2001, 144 pages and Kelly OConnell Archived December 21, 2018, at the Wayback Machine of Canada Free Press, August 4, 2014, parts II. Magdeburg Confession and III. Doctrine of Lesser Magistrates
 Benjamin Franklin to Charles F.W. Dumas, December 19, 1775, in The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Albert Henry Smyth (New York: 1970), 6:432.
 Gulf, C. & SFR Co. v. Ellis, 165 US 150 Archived May 23, 2020, at the Wayback Machine (1897): "While such declaration of principles may not have the force of organic law, or be made the basis of judicial decision as to the limits of right and duty...it is always safe to read the letter of the Constitution in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence."
 Wills, Gary. Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence Archived September 26, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, p. 25 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002): "the Declaration is not a legal instrument, like the Constitution".
 Cuomo, Mario. Why Lincoln Matters: Now More Than Ever, p. 137 (Harcourt Press 2004) (it "is not a law and therefore is not subjected to rigorous interpretation and enforcement").
 Strang, Lee "Originalism's Subject Matter: Why the Declaration of Independence Is Not Part of the Constitution" Archived September 5, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, Southern California Law Review, Vol. 89, 2015.
 The U.S. State Department (1911), The Declaration of Independence, 1776, pp. 10, 11.
 Warren, "Fourth of July Myths", 242–43.
 Hazelton, Declaration History, 299–302; Burnett, Continental Congress, 192.
 Warren, "Fourth of July Myths", 245–46
 Hazelton, Declaration History, 208–19
 Wills, Inventing America, 341.
 Hazelton, Declaration History, 208–19.
 "Benjamin Rush to John Adams, July 20, 1811". National Park Service. Retrieved November 22, 2019.
 Hazelton, Declaration History, 209.
 Merriam-Webster online Archived April 24, 2009, at the Wayback Machine; Dictionary Archived April 9, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
 "TeachAmericanHistory: John Hancock" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on May 10, 2013. Retrieved October 6, 2014.
 "The Gurney Papers". The New Monthly Magazine and Humorist (Part 1): 17. 1837. Retrieved July 4, 2021.
 Boyd (1976), The Declaration of Independence: The Mystery of the Lost Original, p. 438.
 Papas, Philip. That Ever Loyal Island. Staten Island in the American Revolution. New York University Press, 2007, pp. 74–76
 "The Declaration of Independence in World Context". July 10, 2006. Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved October 6, 2014.
 Bolkhovitinov, Nikolai N. (March 1999). "The Declaration of Independence: A View from Russia". The Journal of American History. 85 (4): 1389–1398. doi:10.2307/2568261. ISSN 0021-8723. JSTOR 2568261. Retrieved January 13, 2023.
 "The Contagion of Sovereignty: Declarations of Independence since 1776" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on September 16, 2012. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
 Jessup, John J. (September 20, 1943). "America and the Future". Life. p. 105. Retrieved March 9, 2011.
 Hutchinson, Thomas (1776), Eicholz, Hans (ed.), Strictures upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia in a Letter to a Noble Lord, &c., London
 Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619–1877 (1993), pp. 77–79, 81
 McNamara, Sandra (December 20, 2018). "The Loyalist Declaration of Dependence, 1776". Journal of the American Revolution.
 "The Declaration of Independence: A History". Charters of Freedom. National Archives and Records Administration. Archived from the original on January 26, 2010. Retrieved July 1, 2011.
 Malone, Story of the Declaration, 263.
 "Charters of Freedom Re-encasement Project". National Archives and Records Administration. Archived from the original on September 19, 2011. Retrieved July 1, 2011.
 "Rare copy of United States Declaration of Independence found in Kew". The Daily Telegraph. July 3, 2009. Archived from the original on November 13, 2011. Retrieved July 1, 2011.
 Dube, Ann Marie (May 1996). "The Declaration of Independence". A Multitude of Amendments, Alterations and Additions: The Writing and Publicizing of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution of the United States. National Park Service. Archived from the original on November 8, 2012. Retrieved July 1, 2011.
 Henderson, Jane. "Made in 1776: Rare copy of the Declaration of Independence goes on view at Washington U." STLtoday. Archived from the original on July 2, 2018. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
 Boyd, "Lost Original", 446.
 Boyd, Julian (1976). "The Declaration of Independence: The Mystery of the Lost Original". Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 100 (4).
 Boyd, Papers of Jefferson, 1:421.
 "TPNHA". thomaspaine. Archived from the original on October 3, 2022. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
 Boyd, "Lost Original", 448–50. Boyd argued that, if a document was signed on July 4 (which he thought unlikely), it would have been the Fair Copy, and probably would have been signed only by Hancock and Thomson.
 Ritz, "From the Here", speculates that the Fair Copy was immediately sent to the printer so that copies could be made for each member of Congress to consult during the debate. All of these copies were then destroyed, theorizes Ritz, to preserve secrecy.
 "Declaration of Independence document found". BBC News. July 4, 2018. Archived from the original on July 4, 2018. Retrieved July 4, 2018.
 Yuhas, Alan (April 22, 2017). "Rare parchment copy of US Declaration of Independence found in England". The Guardian. Archived from the original on April 22, 2017. Retrieved April 22, 2017.
 "The Sussex Declaration". Declaration Resources Project. Harvard University. Archived from the original on April 22, 2017. Retrieved April 22, 2017.
 Pappalardo, Joe (July 3, 2020). "The Science of Saving the Declaration of Independence." Archived November 9, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Popular Mechanics. Retrieved February 3, 2020.
 Ruane, Michael E. (October 21, 2016). "Was the Declaration of Independence 'defaced'? Experts say yes". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 27, 2021.
 "Trump hangs a copy of Declaration of Independence in Oval Office". AP News. March 17, 2025. Retrieved March 20, 2025.
 McDonald, "Jefferson's Reputation", 178–79
 Lefebvre, Georges (2005). The Coming of the French Revolution. Princeton UP. p. 212. ISBN 0-691-12188-5. Archived from the original on September 13, 2015. Retrieved October 16, 2015.
 Billias, George Athan, ed. (2009). American Constitutionalism Heard Round the World, 1776–1989: A Global Perspective. NYU Press. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-8147-9139-4. Archived from the original on May 27, 2016. Retrieved October 16, 2015.
 Susan Dunn, Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light (1999) pp. 143–145
 Palley, Claire (1966). The Constitutional History and Law of Southern Rhodesia 1888–1965, with Special Reference to Imperial Control (First ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 750. OCLC 406157.
 Hillier, Tim (1998). Sourcebook on Public International Law (1st ed.). London & Sydney: Cavendish Publishing. p. 207. ISBN 1-85941-050-2.
 Gowlland-Debbas, Vera (1990). Collective Responses to Illegal Acts in International Law: United Nations action in the question of Southern Rhodesia (1st ed.). Leiden and New York: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. p. 71. ISBN 0-7923-0811-5.
 McDonald, "Jefferson's Reputation", 172.
 McDonald, "Jefferson's Reputation", 172, 179.
 McDonald, "Jefferson's Reputation", 179
 McDonald, "Jefferson's Reputation", 180–184
 Detweiler, Philip F. (October 1962). "The Changing Reputation of the Declaration of Independence: The First Fifty Years". The William and Mary Quarterly. 19 (4): 557–574. doi:10.2307/1920163. JSTOR 1920163.
 Wills, Inventing America, 324
 John C. Fitzpatrick, Spirit of the Revolution (Boston 1924).
 Wills, Inventing America, 90.
 Armitage, David (2002). "The Declaration of Independence and International Law". The William and Mary Quarterly. 59 (1). Williamsburg: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture: 39–64. doi:10.2307/3491637. ISSN 0043-5597. JSTOR 3491637.
 Philip S. Foner, ed., We, the Other People: Alternative Declarations of Independence by Labor Groups, Farmers, Woman's Rights Advocates, Socialists, and Blacks, 1829–1975 (Urbana 1976).
 Wills, Inventing America, 348.
 John Hazelton (1907). "The Historical Value of Trumbull's – Declaration of Independence". Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. Vol. 31. p. 38.
 Tsesis, Alexander (May 2012). "Self-government and the Declaration of Independence". Cornell Law Review. 97 (4). Ithaca: Cornell University. ISSN 0010-8847.
 Jefferson's "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence, Library of Congress, citing: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Vol. 1, 1760-1776. Ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950, pp 243-247
 Cohen (1969), Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Slavery
 Day, Thomas. Fragment of an original letter on the Slavery of the Negroes, written in the year 1776. London: Printed for John Stockdale (1784). Boston: Re-printed by Garrison and Knapp, at the office of "The Liberator" (1831). p. 10. Archived from the original on March 16, 2016. Retrieved February 26, 2014. If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves. At: Internet Archive Archived March 4, 2014, at the Wayback Machine: The Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries Archived April 23, 2014, at the Wayback Machine: James Birney Collection of Antislavery Pamphlets Archived August 6, 2014, at the Wayback Machine.
 "Lemuel Haynes' Liberty Further Extended". The Founding Project. February 24, 2020. Archived from the original on October 27, 2020. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
 Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 287.
 Mayer, All on Fire, 53, 115.
 Detweiler, Philip F. (April 1958). "Congressional Debate on Slavery and the Declaration of Independence, 1819–1821". American Historical Review. 63 (3). Oxford University Press: 598–616. doi:10.2307/1848882. JSTOR 1848882.
 Douglass, Frederick (1881). John Brown. An Address at the Fourteenth Anniversary of Storer College, May 30, 1881. Dover, New Hampshire: Morning Star job printing house. Also available at Project Gutenberg Archived October 15, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
 "Senate Select Committee Report on the Harper's Ferry Invasion". West Virginia Division of Culture and History. "His Soul Goes Marching On": The Life and Legacy of John Brown. June 15, 1860. Archived from the original on July 10, 2016. Retrieved July 25, 2016.
 Hinton, Richard J. (1894). John Brown and his men; with some account of the roads they traveled to reach Harper's Ferry (Revised ed.). New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
 Onion, Rebecca (December 2, 2013). "John Brown's Passionate 'Declaration of Liberty', Written on a Lengthy Scroll". Slate.
 Brown, John (July 4, 1859). A Declaration of Liberty By the Representatives of the slave Popolation of the United States of America. Preserving American Freedom : The Evolution of American Liberties in Fifty Documents. Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
 DeCaro, Louis A. Jr. (2020). The Untold Story of Shields Green: The Life and Death of a Harper's Ferry Raider. New York University Press. ISBN 978-1-4798-0275-3.
 Mead, John (2008). "Declarations of Liberty: Representations of Black/White Alliances Against Slavery by John Brown, James Redpath, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson". Journal for the Study of Radicalism. 3 (1): 111–144. doi:10.1353/jsr.0.0017. JSTOR 41887620. S2CID 159213688.
 "Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865): Political Debates Between Lincoln and Douglas 1897". Bartleby. p. 415. Archived from the original on May 10, 2013. Retrieved January 26, 2013.
 Wills, Garry (1992). Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Rewrote America. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-76956-1.
 Harry V. Jaffa, Crisis of the House Divided (1959)
 A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (2000)
 Willmoore Kendall and George W. Carey, The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition (1970)
 M. E. Bradford (1976), "The Heresy of Equality: A Reply to Harry Jaffa", reprinted in A Better Guide than Reason (1979) and Modern Age, the First Twenty-five Years (1988)
 Norton, et al (2010), p. 301.
 "Modern History Sourcebook: Seneca Falls: The Declaration of Sentiments, 1848". Archived from the original on October 20, 2014. Retrieved October 6, 2014.
 Flood, Alison (September 8, 2011). "Michael Hart, inventor of the ebook, dies aged 64". The Guardian. Archived from the original on February 13, 2015. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
 "Crews finish installing World Trade Center spire". CNN. May 10, 2013. Archived from the original on July 19, 2013. Retrieved July 17, 2013.
 "Tallest buildings in NY". Skyscraperpage. Archived from the original on July 21, 2013. Retrieved June 23, 2012.
 "Tallest buildings under construction in the world". Skyscraperpage. Retrieved June 23, 2012.
 "1776: The Musical About Us". Pratico. Archived from the original on May 9, 2018. Retrieved May 8, 2018.
 "John Adams: Independence". Home Box Office. Archived from the original on May 8, 2018. Retrieved May 8, 2018.
 "Independence". Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. July 4, 2010. Archived from the original on March 31, 2019. Retrieved February 10, 2018.
 "National Treasure". Rotten Tomatoes. 2004. Archived from the original on November 29, 2017. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
 Gameguides, IGN (May 19, 2014). "Stealing Independence". IGN. Retrieved August 24, 2024.
 The Price of Freedom. TheDove TV (Commentary). August 19, 2019. Event occurs at 1:36–8:50. Archived from the original on September 3, 2020. Retrieved June 20, 2020.
Bibliography
Becker, Carl Lotus (1922). The Declaration of independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc.
Boyd, Julian P. (1945). The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text as Shown in Facsimiles of Various Drafts by its Author, Thomas Jefferson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Boyd, Julian P., ed. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1. Princeton University Press, 1950.
Boyd, Julian P. "The Declaration of Independence: The Mystery of the Lost Original" Archived February 12, 2015, at the Wayback Machine. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 100, number 4 (October 1976), 438–67.
Burnett, Edmund Cody (1941). The Continental Congress. New York: The Macmillan Company.
Christie, Ian R. and Benjamin W. Labaree. Empire or Independence, 1760–1776: A British-American Dialogue on the Coming of the American Revolution. New York: Norton, 1976.
Dumbauld, Edward. The Declaration of Independence And What It Means Today. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950.
Dupont, Christian Y. and Peter S. Onuf, eds. Declaring Independence: The Origins and Influence of America's Founding Document. Revised edition. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Library, 2010. ISBN 978-0-9799997-1-0.
Ferling, John E. (2003). A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc. ISBN 0-19-515924-1.
Friedenwald, Herbert (1904). The Declaration of Independence: An Interpretation and an Analysis. New York: The Macmillan Company.
Gustafson, Milton. "Travels of the Charters of Freedom" Archived October 19, 2017, at the Wayback Machine. Prologue Magazine 34, no 4 (Winter 2002).
Hamowy, Ronald. "Jefferson and the Scottish Enlightenment: A Critique of Garry Wills's Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence". William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 36 (October 1979), 503–23.
Hazelton, John H. The Declaration of Independence: Its History. Originally published 1906. New York: Da Capo Press, 1970. ISBN 0-306-71987-8. 1906 edition available on Google Book Search
Journals of the Continental Congress,1774–1789, Vol. 5 ( Library of Congress, 1904–1937)
Lucas, Stephen E., "Justifying America: The Declaration of Independence as a Rhetorical Document", in Thomas W. Benson, ed., American Rhetoric: Context and Criticism, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989
Mahoney, D. J. (1986). "Declaration of independence". Society. 24: 46–48. doi:10.1007/BF02695936. S2CID 189888819.
Maier, Pauline (1998). American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-307-79195-5.
Malone, Dumas. Jefferson the Virginian. Volume 1 of Jefferson and His Time. Boston: Little Brown, 1948.
Mayer, David (2008). "Declaration of Independence". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 113–15. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n72. ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4.
Mayer, Henry. All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. ISBN 0-312-18740-8.
McDonald, Robert M. S. "Thomas Jefferson's Changing Reputation as Author of the Declaration of Independence: The First Fifty Years". Journal of the Early Republic 19, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 169–95.
Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789. Revised and expanded edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Norton, Mary Beth, et al., A People and a Nation, Eighth Edition, Boston, Wadsworth, 2010. ISBN 0-547-17558-2.
Rakove, Jack N. (1979). The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. ISBN 0-394-42370-4.
Ritz, Wilfred J. "The Authentication of the Engrossed Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776". Law and History Review 4, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 179–204.
Ritz, Wilfred J. "From the Here of Jefferson's Handwritten Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence to the There of the Printed Dunlap Broadside" Archived July 7, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 116, no. 4 (October 1992): 499–512.
Tsesis, Alexander (2012). For Liberty and Equality: The Life and Times of the Declaration of Independence. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-195-37969-3.
Warren, Charles. "Fourth of July Myths". The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, vol. 2, no. 3 (July 1945): 238–72. JSTOR 1921451.
United States Department of State, "The Declaration of Independence, 1776, 1911.
Wills, Garry (1978). Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-08976-7.
Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War Against Slavery. Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1969. ISBN 0-8295-0146-0.
"Declaration of Sentiments Full Text – Text of Stanton's Declaration" Owleyes, 2018.
NPR. "Read Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream" Speech in Its Entirety." NPR. January 18, 2010.
"That's What America Is" Archived May 3, 2021, at the Wayback Machine, Harvey Milk,
External links
United States Declaration of Independence
at Wikipedia's sister projects
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
"Declare the Causes: The Declaration of Independence" lesson plan for grades 9–12 from National Endowment for the Humanities
Declaration of Independence at the National Archives
Declaration of Independence at the Library of Congress
Mobile-friendly Declaration of Independence
vte
United States Declaration of Independence
vte
Origins of the American Revolution: writings
vte
Pennsylvania in the American Revolution
1774    
Carpenters' HallFirst Continental CongressArticles of Association

1775    
Independence HallSecond Continental Congress
1776    
Pennsylvania Provincial ConferenceLee ResolutionDeclaration of IndependencePennsylvania ConstitutionWashington Crosses the Delaware
1777    
Articles of ConfederationPhiladelphia campaignBattle of BrandywineBattle of the CloudsLiberty Bell moved to AllentownBattle of PaoliBattle of GermantownSiege of Fort MifflinBattle of White MarshBattle of Matson's FordValley Forge
1778    
Battle of Crooked BilletBattle of Barren HillBritish occupation of Philadelphia endsWyoming Valley battle and massacre
1781    
Congress of the ConfederationMutiny of the Pennsylvania Line
1783    
1783 Mutiny
vte
American Revolutionary War
Origins of the American Revolution
Philosophy    
American EnlightenmentJohn LockeColonial historyLiberalismRepublicanismFreedom of religionRights of EnglishmenNo taxation without representationCommon SenseSpirit of '76"All men are created equal""Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness""Consent of the governed"ExpansionismSettler colonialism
Royalists    
Pitt–Newcastle ministryBute ministryGrenville ministryFirst Rockingham ministryChatham ministryGrafton ministryNorth ministrySecond Rockingham ministryShelburne ministryFox–North coalitionLoyalistsBlack Loyalist
Related British
acts of Parliament    
NavigationIronMolassesRoyal Proclamation of 1763SugarCurrencyQuarteringStamp up i.p.oDeclaratoryTownshendTeaQuebecIntolerableConciliatory ResolutionRestrainingProclamation of RebellionProhibitory
Colonials    
Loyal NineStamp Act CongressDeclaration of Rights and GrievancesVirginia AssociationDaughters of LibertySons of LibertyPatriotsBlack PatriotsCommittees of correspondenceCommittees of safetyLetters from a Farmer in PennsylvaniaMassachusetts Circular LetterSuffolk ResolvesContinental CongressFirst Continental CongressContinental AssociationMinutemenProvincial CongressSecond Continental CongressUnited ColoniesOlive Branch PetitionDeclaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up ArmsCommittee of Secret CorrespondenceHalifax ResolvesLee ResolutionDeclaration of IndependenceModel TreatyArticles of Confederation and Perpetual UnionConfederation Congress
Events    
French and Indian WarTreaty of Paris (1763)Boston MassacreBritish credit crisis of 1772–1773Gaspee affairHutchinson letters affairBoston Tea PartyPhiladelphia Tea PartyPowder Alarm
CombatantsCampaignsTheatersBattlesEventsColonies
Combatants    
United Colonies / Thirteen Colonies    
Continental Congress Board of WarArmyNavyMarines
Kingdom of Great Britain    
ParliamentBritish ArmyRoyal NavyEuropean allies of King George III
Colonial allies    
France Franco-American TreatyTreaty of Amity and CommerceArmyNavyHortalez et CieGerman supporters of Congress
Campaigns and
theaters    
BostonQuebecNova ScotiaNew York and New JerseySaratogaPhiladelphiaNorthernNorthern after SaratogaSouthernWesternYorktownNaval battles
Major battles    
Lexington and ConcordBostonCapture of Fort TiconderogaBunker HillQuebecValcour IslandLong IslandHarlem HeightsFort WashingtonTrentonAssunpink CreekPrincetonSiege of Fort TiconderogaBenningtonSaratogaOriskanyBrandywineGermantownMonmouthSt. LuciaGrenadaStony PointSullivan ExpeditionSavannahGibraltarCape St. VincentCharlestonConnecticut FarmsSpringfieldCamdenKings MountainCowpensPensacolaGuilford Court HouseLochry's DefeatChesapeakeYorktownThe Saintes
Other events    
Staten Island Peace Conference"First Salute"Washington's crossing of the Delaware RiverConway CabalValley ForgeEntry of France into warCarlisle Peace CommissionGordon RiotsPennsylvania Mutiny of 1781Sint EustatiusNewburgh ConspiracyPennsylvania Mutiny of 1783
Related conflicts    
Cherokee–American warsFourth Anglo-Dutch WarSecond Anglo-Mysore War
Involvement (by 
colony or location)    
Rebel colonies    
ConnecticutDelawareGeorgiaMarylandMassachusettsNew HampshireNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaVirginia
Loyal colonies    
East FloridaNova ScotiaQuebecWest Florida
Leaders
British    
Military    
ArbuthnotBrantBurgoyneCampbellCarletonClintonCornwallisFraserGageGravesRichard HoweWilliam HoweKnyphausenRodney
Civilian    
King George IIIAmherstBarringtonGermainNorthRockinghamSandwichShelburne
Colonial    
Military    
WashingtonAlexanderAllenArnoldBarryClaghornClarkDuportailGatesGreeneHamiltonHopkinsJonesde KalbKnoxLafayetteCharles LeeLincolnMercerMontgomeryNicholsonPutnamRodneySt. ClairSchuylervon SteubenSullivanWardWayne
Civilian    
John AdamsSamuel AdamsCarrollDickinsonFranklinHancockHansonHenryHuntingtonJayJeffersonLaurensRichard Henry LeeMcKeanMorrisRevereRushWitherspoon
Colonial allies    
French    
Louis XVIBeaumarchaisd'Estaingde Grassede GuichenLuzernede RochambeauSuffrenVergennes
Aftermath
Society of the CincinnatiTreaty of Paris (1783)Evacuation Day (1783)Ratification Day (1784)Constitutional ConventionThe Federalist PapersConstitutionBill of RightsShays's RebellionJay TreatyInfluence on the French Revolution
Related topics
Military    
PrisonersThe TurtleTomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier
Political    
Founding FathersDiplomacyLiberty TreeYankee Doodle
Other topics    
Timeline of the American RevolutionAfrican Americans in the Revolutionary WarDogs in the American Revolutionary WarIntelligence in the American Revolutionary WarWomen in the American RevolutionFinancial costs of the warContinental currency banknotesContinental Currency dollar coinLibertas AmericanaCommemoration filmstelevisiontheaterIndependence DayPatriots' DayPulaski Memorial DayWashington's BirthdayJefferson's BirthdayVon Steuben DayMinor holidaysCentennialSesquicentennialBicentennialSemiquincentennialChildren of the American RevolutionDaughters of the American RevolutionSons of the American RevolutionSons of the RevolutionWashington D.C. statuaryCharters of Freedom RotundaMuseum of the American Revolution
vte
United States 
History    
By period    
1776–17891789–18151815–18491849–18651865–19171917–19451945–19641964–19801980–19911991–20162016–present
By event    
Pre-colonial eraColonial era Stamp Act CongressThirteen ColoniesContinental CongressContinental AssociationUnited Coloniesmilitary historyFounding FathersHalifax ResolvesLee ResolutionDeclaration of IndependenceAmerican Revolution WarTreaty of ParisArticles of Confederation Perpetual UnionConfederation periodAmerican frontierConstitution drafting and ratificationBill of RightsFederalist EraWar of 1812Territorial evolutionMexican–American WarCivil WarReconstruction eraIndian WarsNative genocideGilded AgeProgressive EraWomen's suffrageCivil rights movement 1865–18961896–19541954–1968Spanish–American WarImperialismWorld War IRoaring TwentiesGreat DepressionWorld War II home frontAmerican CenturyCold WarKorean WarSpace RaceFeminist MovementLGBTQ MovementVietnam WarPost-Cold War (1991–2016)September 11 attacksWar on Terror War in AfghanistanIraq WarGreat RecessionCOVID-19 pandemic
By topic    
Outline of U.S. historyDemographicDiscoveriesEconomicInventionsMilitaryPostalTechnological and industrial
Geography    
Territory Contiguous United Statescountiesfederal districtfederal enclavesIndian reservationsinsular zonesminor outlying islandspopulated placesstatesEarthquakesExtreme pointsIslandsMountains peaksrangesAppalachianRockySierra NevadaNational Park Service National ParksRegions East CoastWest CoastGreat PlainsGulfMid-AtlanticMidwesternNew EnglandPacificCentralEasternNorthernNortheasternNorthwesternSouthernSoutheasternSouthwesternWesternLongest rivers ArkansasColoradoColumbiaMississippiMissouriRed (South)Rio GrandeYukonTimeWater supply and sanitationWorld Heritage Sites
Politics    
Federal    
Executive    
President of the United States powersExecutive OfficeVice PresidentCabinetExecutive departmentsIndependent agenciesIntelligence Community Director of National IntelligenceCentral Intelligence AgencyNational Security AgencyNational Reconnaissance OfficeLaw enforcement ATFCBPDiplomatic SecurityDEAFBIICEMarshalsSecret ServiceTSAInspector generalsCivil servicePublic policy
Legislative    
House of Representatives current membersSpeakerSenate current membersPresident pro temporePresidentCapitol PoliceLibrary of CongressCongressional Budget OfficeGovernment Accountability OfficeGovernment Publishing Office
Judicial    
Supreme Court Chief JusticeAssociate JusticeslistCourts of appeals list of judgesDistrict courts/Territorial courts list of courtslist of judgesOther tribunalsU.S. attorney
Law    
Bill of Rights civil libertiesCode of Federal RegulationsConstitution federalismpreemptionseparation of powerscivil rightsUnited States Code
Uniformed    
Armed Forces ArmyMarine CorpsNavyAir ForceSpace ForceCoast GuardNational GuardNOAA CorpsPublic Health Service Corps
State,
Federal District,
and Territorial    
Executive    
Governor listLieutenant governor listSecretary of stateAttorney generalTreasurerAuditor/ComptrollerAgriculture commissionerInsurance commissionerPublic utilities commissionState police list
Legislative    
List of legislaturesList of legislators
Judicial    
Supreme courts Chief justicesDistrict attorney list
Law    
State constitutionsStatutory codesUniform actComparison of governments
Tribal    
Tribal sovereigntyNative American recognition in the United States Federally recognized tribesFederally recognized Alaska Native tribesState-recognized tribesIndian reservation listHawaiian home land
Local    
County    
List of counties and county equivalentsCounty executiveSheriffClerk
Cities    
Consolidated city-countyIndependent cityCoterminous municipalityCharterMayor–council governmentCouncil–manager governmentCity commission governmentMayorCity managerCity council
Minor divisions    
TownshipTown meeting
Special district    
School district list
CorruptionDemocratic backslidingElections Electoral CollegeRed states and blue statesForeign relations foreign policyImperial presidencyIdeologies Anti-AmericanismexceptionalismnationalismParties DemocraticRepublicanThird partiesScandals
Economy    
By sector AgricultureBankingCommunicationsCompaniesEnergyInsuranceManufacturingMiningScience and technologyTourismTradeby stateCurrencyExportsFederal budgetGreenhouse gas emissions by the United StatesFederal Reserve SystemFinancial positionLabor unionsPublic debtSocial welfare programsTaxationUnemploymentWall Street
Transport    
AviationDrivingPublic transportationRail transportationTransportation policyTransportation safetyTrucking industry
Society    
Culture    
AmericanaArchitectureCinemaCrimeCuisineDanceDemographicsEconomic issues affluenceevictionhomeownershiphousehold incomeincome inequalitymiddle classpersonal incomepovertystandard of livingwealthworking classEducation attainmentliteracyFamilyFashionFlag listFolkloreHolidays Federal holidaysHomelessnessHousingHuman rightsLanguages American EnglishIndigenous languagesASLLiteratureMedia journalisminternetnewspapersradiotelevisionMusicNamesNational anthemNational symbols ColumbiaMount RushmoreStatue of LibertyUncle SamPeoplePhilosophyPolitical ideologiesRaceReligionSexualitySocial classSocietySports historyTheaterTransportationVideo gamesVisual art
Social class    
AffluenceAmerican DreamEducational attainmentHomelessnessHomeownershipHousehold incomeIncome inequalityMiddle classPersonal incomePovertyStandard of living
Health    
AgingHealthcare AbortionBirth controlPrenatal careHospice careImmigrant health careRationingHealth care finance Health insurance costsHealth care pricesPrescription drug pricesDisabilityHealth insuranceFood safetyPhysician shortagePoverty and healthRace and healthObesityMedical desertsWomen's reproductive healthLife expectancy
Issues    
Capital punishmentCrime incarcerationCriticism of governmentDiscrimination affirmative actionantisemitismintersex rightsIslamophobiaLGBTQ rightsracismNative AmericanAfrican AmericanEnergy policyEnvironmental issues Environmental movementClimate changeGun politicsMass shootingsHungerSmokingHuman rightsImmigration illegalNational security TerrorismOpioid epidemicSeparation of church and stateXenophobia
OutlineIndex
CategoryPortal
Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata
International    
VIAFGNDFAST
National    
United StatesFranceBnF dataAustraliaIsrael
Other    
IdRefMusicBrainz work2NARA
Categories: United States Declaration of Independence1776 in American law1776 in international relations1776 in American politics1776 worksAmerican EnlightenmentAmerican political philosophy literatureContinental CongressGovernment documents of the United StatesMarket Street (Philadelphia)National human rights instrumentsPhiladelphia in the American RevolutionUnited States documentsWorks by Thomas Jefferson