The American Declaration of Independence Puts Locke's Theory into Practice
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, thirteen colonies declare in July 1776
Quick facts
- Adopted
- July 4, 1776
- Principal author
- Thomas Jefferson
- Body
- Second Continental Congress
- Key phrase
- Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
What happened
The Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, drafted principally by Thomas Jefferson. The document opens by asserting that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that governments are instituted to secure those rights, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That structure, natural rights preceding government, government legitimate only by consent, and a people's right to alter or abolish a government that becomes destructive of those ends, follows Locke's Two Treatises of Government closely enough that historians treat the Declaration as Locke's political theory converted directly into a founding political act.
Why it matters
The Declaration turned Enlightenment political theory from an academic argument into the founding legal claim of a new nation, and its language of self-evident natural rights became a template invoked by later reform and independence movements far beyond the United States, including the French Declaration of the Rights of Man thirteen years later.
How we know
The Declaration's original engrossed manuscript is held by the National Archives, which publishes an authoritative transcript of its text.
Sources
- National Archives. Declaration of Independence: A Transcription · Primary source (author-declared)archives.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- The Avalon Project, Yale Law School. Declaration of Independence · Primary source (author-declared)avalon.law.yale.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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