With the ideas of the Enlightenment in wide circulation and Thomas Paine’s stirring arguments in Common Sense spreading widely, more and more people began to consider a formal breach with England.
As 1776 moved along, more voices called for independence. On April 12, 1776, the North Carolina legislature passed the Halifax Resolves, the first official call for separation. On May 4, Rhode Island went even further, declaring itself independent of British rule. A few weeks later, on May 15, Virginia delegates to Philadelphia were directed to vote for independence.
In June, the Virginia House of Burgesses approved the Virginia Declaration of Rights. It was written by George Mason and was significantly influenced by the writings of John Locke’s writings on natural rights, the social compact, and the consent of the governed. Mason’s document had a major influence on the Declaration and the Bill of Rights. Mason asserted,
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.
Events moved quickly after this. On June 7, 1776, Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee proposed that the Second Continental Congress declare independence, that the colonies form a confederated government, and that they seek foreign alliances. A vote was delayed because many delegations lacked instructions from their legislature. The Congress appointed a committee of five men, including John Adams, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, to draft a statement of causes for a congressional vote. Adams and Franklin gave plenty of advice, but the writing was largely left to the committee’s youngest member, Jefferson. The bulk of the document was a list of complaints about King George’s abusive behavior toward the colonies.
The first vote was taken on July 1. The first vote was 9 in favor of independence, two (South Carolina and Pennsylvania) opposed, and two not voting. New York’s delegates had no instructions from their legislature and abstained. Delaware delegate Caesar Rodney was absent and the other two split 1-1.
The delegates took a second vote the next day. Pennsylvania and South Carolina reversed their “no” votes and Caesar Rodney made a dramatic entrance after riding all night to break Delaware’s tie by voting in favor of independence. After debate and some changes to Jefferson’s document, the Declaration was issued on July 4, which we now celebrate as Independence Day.
In 1776, Jefferson’s lofty words (“that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”) applied to almost nobody – only white, male, property owners over 21 years old had the right to vote. Until recently, it could be argued that the basic story of America was the gradual expansion of Jefferson’s words to apply to more and more people.
While the Declaration has inspired freedom movements around the world for the past 2 ½ centuries, the Founders abhorred the idea of democracy, believing that rule of the people inevitably led to anarchy or tyranny. Instead, the Founders favored what we would call an autocracy, specifically a plutocracy, a representative government based on a very narrow franchise. Eleven years later, they formed a government with an unelected judiciary; a president where the popular vote was largely irrelevant, selected by a committee (the Electoral College) intended to select the best man for the job; a Senate whose members were elected by the state legislatures; and a House of Representatives, the only branch elected by the (very narrow) popular vote.
Even so, the notion of a representative government that acknowledged natural rights and consent of the governed was almost unprecedented. Incomplete as it was, the men voting in Philadelphia indeed had taken a revolutionary act, one that future generations could build on.
There were a few different approaches. In 1776, the Pennsylvania Constitution extended suffrage to essentially all white men over 21, removing the property requirement. In 1777, Vermont (an independent country at the time) became the first “state” to ban slavery and also provided for universal male suffrage. Finally, Abigail Adams and other women argued on behalf of suffrage/rights for women, though this demand was not met for nearly 150 years.
