The American Declaration of Independence

JUL 04 1776 · 12:00

Declaration of Independence, by John Trumbull (1818). United States Capitol Rotunda. Place: Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall), Philadelphia Figures: Thomas Jefferson, principal drafter · John Adams · Benjamin Franklin · the Second Continental Congress, fifty-six signers across August A Claim Before a Capability The Continental Congress has been at war with British forces since Lexington and Concord in April 1775. Independence is debated through the spring of 1776 and resolved on 2 July with twelve colonies voting yes and New York abstaining. The text, drafted by Jefferson and revised by Adams, Franklin, and the Congress itself, is adopted on 4 July. Its substantive paragraph is unprecedented in international law. The United Colonies are declared Free and Independent States, possessing 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. The signers are aware that they are claiming a status they do not yet possess: the British army holds New York within a month, Philadelphia within fourteen months. The declaration is a performative bid for membership in the Westphalian system, issued before the bidder has the means to enforce it. Westphalian Principle Against the Westphalian Hegemon The list of grievances against George III is structured as a bill of indictment for the violation of constitutional sovereignty in the Whig sense (see [[glorious-revolution-1688]]): the king has dissolved colonial legislatures, quartered standing armies in peacetime, imposed taxes without consent, transported subjects for trial overseas. The argument is that the British Crown has itself broken the post-1688 settlement, and that the colonies, in declaring independence, are defending the principle rather than abandoning it. France, which has been quietly supplying powder and weapons since 1775, makes the alliance formal on 6 February 1778 after Saratoga. Spain follows in 1779; the United Provinces in 1780. The Westphalian system absorbs its first major non-European member. The principle of sovereign equality, which Vattel had codified twenty years earlier, is deployed in 1776 against the system's leading power, by colonists who quote Vattel and the English Whigs in the same paragraphs. The British recognition (see [[treaty-of-paris-1783]]) seven years later confirms the bid.