The Declaration of Independence serves as one of America's most treasured symbols because it identifies the moment at which the nation was born and, in stirring language, describes the reasons for its birth. It announced the separation of the thirteen colonies from England and recounted, for Americans and the international community, the grievances that had led to the call for independence.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, differences in life, thought, and economic interests had formed between the colonists and England. The British government tried to regulate colonial commerce in the British interest. The Stamp Act passed by Parliament in 1765 roused a violent colonial outcry as an act of taxation without representation.The Townshend Acts (1767) led to such acts of violence as the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party(1773). In 1774 Britain responded with the coercive Intolerable Acts. The first Continental Congress met in September, 1774 and petitioned King George III for redress of their grievances. The king ignored the colonists' complaints and declared the colonies were in rebellion. By the time the Second Continental Congress met in May, 1775, armed conflict had begun in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts . In June, the Continental Congress created a committee of five members to draft a statement of independence.

Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston comprised the committee charged with drafting the Declaration, but the task fell to Jefferson, as he was considered the most eloquent writer. After Jefferson drafted the document, the committee and Congress made a total of eighty-six changes. Jefferson was well-versed in the ideas of the French and English Enlightenments, and he drew inspiration from English philosopher John Locke. He also used many ideas from his own draft of the Virginia Constitution, as well as the Virginia Declaration of Rights by George Mason. The Declaration of Independence claimed that if a government was tyrannical, the people had a right to overthrow it. It included a long list of the ways the British king had oppressed the colonists.

And finally it concluded that because of the king's oppressive acts, the colonies had the right to declare themselves free and independent states.

On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress met in the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall)and approved the Declaration of Independence. Two days earlier the Congress had voted in favor of Richard Henry Lee's motion to declare the freedom and independence of the thirteen American colonies from England. The Declaration was written to influence public opinion and gain support both among the new states and abroad -- especially France, from which the new "United States" sought military assistance.

After the United States was established, the political philosophy expressed in the declaration had a continuing influence on political developments in America and Europe. It served as a source of authority for the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. And it influenced the ideas in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, adopted by the National Assembly of France in 1789, during the French Revolution, as well as Ho Chi Minh's Declaration of Independence for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.