Sons of Liberty

In the summer of 1776 the Continental Congress took up a draft that treated rights as belonging to people rather than to rank. Thomas Jefferson wrote the core claim and Congress kept it. “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.” The next lines said governments exist to secure those rights and derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” That wording was a break with the political order the delegates knew. In Britain and across Europe rights still tracked from birth, title and property. Most men were subjects. A few were rulers by inheritance or grant. The Declaration denied that political rights began and ended with a privileged class. In 1776 that was still an uncommon basis for a government and it is why the document read as a challenge to the old order rather than a restatement of it.