The American Declaration of Independence boldly proclaims “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” These words encouraged Americans to fight for freedom and have inspired disadvantaged groups though out the world. Historian Joseph Ellis called the phrase “the most potent and consequential words in American […]
The Articles of Confederation described the first government of the new United States. As one may imagine from understanding the later debates on the Constitution in 1787, there were a number of points of contention on the Articles that were later re-argued for the Constitution. But there was one issue in the debate on the […]
On this week’s Dispatches, host Brady Crytzer interviews JAR contributor James M. Smith on the political, legal, and philosophical influences considered by the First Continental Congress in the formulation of their Declaration of Rights, a 1774 draft that declared the American colonies independent, yet was never brought up for a full vote in that congress. […]
During the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century the political philosophers of Europe were writing and discussing some new and radical ideas on what a government should look like and how it should function. They would reshape the political landscape in the late eighteenth century and well into the twentieth. One of the most […]
Speaking on Independence Day, 1821, John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the Unites States and the son of John Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, stated that the Declaration was merely an occasional state-paper. It was a solemn exposition to the world, of the causes which have compelled the people of a small […]
This story is the unfortunate flip side of “Top Ten Revolutionary War Patriot Homes in Connecticut”: the most significant Connecticut houses demolished in the 1800s or 1900s. Not included, of course, are the plethora of homes burned by the British in their raids on the Connecticut coast, including New Haven and Fairfield, in July 1779; […]
Put yourself, in your mind’s eye, back in June 1776, specifically, the period between June 7 and July 1. It is precisely at that time that one of the most crucial political battles in the history of the American republic was fought—the battle over whether the American colonists would, as thirteen united colonies, declare independence […]
Thomas Jefferson stood outside the halls of congress late one afternoon. And with the hand that penned the Declaration of Independence, he pointed across the steps and said in a loud voice to those assembled around him “There goes a man who never said a foolish thing in his life”.[1] The Federalist Fisher Ames once […]
