United States History Student Edition

The writers of the Declaration of Independence included

The Declaration of Independence

Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.

When the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776, most of the people of the world were governed by monarchs, emperors, or absolute rulers. Since Roman times, few political ideas had focused on the rights of citizens or the relationship between individual citizens and the government. By the time of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, however, many new ideas had emerged. Those ideas culminated in the American Declaration of Independence. The entire text of the Declaration of Independence follows. The printed text of the document shows the spelling and punctuation of the parchment original.

(t)John Parrot/Stocktrek Images/Getty Images; (b)US National Archives

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