"Declaration of Independence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was faded and stained. Empty places where pictures had hung for years, showed in contrast to the more faded barren districts. A framed copy of the Declaration of Independence ornamented the space above the mantel. Hanging above the bed's head were those two famous chromos of "Good-Morning" and "Good-Night." A moth-eaten worsted motto and cross, "The Rock of Ages," hung above ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... cavalry soldier without boots, is no good. I came after my boots, and I will have them or blood. Return my boots, or by the eternal, the Wisconsin cavalry regiment will come over here and everlastingly gallop over your fellows. The constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence, are on my side. In civil life a man's house is his castle. In the army a man's boots is his castle. Give me my boots, sir, or the blood of the slain will rest on ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... girls have a dull time of it till they are married, when 'Vive la liberte!' becomes their motto. In America, as everyone knows, girls early sign the declaration of independence, and enjoy their freedom with republican zest, but the young matrons usually abdicate with the first heir to the throne and go into a seclusion almost as close as a French nunnery, though by no means as quiet. Whether they like it or not, they are virtually put upon the ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... was present and wrote a hymn for the occasion. The address was a stirring denunciation of slavery and a rebuke to the nation for its pretentious devotion to liberty. The speaker was accused by a Boston paper of slandering his country and blaspheming the Declaration of Independence. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... the problem in a special way, because the drink question in America is entirely different from the drink question in England. But I wish the Duchess of Marlborough would pin up in her private study, side by side with the Declaration of Independence, a document recording the following simple truths: (1) Beer, which is largely drunk in public-houses, is not a spirit or a grog or a cocktail or a drug. It is the common English liquid for quenching the thirst; it is so still among innumerable gentlemen, and, until very lately, ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... introduced by an ardent Whig, and the thought seemed to excite the abhorrence of the whole circle. A few weeks after, Paine's 'Common Sense' appeared, and passed through the continent like an electric spark. It everywhere flashed conviction, and aroused a determined spirit, which resulted in the Declaration of Independence, upon the 4th of July ensuing. The name of Paine was precious to every Whig heart, and had resounded throughout Europe." Other testimony could be given to Paine's influence in the American struggle for Independence; but after the two already mentioned ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... the United States," says, "I consider the common law of England the jus commune of the United States. I think I can lay it down as a correct principle, that the common law of England, as it was at the time of the declaration of Independence, still continues to be the national law of this country, so far as it is applicable to our present state, and subject to the modifications it has received here in the course of nearly half a century." Chief Justice Taylor of North Carolina, in his decision in the case of the State vs. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... inalienable—it is neither given nor reserved by constitutional compacts—it exists in citizens of every State, the minority as well as the majority, and not in the government of any one State. But the exercise of this right is revolution—it is a declaration of independence—it is war, and appeals to the sword as its umpire. Let no State, then, claim to stand on the basis of the Constitution of the Union, while stripping it of its vital powers, or setting up its will for law. No, the ordinance of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the American colonies to the British Government did not commence with any spirit of independence. The tea incident at Boston took place in 1773, and it was not till three years later that the Declaration of Independence was drawn up. The Whig principles of 1688 are at the foundation of American liberties, and Locke's influence is to be seen both in the Declaration of Independence and in the American constitution. The colonists from the ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... colonies, By them was a Congress appointed, composed of delegates from each colony, who managed the war, declared independence, treated with foreign powers, and acted in all things according to the sense of their constituents. The Declaration of Independence confirmed in form what had before existed in substance. It announced to the world new States, possessing and exercising complete sovereignty, which they were resolved to maintain. They were soon after recognized by France and other powers, and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... governmental institutions of Great Britain have been established by the growth through many centuries of a great body of accepted rules and customs which, taken together, are called the British Constitution. In this country we have set forth in the Declaration of Independence the principles which we consider to lie at the basis of civil society "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root
... was seen in the wise laws he made, and the "Charter of King Henry" is said to have been gained by her intercession. This important paper was the first step toward popular liberty. It led the way to Magna Charta, and finally to our own Declaration of Independence. The boys and girls of America, therefore, in common with those of England, can look back with interest and affection upon the romantic story of "Good Queen Maud," the brave-hearted girl who showed herself wise and fearless both in the perilous mist at Edinburgh, and, later still, ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... Monroe, New York, and being prosperous enough to feel the king's taxes no burden, to say nothing of his jealousy of the advantage that an independent government would be to the hopes of his poorer neighbors, he declared for the king. After the declaration of independence had been published, his sympathies were illustrated in an unpleasantly practical manner by gathering a troop of other Tories about him, and, emboldened by the absence of most of the men of his vicinage in the colonial army, he began to harass the country as grievously in foray as the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... to smash in the Union with the same go-ahead velocity as they go to caucus, and seem to care as little about the matter. John Bull often calculates much more sedately and to the purpose than his restless offspring, who seem to hold it as a first principle of the declaration of independence that a man has a right to be blown ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... to the union of Church and State, there had been on their part practically no attack upon the constitution itself. Yet even as early as 1786 the Anti-Federalists had proclaimed that the state of Connecticut was without a constitution; that the charter government fell with the Declaration of Independence; and that its adoption by the legislature as a state constitution was an unwarranted excess of authority. The Anti-Federalists maintained also that many of the charter provisions were either outgrown or unsuited to the needs of the state. But the ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... say that Paine did more to cause the Declaration of Independence than any other man. Neither should it be forgotten that his attacks upon Great Britain were also attacks upon monarchy, and while he convinced the people that the colonies ought to separate from the mother country, he also proved to them that a free government ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... boyhood and youth in obscurity, afterward attained to a fortune which he never could have foreseen even in his most ambitious dreams. John Adams, the second President of the United States and the equal of crowned kings, was once a schoolmaster and country lawyer. Hancock, the first signer of the Declaration of Independence, served his apprenticeship with a merchant. Samuel Adams, afterwards governor of Massachusetts, was a small tradesman and a tax-gatherer. General Warren was a physician, General Lincoln a farmer, and General Knox a bookbinder. General Nathaniel ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... principles of piety, of justice, of honor, of benevolence, with which from his earliest infancy he had hitherto walked through life, in the presence of all his brethren; a spear, studded with the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence; a sword, the same with which he had led the armies of his country through the war of freedom to the summit of the triumphal arch of independence; a corselet and cuishes of long experience and habitual ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... be well for purposes of explanation to refer back to the celebration of the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July, 1838, at Far West. That day Joseph Smith made known to the people the substance of a Revelation he had received from God. It was to the effect that all the Saints throughout the land were required ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... He realized that the struggle meant much more than the freedom or bondage of a few million black men: that it was in reality a struggle for the central idea of our American republic—the statement in our Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." He made no public speeches until autumn, but in the meantime studied the question with great care, both as to its past history and present state. When he did speak ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... and easily distorted into grotesque forms, to enable us to discriminate accurately the shape from which they are flung.... The truth is, that American literature, apart from that of England, has no separate existence.... The United States have yet to sign their intellectual Declaration of Independence: they are mentally still only a province of this country.' With a gallantry too characteristic to be startling, a discernment that does all honor to his taste, and a coolness highly creditable to his equatorial regions of discussion, the critic continues by assuring his readers that Washington Irving ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... declaration of sovereignty in October 1991 was followed by a declaration of independence from the former Yugoslavia on 3 March 1992 after a referendum boycotted by ethnic Serbs. The Bosnian Serbs - supported by neighboring Serbia and Montenegro - responded with armed resistance aimed at partitioning the republic ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... than hear an oration from Fisher Ames. Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, proposed to me when I was old enough to be your grandmother, and after Susan Decatur, the commodore's widow, had tried in vain to get an offer from him. Said I, 'Carroll, is this another Declaration of Independence? No,' said I, 'Carroll, I won't reduce the last signer, it may be, to obedience on a wife going blind. That would be worse slavery than George the Third's!' He said I was a ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... drawn at Petaluma. A declaration of independence, rude in form, but grimly effective in scope, is given out by the "bear flag" party. Fremont joins and commands them. The Presidio batteries at San Francisco are spiked by Fremont and daring Kit Carson, The cannon and arms of Castro are soon taken. On July 7, Captain Mervine, with two hundred ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... himself described as 'the grievances justly complained of.' Still more instructive is the case of Daniel Dulany of Maryland. Dulany, one of the most distinguished lawyers of his time, was after the Declaration of Independence denounced as a Tory; his property was confiscated, and the safety of his person imperilled. Yet at the beginning of the Revolution he had been found in the ranks of the Whig pamphleteers; and no more damaging attack was ever made ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... yourself and danger an insurmountable barrier. You talk about freedom; and yet are a slave to the most debasing appetite. Get free from the influence of that eager, insatiable desire, and you are free, indeed. The perpetual total-abstinence pledge will be your declaration of independence. When that is taken, you. will be free, indeed. And until it is taken, rest assured, that none of your friends will again have confidence in you. For their sakes,—for your sister's sake, that peace may once more be restored to her ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... sixteenth century there were numerous writers who declared the right of subjects to depose a bad sovereign, but this position is to be distinguished from Rousseau's doctrine. Thus, if we turn to the great historic event of 1581, the rejection of the yoke of Spain by the Dutch, we find the Declaration of Independence running, "that if a prince is appointed by God over the land, it is to protect them from harm, even as a shepherd to the guardianship of his flock. The subjects are not appointed by God for the behoof of the prince, but the prince ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... of the Continental army wonderfully cooled many of the townspeople who but a few months before had vigorously applauded and saluted the glowing lines of the Declaration of Independence, when it had been read aloud to them by the Rev. Mr. McClave. One of the first evidences of this alteration of outward manner, if not of inward faith, was shown in the sudden change adopted by the community toward the household of ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the advantage of its neighbor, in being surmounted by a small tower or cupola, in which a bell of moderate size hung suspended, permitted to speak only on such important occasions as the opening of court, sabbath service, and the respective anniversaries of the birthday of Washington and the Declaration of Independence. This building, thus distinguished above its fellows, served also all the purposes of a place of worship, whenever some wandering preacher found his way into the settlement; an occurrence, at the time we write, of very occasional character. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... piece of bunting lifted in the air; but it speaks sublimely, and every part has a voice. Its stripes of alternate red and white proclaim the original union of thirteen states to maintain the Declaration of Independence. Its stars of white on a field of blue proclaim that union of states constituting our national constellation, which receives a new star with every new state. The two together ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... troubles disturbed his reign; and, while the grandees of the kingdom including his own brother Orodes rebelled against the king and at length that brother overthrew him and had put him to death, the hitherto unimportant Armenia rose into power. This country, which since its declaration of independence(2) had been divided into the north-eastern portion or Armenia proper, the kingdom of the Artaxiads, and the south-western or Sophene, the kingdom of the Zariadrids, was for the first time united into one kingdom by the Artaxiad Tigranes (who had reigned since 660); and this ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Bunch of Grapes Tavern stood on the corner of Mackerel Lane and King Street, now Kilby and State streets. Its sign was three clusters of grapes. It was a noted tavern, often patronized by the royal governors. In July, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was read to the people from its balcony. After hearing it they tore the lion and unicorn, and all emblems of British authority, from the Custom House, Court House, and Town House, and made a bonfire of them in front of ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... with his devoted friend Anthony Drexel, had founded the Drexel Institute, which was their magnificent educational legacy to the historic town. I saw the Liberty Bell in Chicago—the bell that rang out the Declaration of Independence, and cracked soon after—which is cherished by all good Americans. It had had a triumphant progress to and from the World's Fair, and I was present when once again it was safely landed in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. I think the Americans liked me, because I thought ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... read the little book called "The Stars and the Earth?"—said I.—Have you seen the Declaration of Independence photographed in a surface that a fly's foot would cover? The forms or conditions of Time and Space, as Kant will tell you, are nothing in themselves,—only our way of looking at things. You are right, I think, however, in recognizing the category of Space as being quite as applicable to minds as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was better than slavery, and that when men see that it is so, they will decree freedom instead of slavery. He therefore entered the lists FOR FREEDOM. He spoke of its inestimable blessings, and then unrolling the immortal Declaration of Independence claimed that, with all its dignity and all its endowments, liberty is the birthright of ALL MEN. He taught the American people that the inalienable right of all men to liberty was the first utterance of the young Republic, and that her voice must be stifled so long as slavery lives. In his Ottawa ...
— Abraham Lincoln - A Memorial Discourse • Rev. T. M. Eddy
... fourth day of July of the year 1776. There was great excitement in all of the colonies of America at that time, for on this day the representatives of the people, gathered together in the city of Philadelphia, were to decide whether the Declaration of Independence, already drawn up, should be adopted and signed. In Philadelphia, as may well be supposed, the excitement was so intense that the people suspended business. They thronged the streets, walking up and down, talking excitedly, and waiting, waiting for ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... will not be denied that the documents, whether for piracy or for privateering, show a considerable variety of origins. Their authors range from a Signer of the Declaration of Independence to an Irishwoman keeping a boarding-house in Havana, from a minister of Louis XIV. or a judge of the High Court of Admiralty to the most illiterate sailor, from Governor John Endicott, most rigid ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... the statue of Josiah Bartlett at Amesbury, Mass., July 4, 1888. Governor Bartlett, who was a native of the town, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Amesbury or Ambresbury, so called from the "anointed stones" of the great Druidical temple near it, was the seat of one of the earliest religious houses in Britain. The tradition that the guilty wife of King Arthur fled thither for protection forms one of the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... should be the supreme law of the land. It provided a method for its own amendment. Save for a few other brief clauses, that was all. There was no proclamation of Democracy; no trumpet blast about the rights of man such as had sounded in the Declaration of Independence. On the contrary, the instrument expressly recognized human slavery, though in discreet ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... grimy streets of worker's houses clustered closely about huge mills. The same light that had played over the stones in his hand began to play over his mind, and for a moment he became not an inventor but a poet. The revolution within had really begun. A new declaration of independence wrote itself within him. "The gods have thrown the towns like stones over the flat country, but the stones have no color. They do not burn and change in the ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... of opinion and discussion that ensued, the opponents of what is assumed to be the Administration policy on the new possessions have seemed to rely chiefly on two provisions in the Constitution of the United States and a phrase in the Declaration of Independence. The constitutional ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... since the declaration of independence, has suffered more from anarchy than Peru. At the time of our visit there were four chiefs in arms contending for supremacy in the government: if one succeeded in becoming for a time very powerful, the others ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... and Herzegovina's declaration of sovereignty in October 1991, was followed by a declaration of independence from the former Yugoslavia on 3 March 1992 after a referendum boycotted by ethnic Serbs. The Bosnian Serbs - supported by neighboring Serbia and Montenegro - responded with armed resistance aimed at partitioning the republic along ethnic lines and joining Serb-held ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... fortunes of the war, every one of those enrolled defenders of the Union had vindicated beyond all future question, for himself, his wife, and their issue, a title to American citizenship, and become heir to all the immunities of Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... Harrison, third and youngest son of Benjamin Harrison, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was born at Berkeley, Charles City County, Va., February 9, 1773. Was educated at Hampden Sidney College, Virginia, and began the study of medicine, but before he had finished it accounts of Indian outrages on the western frontier led him to enter the Army, and he was commissioned ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... it's different. While you may lose some votes from the 'near-silk stocking' class, yet for every vote so lost hundreds will rally to you. That all men are created equal is still a truth held to be self-evident. The spark of the spirit that prompted the Declaration of Independence is always ready to be fanned to a flame, and the Democrats have furnished us the ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... Early Settlers and Settlements of the United States—nationality, location, date. 8. Troops of the American Revolution, showing the number each State furnished. 9. Battles and Losses of the Revolution. 10. The Declaration of Independence. 11. The Signers of the Declaration of Independence. 12. The Presidents of the Continental Congress. 13. Constitution of the United States. 14. History of the American Flag. 15. Area and Population of the United States. 16. Population of all Cities ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... which nations speak to each other when they are asserting their rights, there is no objection to the first clause in the Declaration of Independence; but when you come to the people of a state, and one portion of that people rise and assert their right to break up the constitution of things under which they live, there is no more pertinency in that clause in ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... is included in the "Our Father." He is included in the "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do you even so unto them." Now, if the nation adopts some separate and unjust manner of treatment of the Negro, it must repudiate the Declaration of Independence. It must repudiate the Lord's Prayer. It must repudiate the Golden Rule. Can it do that and survive? Can it practice injustice upon the Negro and survive? Sin recoils upon the sinner. Injustice to the Negro will destroy the Nation. For that reason good white men and women are striving to bring ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... this speech of Emerson's our "intellectual Declaration of Independence," and indeed it was. "The Phi Beta Kappa speech," says Mr. Lowell, "was an event without any former parallel in our literary annals,—a scene always to be treasured in the memory for its picturesqueness and its inspiration. What crowded and breathless aisles, what ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... to see, Nothing to do, Nothing to play with, Except that in an empty room upstairs There was a large tin box Containing reproductions of the Magna Charta, Of the Declaration of Independence, And of a letter from Raleigh after the Armada; There were also several packets of stamps, Yellow and blue Guatemala parrots, Blue stags and red baboons and birds from Sarawak, Indians and Men-of-war From the United ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... like his "Exercise: Containing a Dialogue [by the Rev. Dr. Smith] and Ode, sacred to the memory of his late gracious Majesty George II. Performed at the public commencement in the College of Philadelphia, May, 1761." Yet Hopkinson was one of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence! ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... taxable articles, and petitioned against the practice of taxation: and these failing, they, thirdly, defended their property by force, as soon as it was forcibly invaded, and, in answer to the declaration of rebellion and non-protection, published their Declaration of Independence and right ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... constantly detect in American writing the accents of democratic radicalism. Partly, no doubt, it was a heritage of the sentiment of the French Revolution. "My father," said John Greenleaf Whittier, "really believed in the Preamble of the Bill of Rights, which re-affirmed the Declaration of Independence." So did the son! Equally clear in the writings of those thirty years are echoes of the English radicalism which had so much in common with the democratic movement across the English Channel. The part which English thinkers and English ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... independence had taken fast hold of them. This feeling swept through the colonies, and when the Continental Congress met in June of this year, it voted that the united colonies should be free and independent States and have no further political connection with Great Britain. A declaration of independence was adopted on July 4th, and the British colonies became the United ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... contributed by Mr. Peterkin for the evening. According to a programme drawn up by Agamemnon and Solomon John, the reading of the Declaration of Independence was to take place in the morning, on the piazza, under ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.... But I hold that ... there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas that he is not my equal in many respects,—certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... Virginia dragoons in blue and red, with whom she was brought into acquaintance through her father's attachment to the rebel interest. She expanded and grew brilliant in the sunshine of admiration (she had even a smile and compliment from Washington himself, at a ball in honour of the rebel declaration of independence) in which she lived during the time when New York abounded with ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Absalom. Tillie thought she could not bear it at all if Miss Margaret were sent away. Poor Miss Margaret did not seem to realize her own danger. Tillie felt tempted to warn her. It was only this morning that the teacher had laughed at Absalom when he said that the Declaration of Independence was "a treaty between the United States and England,"—and had asked him, "Which country, do you think, hurrahed the loudest, Absalom, when that treaty was signed?" And now this afternoon she "as much as ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... all the tame obedience years of servitude had taught him, I could see that the proud spirit his father gave him was not yet subdued, for the look and gesture with which he repudiated his master's name were a more effective declaration of independence than any Fourth-of-July orator could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... painful duty of the Secretary of War to announce to the Army the death of another distinguished and venerated citizen. John Adams departed this life on the 4th of this month. Like his compatriot Jefferson, he aided in drawing and ably supporting the Declaration of Independence. With a prophetic eye he looked through the impending difficulties of the Revolution and foretold with what demonstrations of joy the anniversary of the birth of American freedom would be hailed. He was permitted to behold the verification ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... provisions in behalf of slavery be dropped out of the Constitution when they shall have become no longer any thing but a dead letter—with no power of political victory and reward in them. As a living contradiction to the Declaration of Independence they have been the source of all our woes. It is not necessary to blame the framers of our Constitution for introducing them. They did it for the best, as they thought. They themselves hoped and believed the necessity for such provisions would long before this time ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... case upon its merits, and these, had they been judicially weighed, must, it would seem, all have told powerfully against slavery. Not to raise the question whether the black was a man, with the inalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, the South's own economic and moral weal, and further—what one would suppose should alone have determined the question—its social peace and political stability loudly demanded every possible effort and device for the extirpation of slavery. That this would have ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... on. We must fight it through. And if the war must go on, why put off longer the Declaration of Independence? That measure will strengthen us. It will give us character abroad. The nations will then treat with us, which they never can do while we acknowledge ourselves subjects, in arms against our sovereign. Nay, I maintain that England herself will sooner treat for peace with ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... with the subject and heartfelt interest in it are the first essentials of convincing speech, there are other qualities that greatly strengthen discourse. First among these I would put clearness of statement. Jefferson declared in the Declaration of Independence that certain truths are self-evident. It is a very conservative statement of an important fact; it could be made stronger: all truth is self-evident. The best service one can render a truth, therefore, is to state it so clearly that it can be understood. This does not mean ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... sensation came another of those dramatic protests which until the very end she always combined with political agitation. The nation was celebrating its first centenary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence at Independence Square, Philadelphia. After women had been refused by all in authority a humble half moment in which to present to the Centennial the ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... The declaration of independence so nobly delivered by his brother 'Arry necessitated Richard's stay in town over the following day. The matter was laid before a family council, held after breakfast in the dining-room. Richard opened the discussion with some vehemence, and appealed to his mother and Alice for ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... 'our daily bread' the machine always gives a little gasp. See? The rule of the office is that they must have some diddings doing all the time. The big one with red hair is a perfect marvel at the Declaration of Independence. She'll be through addressing circulars in a little while and will run off into 'All men are created equal'—a blooming lie, by the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... prelude to the new constitution. With pride and emphasis he read aloud the most important of his dicta, and which, he owned with a profound bow to Mr. Jefferson, had been largely inspired by the great Declaration of Independence. ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... more truly representative of the highest and best of American life and genius. To suggest that these were all the agents of a Jewish conspiracy, either consciously or unconsciously, is to invite and deserve ridicule. In truth, Socialism is as Anglo-Saxon as Magna Charta and as American as the Declaration of Independence, and we might as well attribute either or both of these to Jewish intrigue as Socialism. It is true that the organized Socialist movement in America has long spoken with a foreign accent and borne the imprint of an alien psychology, but that psychology, ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... young Republic, founded upon the consent of the governed, to rule over a people whose land had been annexed without their consent and whose preferences in the matter of government had never been consulted. The incongruity appears the more striking when it is recalled that the author of the Declaration of Independence was now charged with the duty of appointing all officers, civil and military, in the new territory. King George III had never ruled more autocratically over any of his North American colonies than President Jefferson ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... grandfather, he became, like George Washington, the Father of his Country. Born of a father who could not write his name, he himself had written the Proclamation of Emancipation, the fourth great state paper in the history of the Anglo-Saxon race,—the others being Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If we accept the statement of Cicero that the days on which we are saved should be as illustrious as the days on which we are born, then Lincoln the Savior must always remain coordinate with Washington, the Father of ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... to some slob, it may be partly because I don't know better (and God knows I'm not no authority on trick forks and what pants you wear with a Prince Albert), but mostly it's because I mean something. I'm about the only man in Johnson County that remembers the joker in the Declaration of Independence about Americans being supposed to have the right to 'life, liberty, and the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Nearly half of the population consisted of negro slaves. It is one of the ironies of history that the chief leader in a war marked by a passion for liberty was a member of a society in which, as another of its members, Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, said, there was on the one hand the most insulting despotism and on the other the most degrading submission. The Virginian landowners were more absolute masters than the proudest lords of medieval England. These feudal lords had serfs on their land. The serfs were attached to the soil ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... generation after generation, as a casual indulgence in temper. Deep below the strong charges against the unions of narrow self-interest and un-American limitation of output, dressed by the Citizens' Alliance in the language of the Declaration of Independence, lies a quiet economic reason for the hostility. Just as slavery was about to go because it did not pay, and America stopped building a merchant marine because it was cheaper to hire England to transport American goods, so the American Trust, as soon as it had power, abolished ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... truth I have yet perceived that the Beloved Republic"—here she took up a book—"of which Swinburne speaks"—she put the book down—"will not be brought about by love alone. It will approach with no flourish of trumpets, and have no declaration of independence. Self-sacrifice and—worse still—self-mutilation are the things that sometimes help it most, and that is why we should start for Stockholm this evening." He waited for her indignation to subside, and then continued. "I don't know whether it can be hushed ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... without their consent as were the people of any absolute monarchy in existence. It was only when our government was extended over alien races in foreign countries that our people awoke to the meaning of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. In response to its provisions, the Congress of the United States hastened to invest with the power of consent the men of this new territory, but committed the flagrant injustice of withholding it from the women. We demand that the ballot shall be extended to the women of our foreign possessions ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... Oration was our intellectual Declaration of Independence. Nothing like it had been heard in the halls of Harvard since Samuel Adams supported the affirmative of the question, "Whether it be lawful to resist the chief magistrate, if the commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved." It was easy to find fault ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... The Declaration of Independence, which was produced with no little theatrical effect amid the pomp and circumstance of a national conclave that had met in the finest hall in the country, was unquestionably a remarkable and memorable pronouncement. It was for the ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... You'll never understand America." I was all humility. His theme and his friendliness fired him. He rose with a splendour which, I had to confess to myself, England could never have given to him. "Would you like to hear me re-cite to you the Declaration of Independence?" he ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... speaker is to have a good cause. Then, if he is thoroughly in earnest, we enjoy hearing him." He once illustrated his subject by the story of a Union general who tried to rally the fugitives at Pittsburg Landing, and said, waving his sword in the air: "In the name of the Declaration of Independence, I command, I exhort you," etc., while a private soldier leaning against a tree, with a quid of tobacco in his mouth, remarked, "That man can make a good speech," but showed no intentions of moving. This summary, however, gives no adequate idea of the ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... and until 1905 was the metropolis of the Roman Catholic Church in Brazil. The city was captured in 1624 by the Dutch, who held it only a few months. Always conservative in character, the city hesitated in adhering to the declaration of independence in 1822, and also to the declaration of the republic in 1889. Much of its commercial and political importance has been lost, also, through the decay of industrial activity in the state, and through the more vigorous competition of the agricultural ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... accomplish the prediction of Horace Walpole, that there would one day be "a Thucydides at Boston and a Xenophon at New York"; a prediction which seemed so fanciful, at the time it was made, (less than two years before the declaration of Independence,) that the prophet was fain to link its fulfilment with the contemporaneous visit of a South American traveller to the deserted ruins of London.[4] His writings have won favor with hosts of readers, and they have received the homage of learned and profound inquirers, like Humboldt and Guizot. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... subjects of Great Britain, and yet hold arms against her, they have a right to treat us as rebels, and that, according to the laws of nature and nations, no other state has a right to interfere in the dispute? But, on the other hand, on our declaration of independence, the maritime states, at least, will find it their interest (which always secures the question of inclination) to protect a people who can be so advantageous to them. So that those shortsighted politicians, who conclude that this step will involve ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... should exist, either by compulsory or voluntary reason; it is not good for the government, it is not good for the individual. A government like ours is like unto a household. Difference of opinion on non-essentials is wholesome and natural, but upon the fundamental idea incorporated in the Declaration of Independence and re-affirmed in the Federal Constitution the utmost unanimity should prevail. That all men are born equal, so far as the benefits of government extend; that each and every man is justly entitled to the enjoyment ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... times and Washington's Republican Court; reminiscences of boyhood in New England; my revolutionary grandfathers and other relatives, and such men as the last survivor of the Boston Tea-party (I also saw the last signer of the Declaration of Independence); an account of my early reading; my college life at Princeton; three years in Europe passed at the Universities of Heidelberg, Munich, and Paris, in what was emphatically the prime of their quaint student-days; an account ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... had "good old-fashioned" snow-storms eighty years after the Declaration of Independence, and one had fallen upon New York that tempted Mrs. Jacob Dolph to leave her baby, ten months old, in the nurse's charge, and go out with her husband in the great family sleigh for what might be the last ride of ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... says: "All America is divided into two classes,—the quality and the equality. The latter will always recognize the former when mistaken for it. Both will be with us until our women bear nothing but kings. It was through the Declaration of Independence that we Americans acknowledged the eternal inequality of man. For by it we abolished a cut-and-dried aristocracy. We had seen little men artificially held up in high places, and great men artificially held down in low places, and our own justice-loving hearts abhorred ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... is the day of national rejoicing, for on that day the "Declaration of Independence," that solemn and sublime document, was adopted. Tradition gives a dramatic effect to its announcement. It was known to be under discussion, but the closed doors of Congress excluded the populace. They awaited, in throngs, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... father, mother, and child were represented in a graveyard, weeping over said tomb; the mourners dressed in black, country-cut clothes; the engraving executed in Vermont. There was also a wood engraving of the Declaration of Independence, with fac-similes of the autographs; a portrait of the Empress Josephine, and another of Spring. In the two closets of this chamber were mine hostess's cloak, best bonnet, and go-to-meeting apparel. There was a good bed, in which I slept tolerably well, and, rising betimes, ate breakfast, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of bleeding humanity will melt the most obdurate hearts; and that the land will be redeemed and regenerated by an enlightened and energetic public opinion. As long as there remains among us a single copy of the Declaration of Independence, or of the New Testament, I will not despair of the social and political elevation of my sable countrymen. Already a rallying-cry is heard from the East and the West, from the North and the South; towns and cities and states are in commotion; volunteers are ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... colonies, many forms of labor were transferred from male to female hands. Limitations were of the sharpest. That they were often unconscious ones, made them no less grinding. To "better one's self" was the effort of all. Long before the Declaration of Independence had formulated the thought that all men possess certain inalienable rights, amongst which are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," this had become the faith of those who, braving the perils ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... at the time of the Declaration of Independence there were three kinds of government in the colonies. Connecticut and Rhode Island had always been true republics, with governors and legislative assemblies elected by the people. Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland presented the appearance of limited hereditary ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... soul-satisfying, mental wink going the rounds of the girls, indicating our comradeship and unanimity of thought quite as understandingly as the fraternal grip stands for fellowship among masons. We girls have been thinking these things for a long time, and, with this declaration of independence, the shackles will fall from many a girl's soul, because another girl has dared to ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... came of age in the year of the Declaration of Independence. In the issue between the British government and the American colonies his choice could not be doubtful. He followed the traditions of his family. Indeed, it is now well established and universally admitted that the patriots of the American Revolution were not in ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... mother cause of all the progeny of lesser antagonisms. Whether we know it or not, whether we mean it or not, we cannot help fighting against the system that has proved the source of all those miseries which the author of the Declaration of Independence trembled to anticipate. And this ought to make us willing to do and to suffer cheerfully. There were Holy Wars of old, in which it was glory enough to die, wars in which the one aim was to rescue the sepulchre of Christ ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Martin Luther, that the birth of the Scotch Covenanters and of English Puritanism is traceable. Hence Geneva is the parent of New England. So, too, it was Rousseau—a true child of Calvin—who was the author of America's Declaration of Independence. Again, one of the first pacifists and advocates of international arbitration was born in Geneva. John Knox sat for two years at the feet of Calvin. Consequently the Puritan Revolution, the French Revolution, and the American Revolution all had ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... that "God made of one blood all nations of men," and also that the American Declaration of Independence says, that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" we could not understand by what right we were held as "chattels." Therefore, ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... Rush here referred to subsequently became quite eminent as a physician. He took an active part in the struggle between the American colonies and the mother country, and was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. One of his sons was the American minister to London a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... the imperial authority, and Canada is an independent country. Mr. Baldwin's proceeding, therefore, not only leads to independence but involves (unconsciously, I admit, from extreme and theoretical views), a practical declaration of independence before the arrival of ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... was done by the Socialists, who quickly formed the Council of Workmen and Soldiers' Deputies and formulated the programme which has come to be the Russian Declaration of Independence. They consented to support the Duma if it adopted their democratic programme. There was nothing else for the Duma to do, and the main issues of the new Government were worked out before Tuesday morning, within twenty-four hours of the beginning of the revolution. Since then I have been ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... had always regarded the principles of the Declaration of Independence as underlying the Constitution and as the essence of constitutional law. In her opinion, the interpretation of the Constitution in the Virginia Minor case was not only out of harmony with the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, but also contrary to the wise counsel of the great English jurist, ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... would be at hand. Our heroes have been those who fought against despots for the rights of the people; we measure progress by such milestones as the Magna Charta, the French Revolution, the American Declaration of Independence. To this day we engrave the word "liberty" on our coins; and the converging multitudes from Europe look up eagerly to the great statue that welcomes them in New York Harbor and symbolizes for them the freedom that they have often suffered so ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... that the King's paternal solicitude has been rather trying. It has burned our defenseless towns in mid-winter; if has incited the savages to massacre our farmers' in the back country; it has driven us to a declaration of independence. Britain and America are now distinct states. Peace can be considered only on that basis. You wish to prevent our trade from passing into foreign channels. Let me remind you, also, that the profit of no trade can ever be equal to the expense of holding ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... when the uprising becomes general, the government of George III. can scarcely find, even in the great centres of opposition, such as Boston, any specious pretexts for its own violence" [M. Cornelis de Witt, Histoire de Washington]. The declaration of independence was by this time becoming inevitable when Washington and Jefferson were still writing in ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... away of Christian dogma and tradition, Absolute Egotism appeared openly on the surface in the shape of German speculative philosophy. This form, which Protestantism assumed at a moment of high tension and reckless self-sufficiency, it will doubtless shed in turn and take on new expressions; but that declaration of independence on the part of the Teutonic spirit marks emphatically its exit from Christianity and the end of that series of transformations in which it took the Bible and patristic dogma for its materials. It now bids fair to apply ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Declaration of Independence a denunciation of slavery, and called it an "execrable commerce." It was stricken out at the request of Georgia and South Carolina, and years afterward slavery was recognized in ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Austrian frigates, and threatened to blow them out of the water if they did not respect the flag of the United States in the case of Martin Koozta. Jefferson had it for a writing-desk when he drafted the Declaration of Independence and the "Statute of Religious Liberty" for Virginia. Lovejoy rested his musket upon it when they would not let him print his paper at Alton, and he said: "Death or free speech!" Ay! it cropped out again. Garrison had it for an imposing-stone ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... the personal bitterness of politics here. It reminded me of Dr. Duche's description in his famous letter to Washington of the party which carried the Declaration of Independence through the Continental Congress. But it had a special interest for me as confirming the inferences I have often drawn as to Mr. Parnell's relations with his party, from his singular and complete isolation among them. I remember the profound astonishment ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... something had to be done," said Robert, "as soon as I heard they weren't going to let us burn any candles to-morrow night 'cause candles are so scarce. I knew we had to do something to show how proud we are that they signed the Declaration of Independence two years ago, and so I thought things over last night and worked out a way of making these rockets. They'll be much grander than last year's candle parade. They wouldn't let us light the streets, so we'll light ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... it is in this struggle that the Celt was covered with glory; and either on the field or in the forum he was always in the van. The Celts of Mecklenburg made a declaration of freedom over a year before the Declaration of Independence was made. ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... responsibility, and Mildred had many a weary chase after the little explorers. In spite of his clearly defined policy of indifference, Roger found himself watching her on such occasions with a growing interest. It was evident to him that she did not in the slightest degree resent his daily declaration of independence; indeed, he saw that she scarcely gave him any thoughts whatever—that he was to her no more than ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... thousandth time, elicits it groan of spiteful lamentation. Where are the united heart and crown, the loyal emblem, that used to hallow the sheet on which it was impressed, in our younger days? In its stead we find a continental officer, with the Declaration of Independence in one hand, a drawn sword in the other, and above his head a scroll, bearing the motto, "WE APPEAL TO HEAVEN." Then say we, with a prospective triumph, let Heaven judge, in its own good time! The material of the sheet attracts our scorn. It is a fair specimen of rebel manufacture, ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... its pages, appropriately, will be found the "Declaration of Independence," the great corner stone of American liberty; and as a fitting close, one of our most distinguished historians has furnished a "History of the Flag,"—the Flag of the Union, the sacred emblem around which are clustered the memories of the thousands ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of 'seventy-six' did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and the Laws let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor; let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... this Republic were-and are—free men, heirs of the American Revolution, dedicated to the truths of our Declaration of Independence: ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... risked his great fortune and his head, and sided with his countrymen. His bold signature heads the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Riches and honours came to him. Year after year he was ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... that reminded him of the time Guffey had confronted him with the letter from Nell Doolin! "Who do you think that was you pinched?" cried Guffey. "He's the brother of a United States senator! And what do you think he was saying? That was a sentence from the Declaration of Independence!" ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... confined to himself, like that of most of his fellow-slaveholders. He was above that execrable sophistry of the South Carolina nullifiers, which would make of slavery the corner-stone of the temple of liberty. He saw the gross inconsistency between the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the fact of negro slavery; and he could not, or would not, prostitute the faculties of his mind to the vindication of that slavery, which, from his soul, he abhorred. But Jefferson had not the spirit of martyrdom. He would have introduced a flaming denunciation of slavery ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... lulled revolution, and antagonism is about all the capitalist class offers. It is true, it offers some few antiquated notions which were very efficacious in the past, but which are no longer efficacious. Fourth-of-July liberty in terms of the Declaration of Independence and of the French Encyclopaedists is scarcely apposite to-day. It does not appeal to the working-man who has had his head broken by a policeman's club, his union treasury bankrupted by a court decision, or his job taken away from him by a labour-saving ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... get discouraged when I read of one man being worth a thousand million dollars. It makes me feel mighty poor. I don't see any use in being ambitious and taking any stock at all in anything so far as I am concerned, but I do hate to see the government come to harm. I get to thinking that if the Declaration of Independence isn't going to hold out that I'll change my politics and then see what will happen. When a fellow who is as set in his ways as I am changes his politics, reform must be coming, for I would probably be the last man ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent |
