"Declaration of Independence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... colonial opposition to the Townshend Acts, when the Stamp Act Congress had declared that the regulation of the Colonies' external trade was properly within the powers of Parliament. Let the class be asked to explain a statement that the Declaration of Independence does not mention the real underlying causes of the Revolution. A few suggestions and advanced questions of this sort will stimulate a critical analysis of the statements in the text, and send the student to class ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... schoolboy, studying the history of our own country, may be interested to know that this portrait of an English boy, who was a subject of George III., was painted five years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. One of the signers had a son who was of nearly the same age as Master Bunbury, a boy named William Henry Harrison, who afterwards became the president of our republic. If we possessed a portrait of Harrison at the age of nine, it would be interesting to compare the two boyish ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... made when he chopped 'em off, as well as two crooked ones a-showin' his bad licks, which little did he think history would preserve forever; an' the old Guildhall, where down in the ancient crypt is a-hangin' our Declaration of Independence along with the Roman pots and kittles dug up in London streets; we can't forgit that if it hadn't 'a' been for your old ancestral lines as roots, we'd never been the flourishin' ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... their constitution and their laws, that had been guaranteed to them as a heritage forever by their forefathers. They died for the faith that each state was a separate sovereign government, as laid down by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... The Declaration of Independence laid emphasis upon the principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Nevertheless this principle was not held to apply to the internal politics of the American states, and so there ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... is very brilliant, and in the centre of the diamond cross is a sparkling sapphire, while in front of the crown is a large ruby which was worn by the Black Prince. Well, Charley, my boy, I would rather go to Washington and look at our old copy of the Declaration of Independence than gaze for a whole day at this vast collection of treasure. There is more to be proud of in that old camp equipage of Washington's up in the patent office than in all the crown jewels of England—at least, so I think, ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... man is unquestioned obedience and loyalty to the government, and it makes no difference whether he approves of that government or not." Thus Funston stamps the true character of allegiance. According to him, entrance into the army abrogates the principles of the Declaration of Independence. ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... be seen; but this is certain, they have commenced their new form of government with an act of such gross injustice, as to warrant the assumption that all their boasted virtues are pretence. I refer to their not liberating their slaves. They have given the lie to their own assertions in their Declaration of Independence, in which they have declared all men equal and born free, and we cannot expect the Divine blessing upon those who, when they emancipated themselves, were so unjust as to hold their fellow-creatures in bondage. The time will come, I have no doubt, although perhaps not any of us ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... Before the Revolutionary war Smith was a farmer in 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 ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... event has, indeed, given rise to an annual jubilee; but not on the day designated by Adams. The FOURTH of July is the day of national rejoicing, for on that day the "Declaration of Independence," that solemn and ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... grammar-school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in church and state; the first row of trammels and pothooks which the little Shearjashubs and Elkanahs blotted and blubbered across their copy-books, was the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. The men who gave every man the chance to become a landholder, who made the transfer of land easy, and put knowledge within the reach of all, have been called narrow-minded, because they were intolerant. But intolerant of what? Of what they believed to be dangerous ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... supposed 'Declaration of Independence,' on the model of the American one, is a gratuitous falsehood, which must have originated from some well-disposed for, or well-affected ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... 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 ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Philadelphia in 1785, revered by his country. He was the only man who had signed four of the most famous documents in American history: the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with France, the treaty of peace with England at the close of the Revolution, and the Constitution of the United States. He had also become, as he remains to-day, America's most widely read colonial writer. When he died ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... first American flag, with the motto "Don't tread on me." It was on February 13, 1778, in the harbor of Quiberon, that the American flag received its first recognition by a foreign government, an incident represented by one of these paintings; thirteen years elapsed between the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the inauguration of the first President, General Washington, in 1789; and the Louisiana purchase from France includes the area prospectively covered by thirteen States, as soon as Oklahoma and Indian Territories shall, ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... had asked him for the Pinckney arms, and quartered them into the appropriate check-square with as much grave satisfaction as he felt for the far-off patch of Hohenzollern, or of Hapsburg in sinister chief. Pinckney had laughed at it and referred them to the Declaration of Independence, clause the first; but his wife had copied them from some spoon or sugar bowl. She was very fond of Pinckney, and no more questioned him why they always lived in Carlsruhe than a Persian would the sun for rising east. Now and then they went to Baden, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... rendezvous without the gates of the city, to hear, as we were told, "Some great news." Soon as we were paraded, governor Rutledge ascended a stage, and in the forcible manner of a Demosthenes, informed, that Congress had dissolved all relation with England, by an open Declaration of Independence. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... but you can gamble a bloo stack that not knowin' Colonel Sterett borders on a deeprivation. He is shore wise, the Colonel is, an' when it comes to bein' fully informed on every p'int, from the valyoo of queensup before the draw to the political effect of the Declaration of Independence, he's an even break with Doc Peets. An' as I've asserted frequent—an' I don't pinch down a chip—Doc Peet's is the finest eddicated sharp ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... 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 Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... before he had issued his declaration of independence. Before he could marry, he told her, he must be able to support a wife on what he earned, without her having to accept money from her father, and until he received "a minimum wage" of five thousand dollars they ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... so serious a matter was not to be expected, and Congress put it off till July 1. Meanwhile Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston were appointed to write a declaration of independence and have it ready in case it was wanted. As Jefferson happened to be the chairman of the committee, the duty of writing the declaration was given to him. July 2, Congress passed Lee's resolution, and what had been the United Colonies became ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... Tollivers), the Campbells, the Barnetts, the Toombses, the Doolys, and many other families whose names have figured in the history of the country. Here also settled James Jack, the sturdy patriot who volunteered to carry the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence to Philadelphia. The Congress then in session chose to shut its eyes to that declaration, but it was the basis and framework of the Declaration afterwards written by ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... said that although America is so fresh and blooming that people persist in calling it young, it is much older than it appears to the superficial eye. There is no real propriety in dating us as a nation from the Declaration of Independence in 1776, I said, nor even from the landing of the Pilgrims in 1620; nor, for that matter, from Columbus's discovery in 1492. It's my opinion, I asserted, that some of us had been there thousands of years before, but nobody had had the sense to discover us. We couldn't discover ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 areas to form a "Greater ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... us who Sir William Wallace was, or who wrote "Hamlet," or where the Declaration of Independence was fought, it fills us with a suspicion wellnigh amounting to conviction, that that person would not suspect us of being so empty of knowledge if he wasn't suffering from the same "claim" himself. Then we turn to page ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of Thoreau as a saunterer, or as a naturalist, or as an essayist, that I wish to speak, but as a moralist, and this in relation to American politics. Thoreau lived in a dark day of our political history. At one time he made a declaration of independence in a small way, and refused allegiance and poll-tax to a Government built on a corner-stone of human slavery. Because of this he was put into jail, where he remained one night, and where he made some curious observations on his townspeople as viewed from ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... between prince and people, and that the sovereign held office only on condition of doing his duty, were startling truths which men were beginning, not to whisper to each other in secret, but to proclaim in the market-place. "'Tis well known to all," said the famous Declaration of Independence, two years afterwards, "that if a prince is appointed by God over the land, 'tis 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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... trial was held of Obett Hussy's new reaping machine, which Cyrus MacCormick also claimed as his invention. The device was destined to give a tremendous impetus to agriculture in the development of the western prairies. About the same time the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Maryland, died at the age of ninety-six. In American letters, this year is noted for the appearance of Smith's national anthem, "My Country, 'tis of Thee." Among the books that attracted attention were Whittier's "Moll Pitcher," Sparks's "Gouverneur ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... not read history in vain. He knew that all statesmanship is the record of compromise—that compromise is another name for reason. The Declaration of Independence was a compromise between the radicalism of Thomas Jefferson and the conservatism of the colonies. In the original draft of the Declaration, Jefferson had written a paragraph arraigning ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... he made all men to be free and equal, as saith our Declaration of Independence. Hence, every negro child that is born is as free before God as the white child, having precisely the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as the white child. The law which denies him that right does not destroy it. It may enable the man who claims him as ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... to be invoked in order to a decision of the 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 ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... is the more inexplicable, inasmuch as by the Declaration of Independence there could be no jurisdiction derived from the Crown of England. And, consequently, the Episcopal Church, formed as it was after the Independence, could not, from the nature of the case, receive jurisdiction from without. It ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel
... towards biological science which seems an almost necessary element in the make-up of Mr Wells' exemplars of the open mind. She came to an open quarrel with her father on the question of attending a somewhat Bohemian fancy-dress ball, and she had the courage and determination to uphold her declaration of independence. She ran away, came up to London from her father's suburb, took lodgings and essayed quite unsuccessfully to make her own living. She failed in this endeavour because she had not been educated or trained for any ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... I, in turn; "I mean a Democrat etymological, not a Democrat political. You stand by the Declaration of Independence, and believe in liberty, equality, and fraternity, and that all men are of one blood; and here you are, ridiculing these innocent flowers, because their brilliant beauty is not shut up in a conservatory to exhale its fragrance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... day of history in its high and true significance. Not because the underlying principles set out in the Declaration of Independence were new; they are older than the Christian religion, or Greek philosophy, nor was it because history is made by proclamation or declaration; history is made only by action. But it was an historic day because ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... inwardly and hoped that the train on which he was to depart would not arrive before he had had his opportunity. But he sat smiling, nevertheless, throughout the opening prayer by the minister, the address of the day and the reading of the Declaration of Independence by the orator, the verses of the poet, the teacher's song, and four band pieces. On his lap were two large squares of white pasteboard which he fingered nervously, and every two or three minutes he took note of ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... with me 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 ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Broad and the Catawba. Thus it was that the first sight which greeted my eyes when I rode into Queensborough was the familiar trappings of my old service, and I was made to know that in spite of Mr. Jefferson's boldly written Declaration of Independence, and that earlier casting of the king's yoke by the patriotic Mecklenburgers themselves, my boyhood home was for the moment by sword-right a part of his Majesty's province ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... us glance at the Revolution; 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
... perfect literature. He seems to have admired women vulgarly as creatures whose hands were waiting to be squeezed, rather than as equal human beings; the eminent exception to this being his sister-in-law, Georgiana. His famous declaration of independence of them—that he would rather give them a sugar-plum than his time—was essentially a cynicism in the exhausted-Don-Juan mood. Hence, Keats was almost doomed to fall in love with provocation rather than with what ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... a town of Rhode Island on the borders of Connecticut. The marriage must have taken place about two years later, on the second marriage of my grandfather Maxson to the daughter of Samuel Ward, one of the leading delegates from Rhode Island to the convention which drew up and promulgated the Declaration of Independence[1]. Their early days of married life must have been passed in an extreme frugality, for my father was one of a large number of children, and, brought up on a farm, learned the trade of ship-carpenter, which he alternated, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the difference was that, whereas during the war we failed in our attempts to conquer Florida and Canada, we succeeded in conquering the Northwest. The Northwest formed no part of our country as it originally stood; it had no portion in the declaration of independence. It did not revolt; it was conquered. Its inhabitants, at the outset of the Revolution, no more sympathized with us, and felt no greater inclination to share our fate, than did their kinsmen in Quebec or the Spaniards in ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... for the horses' harness did not fit them very well, and they objected to dragging the plough as well-regulated oxen should have done; so at the last moment it was decided to give up the idea of a moving scene, and simply attempt a tableau; General Putnam at his plough in the field, reading the Declaration of Independence. A sheet could be held up until the cows were in position, then it was to be dropped and the tableau revealed to the audience. "The effect would ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... justify, James, but it would change the game of baseball as in 'stealing a base' or it would ruin the game of love as in 'stealing a kiss'. It would ruin the mystery-story field for millions of people who really haven't any inclination to go out and rob, steal, or kill. Treason? Our very revered Declaration of Independence is an article of Treason in the eyes of King George Third; it wouldn't be very hard to draw a charge of treason against a man who complained about the way the Government is being run. Now, one more ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... 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 few ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... Colonies. Even in 1774 no Hint of Independence. Hardly in 1775. Swift Change at Last. All the Colonies Turn to the New Idea. Causes. Dickinson and Harrison. The King's Barbarity. The Gaspe Affair. Capture of Fort William and Mary. Paine's "Common Sense." Declaration of Independence Mooted. Debated. Drafted. Passed and Signed. Jefferson. How far he Followed Earlier Utterances. Effect of the Declaration. Anarchy in the Colonies. New State Governments. New Constitutions. Their Provisions. Changes from the Old Order. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... to Washington for the first time at the beginning of the previous winter, while the Madisons were in England. Lady Mary had left her note of introduction the day before Betty's declaration of independence. ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... few leaves from the end are missing. The title page of a duplicate volume which Mr. Winters kindly showed me reads: "The Revised Laws of Indiana adopted and enacted by the General Assembly at their eighth session. To which are prefixed the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Indiana, and sundry other documents connected with the Political History of the Territory and State of Indiana. Arranged and published by authority of the General Assembly. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... contain them; and in 1729 the famous building which still stands was erected on the same spot,—a building with a grander history than any other on the American continent, unless it be that other plain brick building in Philadelphia where the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the Federal Constitution framed. [Sidenote: Founding of the Old ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... 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 said Absalom's father should mind to his own business!" It was growing serious. ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... streets. An entry in Washington's Orderly Book at this time, forbidding his soldiers to take part in anything like a riot, shows that he did not fully approve of this proceeding. But the people were very much excited. It was the night of the 9th of July, 1776, and news of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia had just reached New York that afternoon. At evening rollcall the Declaration was read at the head of each brigade of the army and ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... the erection of the college buildings, in the support of stations and schools, and in the printing of tracts, much more than L23,000. The unceasing calumny with which we have been assailed, for what has been called 'our declaration of independence' (which, by the bye, Mr. Fuller approved of our issuing almost with his dying breath), it is beneath us to notice, but it has fully convinced us of the propriety of the step. This calumny is so unreasonable that we confidently ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... whole people. It is a public affair (as its name imports), a thing of the public; and this is not true of any other than a democracy. For the essential idea of such a government is expressed in the maxim: 'the greatest good to the greatest number;' and in that other maxim which is part of our Declaration of Independence, that 'government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.' It needs no argument to show that these maxims are violated in a country where any portion of the people are deprived of their highest good—liberty. For what is the object ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... for the best yet rather expecting the worst, discreetly retiring, at an early date, within the ranks of the British loyalists. John Alsop, the "soft, sweet" man, was also there, active enough in his mild way until the very last—until the Declaration of Independence, as he said, "closed the last door to reconciliation." There, too, was James Duane, with never so great need of his "surveying eye" to enable him to size up the situation. He is more discreet than any one, and sits quietly ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... is inordinately proud of the fact that one of his ancestors affixed his name to the Declaration of Independence. At the time the salesman called, the buyer was signing a number of checks and affixed his signature with many a curve and flourish. The salesman's patience becoming exhausted in waiting for the buyer to recognize him, ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... just before sunrise he came into my bedroom, hair and moustache on end, and in full uniform, and attempted to read the Declaration of Independence to me—or maybe it was the Constitution—I don't remember—but I began to cry, and ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... colonies—Germans from Pennsylvania and Scotch-Irish furnishing the main supply. "By 1770, tide-water Virginia was full to overflowing and the 'back country' of the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah was fully occupied. Even the mountain valleys ... were claimed by sturdy pioneers. Before the Declaration of Independence, the oncoming tide of home-seekers had reached ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... could so readily be set aside, that she had only to stamp her foot violently down on another foot and the other foot would be jerked out of the way. In the flush of elation, she thought of what had just taken place as her Declaration of Independence. She kept on celebrating it in a sort of intoxication ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... the story was to encourage the feast of Purim (chapter ix, verses 20-32) and to promote national solidarity. It may be compared to "A Christmas Carol," which was written to restore the waning celebration of Christmas, and to our Declaration of Independence, which is re-read on every Fourth of July to quicken our sense of national fellowship. But "Esther" is more than an institution. It is the old story of two conflicting civilizations, one representing bigness, the ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... of the portraits, already hung up, are of men of high rank,—the Duke of Sussex, for instance; Lord Durham, Lord Grey; and, indeed, I remember no commoner. In one room, I saw on the wall the fac-simile, so common in the United States, of our Declaration of Independence. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Punctuality," or "How Great Fortunes have been Made" story; but, as a matter of fact, Master Maloney was no early bird. Larks who rose in his neighbourhood, rose alone. He did not get up with them. He was supposed to be at the office at nine o'clock. It was a point of honour with him, a sort of daily declaration of independence, never to put in an appearance before nine-thirty. On this particular morning he was punctual to the minute, or half an hour late, whichever way you choose to ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the era that begins its cycle with the memorable year of 1776: the Declaration of Independence, the steam engine, and Adam Smith's book, "The Wealth of Nations." The Declaration gave birth to a new nation, whose millions of acres of free land were to shift the economic equilibrium of the world; the engine multiplied man's productivity a thousandfold and uprooted ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... of American institutions is human equality—the idea embodied in the American Declaration of Independence, that men are created free and equal, each with an independent, and all with a co-ordinate, right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There is in this idea the highest poetry, because it is the transcendent truth; and there is no true poetry this ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... 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 ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... the laws of Indiana in it, and it tells how the government of our country was started." Abe's voice took on a new tone of excitement. "It has the Declaration of Independence in it and the ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... American, every lover of liberty, every 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 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 ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... of America"! It was in the Declaration of Independence that this name was first and formally proclaimed to the world, and to maintain its verity the war of the Revolution was fought. Americans like to think that they were then assuming "among the Powers of the Earth the equal and independent Station to which the Laws ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... globe. The Setwanaks have appealed to the "God of Battles," and are no doubt shouting on all hands that "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God;" and "Millions for defence; not a cent for tribute." Look out for their forthcoming declaration of independence; and why shouldn't they have their "Whereases" as well as your even Christian? The only trouble is that when monarchs fight nothing is settled as a rule; what one loses to-day, he tries to win back to-morrow, and so the masses are kept in a state of perpetual war, or preparation for ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... 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 ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... 4th of July I permitted in Mobile a procession of the freedmen, the only class of people in Mobile who craved of me the privilege of celebrating the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Six thousand well-dressed and orderly colored people, escorted by two regiments of colored troops, paraded the streets, assembled in the public squares, and were addressed in patriotic speeches by orators of their own race and color. These ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... body was first assembled during the reign of Charles II., in 1683; from which it will be seen that parliamentary representation was introduced into the American colonies at a very early date. The Declaration of Independence was made by the revolted colonies in 1776, and in 1777 the first constitution was adopted by the State of New York. In 1822 this was changed for another; and the one of which I now purport to state some of the details was brought into action in ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... seconded by John Adams of Massachusetts. It was carried on July the second and on July fourth, it was followed by an official Declaration of Independence, which was the work of Thomas Jefferson, a serious and exceedingly capable student of both politics and government and destined to be one of the most famous ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... your picture of your domestic life and happy house and home, or in the view you gave me of your public festivity and celebration of your American day of days—your national festival in honour of your Declaration of Independence. It was never, I suppose, more joyously, innocently, and advantageously held than on the day you describe so delightfully with the accuracy of an eye-witness. I think I too have seen all this, and thank you ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... man of this epoch on the subject of Negro education were those of Thomas Jefferson. Born of pioneer parentage in the mountains of Virginia, Jefferson never lost his frontier democratic ideals which made him an advocate of simplicity, equality, and universal freedom. Having in mind when he wrote the Declaration of Independence the rights of the blacks as well as those of whites, this disciple of John Locke, could not but feel that the slaves of his day had a natural right to education and freedom. Jefferson said so much more on these important questions than his contemporaries that he would have been considered ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... great events in the history of the race require capitals; "The Flood, Magna Charta, Declaration of Independence." ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... window with colored panes, which lets in spots of red, blue and yellow light. I imagine that this patch of vivid color was a keen satisfaction to Walt's acute senses. Such is the simple cottage that one associates with America's literary declaration of independence. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... a well-educated man, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a member of the Convention of 1787 which formulated the Constitution of the United States, first Judge of the Admiralty Court in Pennsylvania, and author of many ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... what is right in the fulfilment of inalienable duties. 'Life' and the 'pursuit of happiness' must both yield to the exactions of such duties. I must confess, however, that, let my abstract views be as they may, I have occasionally embraced in their widest extent the generalizations of the Declaration of Independence; and nowhere has the right of 'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness' seemed to me so precious and delightful a possession as, when seated on top of a stage coach, I have breathed the exhilarating atmosphere of some elevated mountain region. As to equality, I must also say, that there especially ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... our highest judicial tribunal that the phrase "we the people," in the Declaration of Independence, did not include slaves, who were excluded from the inherent rights recited therein and accounted divine and inalienable, embracing, of course, the right of self-government, which rested on the others ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... brilliant little essay, which was in form a letter addressed to the author of "Sir Charles Grandison," lay in its assertion of the superiority of genius to learning and of the right of genius to be free from rules and authorities. It was a sort of literary declaration of independence; and it asked, in substance, the question asked in Emerson's "Nature": "Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?" Pope had said, in his "Essay on Criticism,"[16] "follow Nature," and in order to follow Nature, learn the rules and study the ancients, particularly ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... seldom that England gives birth to so rampant a republican as Landor. Born on the 30th of January, two years before our Declaration of Independence, it is probable that the volcanic action of those troublous times had no little influence in permeating the mind of the embryo poet with that enthusiasm for and love of liberty for which he was distinguished ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... metaphors, and allegories, have been used on this day! what varieties and gradations of eloquence! There are at least fifty thousand cities, towns, villages, and hamlets, spread over the surface of America—in each the Declaration of Independence has been read; in all one, and in some two or three, orations have been delivered, with as much gunpowder in them as in the squibs and crackers. But let me describe what ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Franklin, and called "Common Sense," was published in 1776. Hildreth, writing of the year 1802, says that "Paine, instead of being esteemed as formerly, as a lover of liberty, whose pen has contributed to hasten the Declaration of Independence, was now detested by large numbers as the libeler of Washington." In 1795 the Aurora put out the following language, which seems to be that to which Hildreth alludes: "If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation was debauched by Washington; ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... upon which Buerger's fame chiefly rests, was published in 1773. It constituted one of the articles in that declaration of independence which the young poets of the time were formulating, and it was more than a mere coincidence that in the same year Herder wrote his essay on 'Ossian' and the 'Songs of Ancient Peoples,' and Goethe unfurled the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the frontier sentries stopped us often, but the consul's much-used passport, framed and glassed in like Napoleon's Abdication or the Declaration of Independence, was very convincing. Half an hour's cold drive along the Meuse brought us to Vise. On approaching it, we did not dream that we were nearing a town and in truth we were not—only the remains of one, for not a single building ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... those of France and America. It compares advantageously with the second par. of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) by the Representatives of the U.S., which declares, "these truths to be self-evident:—that all men are created equal," etc. It is regretable that so trenchant a state-paper should begin with ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... and directly encourage this traffic. The Congress of Texas recently offered a premium of nearly three thousand acres of land to every woman who would marry a citizen of Texas, who was one at the declaration of Independence. ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... denominations among us as children of the same family, differing only in what is called their Christian names." All things considered, "nothing can settle our affairs so expeditiously as an open and determined declaration of independence." "This proceeding may at first appear strange and difficult. A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right"; but in a little time it will become familiar. "And until independence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... then, must go 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 ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... other ever published in our country," and which, as Elkanah Watson said, "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, ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... The declaration of independence came next. All Spaniards were ordered to leave the island with their families within three days, failing which they would be considered as citizens of the new-born republic and obliged to take arms in its defense; in case of refusal they would be ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... out the corpse on three cheers (that joke was not intentional and I do not endorse it), and then the President, throned behind a cable locker with a national flag spread over it, announced the "Reader," who rose up and read that same old Declaration of Independence which we have all listened to so often without paying any attention to what it said; and after that the President piped the Orator of the Day to quarters and he made that same old speech about our national greatness which we so religiously ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... no doubt Mr. Jefferson affixed to the term in his own mind, "all men are created free and equal." The "noble Oracle" himself had long before as explicitly asserted the natural equality of man. In 1739, thirty-seven years before the Declaration of Independence was penned, Lord Chesterfield wrote: "We are of the same species, and no distinction whatever is between us, except that which arises from fortune. For example, your footman and Lizette would be your equals were they as rich as you. Being poor, they ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... but, setting this defect aside, it was indeed a glorious sight to behold a jubilee so heartfelt as this; and had they not the bad taste and bad feeling to utter an annual oration, with unvarying abuse of the mother country, to say nothing of the warlike manifesto called Declaration of Independence, our gracious king himself might look upon the scene and say that it was good; nay, even rejoice, that twelve millions of bustling bodies, at four thousand miles distance from his throne and his altars, should make their own laws, and drink ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... July came, and Master Mann had invited the school to come together on the holiday for patriotic exercises. He had one of the pupils read the Declaration of Independence on the occasion, and Gretchen played the President's March on the violin. He himself made an historical address, and then joined in some games out of doors ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... in the interesting attitude of that moment, could have been thrown upon the painter's canvas! At some future day, when the Gospel shall have triumphed here, it would be cherished and admired as the first declaration of independence against ecclesiastical tyranny and ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... (indeed, the whole American constitutional system) grew out of the philosophical doctrine (or, rather, statement of faith) which Jefferson wrote into the Declaration of Independence: ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... form a new government. That they did not so believe, seems to be proved by their statement that "they knew that woman had wrongs, but how to state them was the difficulty, and this was increased from the fact that they themselves were fortunately organized and conditioned." The Declaration of Independence meant war against the ever-growing encroachment of despotism. The gauntlet was thrown down at the feet of a king by his subjects. The Declaration of Sentiments meant war against the whole social order as then constituted. The gauntlet was thrown down at the feet of man by ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... endowment entail physical enfeeblement; for, with temperance, literary men have reached extreme old age, as in the cases of Klopstock, Goethe, Chaucer, and the average age attained by all the signers of the American Declaration of Independence was sixty-four years, many of them being highly gifted men intellectually. Thus, in the case of the phenomenal Oscar it cannot be predicted that he will not develop, as he now promises to do, equal and extraordinary powers of mind, even though it would be rare in one ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln - A Memorial Discourse • Rev. T. M. Eddy
... England, or wrought out as here by the people themselves, and cast into representative forms. And now we see before us the anomaly, the mortifying contradiction, that it is in Great Britain, and not in the republic of the United States, with our venerated Declaration of Independence, that the great principles of Liberty and Fraternity are practically carried out. I do not mean to reflect upon any person or persons south or north of a certain geographical line. Our ancestors have eaten sour grapes, and their childrens' teeth are set ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... difference, I, as well as 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 endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... governor at once ordered out two batteries of artillery, all the state troops that were available, and sent them to the scene of the troubles, and then sent his celebrated telegram to the war department, which may be called the "Minnesota Declaration of Independence." It ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... immediately brought it into the center of world politics. In that year the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina was announced, although for many years previous the Turkish suzerainty over these two provinces had been less than nominal. As this was followed immediately by a declaration of independence on the part of Bulgaria, the jealousy of Serbia was aroused. But both the difficulties with this country and with Turkey about the annexation were finally adjusted, mainly through the strong support which Germany gave to its ally and in 1909 all of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... themselves, deprived them of their independence, and established there, by American power, a Government in which the people have no part, against their will. No man, I think, will seriously question that that action was contrary to the Declaration of Independence, the fundamental principles declared in many State constitutions, the principles avowed by the founders of the Republic and by our statesmen of all parties down to a time long after the death ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, the author of that immortal document; George Wythe, afterwards Chancellor of Virginia; Francis Hopkinson, the poet and patriot Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Huntington, Edward Rutledge, and many others, have left upon record testimonials of their ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... United States, was born at North Bend, Ohio, August 20, 1833. His father, John Scott Harrison, was the third son of General William Henry Harrison, ninth President of the United States, who was the third and youngest son of Benjamin Harrison, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. John Scott Harrison was twice married, his second wife being Elizabeth, daughter of Archibald Irwin, of Mercersburg, Pa. Benjamin was the second son of this marriage. His parents were resolutely determined upon the education of their children, and early in childhood Benjamin ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... persistence in ignoring the American demands, and especially the American spirit. His great speeches, "On American Taxation" and "On Conciliation with America," were delivered in 1774 and 1775, preceding the Declaration of Independence. In this period Burke's labor seemed all in vain; he lost his cause, and England her ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... being nothing less aristocratical than the placing of the sword of command in the hands of men who have carried the musket. While pursuing his military duties, he did not neglect the study of politics; and his notes show that before the Declaration of Independence he had thought out a plan of government for the nation that was so soon to come into existence. Among them is this inquiry: "Quaere, would it not be advisable to let all taxes, even those imposed by the States, be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... with the object of obtaining the redress of what Galloway 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
... Mexico floats up the flag-pole in the bare little plaza of shabby Las Uvas. The sun over Pine Mountain greets the eagle of Montezuma before it touches the vineyards and the town, and the day begins with a great shout. By and by there will be a reading of the Declaration of Independence and an address punctured by vives; all the town in its best dress, and some exhibits of horsemanship that make lathered bits and bloodly spurs; ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... down the sky as easily. His muse and teaching was common sense, joyful, aggressive, irresistible. Not Latimer, nor Luther, struck more telling blows against false theology than did this brave singer. The "Confession of Augsburg," the "Declaration of Independence," the French "Rights of Man," and the "Marseillaise," are not more weighty documents in the history of freedom than the songs of Burns. His satire has lost none of its edge. His musical arrows yet sing through the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Declaration of Independence or the 'Charge of the Light Brigade'!" Droop exclaimed. "Any o' ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... radiantly confirmed this declaration of independence, and Stanwell, with his evasive laugh, asked her if, meanwhile, she should object to his investing a part of his ill-gotten gains in theatre tickets for ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... mutinously. Her cheeks were flushed, and her slim, boyish figure quivered. Her chin, always determined, became a silent Declaration of Independence. ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Declaration of Independence came to add the question of recognition to the question of aid. But recognition was a declaration of war, and to bring the French Government to this decisive pass required the highest diplomatic skill supported ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... exactly one hundred years from the date of the Declaration of Independence, when on July 4, 1876, the first Christian Scientist Association was organized by seven persons, of whom the foremost was Mrs. Eddy. The church was founded in April, 1879, with twenty-six members, and a charter was obtained two months ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... of power, are essential to the existence of the Constitution of the United States. At the very commencement, when we assumed a place among the powers of the earth, the Declaration of Independence was adopted by States; so also were the Articles of Confederation; and when "the people of the United States" ordained and established the Constitution it was the assent of the States, one by one, which ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... that black horse o' mine. But if he's no good, I lose five hundred, all right," and he sloped away to his duties. For it was the Hon. Sam who was master of ceremonies that day. He was due now to read the Declaration of Independence in a poplar grove to all who would listen; he was to act as umpire at the championship base-ball game in the afternoon, and he was to give the "Charge" to the assembled knights before ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... made at Jamestown, Va., in 1607. In process of time other settlements were made, and colonies organized, which were all subject to the English government till the declaration of Independence July ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... but, through 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... 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 much to gain. In Mrs. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... plain name-label. These are all of our presidents known to have used them, except General Garfield, who had a printed book-plate of simple design, with the motto "inter folia fructus." Eleven of the signers of the Declaration of Independence are known to have had these signs of gentle birth—for in the early years of the American Colonies, it was only the families of aristocratic connection and scholarly tastes who indulged in what may be ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... conflicting civilizations came into existence with the establishment of the American Union—the one founded on the sovereignty of the States and the continuance of slavery was espoused by the hot-blooded citizens of the South; the other, upon the literal construction of the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created free and equal," and the supremacy of the general government over States Rights, and this was the slogan of the cool, calculating, but equally brave people of the North. The converging ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... committed in the accumulation of these millions, would, if fully exposed, make the performances of Wright and Barnato seem like petty larceny in comparison.[12] But freedom and equality, as guaranteed us by the Declaration of Independence, have recently been capitalized, and "freedom" now means immunity from legal interference for financiers, while the latest acceptance of "equality" is that all victims of special privilege are treated alike ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... which emphasized the rights of man in general and social equality in particular. If the middle class Jacksonian was probably thinking first of reducing the debt on his farm or perchance of getting a political office, and only as an after-thought proceeding to look for a justification in the Declaration of Independence, as yet the wage earner was starting with the abstract notion of equal citizenship as contained in the Declaration, and only then proceeding to search for the remedies which would square reality with the idea. Hence it was that ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... The 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 ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... several surprises to the advantage of the colonists. They took Ticonderoga and invested Boston before the British government believed that a fight was impending. An expedition to Canada failed in 1775-76, but Boston fell. Down to the day of the Declaration of Independence the advantage was clearly with the colonists. The hard, stern struggle of the war began in August, 1776, with the arrival of the British in the harbor of New York. The Americans were attacked on Long ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... frequently been made that the United States government destroyed a republic in the Philippine Islands, [350] but some of the critics seem to entertain peculiar ideas as to what a republic is. Blount states [351] that Aguinaldo declined to hear our declaration of independence read "because we would not recognize his right to assert the same truths," and then apparently forgetting the Insurgent chief's alleged adherence to the principles of this dacument, he lets the cat out of the bag by saying that "the war satisfied us ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... to pacify submerged discontent; and even in far Cathay, the mystery land of Marco Polo, immobile, phlegmatic, individualistic China, men have been waging war for the philosophy incorporated in the first ten lines of our Declaration of Independence. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... Declaration of Independence George Washington has been the greatest figure in the history of the United States of America, and it is certain that he will continue to be so for hundreds of years to come. In all history there is no parallel to the ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... conversation, as showing 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. ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... while we profess ourselves the 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 us in slaughter ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... Parliament had so long been engaged. The similarity in the grievances of Ireland and the colonies, the close ties of kindred established between them, the extent of colonial commerce involved in the result, contributed to give the American Declaration of Independence more importance in men's eyes at Dublin, than anywhere else out of the colonies, except, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... several members of the Continental Congress who have been elected and served as members thereof since the declaration of Independence. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... won except by force? What barricade of wrong, injustice, and oppression has ever been carried except by force? Force compelled the signature of unwilling royalty to the great Magna Charta; force put life into the Declaration of Independence and made effective the Emancipation Proclamation; force beat with naked hands upon the iron gateway of the Bastile and made reprisal in one awful hour for centuries of kingly crime; force waved the flag of revolution ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... 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 Greenwood. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... 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." ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... prominent than many others, in fact hardly to be called prominent at all in the events which led up to the Revolution, he became a leader in the first Congress, and it is probable that no one contributed more than he did—possibly no one contributed so much—towards forcing the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... 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 ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... 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 ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... 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 ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... in the Sentinel suggests that if we should be hard pressed, the States ought to repeal the old Declaration of Independence, and voluntarily revert to their original proprietors—England, France, and Spain, and by them be protected from the North, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the oath of the Tennis Court, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Mark Antony's oration, all the brave scenes of history, I conceive as having been not unlike that evening in the cafe at Chatillon. Terror breathed upon the assembly. A moment later, when the Arethusa ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... poetry and English lords talked in American novels. It was not until 1837 that Emerson gave that famous address, The American Scholar, an event which Lowell calls "without any former parallel in our literary annals," and which Holmes declared to be "our intellectual Declaration of Independence." ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... 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, ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... collation, we visited the reception room, which contains a number of old-time engravings, facsimiles of the Declaration of Independence, a bronze bust of Lafayette, a marble bust of Lafayette and a bronze bust of Franklin. Overhanging the bed in which Lafayette was born is a fine portrait of Benjamin Franklin. Although Lafayette died in Paris, the bed in which he died was brought ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... Declaration of Independence read well, but they were not meant to be applied to the worker. The independence so much vaunted was the independence of the capitalist to do as he pleased. Few, if any, restrictions were placed upon him; such pseudo restrictions ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers |
