Declaration Project

Declaration of Food Sovereignty – Sedgewick, Maine (2011)

Editor’s Note: In March 2011, the Maine town of Sedgewick became the first of four municipalities to pass an ordinance that effectively amounted to a declaration of food sovereignty, one that effectively gives them the right to “a local food system” food that’s sustainable, organic, local; that promotes self-reliance; and that provides an alternative to […]

New Hampshire Declaration of Independence (June 15, 1776)

Editor’s Note: With the inauspicious title of “Committee,” New Hampshire’s chambers declared independence “with the example of several of the most respectable of our sister Colonies before us for entering upon that most important step, of a disunion from Great Britain, and declaring ourselves free and independent of the Crown”, impelled as they were “by the […]

The Lee Resolution — Our July 2, 1776 Declaration of Independence

Editor’s Note: The resolution declaring independence from Britain was first introduced to the Second Continental Congress by Virginian Richard Henry Lee on June 7, 1776. But it became evident that all the delegates on hand weren’t yet close to supporting it. Those from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and South Carolina were not yet […]

Talbot County, Maryland, Instructions for Independence (June 7, 1776)

Editor’s Note: If ever there was a declaration that shows how sentiments for independence at the most local level can drive its state delegates to do the right thing and join the other colonies in breaking from Britain, this is it.  When the Second Continental Congress first considered, on June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee’s […]

Anne Arundel County, MD, Resolves of Independence (June 22, 1776)

Editor’s Note: Describing themselves as ‘Associators’ (which brings to mind the sundry clusters of voluntary associations that banded together in the years preceding the march toward revolution — formed to combat effective the increasingly onerous acts imposed by King and Parliament — this resolve for independence in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, aims in part to generate a […]

Charles County, MD, declaration to declare independence (June 1776)

Editor’s Note: A first glance at the grievances enumerated here, and the language and tone in which they are presented, and you might think that Charles County took its cue from our July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence — yet it was issued about a month before that famous document. Charles County, in the convention […]

Declaration of Independence – Town of Wrentham, Mass. (June 5, 1776)

Editor’s Note:  This eloquent declaration was issued by the denizens of Wrentham, MA, who possessed a “zeal for the common rights of mankind,” and were dismayed that the same “spirit of oppression” that prompted them to leave Britain in the first place has now pursued them in their new habitat.” And so they declared themselves “independent […]

Gageborough, MA, Declaration of Independence from Britain (June 7, 1776)

Editor’s Note: Prizing both brevity and independence as virtues in composition, Gageborough, MA, joins the 1776 declaration bandwagon on June, 7, 1776 Gageborough, MA, Declaration of Independence  At a meeting of the inhabitants of the town of Gageborough, agreeable to a resolve of the House of Representatives, of June 7, 1776, requesting the several Towns […]

Natick, MA, Declaration of Independence, June 20, 1776

Editor’s Note: Short and sweet, this declaration of independence from Britain, by the town of Natick, Massachusetts, preceded our July 4, 1776 Declaration by a little over two weeks.  The concise document packs quite a punch, slamming Britain for “the glaring impropriety, incapacity, and fatal tendency… at the distance of three thousand miles, to legislate […]

Spanish Translation of July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence

From Semanario Político, Económico y Literario, Dec. 12, 1821. Cuando en el curso de los acontecimientos humanos se hace necesario para un pueblo disolver los lazos políticos que le han unido con otro y asumir entre los poderes de la tierra, el rango separado é igual, para el cual lo habilitan las leyes de la naturaleza […]