Declaration of Czecho-Slovak Independence (1918)
Editor’s Note: On October 18, 1918, from their base in Paris, the Czecho-Slovak Provisional Government issued a declaration of independence. The declaration came out after the historic ‘Pittsburgh Agreement,’ in which key Czech and Slovak expatriates, who convened shortly after World War I, and in the face of the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, agreed […]
Palestinian Declaration of Independence (1988)
Editor’s note: Composed by poet Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian Declaration of Independence was approved at an Algiers gathering of the Palestinian National Council on November 15, 1988. The declaration calls for an independent State of Palestine, which is described in the document as “the state of Palestinians wherever they may be.” Declaration of Independence (1988) (UN Doc) […]
Declaration of Independence, Argentina – July 9, 1816
Editor’s note: Argentina’s struggle for independence from Spain had begun a decade before the adoption of this Declaration of Independence, approved on July 9, 1816, six years after the Argentine War for Independence was launched and led by the likes of Juan Jose Castelli, Manuel Belgrano, and Jose de San Martin. The declaration represented a complete break […]
Declaration of Independence of Venezuela – July 5, 1811
Editor’s Note: July 5, 1811 heralded Venezuela’s formal break with the Spanish crown when its members of congress approved the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence, which was clearly influenced by our July 4, 1776 declaration. In establishing an independent nation, the Venezuelan “Firma Acta de la Independencia,” or “Signing of the Act of Independence,” aimed to create a society based on […]
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 […]
The Declaration of Independence – July 4, 1776
Editor’s Note: In American Scripture, eminent scholar Pauline Maier characterizes the July 4, 1776 Declaration originally as “a workaday document” that came to be “in the grubby world of 18th century politics.” Maybe so, but it has long since come to be seen as “a statement of values that more than any other expresses not why we […]
Declaration of Independence — Reported Draft, Submitted by Committee of Five to Second Continental Congress (1776)
Editor’s note: This draft of our Declaration of Independence is the one submitted by the Committee of Five — John Adams of Massachusetts and Roger Sherman of Connecticut; Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and Robert R. Livingston of New York; and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia — to the Second Continental Congress, which then made significant changes. A […]
Negro Declaration of Independence, 1876
Editor’s Note: Crafted and issued on February 28, 1876 by the National Independent Political Union, headed by Garland H. White, a Baptist Minister and political activist from Weldon, North Carolina, this declaration was printed as a four-age leaflet in the immediate post-Civil War aftermath at a time when Black Americans were already becoming increasingly embittered […]
“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” – Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852
Editor’s Note: Black Americans did not celebrate the 4th of July until the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. In this no-holds-barred essay, Frederick Douglass, who became one of our great intellectuals, social reformers, and abolitionist leaders after escaping slavery, spells out why Independence Day was a mockery to […]
A Declaration of Gay Independence (2012)
Editor’s note: Tracy Baime prefaces her Declaration with this: “We know that the original signers of the Declaration of Independence didn’t really live by their own words. Very few people in this country’s early years actually had the full rights of citizenship. But those forefathers had a dream, and that dream has been slowly fulfilled […]
