The Declaration of Independence

1
The Declaration of Independence

• July 4, 1776

2
The Boston Massacre

• March 5, 1770
• The Boston Massacre was not a massacre but
  actually a street fight between a mob and a squad
  of British soldiers that ended with the deaths of
  five colonists

3
The Boston Tea Party

• December
• 16, 1773
• To protest
• the tax on
• imported tea,
• the colonists,
• some dressed as Native Americans, boarded three
  British ships and tossed the tea cargo into
  Boston Harbor.

4
The Intolerable Acts

• March 1774
• Four Acts were passed to punish Boston.

5
The Second Continental Congress

• 50 delegates from the American colonies, met on
  May 10, 1775.
• In July of 1776
• the Congress
• also declared
• itself the
• government
• of the colonies.

6
Lexington and Concord

• April 19, 1775
• English troops tried to destroy Colonial
  Arsenals. The English were turned back.

7
Bunker Hill

• June 17, 1775
• Colonial militia tried to get the English to
  leave Boston.
• The Colonists lost.

8
The Declaration of Independence

• July 4, 1776
• Proclaimed the separation of the 13 colonies from
  Britain.
• Written mainly by Thomas Jefferson.

9
In Congress, July 4, 1776,

• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
  men are created equal, that they are endowed by
  their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
  that among these are Life, Liberty and the
  pursuit of Happiness.

10
In Congress, July 4, 1776,

• That to secure these rights, Governments are
  instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers
  from the consent of the governed. That whenever
  any Form of Government becomes destructive of
  these ends, it is the Right of the People to
  alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
  Government

11
The End