"Declaration of Independence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the list of those who have graduated reveals the names of John Hull, Benjamin Franklin and his four fellow-signers of the Declaration of Independence, John Hancock, Sam Adams, Robert Treat Paine, William Hooper; Presidents Leverett, Langdon, Everett and Eliot of Harvard, and Pynchon of Trinity College; Governors James Bowdoin and William Eustis; Lieutenant-Governors Cushing ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... phase of memory—Retention—cannot be described in psychological terms. We know we retain facts after they are once impressed, but as to their status in the mind we can say nothing. If you were asked when the Declaration of Independence was signed, you would reply instantly. When asked, however, where that fact was five minutes ago, you could not answer. Somewhere in the recesses of the mind, perhaps, but as to immediate awareness of it, there was none. We may try to think ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... subject to which neither beginning nor end can be assigned. No beginning, because the dense web of the fortunes of man is woven without a void; because, in society as in nature, the structure is continuous, and we can trace things back uninterruptedly, until we dimly descry the Declaration of Independence in the forests of Germany. No end, because, on the same principle, history made and history making are scientifically inseparable ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... only puts a high value on British conservatism and a low one on the French Revolution and the Declaration of Independence, but declares that no change whatever in the mere structure of government can aid idealists and reformers in any way, and expects politics and parties to be much the same in the future as they are at the present moment. It is this attitude that Mr. Hobson has in mind when he protests that "the ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... summarized as follows: In 1736 he was made Clerk of the Provincial Assembly; in 1737, deputy postmaster at Philadelphia; and in 1753, Postmaster general for British America. He was twice in England as the agent of certain colonies. After signing the Declaration of Independence, he was sent as Minister Plenipotentiary to France in 1776. On his return, in 1785, he was made "President of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania," holding the office three years. He was also one of the framers of the Constitution of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... merely to Carolina, but to all the confederated colonies. It saved the former, for three years, from the calamities of invasion; a respite of the last value to a country so greatly divided in public feeling and opinion. The battle preceded the declaration of Independence, and, though not generally known to have taken place before that decisive measure was resolved upon, it came seasonably to confirm the patriots in those principles which they had so solemnly and recently avowed. Its farther ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... grandsons of John Hancock, first signer of the Declaration of Independence. (Their names are respectively Geo. M. and John H. Hancock) and their eminence hangs on their having ...
— Quaint Epitaphs • Various
... were 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, ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... of the 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 intercourse ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... met at Albany, Franklin proposed a plan, which was adopted, for the union of all the colonies under one government. But all these things, as well as his mission to England in 1757, on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly in its dispute with the proprietaries; his share in the Declaration of Independence—of which he was one of the signers—and his residence in France as embassador of the United Colonies, belong to the political history of the country; to the history of American science belong his celebrated experiments in electricity; ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... (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
... the extension of slavery.[6] He objected to the iniquitous doctrine of the Nebraska Bill in that it assumed that there was moral right in the enslaving of one man by another, and, further, that it tended to be unmistakably subversive of the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln was of the opinion that the salvation of the Union was dependent upon the extension or the restriction of slavery. Realizing the futility and the hopelessness of voluntary emancipation, he asserted ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... 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 ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... officer or an enlisted 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
... most precious of these documents was the Declaration of Independence, which it has been asserted, ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... 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 chosen ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... assume before entering a drawing-room! The modern American hasn't the least idea from whom he is descended; what right has he to claim anything of our glorious English heritage?—or to say there is English blood in him at all? Why, as far back as the Declaration of Independence, the people of English birth or parentage in the Eastern States were in a distinct minority! And as to the American of the future—look at the thousands upon thousands of Germans pouring into the country as compared ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... analyzed in his earlier writings, including the book on "Congressional Government." Beneath the concrete campaign issues in New Jersey he saw the fundamental principles of Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. His trained habit of thinking through concrete facts to basic principles was serving him well in this campaign; his trained habit of clear exposition in the Princeton lecture hall was serving him well. People heard from him political ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... he, leaning on his wooden gun, and looking around him persuasively. "'All men are born free and equal.' I s'pose you know that? It's put down so in the Declaration of Independence!" ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... "When the Declaration of Independence was carried into effect, and the Constitution of the United States was adopted, the civil and political relations of the generation then living, and of all succeeding ones, were changed. Men were no longer the same men, but ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... 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
... that chamber, as then crowded with those hardy mountaineers, 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
... Kapital', with the A-bomb and the H-bomb, with concentration camps and blasted cities. From this position, of course, I beg politely to differ. Literate men also gave us the Magna Charta and the Declaration of Independence. ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... never get behind the Declaration of Independence again, nor behind the writings of Voltaire again. We let Catholicism run around loose now, but that is because Voltaire cut its claws and pulled out all ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... 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 ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... the property of all. He would take religion from the custody of the priests, and culture from the hands of schoolmasters, and restore them to their proper place, among the inalienable rights of man. They were simply forms of the pursuit of happiness of which the Declaration of Independence speaks. It is a right of which no potentates can justly ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... rather into a Portuguese than a Spanish question. By a recognition of the Dutch conquests in Brazil and in the Indian Ocean they were acquiring an ally without losing anything that they had not lost already by the Portuguese declaration of independence. But, as the basis of an agreement was on the point of being reached, an event happened which caused ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... he intended to assert and maintain his unlimited and supreme authority over the fallen city. But not alone did he possess himself of the private property of some of the principal persons who had rendered themselves prominent in the recent declaration of independence, but he demanded a surrender of a great part of the territories that belonged by charter to the public. He also further enriched himself, and impoverished the Novgorodians, by seizing upon all the gold and valuables to which he could, with any show of propriety, lay claim. He ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... the ability and power of John Adams.—"The great pillar of support to the Declaration of Independence, and its ablest advocate and champion on the floor of ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... the end of the human race, then freedom is the condition, and that this freedom should not be a kind of a half escape from thralldom and tyranny, but it should be ample and absolute. This theory is most admirably expressed in the opening of the Declaration of Independence, of which he was the sole author, and which was adopted almost literally as he wrote it: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... obliged to write. My signature at this period I regard with some curiosity and more pride. It is certainly better than that of Guido Faux, affixed to his examination after torture, though it is hardly equal to the signature of Stephen Hopkins to the Declaration of Independence. ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Mayflower. His first American "forebear" was a Puritan minister, Rev. John Sherman, an emigrant to the Connecticut colony from Essex in England. Of one of the collateral branches was Roger Sherman, drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence. The father of the soldier was Judge Sherman, of the Ohio Supreme Court; his mother was "a ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... 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 windows clustering ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... give to this criticism a tone which should indicate, without its being specifically stated, that he had not written the former paper. He understood perfectly well that Mrs. Staggchase would regard his position as a declaration of independence, and indeed when the lady read the Observer that morning she smiled with an air ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... the solemn ways of the regular romance. There may be even a special reference to the "Phebus" the technical name or nickname of the "high language" in these repeated burlesque introductions of the sun. And the almost pert flings and cabrioles of the narrator form a still more obvious and direct Declaration of Independence. But these are mere details, almost trivial compared with the striking contrast of the whole presentation and faire of the piece, when taken together with most of the subjects of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Even before the declaration of independence Roumania had ventured on a few acts of war against Turkey; but the co-operation of her army, comprising 50,000 regulars and 70,000 National Guards, with that of Russia proved to be a knotty question. The Emperor Alexander ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... 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 over Bunker Hill and marked the snows of Valley Forge with blood-stained ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... who achieved distinction a hundred years ago, live in constant thanksgiving that they "are not as other men." None of the great man's descendants have done anything to be particularly proud of since their remote progenitor signed the Declaration of Independence or governed a colony. They have vegetated in small provincial cities and inter-married into other equally fortunate families, but the sense of superiority is ever present to sustain them, under straitened circumstances and diminishing prestige. The world may move on around them, but they never advance. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... seen that Mr. Hornaday is a true-born American, and not disposed to stand any nonsense that conflicts with the great law of human equality. But though this trait makes him appear somewhat uncharitable toward prejudices that have survived the Declaration of Independence, it shows itself in its most amiable light in his own free and sociable disposition, his readiness to be on terms of good-fellowship with men of all sorts and conditions, and his heartiness in responding to any show of friendship in act or demeanor. Hence, on one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... to 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 ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... history. Well, Henry, he takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country. How does he do it—give notice?—give the country a show? No. All of a sudden he heaves all the tea in Boston Harbour overboard, and whacks out a declaration of independence, and dares them to come on. That was his style—he never give anybody a chance. He had suspicions of his father, the Duke of Wellington. Well, what did he do?—ask him to show up? No—drownded him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat. Spose people left money laying around where he was—what did ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... States 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 of Nature ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... later Washington was secretly authorized to raise two thousand Indians; while agents were secretly sent 'to engage the Six Nations in our Interest, on the best terms that can be procured.' Within three weeks of this secret arrangement the Declaration of Independence publicly accused the king of trying 'to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages.' Four days after this public accusation the Congress gave orders for raising Indians along 'the Penobscot, the St John, ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... Franklin and the map of the United States.—When the war of the Revolution broke out, Dr. Franklin did a great work for his country. He did not fight battles like Washington, but he did something just as useful. First, he helped write the Declaration of Independence, by which we declared ourselves free from the rule of the king of England; next, he went to France to get aid for us. We were then too poor to pay our soldiers; he got the king of France to let us have ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... 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 ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... word, and brought the sweat of horror to the brow of Oliver, which he proceeded to remove with a great cotton pocket-handkerchief, produced from his coat behind, on which was displayed in glowing colors, by some cunning artist, the imposing scene of the signers of the Declaration of Independence getting ready to affix their names. Mr. Oliver Peabody was the politician of the family, and always had the immortal Declaration of Independence at his tongue's ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... through by a slight majority. Now, 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 fans ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... organization of republican National, State, and municipal governments, all constructed with reference to each, and each to all. This is the American programme, not for classes, but for universal man, and is embodied in the compacts of the Declaration of Independence, and, as it began and has now grown, with its amendments, the Federal Constitution—and in the State governments, with all their interiors, and with general suffrage; those having the sense not only of what is in themselves, but that their certain several things started, planted, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... know how to cry. He hasn't got any tears, and old Uncle Iz didn't hurt me, because, you see, when I heard Thag getting his, I went and stuffed the Declaration of Independence, that book of stepdaddy's that Demetrius tore the pictures out of, ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... was away from any such danger, and, except immediately around the palace, there was nobody in the long, deserted avenues. They often cited the United States, how no statesman after the signing of the Declaration of Independence (in Philadelphia) would have ventured to propose that the Parliament should sit in New York or Philadelphia, but the reason there was very different; they were obliged to make a neutral zone, something between the North and ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... 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
... cause. The most familiar case is that of the line of the Hudson, where the Bay of New York was held from the first by the British, who also took the city in September, 1776, two months after the Declaration of Independence. The difficulties in the way of moving up and down such a stream were doubtless much greater to sailing vessels than they now are to steamers; yet it seems impossible to doubt that active and capable men wielding the great ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... ability. He was eloquent, and his ideas of civil and religious liberty were liberal. Born a British subject, during the period of the revolution, but too young to take a part in it, he remained in the United States, after the declaration of independence. It was not long before he attained an elevated station in Congress. His talents, however, coupled with his independence of spirit and love of truth made him enemies. A hostility so vindictive was raised against ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... 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 ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... than 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 so gross and palpable a ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... 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, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... be remembered that 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
... business and more business in government" is a very good one, not mainly on account of business or government, but on account of the people. Business is not the reason why the United States was founded. The Declaration of Independence is not a business charter, nor is the Constitution of the United States a commercial schedule. The United States—its land, people, government, and business—are but methods by which the life of the ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... replied: "I know the danger; the cause is just; I have put my faith in God." In 1777 he was elected chaplain of Congress, and held the office (except when Congress met in New York) until the capital was removed to Washington. Francis Hopkinson, a distinguished signer of the Declaration of Independence, and other loyal sons of the country, were among those who elected ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... certainly scold; but now that I know that he was born in 1760, and had nineteen brothers and sisters, I think of him with compassion and wonder. It connects me with the distant past to think I remember a man who was sixteen years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed. He died ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... guests. Nothing from the outside world reached us but one newspaper, and that brought the startling news of the death of Adams and Jefferson on the fourth of July, just fifty years after their signing the Declaration of Independence. ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... The declaration of Independence changes the character of the contest between Great Britain and America.—England uses every means to ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... Sherman are descended Roger Sherman, the signer of the Declaration of Independence, Hon. William M. Evarts, the Messrs. Hoar, of Massachusetts, and many others of national fame. Our own family are descended from the Hon. Samuel Sherman and his son; the Rev. John, who was born in 1650-'51; then another John, born ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... Ireland would be enabled to work for ultimate independence as did President Kruger, and by the same methods, the same secret acquisition of arms and implements of war, the same building of fortresses with a view to a declaration of independence when a suitable opportunity arrived; and this would be all the more likely to occur if Ulster were exempted from a Home Rule Parliament. In this case Ulstermen would occupy exactly the same position as did the Uitlanders from 1895 to 1899. The same arguments for granting independence ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... wonderfully aired and invigorated on its ocean-passage. The salt water agreed with its constitution. In a single instance, at least, it falsified the old maxim,—Coeium, nun animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt. That was a marvellous piece of parchment. So far as Massachusetts was concerned, the Declaration of Independence was interlined upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 later. Mrs. ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... one window, screened by a cambric curtain with a red border; mahogany chairs, covered with reddish sheep's leather put on with gilt nails, walls hung with an olive-green paper, and otherwise decorated with the American Declaration of Independence, a portrait of Bonaparte as First Consul, and a representation of the battle of Austerlitz. The salon, decorated undoubtedly by an upholsterer, had a set of furniture with arched tops covered in yellow, a carpet, chimney ornaments of bronze without gilding, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... This declaration of independence was received with an outburst of indignant exclamations, in the midst of which Mrs. Chase could be heard demanding to be told what was the matter and who said what. ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... some," she writes, "who are waging this war to make our Declaration of Independence a fact; there is a glorious band who are fighting for human rights, but the government, with Lincoln at its head, has not a heart-throb for the slave. I want the South to do her own work of emancipation. She would do it only from dire necessity, but the North will ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... much as any one I know the whole alcohol business; but living in a community where the struggle for temperance has often been waged intemperately, and where there is a lurking belief that cudgelling laws can make men virtuous, he publishes abroad once a year his declaration of independence. ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... Purposes were adopted by every rural community, and were taught the children as a civic oath of allegiance, would it not have more immediate effect on practical patriotism than even the Declaration of Independence, and what new meaning would be given to local government? Here is an example of rural civic spirit which, if it could become general throughout the rural communities of the United States, would remold the political and ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... Franklin was born at Boston, Mass., in 1706. By his talents, prudence, and honesty he rose from humble beginnings to be one of the foremost men of his time. He was one of the committee of five chosen by Congress to prepare the "Declaration of Independence" which he with other patriots afterwards signed. Towards the close of the year 1776 he was sent as ambassador to the French Court, and remained in Europe some time. He returned home in 1785, and died at Philadelphia on ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... attractions of the Fourth of July celebration were Lon Worthington, tight-rope walker; Billy Wyatt, in fire-eating exercises; a greased pig; Ed DeLany, who was to read the Declaration of Independence and ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... freedom and equality which were embodied in the bills of rights and the Declaration of Independence were destined in time to triumph over slavery, though not without bloodshed. It is interesting to trace their influence on the status of the slave. The doctrine of human rights found in the Declaration of Independence and in the bills of rights of the State constitutions, despite ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... some other object in living besides everlasting hard work and accumulating a few paltry dollars by coining them from their own life-blood and stamping them with the sighs of weary children and worn wives. What we want in agriculture is a new Declaration of Independence. We must do something to dispel old prejudices and beat down old notions. That the farmer is a mere animal to labor from morning till eve, and into the night, is an ancient but abominable heresy."... "We have heard enough, ten ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... minister to Russia during the Revolution, and was afterwards Chief Justice of Massachusetts; through his mother he was descended from Anne Bradstreet. At the age of ten he went to Newport to live with his maternal grandfather, William Ellery, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and remained until he entered Harvard. The wild rock-bound coast scenery impressed him deeply, and ever after the sea was one of his ruling passions. Only one familiar with all the moods of the ocean could have written 'The Buccaneer'. After quitting college he studied law, and was admitted ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... they," said he. "We first sot the example. Look at our declaration of independence. It was writ by Jefferson, and he was the first man of the age; perhaps the world never seed his ditto. It's a beautiful piece of penmanship that, he gave the British the butt eend of his mind there. I calculate you couldn't falt it in no particular, it's generally ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... 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 Greenwood. When the squire had departed in custody he apparently ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... three lords was beheaded, with the very cuts in it which the headsman 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 ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... opening of the first 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 ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... of myself," he said, "what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy (the United States) so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the motherland, but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty not alone to the people of the country but hope to all the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... message recommending the independent treasury or subtreasury, and the discussion of that subject, which terminated in what has been termed "the divorce of the bank and state in the fiscal affairs of the Federal Government," and which President Van Buren considered a second Declaration of Independence. The controversy with Great Britain in relation to the northeastern boundary of the United States is also included in Van Buren's Administration, and will prove ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... in turn 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 ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... by 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 ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... 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 pursuit ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... 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 majority of the dissenters, ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... to 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 in 1790, the American Congress and the ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... nation builders. No sooner had he made the Declaration of Independence a reality than the eager pathfinder turned his face towards the setting sun and, prompted by the instincts of conquest, he plunged into the wilderness. Within a few years western New York and Pennsylvania were settled; Kentucky achieved statehood in 1792 ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... American 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 contemporaries of ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... 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 ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... Bunker Hill, and was cheered by it. He arrived on July 2 in Watertown, where the Massachusetts congress was sitting, and received a congratulatory address. He then pressed on to Cambridge, which he reached on the same day. On the 3d, a year and a day before the Declaration of Independence, and according to tradition under the great elm still standing near Cambridge Common, he took command of ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... a contemporary view of the leading events in the history of the country from the period of the Declaration of Independence to the close of the Spanish-American War. The result is a very valuable series of studies in many respects more interesting and ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... the explanation of one series of contrasts which strikes an Englishman at once. America claims to be the land of liberty par excellence, and in a wholesale way this may be true in spite of the gap between the noble sentiments of the Declaration of Independence and the actual treatment of the negro and the Chinaman. But in what may be called the retail traffic of life the American puts up with innumerable restrictions of his personal liberty. Max O'Rell has expatiated ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... 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 to the Chateau, ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... 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 ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... and say less. I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid, and I find myself much the happier. Sometimes, indeed, I look back to former occurrences, in remembrance of our old friends and fellow-laborers, who have fallen before us. Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, I see now living not more than half a dozen on your side of the Potomac, and on this side, myself alone. You and I have been wonderfully spared, and myself with remarkable health, and a considerable activity of body and mind. I am on horseback three or four hours of every ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... and familiar phrase. It relates to the fact, that, however many and great have been the benefits derived from his labor and loyalty, the best management of him has been a troublesome problem to the statesmen of this country, ever since the declaration of independence, and especially the Freedman, since ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... 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, he ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... 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 ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... In spite of the declaration of independence of the New States, everything there bore the appearance of a civil war. The names of Whig and Tory distinguished the republicans and royalists; the English army was still called the regular troops; the British sovereign ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... for Ireland; I believe in Home Rule for homes," he cried eagerly to Michael. "It would be better if every father COULD kill his son, as with the old Romans; it would be better, because nobody would be killed. Let's issue a Declaration of Independence from Beacon House. We could grow enough greens in that garden to support us, and when the tax-collector comes let's tell him we're self-supporting, and play on him with the hose.... Well, perhaps, as you say, we couldn't very ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... made with much show of ill feeling. Not long after the exasperated people had driven the Governor from his house, shorn him of power, and compelled him to seek safety. In North Carolina there had been a declaration of independence read aloud to a convention at Charlotte. "An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts, is all that is left us," said Patrick Henry. And Joseph ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... from whom Madison received his inspiration, were opposed to slavery. I do not know that Washington ever took much action in the matter, but his expressed opinion is on record. But Jefferson did so throughout his life. Before the Declaration of Independence he endeavored to make slavery illegal in Virginia. In this he failed, but long afterward, when the United States was a nation, he succeeded in carrying a law by which the further importation of slaves into any of the States was prohibited after a certain year—1820. When this law was passed, the ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... has seemed that if freedom from selfish tyranny could but be won, the millennium 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 ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... a unit as to their determination to defend by force and at all hazards their constitutional rights and liberties as British subjects; but they were yet far from being a unit as to renunciation of all connection with England and the declaration of independence. The Legislature of Pennsylvania was in session when the news of the rejection of the second petition of Congress and the King's proclamation arrived, and when fresh instructions were asked from constituents ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... 1776, several weeks before his arrival, the colonists had declared their independence. The language of the Declaration of Independence was confident, but soon after it was uttered the colonists suffered a series of defeats. Arnold was beaten by Carleton on Lake Champlain and Washington was forced to retreat until he had crossed the Delaware. ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... higher than strength and art loom human sympathy and sacrifice as characteristic of Negro womanhood. Long years ago, before the Declaration of Independence, Kate Ferguson was born in New York. Freed, widowed, and bereaved of her children before she was twenty, she took the children of the streets of New York, white and black, to her empty arms, taught them, found them ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Throughout the Revolution this pretension was a check upon the powers of Congress, whether in respect to its armies or its finances; so that it was too often constrained to content itself with the language of advice or persuasion rather than of command. By the Declaration of Independence it was solemnly declared that "these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, and that, as such, they have full powers to levy war, to contract alliances, to establish commerce, and to do all other acts which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... a little man of profound learning and ancient lineage. Mr. O'Meagher is a man of indifferent learning and no lineage to speak of. Mr. Wimples's grandfather had signed the Declaration of Independence, and had moved on three separate occasions that the Continental Congress do now adjourn, while no reason whatever existed, other than the one most obvious but least apt to occur to any one, for supposing that Mr. ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... that religious faith in God and hope of heaven, for the sake of which they suffered such things. Is it credible that they would allow them to be altered and corrupted? You might far more rationally talk of altering the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of the United States. Translated into different languages—transported into Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Carthage, Egypt, Parthia, Persia, India, and China—committed to memory by children, and quoted in the writings ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... capital 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
... a year before the signing of the Declaration of Independence a document was drawn up that was almost a model in phraseology and sentiment of the great charter of American freedom. There are various accounts of this matter, but the ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... prevalence of the race idea, the race spirit, the race ideal, and as to its efficiency as the vastest and most ingenious invention of human progress. We, who have been reared and trained under the individualistic philosophy of the Declaration of Independence and the laisser- faire philosophy of Adam Smith, are loath to see and loath to acknowledge this patent fact of human history. We see the Pharaohs, Caesars, Toussaints and Napoleons of history and forget the vast races of which they ...
— The Conservation of Races • W.E. Burghardt Du Bois
... effective battle-cry of that period. But the question of property representation fades from view beside the greater question of the right of each individual, millionaire or pauper, to personal representation. In the progress of the war our fathers grew in wisdom, and the Declaration of Independence was the first national assertion of the right of individual representation. That "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," thenceforward became the watchword of the world. Our flag, which beckons ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... 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, as I have elsewhere pointed ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... into practical effect. The late Cecil Chesterton, in his penetrating "History of the United States," showed how Andrew Jackson came to power by that route. Jackson, he said, was simply a man so naive that he accepted the lofty doctrines of the Declaration of Independence without any critical questioning whatever, and "really acted as if they were true." The appearance of such a man, he goes on, was "appalling" to the political aristocrats of 1825. They themselves, of course, enunciated those doctrines ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... In the Declaration of Independence they declared themselves independent states indeed, but not severally independent. The declaration was not made by the states severally, but by the states jointly, as the United States. They unitedly declared their independence; they carried on the war for independence, won it, and were acknowledged ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson |
