On July 6, 1775, the Continental Congress issued a declaration—not of independence, but of necessity. With British troops already marching and colonial blood already spilled, Congress laid out its reasons for taking up arms.
The declaration’s title was as direct as its purpose: A Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. It was drafted primarily by Thomas Jefferson and heavily revised by John Dickinson—or so the story goes, as authorship remains disputed. What’s clear is that the final product was a careful defense, not of a new nation, but of a people who felt cornered by the British Empire that some still hoped to remain part of.
Just one day earlier, Congress had sent the Olive Branch Petition to King George III, reaffirming loyalty and wishing him “a long and prosperous reign.” They hadn’t yet abandoned hope for peace, but they had stopped pretending it was likely. Students of history might suspect schizophrenia in the dual message. But it was strategic: if the king wanted reconciliation, he had a chance; if he didn’t, the colonies were already preparing for war.
The colonists were not yet declaring independence. What they were declaring was clarity: Parliament, not the king, had overreached. As the July 6 declaration made plain, Parliament’s claim to legislate “in all cases whatsoever”—without representation, without limit—had turned subjects into adversaries. The colonists remembered their loyalty to the Crown during Britain’s war with France. They remembered a time when their rights had been respected. But the king chose not to remember. And so, the colonists’ memories now stood in contrast to what the declaration called “a legal domination never rightfully resistible.”
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The British government, as either Jefferson or Dickinson wrote, had abandoned reason and turned to force. There were troops quartered in homes. Trials denied. Taxes levied without consent. Battles begun. But even then, the author of the declaration held his tongue. It did not call George III a tyrant. It did not call for secession. Instead, it reaffirmed the colonists’ preference “to die free men rather than live as slaves.” They would fight, but they would also stop if liberty could be restored:
With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with our [one] mind resolved to dye Free-men rather than live Slaves.
They held their tongues long after they’d taken up arms to see if reason might prevail. In our own time, Americans exhibit a similar patience, enduring mounting excesses from a government that is deaf to their concerns, still hoping for correction before confrontation becomes the only remaining option.
As for our founders, the complete break from the Crown would come just under a year later in a document penned by Jefferson. But the shift had already begun. The causes had been stated. The arms had been taken up. And America was saying, cheerio!
And maybe today, when citizens feel alienated from decisions made in their name—and burdened by obligations they didn’t choose—we, too, need our own declaration. Not of separation, but of seriousness: a reminder sent to Washington that government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed.
When that consent frays, history warns us what comes next.
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“The colonists were not yet declaring independence. What they were declaring was clarity: Parliament, not the king, had overreached.”
But not *all* of Parliament — Edmund Burke comes to immediate mind, and to a lesser extent the Whig party of which he was a member, sought to mediate the disputes with the Americans.