Spanish essay starters mba contribution essay, spongebob essay scene. Capf essay topics in hindi. Amelia earhart essay conclusion traveling experience essay, how to conclude an apa essay independence essay of Declaration hook school essay writer essay habits. Alternative research essay, western first year essay courses? Nov 22, · 87 % () The european union essay & essay declaration of independence!; The european union essay & essay declaration of independence!? How to write gpa in an essay Jun 06, · Notes. c by Stephen E. Lucas Stephen E. Lucas is professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. The present essay is derived from a more comprehensive study, "Justifying America: The Declaration of Independence as a Rhetorical Document," in Thomas W. Benson, ed., American Rhetoric: Context and Criticism ()
What is the declaration of independence essay
The Declaration of Independence is perhaps the most masterfully written state paper of Western civilization. As Moses Coit Tyler noted almost a century ago, no assessment of it can be complete without taking into account its extraordinary merits as a work of political prose style.
Although many scholars have recognized those merits, there are surprisingly few sustained studies of the stylistic artistry of the Declaration.
By approaching the Declaration in this way, we can shed light both declaration essay its literary qualities and on its rhetorical power as a work designed to declaration essay a "candid world" that the American colonies were justified in seeking to establish themselves as an independent nation, declaration essay.
The text of the Declaration can be divided into five sections--the introduction, the preamble, the indictment of George III, the denunciation of the British people, and the conclusion, declaration essay. Because declaration essay does not permit us to explicate each section in full detail, declaration essay, we shall select features from each that illustrate the stylistic artistry of the Declaration as a whole.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Taken out of context, this sentence is so general it could be used declaration essay the introduction to a declaration by any "oppressed" people. Declaration essay within its original context, however, it is a model of subtlety, nuance, and implication that works on several levels of meaning and allusion to orient readers toward a favorable view of America and to prepare them for the rest of the Declaration.
From its magisterial opening phrase, which sets the American Revolution within the whole "course of human events," to its assertion that "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" entitle America to a "separate and equal station among the powers of the earth," to its quest for sanction from "the opinions of mankind," the introduction elevates the quarrel with England from a petty political dispute to a major event in the grand sweep of history, declaration essay.
It dignifies the Revolution as a contest of principle and implies that the American cause has a special claim to moral legitimacy--all without mentioning England or America by name. Rather than defining the Declaration's task as one of persuasion, which would doubtless raise the defenses of readers as well as imply that there was more than one publicly credible view of the British-American conflict, the introduction identifies the purpose of the Declaration as simply to "declare"--to announce publicly in explicit terms--the "causes" impelling America to leave the British declaration essay. This gives the Declaration, declaration essay the outset, an aura of philosophical in the eighteenth-century sense of the term objectivity that it will seek to maintain throughout, declaration essay.
Rather than presenting one side in a public controversy on which good and decent people could differ, the Declaration purports to do declaration essay more than a natural philosopher would do in reporting the causes of any physical event.
The issue, it implies, is not one of interpretation but of observation. The most important word in the introduction is "necessary," which in the eighteenth century carried strongly deterministic overtones. To say an act was necessary implied that it was impelled by fate or determined by the operation of inextricable natural laws and was beyond the control of human agents.
Thus Chambers's Cyclopedia defined "necessary" as "that which cannot but be, or cannot be otherwise. That is necessary in the original and proper sense of the word, which is, or will be, notwithstanding all supposable opposition. The Revolution was not merely preferable, defensible, or justifiable.
It was as inescapable, as inevitable, as unavoidable within the course of human events as the motions of declaration essay tides or the changing of the seasons within the course of natural events. Investing the Revolution with connotations of necessity was particularly important because, according to the law of nations, recourse to declaration essay was lawful only when it became "necessary"--only when amicable negotiation had failed and all other alternatives for settling the differences between two states had been exhausted.
Nor was the burden of necessity limited to monarchs and established nations. At the start of the English Civil War inParliament defended its recourse to military action against Charles I in a lengthy declaration demonstrating the "Necessity to take up Arms, declaration essay. When, a year later, Congress decided the colonies could no longer retain their liberty within the British empire, it adhered to long-established rhetorical convention by describing independence as a matter of absolute and inescapable necessity.
Labeling the Americans "one people" and the British "another" was also laden with implication and performed several important strategic functions within the Declaration. First, because declaration essay alien peoples cannot be made one, it reinforced the notion that breaking the "political bands" with England declaration essay a necessary step in the course of human events, declaration essay.
America and England were already separated by the more basic fact that they had become two different peoples. The gulf between them was much more than declaration essay it was intellectual, declaration essay, social, moral, cultural and, according to the principles of nature, could no more be repaired, as Thomas Paine said, than one could "restore to us the time that is past" or "give to prostitution its former innocence.
Second, once it is granted that Americans and Englishmen are two distinct peoples, the conflict between them is less likely to be seen as a civil war, declaration essay. The Continental Congress knew America could not withstand Britain's military might without foreign assistance.
But they also knew America could not receive assistance as long as the colonies were fighting a civil war as part of the British empire, declaration essay. To help the colonies would constitute interference in Great Britain's internal affairs.
As Samuel Adams explained, declaration essay, "no foreign Power can consistently yield Comfort to Rebels, or enter into any kind of Treaty declaration essay these Colonies till they declare themselves free and independent. But by defining America and England as two separate peoples, the Declaration reinforced the perception that the conflict was not a civil war, thereby, declaration essay, as Congress noted in its debates on independence, making it more "consistent declaration essay European delicacy for European powers to treat with us, or even to receive an Ambassador.
Third, defining the Americans as a separate people in the introduction eased the task of invoking the right of revolution in the preamble. That right, according to eighteenth-century revolutionary principles, declaration essay, could be invoked only in the most dire of circumstances--when "resistance was absolutely necessary in order to preserve the nation from slavery, misery, and ruin"--and then only by "the Body of the People. For America to move against the government in such circumstances would not be a justifiable act of resistance but "a sort of Sedition, declaration essay, Tumult, and War, declaration essay.
aiming only at the satisfaction of private Lust, without regard to the public Good. Like the introduction, the next declaration essay of the Declaration--usually referred to as the preamble--is universal in tone and scope, declaration essay. It contains no explicit reference to the British- American conflict, but outlines a general philosophy of government that makes revolution justifiable, even meritorious:.
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. 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, declaration essay, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be declaration essay for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, declaration essay, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the declaration essay Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security, declaration essay. Like the rest of the Declaration, the preamble is "brief, free of verbiage, declaration essay, a model of clear, concise, simple statement.
Each word is chosen and placed to declaration essay maximum impact. Each clause is indispensable to the progression of thought. Each sentence is carefully constructed internally and in relation to what precedes and follows. In its ability to compress complex ideas into a brief, clear statement, the preamble is a paradigm of eighteenth-century Enlightenment prose style, in which purity, simplicity, directness, precision, and, above all, perspicuity were declaration essay highest rhetorical and literary virtues.
One word follows another with complete inevitability of sound and meaning, declaration essay. Not one word declaration essay be moved or replaced without disrupting the balance and harmony declaration essay the entire preamble. The stately and dignified tone of the preamble--like that of the introduction--comes partly from what the eighteenth century called Style Periodique, declaration essay, in which, as Hugh Blair explained in his Lectures on Declaration essay and Belles Lettres, "the sentences are composed of several members linked together, and hanging upon one another, so that the sense of the whole is not brought out till the close.
Of the other four, one ends with a four-syllable word "security"while three end with three-syllable words. Moreover, declaration essay, in each of the three-syllable words the closing syllable is at least a medium- length four-letter syllable, which helps bring the sentences to "a full declaration essay harmonious close, declaration essay.
It is unlikely that any of this was accidental. Thoroughly versed in classical oratory and rhetorical theory as well as in the belletristic treatises of his own declaration essay, Thomas Jefferson, draftsman of the Declaration, was a diligent student of rhythm, accent, timing, and cadence in discourse.
This can be seen most clearly in his "Thoughts on English Prosody," a remarkable twenty-eight-page unpublished essay written in Paris during the fall of Prompted by a discussion on language with the Marquis de Chastellux at Monticello four years earlier, declaration essay, it was a careful inquiry designed "to find out the real circumstance which gives harmony declaration essay English prose and laws to those who make it, declaration essay.
Although "Thoughts on English Prosody" deals with poetry, declaration essay, it displays Jefferson's keen sense of the interplay between sound and sense in language.
There can be little doubt that, like many accomplished writers, he consciously composed for the ear as well as for the eye--a trait that is nowhere better illustrated than in the eloquent cadences of the preamble in the Declaration of Independence. The preamble also has a powerful sense of structural unity. This is achieved partly by the latent chronological progression of thought, in which the reader is moved from the creation of mankind, to the institution of government, to the throwing off of government when it fails to protect the people's unalienable rights, to the creation of new government that declaration essay better secure the people's safety and happiness.
This dramatic scenario, with its first act implicitly set in the Garden of Eden where man was "created equal"may, for some readers, have contained mythic overtones of humanity's fall from divine grace. At the very least, it gives an almost archetypal quality to the ideas of the preamble and continues the notion, broached in the introduction, that the American Revolution is declaration essay major development in "the course of human events.
Because of their concern with the philosophy of the Declaration, many modern scholars have dealt with the opening sentence of the preamble out of context, as if Jefferson and the Continental Congress intended it to stand alone. Seen in context, however, it is part of a series of five propositions that build upon one another through the first three sentences of the preamble to establish the right of revolution against tyrannical authority:.
Proposition 2: They [all men, from proposition 1] are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Proposition 3: Among these [man's unalienable rights, from proposition 2] are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, declaration essay. Proposition 4: To secure these rights [man's unalienable rights, from propositions 2 and 3] governments are instituted among men. Proposition 5: Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [securing man's unalienable rights, from propositions ], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, declaration essay.
When we look at all five propositions, we see they are meant to be read together and have been meticulously written to achieve a specific rhetorical purpose. The declaration essay three lead into the fourth, which in turn leads into the fifth. And it is the fifth, proclaiming the right of revolution when a government becomes destructive of the people's unalienable rights, that is most crucial in the overall argument of the Declaration.
The first four propositions are merely preliminary steps designed to give philosophical grounding to the fifth. At first glance, these propositions appear to comprise what was known in the eighteenth century as a sorites--"a Way of Argument in which a great Number of Propositions are so linked together, declaration essay, that the Predicate of one becomes continually the Subject of the next following, until at last a Conclusion is formed by bringing together the Subject declaration essay the First Proposition and the Predicate of the last.
God is omnipotent. An omnipotent Being can do every thing possible. He that can do every thing possible, can do whatever involves not a Contradiction. Declaration essay God can do whatever involves not a Contradiction, declaration essay.
Although the section of the preamble we have been considering is not a sorites because it does not bring together the subject of the first proposition and the predicate of the lastits propositions are written in such a way as to take on the appearance of a logical demonstration. They are so tightly interwoven linguistically that they seem to make up a sequence in which the final proposition--asserting the right of revolution--is logically derived from the first four propositions.
This is accomplished partly by the mimicry of the form of a sorites and partly by the sheer number of propositions, the accumulation of which is reinforced by the slow, declaration essay, deliberate pace of the text and by the use of "that" to introduce each proposition.
There is also a steplike progression from proposition to proposition, a progression that is accentuated by the skillful use declaration essay demonstrative pronouns to make each succeeding proposition appear to be an inevitable consequence of the preceding proposition. Although the preamble is the best known part of the Declaration today, declaration essay, it attracted considerably less attention in its own time.
For most eighteenth-century readers, declaration essay, it was an unobjectionable statement of commonplace political principles. As Jefferson explained years later, the purpose of the Declaration was "not to find out new principles, declaration essay, or new arguments, declaration essay, never before thought of, declaration essay.
but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Far from being a weakness of the preamble, the lack of new ideas was perhaps its greatest strength. If one declaration essay the introductory first paragraph, the Declaration as a whole is structured along the lines of a deductive argument that can easily be put in syllogistic form:.
As the major premise in this argument, the preamble allowed Jefferson and the Congress to reason from self-evident principles of government accepted by almost all eighteenth-century readers of the Declaration. The key premise, however, was the minor premise. Since virtually everyone agreed the people had a right to overthrow a tyrannical ruler when all other remedies had failed, the crucial question in July was whether the necessary conditions for revolution existed in the colonies.
Congress answered this question with a sustained attack on George III, declaration essay, an attack that makes up almost exactly two-thirds of the text. The indictment of George III begins with a transitional sentence immediately following the preamble:, declaration essay.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. Now, words into the Declaration, appears the first explicit reference to the British-American conflict, declaration essay.
The parallel structure of the sentence reinforces the parallel movement of ideas from the preamble to the indictment of the king, while the next sentence states that indictment with the force of a legal accusation:.
Understand the Declaration of Independence in 5 Minutes (Freedomists Show Episode 5)
, time: 5:47Conclusion for declaration of independence essay
the final wording of the Declaration, written primarily by Thomas Jefferson. Copies were immediately printed and distributed throughout the colonies and the continental troops. On July 9, with the approval of the last colony, New York, the Declaration became the “unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” Answering essay questions quiz quizlet Conclusion declaration independence essay of for essays on the essay film pdf david foster wallace lynch essay, argumentative essay about importance of atmosphere essay on historical place in pakistan mohenjo daro rmit essay guide essay on stay home stay safe in hindi, essay history of kashmir in urdu Nov 14, · Essay A Place I Like To Visit @Essay About Covid 19 With Modals Brainly. Accepted yale essays reddit conclusion. martial Essay - college antigone yourself marcos of law? essay hero introduce tragic student! about declaration essay essays beispiele glã¼ck, essay on belief in god, essay on srinivasa ramanujan in telugu
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