Liberty and the American Revolution

Selections from the Collection of Sid Lapidus, Princeton University

Revolutionary Origins

The American Crisis

The French Revolution

Slavery and Abolition

International Impact of the American Revolution

Revolutionary Origins

In 1763, the end of the Seven Years’ War marked a major victory for England in North America against their French rivals, but a decade later Great Britain would be headed to war again—with its own subjects. Throughout the 1760s and early 1770s, the colonies began to resist British policy that refused them representation in Parliament while imposing taxes and tightening control over local government. English subjects on both sides of the Atlantic debated how to resolve the tensions between Great Britain and its colonies.

Leviathan: or, The Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, Thomas Hobbes (1651)

In 1651 English philosopher Thomas Hobbes published Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill. Along with John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689), Leviathan was a major influence upon the American Founding Fathers as they considered independence and a new American government in the late eighteenth century. Both Hobbes and Locke posited that there existed a natural equality among men: Hobbes wrote that “Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind,” Locke that “all men by nature are equal.” Though Hobbes and Locke agreed on the concept that would be central to the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, that “all men are created equal,” they differed in their ideas about the purpose and power of government and man's relationship to it. Hobbes argued that the social contract gave citizens no right to rebel against the government and that “there happeneth in no Common-wealth any great Inconvenience, but what proceeds from the Subjects disobedience, and breach of those Covenants, from which the Common-wealth had its being.” Locke, on the other hand, argued that government was founded upon “the consent of the people” and that citizens could revoke their consent for government that did not serve the people.

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

Leviathan: or, The Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, Thomas Hobbes (1651)

In 1651 English philosopher Thomas Hobbes published Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill. Along with John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689), Leviathan was a major influence upon the American Founding Fathers as they considered independence and a new American government in the late eighteenth century. Both Hobbes and Locke posited that there existed a natural equality among men: Hobbes wrote that “Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind,” Locke that “all men by nature are equal.” Though Hobbes and Locke agreed on the concept that would be central to the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, that “all men are created equal,” they differed in their ideas about the purpose and power of government and man’s relationship to it. Hobbes argued that the social contract gave citizens no right to rebel against the government and that “there happeneth in no Common-wealth any great Inconvenience, but what proceeds from the Subjects disobedience, and breach of those Covenants, from which the Common-wealth had its being.” Locke, on the other hand, argued that government was founded upon “the consent of the people” and that citizens could revoke their consent for government that did not serve the people.

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

Leviathan: or, The Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, Thomas Hobbes (1651)

Two Treatises of Government, by John Locke (1689)

Much of early American political thought originated not in America but in the writings of British philosopher John Locke. In the Second Treatise of his Two Treatises of Government, originally published anonymously in 1689, Locke declared that “all men by nature are equal.” That assertion and much of Locke’s Second Treatise would form the basis for the Declaration of Independence and American republicanism almost a century later. Though Locke’s work was intended to offer a vision for effective government in seventeenth-century England, his theories of freedom, the minimal state, and especially the sovereignty of governed people profoundly influenced the American Founding Fathers. Locke’s ideas were reflected in the writings and beliefs of, among others, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration who called Locke one of the “greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception.”

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

Essay: Lockean Liberalism and the American Revolution

Two Treatises of Government, by John Locke (1689)

The Spirit of Laws, by Montesquieu (1748)

“In the state of nature, indeed, all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the laws,” wrote French philosopher Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu in 1748.

In his influential work of political theory, The Spirit of Laws, Montesquieu presented an analysis of different classifications of government—monarchy, despotism, and republic—and asserted the importance of the separation of powers in government to preserve the rights of the people, writing “it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.” Montesquieu’s work was often cited by the Founding Fathers as they struggled to establish an American government. Delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention frequently referred to Montesquieu’s ideas on government. While Antifederalists emphasized the philosopher’s assertion that republican government could only be effective in smaller nations, Federalists relied on his theories as a framework for instilling separation of government power through the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

The Spirit of Laws, by Montesquieu (1748)

Common Sense, by Thomas Paine (1776)

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was the most influential pamphlet of the American Revolution. Published on January 10, 1776, its plain and persuasive language held popular appeal, and more than 100,000 copies of the pamphlet were sold within three months. Paine’s straightforward arguments against tyranny and hereditary power hit a nerve with colonists worn out by British rule. Only independence, asserted Paine, could free America from Great Britain’s “long and violent abuse of power.” To Paine, America’s freedom was necessary and inevitable; “until an independence is declared,” he wrote, “the continent will feel itself like a man who continues putting off some unpleasant business from day to day, yet knows it must be done.” Common Sense helped push America toward action and, in July 1776, its Declaration of Independence from Great Britain.

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

Lesson Plan: Revolutionary Propaganda: Persuasion and Colonial Support

Common Sense, by Thomas Paine (1776)

The American Crisis, by Thomas Paine (1776)

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote Thomas Paine in opening the first of The American Crisis papers, published in late 1776. By then, Americans were deeply familiar with Paine thanks to the success of Common Sense, his pamphlet urging American independence published earlier in the year. Where Common Sense had helped spark revolution, the Crisis papers guided revolutionary America through the ensuing war for independence. In the first Crisis, Paine acknowledged at the war’s start that the struggle would be difficult but that “the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” The series, published in sixteen pamphlets between 1776 and 1783, served to inspire the colonists and boost the morale of the American army through those dark and difficult years.

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

The American Crisis, by Thomas Paine (1776)

The American Crisis

At the heart of the tensions between Great Britain and the colonies was the issue of representation. Though the colonies could not elect representatives to Parliament, they were subject to taxes and other impositions. When the colonies protested “taxation without representation,” Parliament passed acts intended to punish them and disrupt American commerce. To the colonies, Great Britain’s actions amounted to tyranny that could not be tolerated by those who had, as the prominent British statesman Edmund Burke wrote, “sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates.” Learn more about American Independence

Vindication of the British Colonies, by James Otis (1765)

In 1764, American politician James Otis published the widely read tract Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved. In that work, he argued that “Every British subject born on the continent of America . . . is . . . entitled to all the natural, essential, inherent, and inseparable rights of our fellow subjects in Great Britain,” including the right “to be represented in Parliament.” Despite not being represented in Parliament, however, the colonies were still subject to taxes imposed by that body. “If they are united they will be entitled to a representation,” Otis wrote, but “if they are so taxed without a union or representation, they are so far disfranchised.” That sentiment was at the heart of American resistance to British “taxation without representation.”

Just a year later, however, Otis backed away from his assertion that “Deprived, however, of their common rights as subjects [the colonists] cannot lawfully be while they remain such.” In A Vindication of the British Colonies, published in 1765, he wrote that Parliament had the “just and equitable right, power and authority, to impose taxes on the colonies” as it saw fit. He proclaimed that he had no interest in an independent America, declaring that, “Whenever such a day shall come, it will be the beginning of a terrible scene. Were these colonies left to themselves to-morrow, America would be a mere shambles of blood and confusion, before little petty states could be settled.”

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

Vindication of the British Colonies, by James Otis (1765)

In 1764, American politician James Otis published the widely read tract Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved. In that work, he argued that “Every British subject born on the continent of America . . . is . . . entitled to all the natural, essential, inherent, and inseparable rights of our fellow subjects in Great Britain,” including the right “ to be represented in Parliament.” Despite not being represented in Parliament, however, the colonies were still subject to taxes imposed by that body. “If they are united they will be entitled to a representation,” Otis wrote, but “if they are so taxed without a union or representation, they are so far disfranchised.” That sentiment was at the heart of American resistance to British “taxation without representation.”

Just a year later, however, Otis backed away from his assertion that “Deprived, however, of their common rights as subjects [the colonists] cannot lawfully be while they remain such.” In A Vindication of the British Colonies, published in 1765, he wrote that Parliament had the “just and equitable right, power and authority, to impose taxes on the colonies” as it saw fit. He proclaimed that he had no interest in an independent America, declaring that, “Whenever such a day shall come, it will be the beginning of a terrible scene. Were these colonies left to themselves to-morrow, America would be a mere shambles of blood and confusion, before little petty states could be settled.”

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

Vindication of the British Colonies, by James Otis (1765)

Benjamin Franklin on the Stamp Act (1766)

In early 1766, Benjamin Franklin appeared before the British House of Commons to advocate for the repeal of the Stamp Act. This transcription of his testimony was released soon after in both the colonies and England. Franklin’s measured but resolute responses to his examiners’ questions on taxation, representation, and the intentions of the colonies were well received on both sides of the Atlantic and helped sway Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act. Franklin’s testimony also illustrated the growing anti-British attitude in the colonies, however. An exchange about American feeling toward Great Britain before and after the Stamp Act revealed the changing tide of colonial sentiment that precipitated full-scale revolution:

Q. What was the temper of America toward Great Britain before the year 1763?

A. The best in the world. They submitted willingly to the government of the Crown, and paid, in their courts, obedience to acts of Parliament. . . . They had not only a respect but an affection for Great Britain; for its laws, its customs, and manners, and even a fondness for its fashions, that greatly increased the commerce. Natives of Britain were always treated with particular regard; to be an Old England-man was of itself a character of some respect, and gave a kind of rank among us.

Q. And what is their temper now?

A. Oh, very much altered!

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

Featured Primary Sources: The Stamp Act, 1765

Benjamin Franklin on the Stamp Act (1766)

The Speech of Edmund Burke, March 22, 1775

On March 22, 1775, British statesman Edmund Burke delivered his speech “On Moving His Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies” before Parliament. Burke, who would become best known for his later critique of the French Revolution, argued that the widespread unrest in America over British rule had merit and that Parliament had been the source of the colonies’ “continual agitation.” Calling on Parliament to “review the subject with an unusual degree of care and calmness,” Burke argued that England’s harsh and inconsistent treatment of the colonies was misguided and that colonial policy called for a more pragmatic approach. For the colonies to remain under Great Britain’s authority, their complaints had to be addressed. “They complain, that they are taxed in a Parliament, in which they are not represented. If you mean to satisfy them at all, you must satisfy them with regard to this complaint,” he declared.

It would be impossible, Burke said, to persuade the American colonists “that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates.” And he warned, the pursuit of force could threaten any hope of repairing the relationship between the colonies and the mother country: “force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left.”

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

Featured Primary Sources: The Boston Massacre

Lesson Plan: What Does Liberty Look Like

The Speech of Edmund Burke, March 22, 1775

The Declaration of Independence, 1776

During the spring of 1776, colonies, localities, and groups of ordinary Americans adopted resolutions endorsing independence. The most radical idea advanced by the American revolutionaries was the proposition set forth in the Declaration of Independence 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.”

Soon after Congress issued the Declaration in July 1776, printer and patriot Peter Timothy brought the news of independence to South Carolina with this copy of the Declaration, the earliest printing in Charleston. He paid a high price for his patriotism. Arrested in 1780 on charges of treason, Timothy spent time on a British prisoner-of-war ship before being sent to a prison in St. Augustine, Florida. His family was exiled by the British to Philadelphia, and Timothy himself died soon after the war when he was lost at sea.

Featured Primary Sources: The Declaration of Independence, 1776

Common Core Unit: The Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence, 1776

Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution and the Means of Rendering It a Benefit to the World, by Richard Price (1784)

In his 1784 pamphlet Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution and the Means of Rendering It a Benefit to the World, the radical British philosopher Richard Price ruminated on the accomplishments of the Revolution and the promise of the new nation. Price called the American struggle a “Revolution in favour of universal liberty . . . which opens a new prospect in human affairs, and begins a new era in the history of mankind.” The Revolution had “done great good by disseminating just sentiments of the rights of mankind, and the nature of legitimate government; by exciting a spirit of resistance to tyranny,” Price declared.

Though he celebrated the Revolution in America (and, later, the one in France), Price also warned that the “present moment” following the war was “critical.” If Americans seized the opportunity to create a just and effective government of the people, the nation would be a “flame of virtuous liberty” to the world. If they failed, “a REVOLUTION which had revived the hopes of good men and promised an opening to better times, will become a discouragement to all future efforts in favour of liberty.”

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

Essay: Teaching the Revolution

Essay: Unruly Americans in the Revolution

Observations On the Importance of the American Revolution, by Richard Price (1784)

The French Revolution

Though the revolution in France was in part inspired by the American fight for independence, and the two revolutions shared a rhetoric of freedom and equality, in substance they were very different. American revolutionaries largely sought a restoration of liberties they had been deprived of by Great Britain. French rebels took wider aim, seeking to throw off an unjust government and to radically reshape French society. The differing goals and tactics also influenced the results. While America moved forward as a democratic republic, by 1799 France was under the dictatorial rule of Napoleon. Learn more about the French Revolution

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789

In August 1789, the National Constituent Assembly—the governing body formed at the start of the French Revolution—adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen). Stating that “the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments,” it set forth the “natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man.” The seventeen articles of the Declaration formed a charter of individual rights more comprehensive than any enumerated by the foundational documents adopted in America during the previous decade. Among the articles were protections for natural “free and equal rights” (Art. 1) and “liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression” (Art. 2), as well as assertions about the power of law—“sovereignty resides essentially in the nation” (Art. 3). The Declaration also offered a definition of liberty, calling it “the freedom to do everything which injures no one else” (Art. 4).

View the full text

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789

Reflections on the Revolution in France, by Edmund Burke (1790)

British statesman Edmund Burke had supported the American struggle for independence, calling it in 1782 “a great revolution . . . made, not by chopping and changing of power in any one of the existing states, but by the appearance of a new state, of a new species, in a new part of the globe.” When it came to the revolution in France a few years later, however, Burke was critical. In his 1790 commentary Reflections on the Revolution in France, he wrote that the revolution in France was “barbarous” and that French revolutionaries “treat France exactly like a country of conquest. Acting as conquerors, they have imitated the policy of the harshest of that harsh race.” Unlike American patriots, whose break from Great Britain never threatened the physical or cultural destruction of the mother country, revolutionaries in France aimed to “destroy all vestiges of the ancient country, in religion, in polity, in laws, and in manners.” Burke’s critique was widely read and hotly debated, sparking responses from, among others, Thomas Paine, whose 1791 Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke’s Attack on the French Revolution led to Paine’s flight to France to avoid facing trial on charges of treason.

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

Featured Primary Sources: Jefferson on the French and Haitian Revolutions, 1792

Lesson Plan: What Does Liberty Look Like

Reflections on the Revolution in France, by Edmund Burke (1790)

Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, by Catharine Macaulay (1791)

In this 1791 pamphlet, Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke: On the Revolution in France, British historian Catharine Macaulay responded to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, which attacked the revolution in France a year earlier. Both Macaulay and Burke had supported the earlier American Revolution, but Burke vociferously objected to the aims and tactics of French revolutionaries. He declared the “the present French power is the very first body of citizens who, having obtained full authority to do with their country what they pleased, have chosen to dissever it in this barbarous manner.” He likened the revolutionary movement to a “madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell” and asked, “Can I now congratulate [France] upon its freedom? . . . Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer who has broke prison upon the recovery of his natural rights?”

Macaulay objected to Burke’s attempt to “censure every part of the conduct of the French Revolutionists” and his characterization of the revolution as criminal: “When the most laudable transactions of men are represented as crimes, we ought to be cautious how we give ear to the suggestions of their accuser.” Macaulay posited that “lawful government” was derived from “the unalienable and indefeasible rights of man.” The revolution in France was, she wrote, borne of this proposition, and “whatever form or complexion any future government in France may bear, it can have no legitimate source, but in the will of the people.”

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

Featured Primary Sources - Jefferson on the French and Haitian Revolutions, 1792

Lesson Plan: “Contagious Liberty”: Women in the Revolutionary Age

Lesson Plan: What Does Liberty Look Like

Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, by Catharine Macaulay (1791)

Rights of Man, by Thomas Paine (1790)

In 1790 British statesman Edmund Burke, who had supported the American independence, published a book-length criticism of the French Revolution. His Reflections on the Revolution in France sparked immediate and scathing responses from supporters of that revolution. Among them was Rights of Man: Being an Answer to Mr. Burke’s Attack on the French Revolution published by Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense, in 1791. Paine called Burke “mistaken and disappointed in the opinions he had formed of the affairs of France.” He dismissed Burke’s lamentations that the French Revolution had resulted in the death of “the age of chivalry . . . and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.” Writing that Burke was concerned too much with “reverence for ancient things” and not enough with “the defects and abuses of government” in France, he declared that Burke “pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.” Justifying the radical actions of French revolutionaries, Paine focused on the natural and civil rights of man and the contract between people and their government: “individuals, themselves, each, in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.”

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

Rights of Man, by Thomas Paine (1790)

Slavery and Abolition

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. . .” So proclaimed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. “All men,” however, did not extend to the hundreds of thousands in bondage in the new United States. But the rhetoric that had fired the struggle for independence inspired abolitionists in the decades that followed. The extinction of slavery in America would take almost one hundred years and a bloody civil war, but black struggles for freedom—from colonialism and from bondage—came sooner in other parts of the world. Learn more about the Haitian Revolution

An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, by Thomas Clarkson (1786)

In 1786, British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson published An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African. Clarkson was deeply influenced by the work of other abolitionist writers, especially Anthony Benezet, an American Quaker. Benezet, Clarkson noted, “always uniformly declared, that he could never find a difference between their [Africans’] capacities and those of other people; that they were as capable of reasoning as any individual Europeans; that they were as capable of the highest intellectual attainments.” Considering the state of slavery in America, Clarkson wrote that, “Should slavery be abolished there, (and it is an event, which, from these circumstances, we may reasonably expect to be produced in time) let it be remembered, that the Quakers will have had the merit of its abolition.”

Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species was published by London Quaker James Philips. The essay, which condemned those who “spend years, and even lives, in the traffick of human liberty,” made Clarkson a leading figure in the British abolition movement. Following its publication, Clarkson joined William Wilberforce and Granville Sharp in establishing the influential Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, by Thomas Clarkson (1786)

An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, by Thomas Clarkson (1786)

Slavery, a Poem by Hannah More (1788)

In 1788, this printing of Hannah More’s Slavery, a Poem appeared in Philadelphia. More was an English poet and evangelical writer whose work was often concerned with social reform. She had become interested in the abolition movement through her friendship with William Wilberforce, Great Britain’s foremost abolition leader, whom she met in 1786. In writing Slavery, she hoped that the poem might influence the immediate debate in the House of Commons over enacting limitations on the slave trade, as well as the larger tide of public opinion on slavery. More sought to humanize slaves, asking, “Does then th’ immortal principle within / Change with the casual colour of the skin?” The answer, she replied, was:

No: they have heads to think, and hearts to feel,
And souls to act with firm, though erring, zeal;
For they have keen affections, kind desires,
Love strong as death, and active patriot fires.

The poem was published in both England and America, putting the “miseries” and “natural evils” engendered by slavery at the forefront of the public’s mind on both sides of the Atlantic.

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

Lesson Plan: “Contagious Liberty”: Women in the Revolutionary Age

Slavery, a Poem by Hannah More (1788)

The Haitian Declaration of Independence, 1804

In 1791, fifteen years after America declared its independence, and with the revolution in France in progress, slave insurrections in the French colony of Saint Domingue on the island of Hispaniola set off the Haitian Revolution. Haiti would not be established as independent, however, until the issuance of the Haitian Declaration of Independence in 1804. With that document, Haiti became the world’s first black republic, declaring “we must take any hope of re-enslaving us away from the inhuman government that for so long kept us in the most humiliating torpor.” The declaration condemned the “cruelties” of both the French government and the “barbarous [French] people” in Haiti. It made clear that the people of Haiti would not again live or be enslaved under French rule. The declaration was a “vow to ourselves, to posterity, to the entire universe, to forever renounce France, and to die rather than live under its domination; to fight until our last breath for the independence of our country.”

View the full text

Essay: Two Revolutions in the Atlantic World

Battle in Saint-Domingue, January Suchodolski (1797-1875)

A Preliminary Essay on the Oppression of the Exiled Sons of Africa, by Thomas Branagan (1804)

As a young man, the Irish-born Thomas Branagan worked as a sailor aboard slave ships to West Africa. After a religious conversion around the age of twenty-one, however, Branagan “voluntarily relinquished, from conscientious motives . . . a lucrative situation in Antigua” as a slave overseer, as he wrote in A Preliminary Essay, on the Oppression of the Exiled Sons of Africa. After denouncing his role in the slave trade, Branagan headed to America in 1798. There he settled in Philadelphia and became a preacher. In 1804, at the age of thirty, he published his Preliminary Essay to illuminate the “cruelties and barbarities, under which the unhappy exiled Africans languish . . . seen with my own eyes.” Though the atrocities of slavery and the slave trade had been published before, Branagan’s account was unique for the author’s own admission of having “torn and dragged from their happy country, and from their nearest and dearest relatives and connexions. The dishonourable, base methods we used to accomplish our infernal designs, are a disgrace to human nature.”

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

A Preliminary Essay on the Oppression of the Exiled Sons of Africa, by Thomas Branagan (1804)

An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the British Parliament (1807)

On March 25, 1807, British Parliament passed this act for “the Abolition of the African Slave Trade in such Manner . . . that the same should be forthwith abolished and prohibited, and declared to be unlawful.” The act made “assisting in, or being, employed in the carrying on of the African Slave Trade” illegal for “any of His Majesty’s Subjects, or any Person or persons resident within this United Kingdom, or any of the Islands, Colonies, Dominions, or Territories thereto belonging, or in His Majesty’s Possession or Occupation.” The law was the culmination of a decades-long fight led by William Wilberforce, who spent nearly twenty years in the House of Commons arguing for an end to slavery. However, while the act abolished the slave trade in England and its possessions, the institution of slavery itself was left intact. British slavery would remain legal for more than twenty-five years, until the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 emancipated those in bondage in the British Empire.

View the full text and image in the Sid Lapidus Collection

Lesson Plan: The First Emancipation

An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, British Parliament (1807)

International Impact of the American Revolution

The influence of the American Revolution reverberated throughout the world in the decades that followed independence. Of all the Revolution’s legacies, perhaps the greatest and most far-reaching is that of the Declaration of Independence. The document that transformed the thirteen British colonies into “the United States” has, in the centuries since its signing, served as inspiration for revolutions around the globe and as a template for nations seeking sovereignty and independence from tyrants and colonizers. Learn more about the American Revolution

Venezuelan Declaration of Independence, 1811

In South America on July 5, 1811, twenty-five years and one day after the British colonies in North America declared their independence from Great Britain, Venezuela declared itself an independent republic. With the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence, the new nation threw off nearly three hundred years of Spanish colonial rule. The declaration borrowed largely from the one issued by the Founding Fathers in North America in 1776. Among the parallels between the two documents was the Venezuelan proclamation that “These united Provinces are, and ought to be, from this day, by act and right, Free, Sovereign, and Independent States,” a statement that was only a minor adjustment of the American “these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.”

View the full text and image

Featured Primary Sources: The Monroe Doctrine

Venezuelan Declaration of Independence, 1811

Act of Independence of the United Provinces of South America (today's Argentina) in Spanish and Quechua. Archivo General de la Nación - Argentina

Gettysburg Address, 1863

On November 19, 1863, four months after the Battle of Gettysburg, a ceremony was held at the site in Pennsylvania to dedicate a cemetery for the Union dead. The battle had been a Union victory, but at great cost. At the cemetery dedication, President Abraham Lincoln defined the meaning of the Civil War and reminded the nation why the dead had given their lives. In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln invoked the revolutionary struggle for American independence, reminding the crowd gathered that the nation had been “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The war was to maintain the Union as it had been created by the Founding Fathers. He linked the great human sacrifice of the Civil War to the cherished concepts of American government forged during the Revolution, declaring that the dead had given “the last full measure of devotion” to ensure “that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Featured Primary Sources: The Gettysburg Address

Common Core Unit: The Gettysburg Address

Gettysburg Address, 1863

Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945

When Ho Chi Minh issued the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in September 1945, he reproduced verbatim the most famous lines of the American Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” To that he added his own clarification: “In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples of the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.” As the 1776 declaration had signaled American independence from Great Britain, Vietnam’s declaration also announced its refusal to continue on under foreign rule: “The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined to fight to the bitter end against any attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer the country.”

Essay: The Declaration of Independence in Global Perspective

Ho Chi Minh, as a member of the French Socialist Party at the Versailles Peace Conference, 1919

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948

In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Resting on the assertion that “the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,” it went beyond national enumerations of rights made in documents such as the American Bill of Rights or the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, though parallels can be seen in the language of those documents. Consisting of thirty articles enumerating civil, political, economic, and social rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights relied on the notion that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (Art. 1) and guaranteed those rights regardless of “race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status” (Art. 2). Harkening back to the American Declaration of Independence, and John Locke before, the UN declaration also asserted that “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”

Read the full text

Essay: The Declaration of Independence in Global Perspective

Eleanor Roosevelt holding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Spanish, 1949

Selected Bibliography and Credits

Selected Bibliography

Revolutionary Origins

Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge MA.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967; rev. ed. Belknap Press, 1992.

Dworetz, Steven M. The Unvarnished Doctrine: Locke, Liberalism, and the American Revolution. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989.

Israel, Jonathan I. Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights, 1750–1790. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Klooster, Wim. Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History. New York: New York University Press, 2009.

Maier, Pauline R. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776. New York: Random House, 1972; rev. ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992.

The American Crisis

Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.

Morgan, Edmund S. The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956; third ed. University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Nash, Gary B. The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America. New York: Viking, 2005.

Wills, Garry. Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978; rev. ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.

Wood, Gordon S. The American Revolution: A History. New York: The Modern Library, 2002.

The French Revolution

Andress, David. The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.

Hibbert, Christopher. The Days of the French Revolution. New York, 1980; rev. ed. New York: William Morrow, 1999.

Hunt, Lynn. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984; rev. ed. University of California Press, 2004.

Lefebvre, George, trans. R. R. Palmer. The Coming of the French Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

Slavery and Abolition

Basker, James G., ed. American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation. New York: The Library of America, 2012.

Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1795; rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Drescher, Seymour. Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Dubois, Laurent. Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Horton, James Oliver, and Lois E. Horton. In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

International Impact of the American Revolution

Armitage, David. The Declaration of Independence: A Global History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.

Bender, Thomas. A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.

Morris, Richard Brandon. The Emerging Nations and the American Revolution. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.

O. Rodríguez, Jaime E. The Independence of Spanish America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Whitaker, Arthur Preston. The United States and the Independence of Latin America, 1800–1830. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1941.

Panel Images

Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan: or, The Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil. London, 1651. Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

Declaration of Independence, Charleston, South Carolina, August 2, 1776. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)

Edmund Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to That Event. In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris. London, 1790. Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

Deck plan of the British slave ship Brookes from Description of a Slave Ship published by the British Abolitionist Society in 1789. Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt of the United States holding a Declaration of Human Rights poster in Spanish, November 1, 1949. United Nations Photo.

Credits

Revolutionary Origins

Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan: or, The Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil. London, 1651. Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

John Locke. Two Treatises of Government: . . . An Essay Concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil Government. [London, 1690, printed;] reprinted, Boston, 1773. ] Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Complete Works, vol. 1 The Spirit of Laws [1748] Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

[Thomas Paine]. Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, . . . Philadelphia, 1776. “A New Edition.” Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

Thomas Paine. The American Crisis. [Philadelphia, 1776]. (The Lapidus Collection has Nos. 1–3.) Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

The American Crisis

James Otis. A Vindication of the British Colonies, against the Aspersions of the Halifax Gentleman, in His Letter to a Rhode-Island Friend. Boston, 1765. Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

The Examination of Doctor Benjamin Franklin, before an August Assembly, Relating to the Repeal of the Stamp-Act, &c. [Philadelphia, 1766]. Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

The Speech of Edmund Burke, Esq; on Moving His Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies, March 22, 1775. London, 1775. ]. Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

Declaration of Independence, Charleston, South Carolina, August 2, 1776. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Richard Price. Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, and the Means of Making It a Benefit to the World. London, 1784. Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

The French Revolution

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen decreed by the National Assembly and accepted by the King on August 26, 1789. Musée Carnavalet, Paris.

Edmund Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to That Event. In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris. London, 1790. Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

Catharine Macaulay. Engraving (1767) after a portrait by Giovanni Battista Cipriani. Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

Catharine Macaulay. Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke : on the Revolution in France, in a Letter to the Right Hon. the Earl of Stanhope. Sid Lapidus '59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution. Princeton University Digital Library.

Thomas Paine. Rights of Man, Being an Answer to Mr. Burke’s Attack on the French Revolution. Part 1: London, 1791; Part 2: London, 1792. Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

Slavery and Abolition

[Thomas Clarkson]. An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African, Translated from a Latin Dissertation, Which Was Honoured with the First Prize in the University of Cambridge, for the Year 1785, … London, 1786. Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

Hannah More. Slavery. A Poem. Philadelphia, 1788. Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

January Suchodolski (Painter) (1845). Battle at San Domingo [Painting], Retrieved January 19, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:San_Domingo.jpg.

Thomas Branagan. A Preliminary Essay, on the Oppression of the Exiled Sons of Africa. . ., Philadelphia 1801. Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, March 25, 1807. London, 1807. Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, Princeton University Digital Library.

International Impact of the American Revolution

Act of Independence of the United Provinces of South America in Spanish and Quechua. Archivo General de la Nación - Argentina.

The President’s Dedication Address at Gettysburg. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Ho Chi Minh, (1890—1969) as member of French Socialist Party at Versailles Peace Conference, 1919. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt of the United States holding a Declaration of Human Rights poster in Spanish, November 1, 1949. United Nations Photo.