A Guide to the Document That Inspired Our Nation “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. . . .” So begins the Declaration of Independence, the fabled 1776 document in which a group of men in a distant colony of the British Empire declared their freedom from that Empire — and thus changed the world. But WERE “all men created equal”? What are “unalienable rights”? And how did these men come to write this document anyway?
History and civics professor Katie Kennedy knows how important it is to understand the meaning behind these often-quoted words. In the style of her acclaimed THE CONSTITUTION DECODED and THE PRESIDENTS DECODED, THE DECLARATION DECODED goes through the Declaration sentence by sentence and idea by idea. Readers will gain a deep understanding of not only the basic meaning of the Founders’ now-arcane language, but the historical background against which the Declaration was written, the situations that animated it (especially its 27 distinctly modern “grievances” against King George III), and the powerful arguments it makes about government, rights, responsibilities, and freedoms—arguments that we’re still having 250 years later THE DECLARATION DECODED brings this powerful text to life for a new generation. 

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