The Declaration of Independence: A Discourse on Its Meaning This volume include the following works: The Declaration of Independence (1901) By Herbert Friedenwald & The Other Side of the Declaration of Independence. A Lecture by Frank Bergen (1898) By Frank Bergen THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE HERBERT FRIEDENWALD. The Declaration of Independence marks the climax of the Revolutionary movement in America. It announced to the world that Great Britain and her colonies, after a journey in company along the same road for a hundred and fifty years, had come to the parting of the ways. It is a brief but eloquent and comprehensive summary of the reasons that made the separation inevitable. Within those few terse and masterly lines are contained the history of the great controversy that peacefully assumed definite shape, in 1763, and came to an end only after bitter war. By no mere chance was Jefferson called on to write the document that has been termed "the best known paper that ever came from the pen of an individual." Many persons throughout the colonies had produced pamphlets innumerable upon the rights of the colonies and the wrongs they had suffered. But none had so wrought as Jefferson. His "Summary View," written in 1774 and designed to serve as articles of instructions to the Virginia delegates to the Continental Congress, showed him to have a scholarly knowledge of the history of the colonies, a philosophic insight into the essentials of the controversy, and withal a facility of expression that were possessed by none of his contemporaries. The sentiment of Congress, therefore, irresistibly turned to him as the fittest person to draw up a declaration of the character desired. The event proved the wisdom of the choice.
About the Author: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE A LECTURE BY FRANK BERGEN Some time ago, to gratify a curious or per verse impulse, I made some inquiry to learn whether there were two sides to the controversy that led to our Revolutionary War, and, if so, to find out how much of the blizzard of eulogy and oratory, which we accept as history, is veritable fact. I found two sides to the dispute, as you probably know, but have not yet finished the rest of my task. Let me say a word to guard against misunderstanding. I do not think an accurate estimate of the Declaration of Independence can be made without a minute and critical survey of the course of civilization in Europe and America from the break-up of the Dark Ages to the outbreak of the French Revolution. To form an opinion of the document, or of the men who signed it, from a mere reading of its text and an account of the skirmishes from Lexington to Yorktown, would be quite absurd, and yet such an opinion has been formed many times on that meager stock of information. All I shall undertake to do is to remind you of a few facts on one side of a long controversy a controversy in which neither side had a monopoly of righteousness. No doubt, the Declaration of Independence is regarded as one of the beacon lights shining in the course of the long and painful march of the Anglo-Saxon race from the feudal system to rational liberty, fit to be held up with Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights, and the Federal Constitution. But whatever may be the final judgment of history on the Declaration if history ever renders any final judgment there can be no harm in turning the famous old document over for a moment and looking at the other side.