Congress declares independence

In 1774, delegates from twelve colonies (all but Georgia) met in Philadelphia as the First Continental Congress, responding to the Intolerable Acts by organizing a boycott of British goods and agreeing to meet again if needed. They needed to: on April 19, 1775, fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, and the Second Continental Congress convened the following month to manage a war that had already begun. Congress appointed George Washington to command the new Continental Army and, after more than a year of fighting, moved toward declaring independence outright.

A five-person committee, with Thomas Jefferson as its primary author, drafted the Declaration of Independence, which Congress adopted on July 4, 1776. Its most famous words hold ideas that still matter today: "all men are created equal," endowed with "unalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," and governments draw their "just powers from the consent of the governed" -- meaning a government's right to rule comes from the people it governs, not from a king's birth alone. The document also lists many grievances against King George III to justify separating from Britain. An honest reading of the Declaration also notices its gap between ideal and reality in 1776: these stated ideals of equality did not yet extend, in practice, to enslaved people, women, or Native Americans, a tension this new nation would keep wrestling with for generations.