What This Unit Covers

SS.7.C.1.3: Describe how English policies and responses to colonial concerns led to the writing of the Declaration of Independence.

• Students will trace the causal relationships between English/British policies, English responses to colonial grievances, and the writing of the Declaration of Independence.
• Students will recognize the underlying themes of English colonial policies concerning taxation, representation, and individual rights that formed the basis of the American colonists’ desire for independence.

SS.7.C.1.4: Analyze the ideas (natural rights, role of the government) and complaints set forth in the Declaration of Independence.

• Students will explain the concept of natural rights as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
• Students will identify the natural rights specifically expressed in the Declaration of Independence (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness).
• Students will analyze the relationship between natural rights and the role of government. 1. People are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; 2. Governments are instituted among men to secure these rights; 3. Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and 4. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.
• Students will recognize the connection between specific grievances in the Declaration of Independence and natural rights’ violations.
• Students will recognize colonial complaints as identified in the Declaration of Independence (imposing taxes without the consent of the people, suspending trial by jury, limiting judicial powers, quartering soldiers, and dissolving legislatures).