The Declaration of Independence announced to mankind WHY the colonists felt they must separate from the British Empire. It was an appeal to the world, an attempt to win public understanding and support both at home and abroad-- piece of political propaganda: that was the main function of the Declaration. The document implies that it speaks for the majority of the people in the new United States, when in actuality according to John Adams, only about one third of the American people supported the Revolutionary War.
How effective would the document have been in trying to gain support for the new government if it had stated it only represented one third of the American people? Thus, in order to gain support for their cause, the patriots implied the document had more support than it really did.
In this manner the patriots justified a revolt by a minority, not a majority. This fact raises an interesting question: Does an oppressed minority have the right to revolt in society today?
In a speech given in 1848, Lincoln stated: "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better, That is a most valuable, a most sacred right--a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is the right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit."
The Declaration has become a sacred document in our society and around the world to which men have appealed when they have wished to make drastic reforms or to assert human equality. In the 1960's the Black Panther party was such a group. They even printed the preamble of the Declaration in their party platform.
The problem with the Black Panther's argument, however, is that they were using the Declaration to advocate changes in society to bring about more social and economic equality. When the draftsmen of the Declaration put their signatures to a parchment declaring that 11All men are created equal,11 they were not endorsing social or economic equality as it is sometimes understood today, nor were they endorsing the idea that all men are created equal in their personal endowments and talents .
What they meant was that all men share equally in certain basic political rights which governments must not invade; and that possession of these rights puts Americans on the same level as men in England or anywhere else. Hence, the Declaration was written as a political argument and not as an argument for social or economic equality.
The Declaration was also a political justification for events that had already taken place. The American Revolution was over by 1776 and the 13 states were fighting the war to preserve what they had accomplished by that date. England was fighting the war to gain control over the colonies she never had. The Declaration did not advocate that changes should take place; it was an attempt to explain WHY the 13 United States had taken the action they had.
In writing the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson borrowed quite heavily from the Enlightenment, Newtonian principles and, in particular, from the writings of John Locke and his natural rights doctrine. Faith in Nature and in Reason was the common denominator of the Enlightenment.