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It’s hard to believe that just over 1,000 words could change world history. But one document that’s only 1,337 words long holds ideas more powerful than dynamite.
The ideas in it shook up the mighty British Empire. It launched a new nation. And it’s still greatly admired today. What is this document? The Declaration of Independence, of course. The story of its creation reads like an adventure tale. It involves a hated king, a tea party, and a group of rebels who became the nation’s heroes.
◀ In the early 1600s, people from England began to settle along the eastern coast of North America in areas claimed by the British. These settlers lived in colonies. A colony is a settlement ruled by another country. Usually, colonies are far from the countries that rule them. By the mid-1700s, many different types of people had settled in Britain’s American colonies. They included people from Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, and Germany. There were also enslaved Africans. This map shows Britain’s colonies in the Americas around 1730. The British king appointed governors to rule the colonies. But many colonies also had their own elected leaders. In time, some of these colonies no longer wanted a government far across the ocean telling them what to do.
Franklin printed this first-known American political cartoon in 1754. Each section of the snake represents a colony. At the time there was a superstition about snakes. People thought that if pieces of a certain kind of dead snake were joined together, it would come back to life. ▶
▲ Long before the North American colonies united, Ben Franklin admired the unity of the six nations that formed the Iroquois League: the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras. The 50-member Iroquois council gave equal power to each member.
