INDEPENDENCE, DECLARATION OF, in United States history, the act (or document) by which the thirteen original states of the Union broke their colonial allegiance to Great Britain in 1776. The controversy preceding the war (see AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, WAR OF) gradually shifted from one primarily upon economic policy to one upon issues of pure politics and sovereignty, and the acts of Congress, as viewed to-day, seem to have been carrying it, from the beginning, inevitably into revolution; but there was apparently no general and conscious drift toward independence until near the close of 1775. The first colony to give official countenance to separation as a solution of colonial grievances was North Carolina, which, on the 12th of April 1776, authorized its delegates in Congress to join with others in a declaration to that end. The first colony to instruct its delegates to take the actual initiative was Virginia, in accordance with whose instructions--voted on the 15th of May--Richard Henry Lee, on the 7th of June, moved a resolution "that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States." John Adams of Massachusetts seconded the motion. The conservatives could only plead the unpreparedness of public opinion, and the radicals conceded delay on condition that a committee be meanwhile at work on a declaration "to the effect of the said ... resolution," to serve as a preamble thereto when adopted. This committee consisted of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert R. Livingston. To Jefferson the committee entrusted the actual preparation of the paper. On the 2nd of July, by a vote of 12 states--10 voting unanimously, New York not voting, and Pennsylvania and Delaware casting divided ballots (3 votes in the negative)--Congress adopted the resolution of independence; and on the 4th, Jefferson's "Declaration." The 4th has always been the day celebrated;[1] the decisive act of the 2nd being quite forgotten in the memory of the day on which that act was published to the world. It should also be noted that as Congress had already, on the 6th of December 1775, formally disavowed allegiance to parliament, the Declaration recites its array of grievances against the crown, and breaks allegiance to the crown. Moreover, on the 10th of May 1776, Congress had recommended to the people of the colonies that they form such new governments as their representatives should deem desirable; and in the accompanying statement of causes, formulated on the 15th of May, had declared it to be "absolutely irreconcilable to reason and good conscience for the people of these colonies now to take the oaths and affirmations necessary for the support of any government under the crown of Great Britain," whose authority ought to be "totally suppressed" and taken over by the people--a determination which, as John Adams said, inevitably involved a struggle for absolute independence, involving as it did the