Declaration Of Independence Revisions

Revisions in the Declaration of Independence Like most papers, documents, and essays, the Declaration of Independence had a first draft before it was published the way we now know it. Rather than having a teacher or a peer edit it, however, it was done so by a whole Congress of people. Very few parts of the document remained untouched, and virtually every well-known phrase from the Declaration was edited in some form from its original version. However, the allowing of it to be edited proved crucial, for after Jefferson originally created the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, congress altered large parts of it, including removing whole paragraphs, which was crucial in it getting the amount of signatures required to be passed.

As the Declaration approaches the conclusion, the ratio of edited to unedited words becomes very unbalanced. The concluding paragraphs are changed drastically from the original draft to the point that they would be almost unrecognizable if they were compared to each other. One sentence, for example, goes from “...be it so, since they will have it: the road to happiness and to glory is open to us too; we will climb it separately, and acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our eternal separation,” in the original draft to “We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace, friends.” The multiple edits and revisions changed many of the smaller meanings and insinuations of the Declaration, but it 's purpose of stating independence remained the same nonetheless. John Hancock may have been the first person to sign the Declaration, but many congressmen had their say in changing it beforehand in order for it to gain the support necessary for its ratification to be possible. The Continental Congress thought that it would be only a footnote in history, but the Declaration of Independence has clearly had more historical importance than that. The changes done by the Congress made the Declaration what we now know it as, and without them, the document never would have been ratified, which would have created a vastly different