Declaration of Independence

Over time, the Declaration of Independence has profoundly affected American history. Phrases from the document such as 'all men are created equal' quickly took on a life of their own or were applied to groups that the authors never anticipated. Blacks quickly used this language to challenge slavery in the United States. The ideal of equality led Northern states to free slaves within their borders in the 1780s, 1790s and early 1800s. Black and white abolitionists used the ideal that all men were created equal to attack slavery in the South before the Civil War. And civil rights supporters rallied behind Jefferson’s words in their fight against racism in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1848 the delegates to the Seneca Falls women's rights convention proclaimed that 'all men and women are created equal,' and their 20th-century feminist counterparts did the same.

Other groups have focused on the document’s defense of the right to rebel against an unjust government. The Declaration of Independence had a profound impact on the French Revolution; its influence was strong in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, adopted by the National Assembly of France in 1789. In the 19th century the principles of the declaration were adopted by various Latin American movements fighting for independence from European colonial powers. The declaration also established a precedent for the Southern states to secede prior to the American Civil War (1861-1865) because they felt that the national government was unjust. The declaration influenced more recent struggles for national identity: Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh, for example, cited the American document as one of the rationales behind his fight to establish an independent and unified Vietnam.

The document itself continues to be an important symbol for the American people. The original copy of the Declaration of Independence probably accompanied the Continental Congress wherever it met during the American Revolution (1775-1783) and the early years of the new republic. When the Constitution of the United States was adopted in 1789, Congress assigned the document to the Department of State for safekeeping. Over the next century the declaration was moved to several different locations and placed on public display in the Patent Office Building and the State Department library. In 1894 State Department officials withdrew the document from exhibition because of rapidly fading text and serious deterioration of the parchment. The Library of Congress took responsibility for the declaration in the 1920s and after conservation work displayed it in a specially constructed shrine. During World War II the document was moved temporarily to the government’s gold depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and then in 1952 permanently transferred to the care of the National Archives.

Today, the original signed parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence is protected in a glass and aluminum case filled with inert argon gas and monitored with sophisticated computer technology for any signs of deterioration. The document was meticulously examined and given minor repairs when it was moved to a new protective encasement in 2003. More than 1 million Americans view the document each year in the rotunda of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., where it is displayed in the Charters of Freedom exhibit along with the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights.