For a person to understand a historical document, one must put the document itself into
historical context before a person can even start understanding the document itself. A historian’s
job is to collect, examine, and catalog a historical piece of evidence but it becomes more difficult to
do so when there is so much background to the historical narrative. The document focused on is
the Declaration of independence, crafted by the Committee of Five consisting of Thomas
Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. These men
were assigned to creating this document by The Second Continental Congress and adopted by
Congress on July 4th, 1776. But one must first understand the circumstances that the document …show more content…
One of the author’s main ideas is how actions are a main influence in the construction and
changes in the Declaration of Independence and how we know it today. Proven by how
Jefferson’s ideas and experiences in his life affected his writing and outcome of the Declaration of
Independence, actions do speak louder than words. he willingly wrote in his rough draft a major
contradiction that allowed Congress to keep slavery as a key point to be discussed in Congress
and how hypocritical it was for him to oppose slaves because they too have unalienable rights but
he was a slave owner himself. He felt compelled to improve on George Mason’s ideas in Virginia
about Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness which also came from the ideas of natural rights and
that government was a compact by the people and was to serve for the people. Thomas
Jefferson created a document that allowed insight on context of the intellectual world of the time
even though some of the points he made were contradictory but allowed historians to actually
understand the document at hand.
In opinions of my own, I believe that to understand a document fully, there needs to be
historical context before a person can even start understanding the document itself. A historian’s
job is to collect, examine, and catalog a historical piece of evidence but it becomes more difficult to
do so when there is so much background to the historical narrative. The document focused on is
the Declaration of independence, crafted by the Committee of Five consisting of Thomas
Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. These men
were assigned to creating this document by The Second Continental Congress and adopted by
Congress on July 4th, 1776. But one must first understand the circumstances that the document …show more content…
One of the author’s main ideas is how actions are a main influence in the construction and
changes in the Declaration of Independence and how we know it today. Proven by how
Jefferson’s ideas and experiences in his life affected his writing and outcome of the Declaration of
Independence, actions do speak louder than words. he willingly wrote in his rough draft a major
contradiction that allowed Congress to keep slavery as a key point to be discussed in Congress
and how hypocritical it was for him to oppose slaves because they too have unalienable rights but
he was a slave owner himself. He felt compelled to improve on George Mason’s ideas in Virginia
about Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness which also came from the ideas of natural rights and
that government was a compact by the people and was to serve for the people. Thomas
Jefferson created a document that allowed insight on context of the intellectual world of the time
even though some of the points he made were contradictory but allowed historians to actually
understand the document at hand.
In opinions of my own, I believe that to understand a document fully, there needs to be