What do you know about the US Declaration of Independence? Read the text to find out if your ideas were mentioned.

↑

⇐ ПредыдущаяСтр 3 из 4Следующая ⇒

To become a citizen of the United States of America, you have to pass a test called the US Civics Test. The information on this website will help you do that. Once you read the text, you should be able to answer the questions that follow.

The Declaration of Independence, published on July 4th 1776, announced the existence of a new country, the United States of America, and its independence from its former ruler, Great Britain. At that time, there were 13 colonies, as they were called: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. King George III and the British parliament ruled them from Great Britain, but the colonies had been unhappy for some time with having no say in the way they were run, and in 1776 they gathered to vote on whether to declare independence.

This congress first appointed a committee of five to write the declaration: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman. Jefferson, who would go on to be the new republic’s third president, wrote the first draft, then the other four helped improve it. Next it was debated by the congress, with the final vote taking place on July 2nd. Each colony had one vote, and the decision to declare independence was passed by 12 votes in favour, with one colony abstaining (New York, though it later changed that to an affirmative vote). Some more work on the declaration had to be done before it could be published on July 4th. It includes a line that most schoolchildren in the USA can recite, and which has indeed been called one of the best-known sentences in the English language

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

This extraordinary sentence captures the first time in history when a country put the rights of its citizens above all else and put every citizen on an equal basis. There were obvious inconsistencies here – many Americans, including Jefferson himself, owned slaves, and women couldn’t vote until 1920 – but the sentence has served as an ideal for both the USA and other countries to strive towards ever since.

Interestingly, John Adams thought that independence would be celebrated on July 2nd, the day of the vote, but it is the day of the publication of the Declaration of Independence, the Fourth of July, that people celebrated as Independence Day right from the beginning. Today it is a national holiday in the USA, celebrated all over the country with parades, carnivals, family picnics, and fireworks displays.

Познавательные статьи:



Как правильно слушать собеседника

Типичные ошибки при выполнении бросков в баскетболе

Принятие христианства на Руси и его значение

Средства массовой информации США