La déclaration de l'indépendance (document en anglais)

On July, the 4th of 1776, Thomas Jefferson ratified the Declaration of Independence of the thirteen States of America , birth act of the biggest democracy worldwide.

That is this document we will analyze now, more precisely an extract of this document. It deals with citizens' rights, unalienable rights which guarantee citizen's fundamental liberties.

All this brings me to wonder in what extent does this document embody the idea of progress and what are its limits. To answer this issue, I shall study what impact this text have on the settlers' life then I will analyze the the DOI's limits.

The united States introduced new principles which are to be found in the Declaration of Independence. At first the unalienable rights : "all men are created equals, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Hapiness." Therefore, the settlers who became citizens had got personal liberties as equality, private property, the right to chose their positions etc. They had got security and the right to chose their government, and to abolish it: "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed", "whenever any Forms of Government, becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it."

These famous sentences are representative of what was an incredible progress at the time. But the Declaration of Independence had its limits and some ones were forgotted and even excluded of its idea of progress.

These ones were the slaves indeed the DOI only concerned white people. For economical and racist reasons slaves were not allowed to be free. This sentence of Thomas Jefferson, main writter of the Declaration of Independence, is an example of widespread racism : "I advance it, as a suscipion only, that the blacks whether originally distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the vites in the endowments both of body and mind".

The United States of America had built their power on slaves' work and even after the slaves were finally emancipated, they were segregated for decades.

Therefore the Declaration of Independence have had a strong negative impact on the slaves in the United States of America, in my opinion, it cannot be forgotted.

So to conclude, I'll say that the Declaration of Independence because it had changed the settlers' life and allowed them to freedom have mainly had a positive impact in the country. Futhermore their situation have strongly influenced other countries later. But it cannot be forgetted that they didn't include an important part of their population (that is to say the slaves) in their Declaration of Independence, which is utterly ironic for a country called the "biggest democracy in the world".

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