It’s common for Americans on July 4 th to read and discuss the Declaration of Independence, and to reflect on its principles and ideas. Those principles and ideas are often attributed solely—though ...

The official declaration of America’s independence from Britain may be dated July 4, 1776, but the story of the Thomas Jefferson's hallowed document really begins two weeks later. On July 19, the ...

In January 1777, Baltimore printer Mary Katharine Goddard published the first copies of the Declaration of Independence that included the signers’ names. By then, the document was already old news.

Read today, the Declaration of Independence is a freedom document. It stands for absolute human equality and represents the highest ideals of the American republic. On July 4, we celebrate it as much ...

Joseph Postell is associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College and a visiting fellow in the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation. He is the author of the ...