Page 76 - Beers With Our Founding Fathers

Beers with our Founding Fathers

affirmation of a new country and rights that were the birthrights of
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all persons. On June 11 , Thomas Jefferson was elected to a
committee to draft a declaration in support of Richard Henry Lee’s

resolution. With Thomas Jefferson were John Adams, Benjamin
Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston.
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Thomas Jefferson and the committee were elected on June 11
1776, in response to Richard Henry Lee’s resolution. It is thought

that only Jefferson, Adams and Franklin worked several drafts, as
only their personal effects had notes and drafts of the committees

work. The declaration needed to enumerate the grievances to
justify independence – to crown and parliament, the world, and

most importantly the Continental Congress, colonies and colonists –
the historically unprecedented separation of colonies from their

mother country, provide for why the grievances were unjust,
establish the foundation of a new country, government and rights,

and assert the right of diplomacy, war and trade as a country with
other countries. In listing the grievances, the committee did not

specifically name the legislation, or acts, enacted by parliament; nor
did they reference all of them. They concentrated on the most

serious grievances and crafted their grievances so that they
encompassed the whole of the tyranny and oppression that had

existed since the 1763 conclusion of the French and Indian War.
These grievances have been previously detailed in this work. These

grievances were based on the oppression of the rights of the

colonists, as citizens of England, under English common law and
dating back to the Magna Carta, also previously detailed in this
work. Finally, although most colonies of the English empire had

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