Thomas Jefferson is credited as being the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. Read the Declaration of Independence. Answer the following
questions about the document:
Why is the document being written?
What were the goals of the writer(s) of the document?
What rights are the writer(s) claiming they have?
List the complaints they set out in the document.
According to this document, what is the purpose of government?
Thomas Jefferson was the Ambassador to France during the summer of 1787 and did not attend the Constitutional Convention. When he returned to the
United States, he stated that he did not believe the new Constitution had ended the powerful question of states’ rights and he hoped that question would not
be answered in bloodshed. Although Jefferson could not predict the future, the American Civil War was almost certainly the bloodshed he had feared. Most
historians believe that the Civil War began the seismic shift from a government with a states’ rights focus to a more centralized government, and that the
Great Depression completed the shift.
