Across The Fence: A Fourth of July Montage

July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress, convened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, adopted the Declaration of Independence proclaiming the independence of a new United States of America from Great Britain and its king. It had been nearly 15 months since the first shots of the American Revolution had been fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts.

The Declaration was for the most part the work of Thomas Jefferson. In justifying the appeal for American independence, Jefferson drew much of his ideology from the political philosophy of John Locke, an advocate of natural rights. The first sectio...