‘Carl Becker explains the Declaration as a classic document of the Age of Enlightenment, a conscious product of the natural rights philosophy of John Locke and other British thinkers, and a text that spoke powerfully to an international audience.’ The New York Times

This important study of the Declaration of Independence compares early drafts of the Declaration with the final version to discuss what influenced its conception; why it came about; and how it was interpreted by successive generations.

Drawing on key philosophers of the Enlightenment period, such as Descartes, Rousseau, and John Locke, Becker explores the revolutionary tradition in the Western world, which for the American Founding Fathers was inspired heavily by the earlier Civil Wars in England, and the protest writers of pre-Revolutionary France.

Becker’s thought-provoking analysis of the Declaration makes clear its importance to both the students of American history and of liberty.

‘Still one of the great analyses of the Declaration of Independence explaining section by section the history and philosophy behind it.’ Library Thing

Carl Lotus Becker (September 7, 1873 – April 10, 1945) was an American historian. He was John Wendell Anderson Professor of History in the Department of History at Cornell University from 1917 to 1941. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1923. He was best known for The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (1932), four lectures on The Enlightenment delivered at Yale University, and this work, The Declaration of Independence—A Study in the History of Political Ideas was first published in 1922.