On July 4, 1776, the United States Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. Its principal author, Thomas Jefferson, wrote the Declaration as a formal explanation of why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare independence from Great Britain, more than a year after the outbreak of the United States Revolutionary War. , and how the declaration announced that the thirteen American Colonies were no longer part of the British Empire.
Philosophically, the statement emphasizes two themes: individual rights and the right to revolution. These ideas came to be widely accepted by Americans. In addition, the invocation of natural law served the American jurists of the eighteenth century to proclaim and authenticate the independence of their country with respect to Great Britain, alleging its right of resistance to oppression.