How many colonies declared independence in 1776

The Sultan of Morocco mentioned American ships in a consular document in , but Congress had to wait until the Treaty of Alliance with France for a formal recognition of U. The Netherlands acknowledged U. Although Spain joined the war against Great Britain in , it did not recognize U. Under the terms of the treaty, which ended the War of the American Revolution, Great Britain officially acknowledged the United States as a sovereign and independent nation.

Menu Menu. Home Milestones The Declaration of Independence, Milestones: — For more information, please see the full notice. The Declaration of Independence, By issuing the Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, , the 13 American colonies severed their political connections to Great Britain.

The Declaration of Independence. The first major American opposition to British policy came in after Parliament passed the Stamp Act , a taxation measure to raise revenues for a standing British army in America. With its enactment in November, most colonists called for a boycott of British goods, and some organized attacks on the customhouses and homes of tax collectors.

After months of protest in the colonies, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in March The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. The British Parliament , outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops.

The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British. With the other colonies watching intently, Massachusetts led the resistance to the British, forming a shadow revolutionary government and establishing militias to resist the increasing British military presence across the colony.

In April , Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, ordered British troops to march to Concord, Massachusetts, where a Patriot arsenal was known to be located.

On April 19, , the British regulars encountered a group of American militiamen at Lexington, and the first shots of the American Revolution were fired. Initially, both the Americans and the British saw the conflict as a kind of civil war within the British Empire: To King George III it was a colonial rebellion, and to the Americans it was a struggle for their rights as British citizens.

However, Parliament remained unwilling to negotiate with the American rebels and instead purchased German mercenaries to help the British army crush the rebellion.

In the spring of , support for independence swept the colonies, the Continental Congress called for states to form their own governments, and a five-man committee was assigned to draft a declaration. In justifying American independence, Jefferson drew generously from the political philosophy of John Locke , an advocate of natural rights, and from the work of other English theorists.

On July 2, , the Continental Congress voted to approve a Virginia motion calling for separation from Britain. The New York delegation had not received guidance from their state as to how to vote and therefore abstained from voting. Delaware was split when one of their delegates voted in favor of independence, one delegate voted against, and the third was absent. On July 2, , Congress again took up the question of independence for a final vote.

On this decisive day, only the delegation from New York voted to abstain. South Carolina and Pennsylvania reversed their decision from the day before and voted for independence. Caesar Rodney, the third Delaware delegate, who had not voted on July 1 traveled from Delaware to cast the deciding vote within the Delaware delegation.

After voting for independence, Congress turned to the wording of the Declaration of Independence. Congress made a number of changes to the draft written by Thomas Jefferson. On July 4, , the final wording of the Declaration of Independence was approved and the document was forwarded to John Dunlap, a printer, for publication.

This army, composed of over 30, soldiers, including several thousand Hessians from a number of small German states, began landing on Staten Island.

General Washington quickly discovered how difficult it was to defend New York City from an enemy with superior naval and military power.

Congress had made the fateful step in July and declared itself independent of Great Britain. View Site Map.