Respond to The Declaration of Independence - Essay Example

In the following paragraphs, I will discuss further the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness which is the very essence of the Declaration of independence and include their significance in today’s world. According to Jefferson, people have the right to live and protect their lives. The statement “He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren or to fall themselves by their arms” (82), shows that there was the violation of life.

It is known that when the colonizers first set foot on the land, they faced the danger of fighting with Native Americans but that was understandable because both parties fought for their lives, being aliens toward each other. However, for Jefferson, life of the people has been violated because the colonizers themselves were killing each other, friend against friend and brother against brother, not for survival but because of the order of the king. When Jefferson and his colleagues successfully got rid of the British claws that was taking the lives of numerous people, sadly, the fight for the right for life has not been over yet.

When it was not White against White that was happening, the divide between the Whites and Blacks was magnified. Whites are known to have owned Black slaves and for decades, there have been killings of slaves simply because of the slave-owner’s desire to have control of his slaves. For this reason, some slaves take their chances of escaping which infuriated slave-owners all the more, causing them more reasons to hurt them or even kill them. The fight for the right for life among slaves has been long and hard but in time, the vision of Jefferson for a government that respects such right has come.

Slave-ownership was abolished in 1863 through the Proclamation of Emancipation issued by