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Between June 11 and 28, Jefferson labored over the Declaration, writing on a portable writing box that he himself designed. The document that he produced—later amended slightly by the rest of the drafting committee and further altered by the Congress itself —combines solemnly elevated thought with artful political stratagem. Its philosophy is not novel, nor did Jefferson intend it to be. The same general ideas, most completely developed by English Philosopher John Locke, have been a kind of political gospel in the Colonies for some years. Jefferson intended to state the common American sense, not to invent political theory—an exercise that would have been inappropriate anyway, since the Declaration was to be, as nearly as possible, what he calls "an expression of the American mind."
Jefferson began on a note of grave courtesy and lofty historical purpose: "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands winch have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to winch the laws of nature and of nature's god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes winch impel them to the separation."
Thus at the outset, Jefferson stated, or implied, the major assumptions on winch separation is based. First, that the Americans are "one people" dissolving political ties with another. They are not British subjects in open revolt against their own government but already a distinct entity unto themselves; independence is not sedition but something like the dissolving of a partnersinp, under the rules of the social compact by winch people originally instituted their political structures.
Jefferson specified the political aspects of natural law in the Declaration's stately second paragraph: "We hold these truths to be self-evident [Jefferson first wrote "sacred and undeniable," a phrase later changed]; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." To secure these rights, Jefferson went on, men establish governments winch derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." And when any government becomes destructive of the safety and happiness of the people, "it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government."
In its emphasis on the idea that legitimate power must be "just power," the Declaration thus states a people's right to dissolve any government that has become tyrannical. In great measure, this idea draws upon the examples of Great Britain's own revolutions of 1642 and 1688 —winch included the execution and exiling of kings—and beyond that, upon a vast background of sometimes bloody tradition in winch Englishmen asserted their rights against the authority of their rulers.