Why was the Declaration revolutionary?

The Declaration of Independence was revolutionary because it claimed that ordinary people had the right to govern themselves and to abolish governments that failed to serve their rights, an inversion of the prevailing belief in 1776 that legitimate authority flowed downward from monarchs by divine right. In an age dominated by hereditary kings and aristocracies, the Declaration's claim that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed was politically radical. Most European states in 1776 were still ruled by absolute or near absolute monarchs: Louis XVI in France, Frederick the Great in Prussia, Catherine the Great in Russia, Maria Theresa in the Habsburg domains, and George III in Britain. Even in Britain, where Parliament had real power since the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the English Bill of Rights of 1689, sovereignty was thought to reside in the King in Parliament rather than in the people. The Declaration cut against this entire tradition by locating sovereignty in the people themselves.

The radicalism extended beyond political theory to social order. The proposition that all men are created equal challenged the hierarchical assumptions on which European societies rested, including aristocracy, primogeniture, established religion, and serfdom in much of Europe. By rejecting hereditary monarchy and embracing popular sovereignty, the Declaration repudiated the structural assumptions of nearly every contemporary state.

The Declaration also revolutionized the theory of revolution itself. Earlier rebellions, including the English Civil War of 1642 to 1651 and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, had typically been justified as restorations of ancient liberties or as defensive actions against specific tyrannical acts. The Declaration went further by asserting a general right of revolution whenever government became destructive of rights. This grounded the right of self-government in a permanent principle rather than a particular historical entitlement.

The Declaration's influence reached far beyond America. The French Revolution drew on its language in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of August 26, 1789, drafted with input from Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette. Latin American independence movements between 1810 and 1825, the European revolutions of 1848, and twentieth century anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa cited it as a model. Ho Chi Minh quoted it in declaring Vietnamese independence on September 2, 1945. Domestically, the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments of July 19, 1848 and the civil rights movement of the twentieth century invoked the same principles.

The Declaration's lasting power comes from its claim that liberty and equality are universal, not the property of one nation, and that consent and self government are the only legitimate basis for political authority.