The Sheffield Declaration, also known as the Sheffield Resolves, was a
Colonial American petition against British tyranny and manifesto for individual rights, drawn up as a series of resolves approved by the Town of
Sheffield, Massachusetts, on January 12, 1773 and printed in ''The Massachusetts Spy, Or, Thomas's Boston Journal'' on February 18, 1773. The meeting took place in the
Colonel John Ashley House, a registered National Historic Landmark in Ashley Falls, a neighborhood of Sheffield, Massachusetts.
The resolves were debated and approved by a committee of eleven local citizens: Deacon Silas Kellog, Col. John Ashley (committee moderator), Dr. Lemuel Bernard, Aaron Root, Major John Fellows, Philip Callender, Capt. William Day, Deacon Ebenezer Smith, Capt. Nathaniel Austin, Capt. Stephen Dewey, and
Theodore Sedgwick
Theodore Sedgwick (May 9, 1746January 24, 1813) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served in elected state government and as a delegate to the Continental Congress, a U.S. representative, and a senator from Massachusetts. H ...
, who wrote the text.
[James M. Banner, Jr. "Sedgwick, Theodore"; '' American National Biography Online'', February 2000.]
The Declaration's
first resolution was that "Mankind in a state of nature are equal, free, and independent of each other, and have a right to the undisturbed enjoyment of their lives, their liberty and property," These words are echoed in the most famous line of Thomas Jefferson's
Declaration of Independence
A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of th ...
three years later: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
References
Further reading
*Brown, Richard D. "Massachusetts Towns Reply to the Boston Committee of Correspondence, 1773". ''The William and Mary Quarterly'', Third Series, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan., 1968), pp. 22–39.
*Brown, Richard D. ''Revolutionary politics in Massachusetts: the Boston Committee of Correspondence and the towns, 1772–1774''. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.
{{American Revolution origins
Massachusetts in the American Revolution
1773 in the Thirteen Colonies
1773 in Massachusetts
1773 documents
History of Berkshire County, Massachusetts
Sheffield, Massachusetts