Was the Declaration itself a mistake? Certainly. It didn’t cause the King to re-consider. It made things far worse for the colonialists. The declaration was a mistake because it didn’t have the right effect on the King. It was a mistake because the Kings military, the strongest in the world, started the wholesale destruction of the property and lives of the colonials.
Of course the Declaration wasn’t a mistake in the larger sense. It was, simply, the right thing to do.
What about the slaves? A common complaint of the Left and the anti-American communities is that the Declaration didn’t even mention slavery. That’s like not mentioning the kitchens on fire when you’re jumping out of the burning bedroom. The whole place is burning. Why stop and list every thing that’s on fire? The colonials were in danger. So were the slaves but believing it was more important to eliminate slavery than it was to fight the King’s army and navy is naive. Slavery was an issue but survival was the priority. The King would have killed the slaves along with the rest of the people. Slaves had no protection because the King had withdrawn his protection from everyone and everyplace and he was going to kill people until the living agreed once again to be his subjects.
The Declaration didn’t declare war against the King. They declared they were free of the authority of the King. They mentioned something about people who were enemies in war but immediately wrote they were friends in peace. It’s a very sub-subservient document. It’s like the children trying to get the parent to stop punishing them. If the King had said he’d at least listen and consider they pleas, they would have gone back to their daily lives.
The other side of the story, so to speak, is the King was what they accused him of being, a tyrant. As such he didn’t even read their what’s called the Olive Branch Petition sent a year before. They waited and waited but the Kings military stepped up their destruction so they couldn’t take the waiting anymore. They agreed with the King that they were without his protection. Remember, the Declaration didn’t set up a government. It just accused the King but didn’t declare him an enemy. De Facto, it was a Declaration or War and everyone knew it but there was a lot of wiggle room for the King. The colonials liked England. They had no beef with getting along with them but the King started it so he should have known the colonials wouldn’t put up with his oppression. He wanted slaves to work for him but in a large sense the colonials started a slave revolt and that’s part of the reason they didn’t stop to free the slaves. They were the slaves. The King considered them “subjects”. The actual slaves were in turn subjects but everyone was the same to the King.
So the colonials decided to Declare why they were right but it didn’t work. Did they expect it to get the King to back of? Absolutely not. These were young men but they were smart enough to know what they were doing and what they did was to declare war against the King and all of America is better off.
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