ABSTRACT
ORIGINS: UNIVERSAL RIGHTS FOR SELECT INDIVIDUALS In June 1776 the Second Continental Congress tasked a committee of ve-John Adams (MA), Benjamin Franklin (PA), Robert R. Livingston (NY), Robert Sherman (CT), and omas Jeerson (VA)—to convene and dra a declaration of independence from the crown of Great Britain. It was not the rst time someone in the British American colonies declared themselves independent from the Crown. According to William Henry Drayton, Chief Justice of South Carolina, e Prohibitory Act of 1775, an act of Parliament authorizing a blockade of colonial ports and privateering of colonial ships, had the eect of “dissolving the Original Contract between King and People” (1776, p. 6). He labels the Act one of “Independency” (p. 2) and emphatically declares, “all political Connection between you [members of the South Carolina grand jury] and the State of Great-Britain, is totally dissolved. CAROLINIANS! heretofore you were bound-by the American Revolution you are now free” (p. 2, emphasis in original). John Adams saw the act as “a compleat [sic] Dismemberment of the British Empire” extending to the American colonies in their entirety (Ferling, 2011, p. 248), although this position was not unanimous, even among Congressional representatives.
