In fact, the Declaration cannot even properly be said to have severed the connection with Great Britain. It simply announced the separation. Two days before the Declaration was adopted, the Continental Congress approved Richard Henry Lee’s resolution, which John Adams had seconded, that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”8 The vote that approved Lee’s resolution
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