The Other Declarations of 1776

1776 was a big year. All Americans know that those four digits mean the birth of the United States. But 1776 matters for another reason: It’s the year Americans declared their rights.

How did they? Partly with the Declaration of Independence. But also with other declarations.

How are we celebrating? The Institute for Justice, where I work, is organizing a conference called “The Other Declarations of 1776” (emphasis in original). Co-sponsored with our friends at the Liberty & Law Center at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, it is an all-day conference (with a free lunch!) in Arlington, Virginia on April 10, 2026. Members of the public — including you! — are very much invited. See the details, and register, here!

Many pieces in the Revolution’s puzzle

Anyone familiar with the ins-and-outs of what happened in 1776 will know it wasn’t any one thing that created the United States. Of course, there’s the Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4 (but, as John Adams would tell you, approved on July 2). The nation properly marks America’s birthday on that day, but so much more went into it. There’s all the work of the Second Continental Congress, only one part of which was drafting that Declaration. And if we pull the lens back a bit there are all manner of other efforts: the continuing war that had been at the kinetic level since Lexington and Concord in April 1775 and had been simmering in Boston and elsewhere for years before that; the writings of revolutionaries such as Thomas Paine, Sam Adams, and so many others inspiring the break from the old order; and the various colonies/states adopting their own constitutions and organizing their new governments, free from British control.

All were important in creating the new nation. Our conference focuses on the last process, often overlooked when Americans study their origins. And even more specifically than early state constitutions, the conference zeros in on one aspect of them from 1776: the declarations of rights. These are the other declarations.

Building the constitutional plane while flying it

A number of states adopted constitutions in 1776, some even before July 4. This started after the Continental Congress began inviting colonies to form their own governments and get ready for potential full independence. The first was New Hampshire on January 5 and the next was South Carolina on March 26. These early constitutions were a bit rudimentary, made to allow transitional governments to establish some legitimacy while they fought a war and figured out how to govern themselves. (New Hampshire’s was less than a thousand words long!)

Things kept moving toward Independence and Congress invited more states in on the game. Constitution drafters started adding more features. Starting with Virginia in June, some also adopted “declarations of rights.” It was a little unclear at the time whether these were, strictly speaking, part of the constitutions or something else — though they would come to be understood as part of them in the coming years. Indeed, what these “constitutions” themselves were was a little unclear.

All of this was brand new. There was no rulebook on how to successfully complete a republican revolution. The experience from Oliver Cromwell’s failed “Protectorate” after the English Civil War in the mid-1600s, which governed according to the “Instrument of Government,” was not a great precedent; it was a chapter of history that haunted the Founders. The first “modern” written constitution had only been written two decades before — Pasquale Paoli’s 1755 handiwork for the short-lived Corsican Republic. With little to guide them, the colonies’ fundamental break with the British system of parliamentary sovereignty and the adoption of “higher law” constitutions came into being through fits and starts. As the Patriots muddled along, they began to believe they needed bold statements that would signify they were doing something, well, revolutionary. The Declaration of Independence did much of that work. But state constitutions were another vital part of that effort. And when states adopted them, it felt right to also adopt declarations of rights, stating what was protected under their new governments that had not been respected under the old.

Declarations here, there, and eventually everywhere

In the end, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina, in that order, adopted “declarations of rights” during that fateful calendar year. Further, New Jersey did not have a separate “declaration” to its constitution, adopted on July 2, but it did include many liberties in the body of its constitution itself. Other states adopted declarations — or “bills” — of rights in years to come. To name a few: Vermont (technically then a republic) in 1777, Massachusetts in 1780, New Hampshire in 1784, and Rhode Island in 1842. (Rhode Island and Connecticut did not adopt constitutions during the founding period, instead relying on their royal charters, amended to remove the “royal” bits. Connecticut finally adopted a real constitution in 1818 and Rhode Island — after a near-civil war — did so even later.) And although the U.S. Constitution itself did not have a declaration of rights to start, these earlier state experiments contributed to rights that were nevertheless inserted in the original 1787 Constitution and then the rest that were added via the first ten amendments, which later came to be known as the Bill of Rights.

Reading these declarations today often seems familiar, as they articulate central tenets of the American creed: freedom of speech and of the press, strict requirements for warrants, jury trial guarantees, and “that all men are by nature equally free.” And they had ancient roots, from Magna Carta to Parliament’s Declaration of Rights of 1689. But they were also new. And radical, lighting a new lamp of liberty — and hope — for all mankind.

A version of this article first appeared on the Institute for Justice’s Center for Judicial Engagement Blog.

Anthony Sanders is the Director of the Center for Judicial Engagement at the Institute for Justice.

Suggested Citation: Anthony Sanders, The Other Declarations of 1776, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (Feb. 25, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/other-declarations-1776