*Diego Herna Armesto is a lawyer with advanced studies in Human Rights (American University, College of Law). Former lecturer at the University of Buenos Aires; teaches at UNLP, UNAB, UCEMA, and UNC. Member of the Argentine Parliamentary and Constitutional Law associations and the New York State Bar Association.
Two hundred and fifty years ago this month, a small committee in Philadelphia handed the modern world one of its most consequential documents. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, announcing that the thirteen colonies were now free and independent states.
The true achievement, however, was not the severing of a political bond with Britain. It was the birth of an idea — one that would soon light a path across an entire continent.
The words belonged principally to Thomas Jefferson. Chosen by his fellow delegates for what John Adams admired as his “peculiar felicity of expression,” the young Virginian took the task of composition and produced a masterpiece.
He did not claim to invent new principles. As he later explained, he sought only to place before mankind the common sense of the matter, to give voice to the mind of the United States. That modesty was itself a mark of genius. Jefferson distilled the scattered convictions of an unsettled people into a few luminous sentences that have never lost their force.
