Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas

Carl L. Becker, born in Lincoln Township, Iowa, in 1873, was Professor of History at Cornell University from 1917 to 1941. Educated at Cornell College, Iowa, at the University of Wisconsin, and at Columbia, he taught at Pennsylvania State, Dartmouth, and the universities of Kansas and Minnesota before going to Cornell. He died in Ithaca, New York, in 1945. His books include Progress and Power (1936), How New Will the Better World Be? (1944), and Freedom and Responsibility in the American Way of Life (1945).