1) When Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence, he was mainly echoing the thoughts of John Locke in the first section. "Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" are the things Jefferson says the government is supposed to guarantee citizens certain "inalienable" rights and that the government cannot take those away. He also says that if the government takes away these rights, that it is not only the right, but the duty of the people to overthrow that government in order to gain those civil liberties.
2) The second part of the Declaration of Independence is the grievances the Continental Congress has compiled against King George III and the rest of the British government. They were mainly upset about the sudden enforcement of the Navigation Acts that severely stagnated their economy. They were also upset by teh fact that they had no representation in Parliament even though they were forced to pay laws passed there. The other main grievance was the trying of colonials in British courts in England, where they were almost guaranteed to be convicted of their crime, because of the bias of the court. With all these grievances that pushed the colonists to revolution.
3) It is in the last section of the Declaration that the colonists finally say that they are breaking away from England because England is not upholding thier rights as natural born citizens of England, and that they were breaking into "free and independent states". This split the colonies and sealed the fate of the future United States.
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