How old is the declaration of independence?

How did the Declaration of Independence change the way the colonists viewed themselves?

• When the Declaration of Independence was writen there were no more slaves at that time. So how did people viewed themselves now?

• Answer:

  I wonder if you mean the Emancipation Proclamation, which technically freed all the slaves. It was a speech given by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, and it did little to change the way the South viewed slaves, given the fact that the Civil War was raging at the time and most of the people in the South didn't recognize Lincoln as their president. People in the North already had been trying to free slaves (for the most part, anyway) for a while, so the proclamation didn't really do anything other than nominally free the slaves. Even though Lincoln gave this address, the slaves weren't "officially free" until the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on December 6, 1865. If you do mean the Declaration of Independence, which didn't free the slaves, then people didn't view themselves differently immediately after the Declaration was signed. The war itself changed Americans' views, but at the time the Declaration was signed, most people considered themselves English citizens.