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Why did the Declaration of Independence list grievances against King George III rather than Parliament?

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American Revolution *The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis* (at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781), oil on canvas by John Trumbull, completed in 1820; in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, Washington, D.C. The painting captures the moment when major fighting during the American Revolution ended and the colonies achieved independence.

The Declaration of Independence focused its grievances on King George III rather than Parliament because the document sought to assert that the colonies were not subject to parliamentary authority.1

By the time of the revolution, American political thought—articulated by figures like James Wilson—had evolved to argue that Parliament never possessed legitimate sovereignty over the colonies. Instead, the colonists maintained that their only legal connection to the British Empire was through the Crown, under a social contract that the King had violated.12

By framing the King as a tyrant who had acted with a "pretended" legislature, the authors of the Declaration aimed to prove that the monarch had breached his agreement with the governed. This approach allowed the colonists to bypass the debate over parliamentary representation and justify their independence by directly challenging the King's failure to uphold his duties as their sovereign.1