The second continental congress declared independence.
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The document is the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson and presented to the Second Continental Congress by the "Committee of the Five" (Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Robert Livingston, Benjamin Franklin and Roger Sherman) as support for Richard Henry Lee's motion on the table "That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states". The words, "When in the course of human events..." are the first seven words of the Declaration. Jefferson, as the author, began the Declaration in this manner in order to begin the detailed justification of the unprecedented act of a subject colony to declare itself independent of the mother country.
A country's geo-political imagination is how and where it sees itself in the world.
haiti
I would say that the Declaration of Independence should be respected, but not revered. It is an important document, which established the ideological basis for the creation of the United States of America, but it is not holy. The US itself is a great country, but it also has a very flawed history.
The most likely 19th century candidate is Paraguay, which on one sunny day declared itself independent from Spain and that was that. The best 20th century candidate would be Surinam, which got its independence (plus billions of euros) from The Netherlands by mutual consent.