I've always seen the Declaration used in modern times as key principles that the country was founded on, but also have heard things pointed out like "All Men created equal" was a hollow phrase as there were plenty of people that weren't considered to be equal.
Have there been any historians who viewed the Declaration through the prism of it primarily being a "call to arms" kind of document? I wouldn't doubt some of its intention was to inspire people to rise up and fight, but does anyone think that was its primary purpose rather than some higher principled foundation for a new democracy?
Read the primary text The Declaration of Independence does not layout a new government, that came later. It is a list of grievances the colonies had about King George III and the colonial power structure. It is a logical argument for the sovereignty of what would become the United States. The document is very much a declaration of revolution.
I think that you may be conflating the U.S. Constitution, which is the framework of the United States' governmental systems, with the Declaration of Independence, which is absolutely in fact a call to rebellion and a justification of rebellion to the world. This is a relatively common error, but the two documents are substantially different and were written about a decade apart.
The Declaration of Independence was written after the fact of actual rebellion (it was promulgated in 1776, whereas the first fighting at Lexington and Concord had taken place in 1775). In the Declaration, the American Continental Congress sought to justify the rebellion against the Parliamentary government by calling on the theories of Enlightenment thinkers (John Locke among them) had written. They first sought to state a universal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and then detail the colonists' perceived ways in which Parliament and the Crown had abused those rights or failed the colonies in their pursuit of those rights.
(The question of what "all men created equal" meant was dealt with in a different thread recently, and in any case is worth a career of study, but it's worth pointing out that Jefferson at least took a broader view of "all men" while writing the Declaration than he did in later life.)
The Constitution, on the other hand, was written to provide a framework of government (a "more perfect union") after the Revolution had succeeded, and mostly skips rhetoric in favor of laying out the governmental framework.
Lots of reading on this, but for a fairly accessible history of thought (and something to spur interest in competing theories) Gordon Woods' The Radicalism of the American Revolution is a good synthesis.
And, as others suggested in the thread, I'd recommend reading the source documents -- both are surprisingly short! -- to compare:
Declaration: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
Constitution: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html