“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”- The Declaration of Independence, in Congress July 4th, 1776.
In my previous essay, I wrote about civil discourse in American politics and how it essentially has never been very civil, as opposed to what others would lead the American public to believe. That subject led me to reference the American victory at Yorktown as a high water mark in American political unity. Five years prior to that victory though, the American public was sharply divided, perhaps for the first time, in a debate over the monumental decision to rebel against the most powerful empire in the world. In that public debate, when weighing out the pros and cons of going to war with the British Empire, the logistics tipped heavily in the wrong direction.
Those in the thirteen American colonies that were hesitant to break off from King George III’s rule had a right to act as such. The American armies were outnumbered, facing far superior forces in training, equipment, and battle experience. England’s land and naval power were unrivaled by any other country in the world. Hessian mercenaries were employed by the British to wreak cruel havoc on the shores of the Americans- a specific choice made by the King as a response to punish the particular insult of his ungrateful subjects’ treason. After the battles of Lexington and Concord, the argument for the “Cause” needed to be made to the people, in particular their reluctant legislatures and representatives in Congress, that the separation was not only necessary, but honorable and just. To achieve this task, the revolutionaries we have endearingly labeled the Founding Fathers would produce a document that not only successfully made this argument to the people as well as countries abroad, but would accomplish nothing short of changing the world.
From the outset, the intention of the Declaration of Independence was never to change the world in the radical and ultimately transformative ways in which it did. Quite simply, it was a document to be drafted by a congressional committee- made up of John Adams (MA), Benjamin Franklin (PA), Thomas Jefferson (VA), Robert Livingston (NY) and Roger Sherman (CT) – to make the case to the people and the world abroad that the people’s rebellion in North America was in fact justified and legal. As Jefferson explained a year before his death in a letter to Henry Lee in 1825:
The draft was “not to find out new principles, or new arguments never before thought of… but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent…”
It was thought of as a legal document, primarily drafted by the lawyer Jefferson, with an appeal to “common sense” and reason. As Thomas Paine stated in his own appeal to Common Sense a year earlier, an island nation (Great Britain) should not have the right to govern a continent of millions three thousand miles away. As crimes against the American people went unpunished by the Crown leading to shots firedand blood drawn on both sides, Washington’s success in the Battle of Boston gave the founders the argument that the time for separation was imminent.
As depicted in a painting by John Trumbull, the presentation of the Declaration of Independence in Congress, 1776.
The Declaration was a success as measured by the intentions explained by Jefferson above, as the people of the country united and were aided greatly in their cause by the French, but there was more to this draft than a simple legal argument for the separation. Somehow in human history, the words “all men are created equal” were never once put to paper before 1776. The concept of a government that served in the interest of the people, through free elections, was something almost never considered amongst the kings, Caesars and emperors that ruled in the thousands of years that proceeded this moment. With John Adams vociferously leading the debate for ratification of the Independence proposal on the floor, invoking the young Jefferson’s awe enough to name the stout New Englander the “Colossus” of Independence, Jefferson’s draft presented an argument that would change the way humanity viewed all forms of government from that point forward. The five years of war that followed the Declaration would be the first in a long line of morally righteous campaigns in which Americans would sacrifice their lives for the cause of human liberty.
When discussing the Declaration and the country’s founding, it is impossible not to acknowledge the glaring hypocrisy in the document’s words with the existing practice of slavery at the time. There is really no answer to this charge save for one- the Founders, as immortal as they seem to be in the eyes of posterity, were nothing more than men. They were tasked with starting a country founded in human liberty, but at the same time the antithesis of that liberty was embodied by the souls shackled in chains in their own backyards. But what were they to do? Slavery was only abolished from the country after four years of civil war that resulted in the deaths of over six hundred thousand Americans. The Founders were tasked with creating the United States first and foremost, and although having to do so with the existence of slavery was unwelcome, the alternative became an impossible position to negotiate when it was already a struggle to convince the citizenry to rebel. In the Declaration, Jefferson charges the King with the crime of this cruel practice, but at the beshest of Congress and specifically the southern colonies, the passage was removed.
“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither…. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another”.
Though this was used as a charge against a tyrannical king, it was evident the slaveholder Jefferson did believe in the inhumanity of the practice. The Founders took such steps to help eradicate slavery, albeit slowly, through acts such as the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, prohibiting slavery in territories north and west of the Ohio River. In the Constitution, the provision was passed that laws restricting the slave trade could be passed as of January 1, 1808- again leaving the door open for action to be taken against the heinous institution. As a point made countless times in Senate and Presidential campaigns of Abraham Lincoln, the Founders put in place a pragmatic process to ultimately rid the United States of its original sin. That they were tasked with founding and keeping the country intact through stability provided by the rule of law only proves that they were men limited by circumstance and reality- a combination in which prevented them from abolishing slavery outright. The burden would have to fall on the shoulders of posterity to right this immense wrong in our nation’s history.
The responsibility of the United States of America continually rests on today’s Americans and their children. The day the Declaration was signed by John Hancock marked the beginning of what became known as the “American Experiment”- an endeavor in which the government was to be constructed as an instrument to serve the people. As noted by Benjamin Franklin after the constitutional convention, when answering the question of what kind of government would be formed, he responded “a Republic, if you can keep it.” Dr. Franklin’s words are as important today as they were in 1787. Our citizenry continually faces the challenges and temptations to veer from the virtuous path of self-government and personal responsibility. The alternative, placing their faith in the form of an all-powerful governing Leviathan, would not only cripple the individualism of the public but completely rebut the principles of the Declaration of Independence. At the Republican national convention in 1964, Ronald Reagan echoed this sentiment in his speech, A Time for Choosing:
“If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”
President Reagan, sixteen years before he served in the oval office, understood that this is our constant dilemma in twentieth, and now twenty-first century America. The world was changed the day the Declaration was ratified, and it is our obligation as Americans to honor and adhere to the words written by Jefferson and championed by Adams, in continuance of the American Experiment. This burden that befalls all Americans is renewed in the collective soul of the country on every July 4th, with the fantastic celebrations serving as a reminder of our solemn duties. The celebration of the Fourth of July today fulfills Adams’ prophecy that that day in history would be “celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
The United States is, and possibly forever will be, “the last best hope on earth.” This hope endures that someday, it can be recognized by all world leaders that the seat of power must rest in the voice of the people, championing the principles of liberty and not tyranny, individualism and not socialism, equality and not oppression. On the 236th anniversary of our independence, let the citizens of the United States renew their vow to uphold these ideals, and again as in 1776, pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
– John P. Burns
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