"How is it that we here the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of negroes?" -- Samuel Johnson (in answer to Thomas Jefferson and the American Colonists).
Americans in general, and uneducated ones in particular, have a nasty habit of looking at their founding documents in isolation, as if these marbled monuments, with their words engraved, were simply "discovered" or "written." They "were not written": they had writers, and they had thinkers. In addition, they had an audience, too. When Americans think of their own founding moments without any grounding in seventeenth and eighteenth century English political thought, they mistake everything. They come away amazed at the genius of Thomas Jefferson, silently blot out parts of his document, and put a piece of polemic through an apotheosis.
What I'd like to do, with my background, is try to look at the "Declaration of Independence" as a letter, which is the form it partially emulates, and a polemic, which it emphatically is. The document is an argument that is attempting to be persuasive.
For Thomas Jefferson, the ultimate goal of his Declaration is that Parliament would vote to let the colonies go without a fight. Follow me below for some detail.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Paraphrased, that's "Whenever one group separates politically from another and asserts independence, it must first say why."
Jefferson's opening gambit is historical. He is placing the independence of his land as a fait d'accompli and trying to say that the division has already occurred. Most folks focus on the next bit, and for good reason:
"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."
Paraphrased: "We (all) agree that no person is created to rule or serve and that each individual has the same rights to life, liberty, and trying to be happy. We (all) agree that humans created governments to achieve these ends more effectively. Also, (everyone) agrees that when a government breaks that social contract, the people governed have a right to change their government."
Jefferson is NOT covering fresh territory. He is reiterating John Locke. While after the Revolution Locke's Second Treatise on Government would be banned a bit, the book was not only well known, but it was accepted. In fact, this part is an appeal to Parliament and the radical Whigs there. The Whigs had taken a Lockean position on the nature of government and tacitly or explicitly asserted a Parliamentary right above the royal on the basis of Locke's logic. Jefferson knew this. Adams and Jefferson were radical Whigs themselves. Therefore, this is an effort to establish common cause with the majority in the House of Commons. (Note that Tories still vaguely maintained a virtue of bloodline.)
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
Paraphrased: "Any government that has a long history should not be broken lightly. History shows that people would rather suffer than revolt, so long as the evils can be borne. However, when the evils confirm a despot, it is the right and duty of the people to revolt."
Jefferson is distancing himself from Thomas Paine here, as well as others who had taken from Locke the view that government was temporized. In other words, he is arguing against the libertarian, the regionalist, and the unhappy. He is also laying, rhetorically, stakes on the table: he is promising to prove to his audience that Americans have suffered the unsufferable.
"Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world"
Paraphrased: This is our case in the colonies, and thus we are under that obligation to rebel. The king has a history of non-stop injury to us. I now list a bill of charges."
Few of today's Founding Father venerators like to quote past this point. After all, the burdens and injuries that were supposed to convince the English Parliament and the other colonies that revolution was compulsory seem out of date.
You can read the original Declaration here, if you'd like. I'll summarize the complaints, if you don't mind.
1. He wouldn't agree to laws we like, but which we do not name.
2. He made governors here wait for his assent to new laws, but then never gave it.
3. He would not give laws to groups unless they agreed to have no representatives in the native legislature.
4. He has called meetings at odd times and places just to weary the legislators and make them agree.
5. He has dissolved local assemblies that disagreed with him.
6. He has not allowed new elections or appointments, so the people have had no representation.
7. He has forbidden us from allowing immigration and admitting new citizens.
8. He has not appointed judges.
9. He has made a whole host of new positions with new men.
10. He kept a standing army
11. He tried to make the military superior to the civil authority.
12. He has authorized a legislature that we don't like.
13. We have to quarter troops.
14. Troops are immune to prosecutions.
15. He stopped our trade.
16. He imposed taxes on us without our consent.
17. We have several cases of summary judgments against our people.
18. We think innocent people have been sentenced to transportation.
19. Turning Canada into a puppet state and setting it up to invade us.
20. Negating our laws.
21. Mercenaries.
22. Taking our people into naval service.
Take a look at the items. . . the items people forget to mention or venerate as reasons for throwing off government and revolting. Whatever points Jefferson scored with his audience (Parliament and then the other colonies), they're all lost here, except that Jefferson's writing genius is on show. It is during the list of complaints that Jefferson switches his reference and stops referring to "these" people and begins calling the colonies "states" and the North American colonies "our" and "us." This is a way of setting up his final rhetorical flourish of,
"We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."
Look back on the bill of complaint, though.
Samuel Johnson, for one, answered the Americans. His "Taxation No Tyranny" is a fantastic argument. He opens with an imitation of the grand style of Jefferson but quickly goes into his own. . . Johnsonian. . . style. Johnson passes up the Lockean foundation, for the most part, to deal with the specifics.
As arguments go, Johnson's is better. As inspirational documents go, Jefferson's is. Jefferson's "bill of complaints" is vague and weak, and Johnson wins by specifically addressing the empirical, monetary, and causal nature of the complaints. Johnson ignores the ground argument of difference in favor of asserting a paternalistic metaphor that does not work (but which Americans cannot deny, if they endorse slavery). (To wit: The King is extending protection and government overseas, and the UK is like a body with members. The farther away you are, the more liable you are to pay for your own defense and endure discomfort. However, this is all because a wiser and more sophisticated authority is in control.)
In fact, the real argument for the American Revolution would come from Edmund Burke -- at least as far as arguing the specifics and the political justifications. I do not mean to say that Jefferson was some small time mind waiting for a big brother to help out, but Edmund Burke, as an MP with political prestige in England and with intimate knowledge of the details of the bills as they were debated in Parliament, was in a position to make the argument that Jefferson simply could not make. (One of us could make an eloquent argument about NSA spying, but no one in Congress would pay attention, unless a congress member on the Intelligence Oversight Committee made the same case, but with knowledge of the ins and outs.)
Jefferson made a fantastic case for the rights of the people. He rewrote Locke in the language of the King James Version. He did not, however, make a winning argument, by itself. He had wanted to get Parliament split on the issue, and even to get them to sympathize. He did not get sympathy, but he did get the split.