So all we probably remember about it is the preamble, and what we remember about THAT is the "all men are created equal" line, or perhaps even the business about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That is, unless we think that what follows that, "being endowed by our Creator," means that this is a Christian nation endowed somehow by the Christian deity. Of course, some of the people who believe (all right, one of the people who believes) that also said this: "The men and women who signed the Declaration (of Independence) wrote the final phrase, 'We pledge to each other our lives, our fortune, and our sacred honor.'"
But Rick isn't alone in the Republican misunderstanding. Here's Mittens: “They're either inspired by God or written by brilliant people or perhaps a combination of both.” There's a piece over at First Things that indicates that the idea that our founding documents are divinely inspired can be found in Doctrines and Covenants of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, which means that the outrageous part of what Mittens said was actually the "brilliant people" part. And then there's Newt who told a CPAC audience that 99 weeks of unemployment somehow stops the people who receive it from the pursuit of happiness, AND (h/t right wing watch), while speaking at the "Pray for America" rally in Nevada on Friday night, 2/2/12, called for passage of legislation requiring all schools and universities to teach the Declaration of Independence so that every student would learn that there is a Creator who has endowed us with certain unalienable rights and realize that government exists to serve the people. And these are just the principal Republican presidential candidates -- I'm not going to look for the abuses Glenn Beck and David Barton have committed against the document. Ah, well.
It's a much more interesting document than that.
Another diary inspired in great part by another terrific book about history.
Yes, scripture, because in a secular republic, there have to be some founding documents. During the Revolution, the Declaration was considered to have done its work in carrying the news to the people, and no one suggested it was unusually eloquent or powerful. It became one of the "sacred" founding documents during the partisan political wars of the 1790s, especially after the election of 1800 when its primary author became President, ESPECIALLY since it had been used in creating the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. But really, what was it intended to do when it was written?
Here's the so-called Virginia resolution that Richard Henry Lee presented to the Continental Congress June 8, 1776:
Resolved, 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.
That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.
That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation
Concretely? Once the colonies were ready to vote for independence, create a document that communicated the first clause, send feelers to Louis XVI and Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, his foreign minister, and write what would become the Articles of Confederation. The votes weren't there when the resolution was offered, so, as you know, a committee was formed to work on a draft declaration in case Congress agreed on independence when it reconvened, which it did June 28.
(Declaration of Independence, John Turnbull, 1818, United States Capitol Rotunda. The Committee (L-R): John Adams [MA], Roger Sherman [CT], Robert Livingston [NY], Thomas Jefferson [VA], Benjamin Franklin [PA])
As you also know, Jefferson was the principal writer, and as you may not know, Congress went into operation as a Committee of the Whole when the document was presented (meaning no notes were taken) and by the time the first vote was taken on July 1, it was Congress's document, not Jefferson's. Yes, Congress's. This version, the one we know as the Declaration of Independence, is sufficiently different from Jefferson's for Jefferson to have laboriously copied over his earlier version several times to send to friends so they could judge for themselves; both Richard Henry Lee and (years later) John Adams commiserated with Jefferson that some of his best work had been cut out.
So we're going to look at what it actually says, so that the next time somebody tells you that this is a sacrosanct founding document you can remind them that all it did was declare independence. It did not establish the new government; the Articles of Confederation (November 1777) did that. It just declared "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." Just a lot more eloquently.
First, the preamble, because this document was intended to be a message that could be read aloud:
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 & 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. We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness:
Yes, Congress changed "inherent and" to "certain." We too have Jefferson's version and Congress's version. You'll note two mentions of the Deity here, and it may be hard to believe, but they're probably there for rhetorical and syntactical reasons. Remember, this is Jefferson, a man who sat down with the Four Gospels and a pair of scissors and created what is now called the Jefferson Bible, 46 pages long.
As he wrote to John Adams in 1813:
I have performed the operation for my own use by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter, which is evidently his [sic] and which is as easily distinguished as diamonds in a dunghill.
The "his," of course, refers to the statements of Jesus of Nazareth, pretty much as if you took a red-letter version of the King James Bible and got rid of everything except the red letters.
"Rhetorical and syntactical" is also suggested by the document Jefferson used as a model: Virginia's Declaration of Rights, the 6/12/1776 draft, which began:
That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
No deity there. Now, which reads better?
We move on now, into what I'm guessing are the less-known portions. I'll try to annotate them to add to the body of annotated Declarations that are out there, none of which are particularly useful, as you'll see later on in the diary.
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
A very forthright statement. Leads directly to the preamble of the Constitution with "the consent of the governed." An idea straight from John Locke,
The Second Treatise of Government, a work that Jefferson was fond of. The "alter and abolish" is all Jefferson's.
It does not form a new government in and of itself.
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.
We wouldn't be writing this document if Britain (
who in Britain hasn't been defined yet) hadn't been doing terrible things to the United Colonies.
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.
Finally, a document that isn't pretending to be loyal to the King by blaming Parliament as the Articles of Association did and as John Dickinson's Olive Branch Proposal (which George III ignored) did.
This is a treasonous document. And now the litany of accusations (with both versions again). Warning, modern historians aren't sure what some of these refer to, and the only real annotated version of the accusations is brought to you by
the Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank, which tries, but gets some of them wrong for, well, ideological reasons. I'm linking it for fairness, but grain of salt, please. They think that the grievances are Jefferson's attempt to detail what he thinks good governments should be -- another attempt to put this on a par with the Constitution as a foundation document, which it is,
but not as far as the forming of a new government is concerned.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome & necessary for the public Good.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, & continually for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.
He has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, & Convulsions within.
These appear to be a recap of the Massachusetts Government Act, one of the four Coercive/Intolerable Acts, which gave almost dictatorial power to the newly-appointed Royal Governor, General Thomas Gage, who was also the commander of the British Army in New England.
He has endeavored to prevent the Population of these states; for that Purpose obstructing the laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, & raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
I'm really not sure what this refers to, but the Proclamation Line of 1763, which was supposed to keep British North Americans east of a line drawn up the crest of the Appalachian Mountains, comes to mind, as does the Quebec Act, which we'll meet again later. This also has something to do with the fact that the colonies seemed prosperous to the British soldiers who fought in the French and Indian War, and Britain wasn't encouraging emigration.
He has made our Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, & the Amount & payment of their Salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
This, of course, refers to the standing Army in Boston which, among other things, precipitated the riot we call the Boston Massacre because five people were killed. By the time the Declaration was written, said standing army was garrisoned in New York because the harbor was better and because there were too damn many rebels in Boston.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
When you make a General the Royal Governor of Massachusetts, naturally someone will have issues, especially when said governor precipitated the battles at Lexington and Concord.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
"Others" is Parliament, who will not get off scot-free in this document, and "pretended" speaks to the idea of "Virtual Representation" which Parlaiment took for granted and the colonists did not.
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
Another one of the Intolerable Acts, the Administration of Justice Act of 1774, said that if someone in the service of the King (like the standing army) committed a capital crime like murder in the process of suppressing a riot, his trial would be held in England. Think they'd be convicted? Hence, "mock" trial.
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
The Navigation Acts, beginning in 1660 and continuing through a number of revisions, increasingly told the colonists that certain products, like sugar, tobacco, and indigo, could only be exported to Britain or the British West Indies, and only on British ships. Initially, this was not such a bad thing because it meant that the colonies were being acknowledged as part of Britain, but this feeling among the colonists wore off VERY quickly after 1763.
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION! This had to be in here somewhere.
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
The Articles of Association, the first document in my 1774 diary, objected to these practices, so it wasn't a reach for Jefferson to use some of the language here.
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
This is absolutely about the Quebec Act, especially "enlarging its boundaries" to incorporate all the territory south of Lake Erie and north of the Ohio River. Besides, letting (Catholic) Quebec have a legislature while forbidding the Massachusetts legislature to meet seemed to be an outrageous constraint of the rights of presumably free people.
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
Two events. Yes, the Massachusetts Government Act again, but also the Dominion of New England, established by James II in 1684, which obliterated the charters of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey, and, which as you'll remember from the seal,
should have let the colonists know what was coming, even though the Dominion was dissolved after the Bloodless Coup of 1689. Congress isn't leaving any stone unturned here.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
These should be fairly obvious -- Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, and the Hessian mercenaries. The part in italics was added by Congress; they aren't in Jefferson's draft.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
This is the practice of "impressement," a fancy word for kidnapping, specifically for the British Navy's tendency to board British North American ships (built here and manned by colonists), identify a few seaworthy young men as British citizens stowing away and force them to enlist as members of the British Navy. This was bad before the revolution, and it was one of the causes of the War of 1812, so yes, bad.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
Well, it's not that the Indians didn't have reason, since in the French
and Indian war many tribes had sided with the French, who weren't as land-hungry as the British North American colonists. As soon as the French left North America at the end of the war, many tribes attempted to remain neutral, but many understood that the British British were less land hungry than the British North Americans. 1763-1776? Um, not really, but it sounds properly accusatory.
Jefferson also wrote a LONG passage accusing the King of complicity in the international slave trade that appears in his draft here. The link is to the version of Jefferson's draft from The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 1: 1760-1776 (Princeton University Press, 1950). It's as proper and correct as links get.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Again, Jefferson's 1774 document for Virginia, and again John Dickinson's Olive Branch petition, and again, George III declared the colonies in rebellion in October, 1775.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
It's not really our fault, says Congress. Really it isn't. The King, and Parliament, and the people of England, the common kin of about 75% of the residents of the United Colonies, don't understand us and aren't even trying. Once the war is over and we're two different countries, things will change. It's a bit formulaic, but why not?
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 the 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.
The country has a name, and a government. The rest you know, and again, two mentions of the Diety and again, rhetorical and syntactic. The pledge of our lives and our fortunes
isn't rhetorical here because, in case you forgot,
this is a group confession of treason. The document wasn't released with signatures until January 1777, after Washington's victory at Princeton, but here are the signers, since some of you are probably related to them:
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Voila! Independence is declared! Now, on to the continuation of the War for Independence, which had been going on for fourteen months at this point.
7:48 AM PT: Already on the rec list? Within 90 minutes? Thanks, everybody!
10:17 AM PT: Never mind. It will develop at its own pace, and a tag is just a tag. Still, thanks for what's developing so far.