Freedom-The Declaration of Independence

Thomas Jefferson

The Declaration of Independence

The Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in 1776 delegated to Thomas Jefferson the task of writing a declaration of independence from Great Britain which the Congress amended and adopted on July 4. After the Revolution, Jefferson (1743–1826) became Governor of Virginia and in 1801 the third President of the United States. He was the father of what is called “Jeffersonian democracy,” which exceeded the democracy then advocated by either Washington or Jefferson’s rival, Alexander Hamilton. After leaving the presidency, he founded the University of Virginia as a place where truth could assert itself in free competition with other ideas. In its theory as well as in its style, the Declaration is a typical eighteenth-century view of man’s place in society which included the right to overthrow a tyrannical ruler.

The Declaration of Independence

W

hen 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 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.

      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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, 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. 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.

      He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

      He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

      He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

      He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

      He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, 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 mean time exposed to all dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

      He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

      He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

      He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and 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 legislature.

      He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

      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:

      For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

      For protecting them, by a mock Trials, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

      For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

      For imposing taxes on us without our Consent:

      For depriving us of many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

      For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

      For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein 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:

      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.

      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 complete 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.

      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.

      He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring 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.

      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.

      Nor have We been wanting in attention 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 ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too must 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.

      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.

Suggestions for Discussion

1.     What is the basis for Jefferson’s belief that “all men are created equal”?

2.     In the eighteenth century, the notion of the “divine right” of kings was still popular. How does Jefferson refute that notion?

Suggestion for Writing

1.     Write an essay on the ideas of the Declaration as expressed by Jefferson. Do you think that modern society must be based on those ideas?

Analysis

      In 1778, the French statesman Turgot wrote:

                This people is the hope of the human race. It may become the model. It ought to show the world by facts that men can be free and yet peaceful, and may dispense with the chains in which tyrants and knaves of every color have presumed to bind them, under pretext of the public good. The Americans should be an example of political, religious, commercial and industrial liberty. The asylum they offer to the oppressed of every nation, the avenue of escape they open, will compel governments to be just and enlightened; and the rest of the world in due time will see through the empty illusions in which policy is conceived. But to obtain these ends for us, America must secure them to herself; and must not become, as so many of your ministerial writers have predicted, a mass of divided powers, contending for territory and trade, cementing the slavery of peoples by their own blood.

      If Turgot had lived long enough, he would have marveled at both the successes and the failures of the American people. Yet both the failures and the successes are part of the democratic story, a story told by these readings.

The Declaration of Independence (1776)

No document in American history can compare with the Declaration of Independence in the place that it holds in the minds and hearts of American citizens. It is not only critical to any exploration of the growth of democracy in the United States, it is in many ways the root document of that democracy. It is advisable that we commence with the Declaration, for it sheds its light both backward, to illuminate the development of democratic ideas and institutions in the New World, and forward, to indicate the ways in which the United States has lived up to the promise of the Declaration as well as those areas in which the ideas have taken longer to mature.

      It is important to understand that the Declaration of Independence is far more than an announcement that thirteen English colonies perched on the eastern seaboard of North America considered themselves freed of allegiance to Great Britain and to its King, George III. In it we can find the key ideas about how the Americans of that generation thought a free people should live, what form their government should take, and what the mutual responsibilities were between a government and its citizens in order that both order and liberty could be sustained.

      In 1763, when the great war between France and Great Britain for the control of the North American empire ended, if one walked down the street of any colonial town or village, or stopped along a rural road at a farm, and asked the residents what they considered themselves to be, they would not have answered, "We are Americans." Instead, they would have proudly declared themselves His Majesty's loyal subjects living in the colonies. They saw themselves as sharing with their cousins in the Mother Country a common language, common culture and traditions and, above all, a common body of legal rights and privileges.

      The French and Indian Wars, which eliminated France as a power in the New World and greatly increased the security of the British colonies, also left His Majesty's Government with an enormous debt. In looking at their prosperous colonies across the ocean, English officials decided that, at the least, the colonists ought to pay the cost of their own government and security. As Great Britain attempted to strengthen its control over the commerce and government of the colonies in the 1760s in order to raise revenue, one writer after another protested that such measures violated the colonists' rights as Englishmen.

      In fact, the very distance of the colonies from the Mother Country had already altered those rights, as well as the perceptions of the colonists regarding rights of the individual in general. The frontier society of the American colonies had fostered a greater sense of individual autonomy, a sense that government should not interfere in the daily lives of its citizens, and that the purpose of government is to secure and protect the liberty and property of its citizens. The seeds of these ideas could clearly be found in English thought, but British government and law in the eighteenth century were slowly changing to give the King, and especially Parliament, greater authority. Law, according to Sir William Blackstone, was the command of the sovereign.

      Americans, however, rejected the ideas of strong governments and authoritarian sovereigns, claiming that they went against British traditions of rights. The pamphlets that began to appear in the colonies in the early 1760s attacked the growing power of Parliament and warned that such increased authority would undermine their individual liberties. As England tried to tighten its imperial controls, it found a strong vein of resistance in the colonies. Efforts to impose taxes were met by protests, boycotts and petitions, and for the most part the Crown's efforts proved futile. In the early 1770s royal government in the colonies disintegrated, so that by 1775 the real ruling powers in the colonies were the local elected legislatures. These assemblies had relatively clear notions about what government ought and ought not to do, and to a large extent Americans in all the colonies shared these views. The enduring importance of the Declaration of Independence derives in part from its authors' ability to capture and articulate those sentiments.

      After its petitions failed to secure redress, the Second Continental Congress voted to declare independence from England, and named John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson to draft a declaration. All three men were familiar with English tradition, and each had thought at length about the problems of government. But of the three, Jefferson was acknowledged to possess the most fluent pen, and his words caught the hopes and ideals of the American experiment.

      The Declaration of Independence, John Adams later said, had not a single new idea in it. Certainly one can see the influence of John Locke and other English highbrow intellectuals in it. But one can also see the notions of government that had been intensely discussed in the colonies in hundreds of pamphlets in the previous fifteen years. The Declaration is clearly part of this pamphlet tradition. It is in fact a pamphlet, a propaganda document designed to justify a radical, unprecedented and unlawful action by placing the blame on a wicked king and Parliament. The colonists, the authors claimed, had done no more than protect their God-given rights.

      It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss the Declaration as just a propaganda document, for it is far more than that. It is the culmination of more than a century and a half of colonial life, during which the settlers in North America developed their unique notions of government, a process in which they gradually stopped being Englishmen and became Americans.

      The long list of complaints Jefferson marshalled to support his charge that the king had violated his obligations to the people is hardly convincing to a modern reader, and like all good propagandists, Jefferson distorted history to serve his purposes. But if one reads the complaints carefully, they contain notions that are basic to American democracy: government is a compact among the people, and can be overthrown when it fails to fulfill its obligations; government exists to protect the rights and property of its citizens; every person accused of a crime is entitled to trial by a jury of peers; the state cannot search the homes of its citizens without a warrant; and taxes cannot be levied without the consent of the people.

      From a constitutional point of view, the Declaration served several purposes. It enshrined the compact theory as the heart of the American philosophy of government, not only for the revolutionary generation but for succeeding ones as well. Long after the particular complaints against King George III have been forgotten, the belief that government exists to preserve the rights of the people, and can be dissolved if it fails to do so, remains a prime article of faith for Americans.

      But even though the Declaration built upon generations of American and British experience, it went far beyond those ideas, and, in fact, as many modern writers have noted, it is a radical statement in its view of the purposes of government. As nation-states began emerging in Europe in the late middle ages, the common assumption had been that governments existed to ensure order and protect the stability of society. But the Declaration of Independence, while not denying the need for order, asserts that the prime purpose of government is to protect the rights of the individual. For the first time, it is the individual and not the society that is paramount, and the success of government is to be measured not by how well society is regulated, but by how free the individual is from government.

      Jefferson's noble statement of the rights of mankind became a beacon for future generations, not only in the United States but throughout the world. One need not ignore the fact that Jefferson had to temporize, for American society in the eighteenth century did not treat all people equally. Native Americans, people without property, women and especially black slaves were considered neither equal nor endowed with rights. But the statement became the goal, the ideal, and it would be the standard against which future American society would be—and still is—judged.

      The development of American democracy has been, in many ways, an elucidation of the premises outlined in the Declaration of Independence: that certain truths are self-evident, that people are created equal, that they are endowed with inalienable rights, that governments derive their power from the consent of the governed and that the purpose of government is to protect these rights. Such sentiments have not lost their power to inspire men and women to this day. They are the mark of the successes of American democracy, as well as of its failures.