The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America
“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.”
Transcendent Wisdom
Paradox of Liberty
Director: Cut! Clear the gate.
Ok – a little movie making comic relief. In light of those lofty ‘metaphysical’, ‘self-evident’ truths critics wonder if America will continually reach for an ideal that is beyond it’s grasp. A strong case can be made that no matter what lofty metaphysical truths it’s based upon, the American system of justice is at odds to live up to its own ideals today. On the other hand an equally strong case can be made that true progress for social change has been made, albeit at an uncomfortable glacier pace.
Thomas Jefferson called slavery a "moral depravity" and a "hideous blot", however he continued to hold human beings as property his entire adult life. Hard to reconcile the ‘Paradox of Liberty’ – the dichotomy between slave owner and the father of liberty and freedom. Jefferson understood that slavery was morally wrong and understood that society at the time had not progressed far enough toward the entire understanding of individual rights and what it actually meant.
Jefferson believed that the institution of slavery was the greatest threat to the survival of the new American nation. In 1778, he drafted a Virginia law that prohibited the importation of enslaved Africans. In 1784, he proposed an ordinance that would ban slavery in the Northwest territories. 1807 he signed into legislation eliminating the Atlantic slave trade, the law that outlawed the importation of African slaves. Although it did not end slavery, this significant piece of legislation highlighted Jefferson’s opposition to slavery.
The common question that invariably arises: “Why didn’t he free his slaves after the ratification of the Declaration of Independence?” Jefferson’s was an idealist but also a practical man. Jefferson believed that freeing slaves would have put them at risk. Where would they go? How would they make a living? Where would they live? Further, Jefferson knew that ratification would be at risk if the declaration explicitly stated to end slavery. Physical enslavement of humans is cruel, no contest there, however Jefferson and the founding Fathers were battling the enslavement of 'life, liberty and property' and the cruelty of King George III: “(waging a) 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 and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.”
Putting “All men (mankind) are created equal” in the Declaration was Jefferson’s sly strategy to end slavery in the future while achieving ratification in the present. Over a century leaders would use the expression. Lincoln used it in his address when he freed the slaves. Martin Luther King cited it during the civil rights movement.
“One cannot question the genuineness of Jefferson’s liberal dreams,” writes historian David Brion Davis (1927-2019). “He was one of the first statesmen in any part of the world to advocate concrete measures for restricting and eradicating Negro slavery.”
“But he still owned slaves!” bemoans the later day 'Communitarian-Egalitarian' (Green-meme). From an outside perspective Jefferson appears to be a typical slave owner. But he was not. There is no record of him beating or whipping a slave. He was very much against it. He provided them with more comfort than other slave owners. He allowed his slaves to sell produce that they would grow on their own and keep the money for themselves. Jefferson granted freedom to seven enslaved men. Two were freed during Jefferson's lifetime and five were freed by the terms of Jefferson's will. All seven were skilled tradesmen, capable of finding employment as freed men. During his lifetime, three enslaved members of the Hemings family were allowed to leave Monticello without pursuit. About 200 individuals were sold at estate sales after Jefferson's death. Some of those sold from Monticello eventually acquired freedom.
For his opposition to slavery Jefferson could
be considered a ‘radical’ in his days. He wrote that maintaining slavery was like holding “a wolf by the ear,
and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.” He was gravely concerned that the new federal union,
the world’s first democratic experiment, would be destroyed by slavery. To emancipate slaves on American
soil, Jefferson thought, would result in a large-scale race war that would be as brutal and deadly as the slave
revolt in Haiti in 1791. But he also believed that to keep slaves in bondage, with part of America in
favor of abolition and part of America in favor of perpetuating slavery, could only result in a civil war that
would destroy the union.
In “The Good Citizen: History of American Civic Life” Michael Schudson, professor of Journalism, Columbia University, observes the following in America’s colonial origins:
● The New England town meeting is one of the myths out of which Americans’ conception of their history has been constructed (eg, The Liberty Bell, George Washington and The Frontier). The object of the New England meeting was order, not representation. Social hierarchies were powerfully reinforced by deference which had real economic and social force behind it, however early colonial deference was more egalitarian as compared to English aristocracy. Americans were a special breed – individualism, optimism, and enterprise.
● Colonial ethos reflected a time of romantic agrarianism: the virtues of the farmer – independence, self-sufficiency, a permanent commitment to the community and a high regard for protecting the same virtues in others.
● Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense (1775) that voiced the unthinkable – independence – and the thinkable – a republican government without a monarch. It turned heresy into common sense. Paine saw colonial life not to be faults but virtues. Paine himself had been an artisan – a staymaker, making corsets for wealthy women. He did not come from the elite of lawyers, ministers and merchants.
● In short, the Declaration of Independence was a bill of treason which indicted the king for assaulting his people rather than protecting them.
● The difficulties of constitutional structure was to find a way to limit the influence of the rich, who are often able to manipulate the people.
● In colonial America and afterward, schooling and reading were understood to be instruments of inducting citizens more firmly into the established order.
● The 1st Amendment set limits on the
powers of Congress, but not on the powers of the states, to curtail free speech.
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776. THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 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. 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 these 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 meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. 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, 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 legislatures. 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 Trial, 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 in 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 neighboring 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: 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 endeavored 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 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.
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.
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