The Declaration of Independence
The founding document of the United States of America had one purpose, and one purpose only — to proclaim the independence of the original thirteen American colonies from Great Britain. The government of the United States is not based upon it; that document is the Constitution. There is, in some quarters, a desire to view the Declaration as a part of the Constitution; this is patently incorrect. While the Declaration has been mentioned in numerous court cases, not a single point of law or legal decision has turned upon it. It has no provisions, as does the Constitution, for amendment, and in fact has never been amended — nor has this even been proposed. It is entirely self-contained, and fulfilled its original purpose so completely and successfully that it is of primarily historical interest today.
One reason for the desire to combine it with the Constitution is that mention of “God” is absent from the latter document, while the former contains several references, notably “nature’s God” in the first paragraph, “Creator” in the second, and “divine Providence” in the last. As to which specific denomination these refer to, the Declaration is silent, but its main author, Thomas Jefferson, was a Deist, and “nature’s God” was a Deistic expression. However, “divine Providence” suggests a God more involved in mankind’s daily affairs than orthodox Deism would allow. Because of this vagueness, one can claim that the “Creator” referred to is that of whichever denomination one wishes. It makes sense that men embarking on this momentous endeavor — the establishment of a new nation — would employ their conception of God, at least for his attention if not his blessing.
It opens with the assertion that if a group of people wish to declare their independence from another, they should provide an explanation. The problems arise in the next paragraph. One can “hold” a truth to be “self-evident,” but that does not make it so — these “truths” are not self-evident at all; that is, so obvious as to not require defense. Merely attributing them to a “Creator” is insufficient, and nothing more than a semantic stopsign — that is, not a valid reason, but merely a device to halt further questions. These are claimed to be “inalienable” rights, meaning that one has them even if one is not allowed to exercise them. If they are bestowed by the Creator, the question is how the Creator came up with them. If they are arbitrary products of the Creator’s whim, then they are meaningless, as they could have just as easily been different, and we would never know since we would have nothing to compare them to. But if they are not arbitrary, if they are an intrinsic part of the universe, then the Creator is merely their transmitter and not an authority to which one might appeal.
So the observation that “all men are created equal” (a supremely hypocritical statement by men who owned other human beings as slaves) and that all are entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” has no foundation other than “this is what we want.” But in a time when the divine right of kings was taken for granted, a divine argument was required to counter it. So the Declaration is addressed to its immediate audience in a language that audience could understand. The king says that his authority comes from God himself; the Declaration asserts that this same God has also bestowed a countervailing authority on the people. The radical nature of this statement cannot be over-emphasized.
What follows is a list of grievances, establishing the rule of King George III as intolerable. No references to specific events are provided, and while the historian could uncover what these were, presumably people at the time would have been familiar with them. One cannot help but wonder what the British version was — were they simply acting out of sheer perversity? Was British policy in the colonies motivated by nothing more lofty than the goal of squeezing as much revenue out of them as possible? Or did they see their role as a duty to maintain order? If there was a written British response to the Declaration, it is not well-known. At any rate, the fact that the British allowed matters in the colonies to reach this point, where no alternative other than independence was feasible, demonstrates a singular failure on their part. In The March of Folly, historian Barbara Tuchman describes British policy in the Americas as an example of profound stupidity. On the other hand, the colonists may have been over-reacting to perceived injustices that did not in fact rise to the level of requiring a revolution to separate themselves from the mother country. Certainly, many other people have endured far worse oppression from their governments without reacting in the same way. The contention that the American Revolution was begun by a small group of wealthy men as a way to keep more of their money is not out of line.
There is, in this case, an unexpected side to the argument. For example, the final grievance, [King George III] “has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages,” might have been described differently by the Native Americans as their attempt, through alliance with the British, to defend their land against what they perceived as an invasion and usurpation of their own sovereignty by the colonists — which it certainly was.
Next is the account of the colonists’ attempts to obtain redress through peaceful means, and how they had been rebuffed, leaving them no other alternative but violence. This, as we know, was successful, and while a good number of the signers did in fact lose their lives and their fortunes, they retained their sacred honor — or at least, the renown that those who are victorious in war gain in the historical record. The American Revolution was not the first time a subjugated people had rebelled against their overlords, but it was definitely the first time that the intention to do so was declared so clearly and unambiguously.
