The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, announced Americans’ decision to separate from Great Britain and their intention to create a new nation. While the Declaration of Independence was viewed mainly as the document that proclaimed America’s formal break from England in the decades following its creation, its eventual use by leaders, movements, and organizations resulted in its acquiring what historian Pauline Maier has referred to as a sacred status. The ideas 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” now stand as a statement of the values that bind Americans as a people and reflect the enduring ideals that we strive to achieve.
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NARRATOR: On June 21st, 1776, a packet arrived at Franklin's Market Street home. It was from Thomas Jefferson, who with Franklin, John Adams and two other delegates, had been assigned to draft a declaration of independence. Working in a rented second floor room of a house a few blocks from Franklin's and attended by his enslaved servant, Robert Hemmings, Jefferson completed a first draft. He asked Franklin to suggest, "such alterations as your more enlarged view of the subject will dictate." The old editor and writer recognized the elegance of Jefferson's prose and made only a few changes before returning it.
Franklin sits back and ponders it a little, and he makes a few really extraordinary suggestions to Jefferson, and one of them is world class. Jefferson had written, "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable." And Franklin said, "No, no. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Just as two plus two is four and the sun rises in the morning, it is self-evident that we have a right to revolution."
Franklin is saying we're trying to create a new type of nation in which our rights come from rationality and the consent of the governed, not the dictates or dogma of a religion.
They were doing something very radical and very scary. To say something is self-evident, to say that it's common sense is to say that there's no other way to think about this, that only an irrational person who's not using their mind correctly could contend with this thing, which is in fact really contentious. It's a classic lawyer's trick to say, "We all agree to this thing." Who is we? The we is presumptuous.
They were not talking about liberating women in any particular way, or certainly not slaves, but in incremental ways, it grew and grew, because if you talk about liberty for the individual of you and me, you're talking about a greater liberty that can be applied to other people.
On July 2nd, the Continental Congress unanimously approved the central clause of the declaration proclaiming American independence. Two days later, July 4th, 1776, 12 of the 13 former colonies approved the entire declaration. New York would take a few more days to make up its mind.
"And for the support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
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