All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.
Abraham Lincoln, letter to Henry L. Pierce and others, 6 April 1859
Most countries do not begin with a statement of why they are beginning. Most cannot produce a document that says why the country is being built, and for what it will stand. Of those that do begin in this way, one has stated a powerful defense of human freedom, based upon the facts of human nature, applicable to all human beings, in all times.
The United States of America has a birthday. It celebrates the adoption, by an elected assembly, of a certain resolution. It celebrates the "Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America."
This is the Declaration of Independence. It was adopted on July 4, 1776. It created a nation by a purposeful act, upon a specific day.
It built that nation upon a foundation of universal principle. The principle referred not merely to the people who would live in that nation. It applied to all people, in all places, in all times.
The Declaration remains the most noble, famous, and powerful statement of the basis of government ever written. It is unique. It has shaped a people and a nation, and it has helped to shape the world.
What Do the Ideas of the Declaration Mean for Individual Citizens?
Moreover he [the American] has conceived an opinion of himself which is often exaggerated but almost always salutary. He trusts fearlessly in his own powers, which seem to him sufficient for everything. Suppose that an individual thinks of some enterprise, and that enterprise has a direct bearing on the welfare of society; it does not come into his head to appeal to public authority for its help. He publishes his plan, offers to carry it out, summons other individuals to aid his efforts, and personally struggles against all obstacles. No doubt he is often less successful than the state would have been in his place, but in the long run the sum of all private undertakings far surpasses anything the government might have done.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Political ideas influence how people think and act. Consider that. You may be different in some of your attitudes because of your country and its ideas.
In America, the most important political ideas are written down, proclaimed to the world. Americans can refer to those ideas as they try to understand themselves and their country.
The single most important political idea in America is the idea of equality, proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence.
A famous commentator came to visit the United States in the 1830s, about fifty years after the nation had been founded. His name was Alexis de Tocqueville, and he came from France. He noticed some striking differences between the traditional political ideas and attitudes in France and the political ideas and attitudes he saw in America. France had a centralized system of government, a system in which authority was concentrated in Paris, the capital. People in the rest of the country looked to Paris for permission to do things and direction in how to do them. Tocqueville was impressed with the independence of mind that characterized Americans. Americans, he thought, tend to have a high opinion of themselves, but they are energetic. They are "self-starters." They take responsibility for themselves and for others. They do not think that someone else, perhaps someone more nobly born, is better qualified to take the lead. They feel entitled to go ahead.
The influence of equality has a lot to do with this.
Does the Declaration of Independence Make Us One People?
We have besides these men descended by blood from our ancestors-among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe German, Irish, French and Scandinavian men.... if they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, ... but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.
Abraham Lincoln, Speech in Chicago, July 10, 1858
In America, citizenship stands upon a principle.
Before America, nations had been formed largely by ancestry. Nations developed when people lived in a place, spoke the same language, and sustained ties of blood over many centuries. This ancestry and this heritage form the basis of citizenship.
In America, our forefathers came from many different places, and at many different times. New people come here still, and in large and growing numbers.
Who are these Americans? Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest Americans, and one of the greatest interpreters of the Declaration of Independence, said that to be an American is to be connected by the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
America is not an ancestry, but a set of practices and beliefs. These ideas have formed the American people into a remarkable, a singular people, uniquely shaped by and devoted to the ideas that underlay free government.
Yet these universal ideas do form a single people. Citizenship in America is open, in principle, to anyone. But not everyone can live in the same country, just as not everyone speaks the same language or holds to the same beliefs. To the Founders, citizenship in America is to those not born here a privilege, not a right. They believed that privilege should be widely extended. But the interest of the nation, the liberty of its people, must be consulted in deciding how widely and to whom.
Do the Principles of the Declaration Include Us All?
They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.
Abraham Lincoln, Speech on the Dred Scott Decision, June 26, 1857
The Declaration of Independence says, "all men are created equal." Today we often read that to mean something different than is meant in the text. We think, in particular, that the Declaration did not mean to include women, or people who were black, or people who were poor.
This is not remarkable, given how the world has changed since the Declaration. But it is wrong. The Declaration does mean to include everyone.
At the time of the Declaration, slavery was legal everywhere in the world, and it had been legal everywhere in the world since history had been recorded. Nor was slavery immediately abolished in the new nation (although it was quickly abolished in more than half of the states in the new nation).
At the time of the Declaration, every nation was governed, at least in part, by a political elite, made up of people who were wealthy or well-born, and who had special powers because of their status. This was the rule of politics in all times and ages.
Does "All Men" Mean Every Human Being?
Are not women born as free as men? Would it not be infamous to assert that the ladies are all slaves by nature?
James Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, 1764
We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man."James Madison, Records of the Federal Convention, 1787
I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn, and Management of the Poor, London Chronicle, November 1766
In light of this, is it possible that "all men" actually did mean "all human beings?"
The answer is remarkable: it did.
The historical record concerning the Founders is both clear and uniform on this point. To them, a human being is defined not by skin color, or gender, or wealth, or ancestry. A human being is a rational creature. Any creature who is able to think and choose, regardless how well or badly, is equal in his political rights.
Abraham Lincoln, in confronting the claim that the Declaration did not include blacks, responded: the historical record "may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the Negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence."
Lincoln was right. No such statement can be found.
How Does the Declaration Affect the Nation as a Whole?
To the Founders, American was a great experiment, the first of its kind in history. To achieve the goal of free and stable government across a vast new land was to them a historic goal, a goal that would commence "A New Order of the Ages"-- the motto adopted by the Founders for the new nation.
The people who are part of that nation are responsible for a unique heritage. They have settled a vast and valuable land. They have, by their struggle in the Revolution and afterwards, secured liberty all across it. They have helped to defend liberty around the world, and they constitute what Lincoln called the "last best hope for mankind upon earth."
By gaining and guarding their own liberty, the American people lay down a new standard of political principle and practice. This standard would provide unprecedented political blessings for the people of America. And it would shine a beacon around the world, calling for people everywhere to rise to the challenge of free government.