The Declaration of Independence and Common Law and Natural Traditions

1
The Declaration of Independence and Common Law
and Natural Traditions

• Teaching American History

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Drafting the Declaration
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Why was Jefferson chosen to write the
Declaration?

• The committee to compose the Declaration of
  Independence included John Adams, Benjamin
  Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston and
  Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson proposed that Adams
  write it, but Adams later said that he gave three
  reasons why Jefferson should write it.
• The subcommittee met. Jefferson proposed to me
  to make the draft. I said, 'I will not,' 'You
  should do it.' 'Oh! no.' 'Why will you not? You
  ought to do it.' 'I will not.' 'Why?' 'Reasons
  enough.' 'What can be your reasons?' 'Reason
  first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought
  to appear at the head of this business. Reason
  second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular.
  You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you
  can write ten times better than I can.' 'Well,'
  said Jefferson, 'if you are decided, I will do as
  well as I can.' 'Very well. When you have drawn
  it up, we will have a meeting. John Adams to
  Timothy Pickering, 1822.
• Earlier in this same letter Adams refers to
  Jeffersons happy talent of composition.
  Jefferson had written the A Summary View of the
  Rights of British America and co-authored
  Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of
  taking up Arms.

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Signers of the Declaration of Independence

• 56 delegates signed the Declaration of
  Independence. Most signed on August 2, 1776, not
  July 4th 1776. The delegates ranged in age from
  26 (Edward Rutledge) to 70 (Benjamin Franklin).
• Six signers of the Declaration of Independence
  also later signed the Constitution Robert
  Morris, Ben Franklin, George Clymer and James
  Wilson from Pennsylvania George Read from
  Delaware, and Roger Sherman from Connecticut.

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The Dunlap Broadside
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(No Transcript)
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What was the Declaration Intended to Do? (The
Declaration as an Address to Foreign Nations)

• Was the American Revolution a battle between
  independent nations or an English civil war
  conducted by one group of Englishmen against
  another? The Crown and Parliament portrayed the
  American revolutionaries as riotous subjects, not
  as citizens of another nation. The Declarations
  immediate purpose was to counter this
  characterization of their rebellion, to alert
  other nations to the entrance of a new nation on
  the world theater, to secure for the fledging
  United States the rights of nations, and to
  convince other nations (especially France) to
  engage in treaties with us, to lend us money, and
  supply us with arms. The original purpose of the
  Declaration of Independence then was to declare
  the United States an equal nation among the
  worlds states. The Declaration asserts that the
  united states are Free and Independent States
  that 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. Thus, the
  Declaration was a statement of the powers and
  capacities of states, according to David
  Armitage, even more than as of the rights and
  duties of individuals. David Armitage, The
  Declaration of Independence A Global History
  (Cambridge Harvard University Press, 2007).

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The Declaration as Justification for Rebellion

• In addition to serving as a clarion to the world
  that a new nation had entered the international
  arena, the Declaration also and perhaps most
  fundamentally justified the act to become
  independent. It is thus not just a statement of
  the relationship of a new nation to a world of
  other nations, but a defense of a particular
  understanding of the proper relationship between
  individuals and their government and of the
  nature and character of the rights of those
  individuals.

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But How Was Independence Best Justified? Natural
Law and Common Law Traditions on the Eve of the
Revolution

• As they came to believe that they had to
  declare independence that reconciliation was
  impossible- the colonists had to decide how they
  were going to present their case. In debate in
  the Continental Congress as early as 1774, the
  delegates explicitly considered whether they
  should make their case for independence based
  upon the universal rights of mankind or the
  privileges of British citizenship? Were they
  arguing that their rights as British citizens as
  embedded in the Magna Carta, the Petition of
  Right, the English Bill of Rights, and colonial
  charters were being violated or were they making
  the broader claim that Parliament and the King
  had violated the natural rights of mankind?
  Debate in 1774 was divided. Richard Henry Lee
  said that our rights rest on four foundations
  nature, the British Constitution, Charters, and
  immemorial usage. But a New Yorker named James
  Duane was for grounding our rights on the Laws
  and Constitution of the Country from Whence we
  Sprung, and Charters, without recurring to the
  law of nature - because this will be a feeble
  support. Charters are compacts between the crown
  and the People, and I think on this foundation
  the Charter Governments stand firm.

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The Natural Law Tradition

• This debate was extremely important and required
  the colonists to suggest which of two broad
  traditions they were going to draw upon a
  natural law natural rights tradition or a
  common law tradition. The natural law tradition
  drew all the way back to Plato, Aristotle,
  Aquinas, and Augustine. This tradition suggested
  that nature provides a standard that is
  unchanging, permanent, and universal. These
  principles are said to be capable of being
  grasped by reason and are objective and
  discovered, not created. Natural Law thinkers
  focus on two points establishing that there are
  universal principles of morality and that a life
  lived in accord with these principles is better
  than one lived in opposition to it.

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The Transformation of the Natural Law Tradition
into a Natural Rights Tradition

• The Natural Law Tradition as it was
  articulated by Aquinas and Augustine was
  substantially transformed during the 17th and
  18th centuries by a host of political
  philosophers including Thomas Hobbes and most
  importantly for the Americans, John Locke. These
  thinkers said that there were indeed certain
  universal principles, but those principles
  concerned self preservation and the autonomy of
  the individual, not a specific conception of
  human flourishing. They also suggested that their
  were universal axioms of political legitimacy,
  namely that legitimate governments rest on the
  consent of the governed and protect the rights
  of the citizenry. Most important, it was this
  Lockean tradition of natural rights that
  Jefferson and the Founders considered in making
  their case in 1776.

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The Declaration of Independence as an Expression
of the Natural Rights Tradition

• The Declaration of Independence is deeply
  committed to the natural rights philosophy of
  John Locke. We had no occasion to search in
  musty records, to hunt up royal parchments, or to
  investigate the laws and institutions of a
  semi-barbarous ancestry. We appealed to those of
  nature, and found them engraved in our hearts.
  (Jefferson to John Cartwright, June 5, 1824 in
  The Portable Thomas Jefferson ed Merrill Peterson
  New York Penguin, 1975, 578.) Despite this
  claim, Jefferson does not wholly reject the
  common law tradition of the rights of Englishmen.
  He makes both kinds of appeal, emphasizing
  violations of universal rights. In particular, he
  suggests on the one hand that the King has
  violated principles of universal political
  legitimacy. He has violated the inalienable
  rights of the colonists and the principle that
  legitimate governments rest on the consent of the
  governed. But especially in his list of
  grievances, Jefferson suggests that the King has
  violated the rights the colonists had as
  Englishmen.

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The Laws of Nature and Natures God

• Natures God is not the God of Abraham and Issac.
  Jefferson is not appealing to the God of the Old
  Testament (Yahweh) or the New Testament (Jesus).
  He is appeal to universalistic principles
  established by nature. Jefferson is drawing upon
  a rational theology and a deistic system of
  nature. He is, as one scholar has put it, making
  reference to a natural not a revealed theology.
  Michael Zuckert writes The Laws of Natures
  God might, for example, include laws pertaining
  to nonnatural subjects (e.g., salvation, grace),
  and be known in nonnatural or nonrational ways
  (e.g. revelation). The God who legislates in the
  Declaration is a God who speaks through reason
  and acts in nature. His laws, then, are none
  other than the laws of nature themselves, as
  understood by human reason. If God acts only
  through the mediation of nature, then the Creator
  would seem to be nothing other than Natures
  God, and his action the action of nature.
  (Michael Zuckert, The Natural Rights Republic
  Studies in the Foundation of the American
  Political Tradition (Notre Dame, IN. University
  of Notre Dame Press, 1996), 25-26.

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The Common Law Tradition The Rights of British
Subjects

• The other kind of appeal that the colonists
  considered in 1776 stressed their rights under
  the Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the
  English Bill of Rights, and colonial charters
  were being violated. This kind of claim stressed
  the rights and privileges that the English
  claimed as a result of being Englishmen. These
  rights and privileges were deeply embedded in the
  history and traditions of the English people.

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Structure of the Argument of the Declaration
(Jeffersons Syllogism)

• To understand how Jefferson interweaves both
  natural and common law appeals in the
  Declaration, we need to examine the structure of
  the argument of the Declaration and its most
  important principles. Jeffersons argument takes
  the form of a transitive syllogism
• A) under certain conditions rebellion is
  justified (Preamble)
• B) those conditions exist (List of Grievances)
• C) Hence, These United Colonies are, and of
  Right ought to be Free and Independent States.

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Substance of Jeffersons Argument (The
Philosophical Preamble)

• 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.

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Substance of Jeffersons Argument (The
Philosophical Preamble)

• Self- Evident Truths
• Natural Equality Opposition to Force, Divine
  Right, Patriarchal Authority (Lineage), and to
  the idea of rule by the Philosophical Few or One
• Consent of the Governed
• Inalienable Rights and the Formation of a Natural
  Rights Republic
• Right to Revolution

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List of Grievances (Jeffersons Bill of
Indictment Against the King)

• In 1774, the 1st Continental Congress had sent a
  petition to the King for redress of grievances.
  But this was never answered. Instead, in August,
  1775, a royal proclamation declared that the
  colonists were "engaged in open and avowed
  rebellion." When he sat down in June of 1776 to
  write the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson
  sought to provide a comprehensive case against
  the King. The King was signaled out rather than
  Parliament because the colonists had asserted
  that Parliament had no power over them, no power
  to tax, no power to legislate at all. The King
  was thus the spokesman for the colonies in
  Britain and it was to the King that owed was
  initially owed and was now being absolved.
  Remember, the colonial charters that formed the
  colonies had been issued by the Crown.

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List of Grievances (Jeffersons Bill of
Indictment Against the King)

• Also, Jefferson had to establish the Kings
  oppressive acts were part of a long train of
  abuses and usurpations deliberately undertaken
  with the goal of violating the colonists
  liberties. These violations could neither be
  recent nor frivolous. This is the language of
  the Declaration Prudence, indeed, will dictate
  that Governments long established should not be
  changed for light and transient causes and
  accordingly all experience hath shewn, 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

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List of Grievances (continued)

• The list of grievances is the longest section of
  the Declaration and was probably the most
  important to Jeffersons contemporaries. By the
  count of the Jeffersonian scholar Barabara Oberg,
  nineteen grievances against the King are listed,
  one of which is divided into 8 parts. These
  grievances had been already articulated in
  several prior documents, including Jeffersons A
  Summary View of the Rights of British America and
  Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking
  Up Arms. Some of the most prominent grievances
  include the Kings unwillingness to sign laws
  necessary for the good of the colonies, imposing
  a standing army in the colonies, dissolving
  colonial legislatures, creating new offices to
  harass the colonists, imposing taxes without the
  consent of the colonists, ravaging coasts and
  burning towns, and inciting domestic
  insurrections among the Indians.
• See Barabara Oberg, Declaration of
  Independence in Paul S. Boyer ed., The Oxford
  Companion to United States History (New York
  Oxford University Press, 2001), 176-177.

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Jeffersons Effort to Blame the King for the
Slave Trade

• Perhaps the most remarkable grievance that
  Jefferson listed was that the King foisted the
  slave trade onto the colonies. This statement was
  strongly opposed by Georgia and South Carolina
  delegates who would not join the cause if it was
  included. Many other delegates also that that it
  would destroy the credibility of the Declaration
  since so many of the colonists had so obviously
  supported the slave trade and benefited from it.
  This provision read He has waged cruel war
  against human nature itself, violating it's most
  sacred rights of life liberty in the persons of
  a distant people who never offended him,
  captivating carrying them into slavery in
  another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death
  in their transportation thither. This piratical
  warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the
  warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain.
  determined to keep open a market where MEN should
  be bought sold, he has prostituted his negative
  for suppressing every legislative attempt to
  prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce
  and that this assemblage of horrors might want no
  fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting
  those very people to rise in arms among us, and
  to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived
  them, murdering the people upon whom he also
  obtruded them thus paying off former crimes
  committed against the liberties of one people,
  with crimes which he urges them to commit against
  the lives of another.

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The Declaration as an Expression of the American
Mind

• Late in his life, Jefferson faced charges from
  John Adams, Timothy Pickering, and Richard Henry
  Lee that he had virtually copied the Declaration
  of Independence and borrowed the ideas from John
  Locke or others. Adams in particular said there
  is not an idea in it but what had been hackneyed
  in Congress for two years before. Jeffersons
  strategy for countering this charge was not to
  claim originality, but to say that while he did
  not directly copy anyone, he also did not aim at
  originality but rather to draw upon the
  harmonizing sentiments of the day to produce an
  expression of the American mind.

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The Declaration as an Expression of the American
Mind (continued)

• Pickering's observations, and Mr. Adams' in
  addition, "that it contained no new ideas, that
  it is a commonplace compilation, its sentiments
  hackneyed in Congress for two years before, and
  its essence contained in Otis' pamphlet," may all
  be true. Of that I am not to be the judge.
  Richard Henry Lee charged it as copied from
  Locke's treatise on government. Otis' pamphlet I
  never saw, and whether I had gathered my ideas
  from reading or reflection I do not know. I know
  only that I turned to neither book nor pamphlet
  while writing it. I did not consider it as any
  part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether
  and to offer no sentiment which had ever been
  expressed before. Had Mr. Adams been so
  restrained, Congress would have lost the benefit
  of his bold and impressive advocations of the
  rights of Revolution. This, however, I will say
  for Mr. Adams, that he supported the Declaration
  with zeal and ability, fighting fearlessly for
  every word of it. As to myself, I thought it a
  duty to be, on that occasion, a passive auditor
  of the opinions of others, more impartial judges
  than I could be of its merits or demerits.
• Jefferson to Madison, August 30, 1823

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The Declaration as an Expression of the American
Mind (continued)

• The British government contravening those
  rights, there was but one opinion on this side of
  the water. All American Whigs thought alike on
  these subjects. When forced, therefore, to resort
  to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of
  the world was deemed proper for our
  justification. This was the object of the
  Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new
  principles, or new arguments, never before
  thought of, not merely to say things which had
  never been said before but to place before
  mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms
  so plain and firm as to command their assent, and
  to justify ourselves in the independent stand we
  are compelled to take. Neither aiming at
  originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet
  copied from any particular or previous writing,
  it was intended to be the expression of the
  American mind, and to give to that expression the
  proper tone and spirit called for it by the
  occasion. All its authority rests then on the
  harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether
  expressed in conversation, in letters, in printed
  essays, or in the elementary books of public
  right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.
  
• Jefferson to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825.

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Other Declarations of Independence

• In making this claim, Jefferson was not
  expressing false humility, but rather giving an
  accurate portrayal of the harmonizing
  sentiments of the day that made up the American
  mind.
• These harmonizing sentiments were expressed in
  numerous other declarations of independence
  that were issued in the colonies between April
  and July 1776. The historian Pauline Maier has
  retrieved and analyzed over 90 different
  declarations of independence that were issued by
  groups and institutions such as Massachusetts
  town meetings, New York mechanics, Pennsylvania
  militiamen, county conventions in Maryland and
  Virginia, and South Carolina juries. Generally,
  like The Declaration of Independence, these
  declarations listed grievances mostly against
  Parliament - and attempted to justify the break
  from the mother country. See Pauline Maier,
  American Scripture Making the Declaration of
  Indepenence

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The Declaration as the most Eloquent Statement of
these Harmonizing Sentiments

• Jefferson gave an unparalleledly lovely and
  perspicuous statement of a widespread public
  philosophy and enshrined it in a place where the
  American people could readily and regularly be
  reminded of it. That the Declarations ideas were
  widespread does not bespeak their insignificance,
  or even the insignificance of the Declaration as
  a particularly good expression of that
  philosophy.
• Michael Zuckert

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The Declaration as an Expression of the American
Mind

• When forced ... to resort to arms for redress,
  an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed
  proper for our justification. This was the object
  of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find
  out new principles or new arguments, never before
  thought of, not merely to say things which had
  never been said before but to place before
  mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms
  to plain and firm as to command their assent, and
  to justify ourselves in the stand we are
  compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality
  of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from
  any particular or previous writing, it was
  intended to be an expression of the American
  mind, and to give that expression the proper tone
  and spirit called for by the occasion. (Thomas
  Jefferson, letter to Henry Lee, 1825)

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Jeffersons Dying Thoughts about the Declaration

• May it be to the world, what I believe it will
  be -- to some parts sooner, to others later, but
  finally to all -- the signal of arousing men to
  burst the chains under which monkish ignorance
  and superstition had persuaded them to bind
  themselves, and to assume the blessings and
  security of self-government. That form (of
  government) which we have substituted, restores
  the free right to the unbounded exercise of
  reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are
  opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The
  general spread of the light of science has
  already laid open to every view the palpable
  truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born
  with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few
  booted and spurred, ready to ride them
  legitimately, by the grace of God. These are
  grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let
  the annual return of this day forever refresh our
  recollections of these rights, and an
  undiminished devotion to them. (Jefferson to
  Roger Weightman, June 24, 1826)

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The Story of Jefferson and Adams

• Both died on July 4th, 1826 on the anniversary of
  the Declaration of Independence. The 19th century
  looked upon this event as a result of divine
  intervention, suggesting that we were a chosen
  people.

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Equality and Slavery

• How could the man who wrote that All Men are
  Created Equal have owned slaves?
• Jefferson believed that slavery was morally
  indefensible
• But he did not move from this belief to the
  contention that slavery should be immediately
  eradicated. Why not? 1) race war 2) miscegenation
  3) risk to the free institutions that Americans
  had established

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Judging Jefferson

• Jefferson as a founding father of scientific
  racism
• But Jeffersons ideas become important in
  discrediting slavery and racism
• There are many dimensions to Jefferson. He was an
  architect and apostle of democracy, a man of
  letters, and a scientific racist.

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Counters to the Declaration of Independence
(Bentham and John Lind)

• Early in his career, Jerry Bentham, the great
  utilitarian political philosopher, opposed the
  American revolution and wrote against the
  Declaration of Independence. Bentham, as you
  might have guessed, opposed the idea of
  inalienable rights. In an essay entitled Fragment
  on Government, Bentham and Lind, argued that
  there are no legal rights antecedent to law that
  limit what law may do. Bentham is famous of
  course for arguing that rights are non-sense on
  stilts. He also decried the concept of rights
  against governmental authority as perfectly
  unintelligible, called natural rights claims
  products of imagination as opposed to reason, and
  argued that claims to natural rights arguments
  were the equivalent to bawling upon paper.
  Benthams point was that rights claims are
  assertions made by people who sought to get what
  they wanted without making a real argument for
  it. They were not real arguments but claims
  parading in the air, as if on stilts. These
  claims were also part of a larger case that
  Bentham gave against limited government and
  constitutionalism. He wrote that all law is the
  expression, direct and indirect, of the will of
  the sovereign legislator whose powers are not
  conferred by the law. Benthams more substantive
  point, however, law creates whatever rights that
  we have. To speak of natural rights, Bentham
  argued, was a kind of cold heat or dry
  moisture. Thus, Benthams opposition was to the
  idea that rights precede government and to
  natural rights claims as argument stopping
  devices, not to the existence of any rights. The
  recognition of rights was essential to happiness.
  But the real questions are, what rights should
  be legally recognized? and how far should they
  extend? And these questions cannot be made based
  upon the assertion of rights. It has to be made
  on the basis of deciding whether or not the
  recognition of such a right will be good for the
  happiness of all.

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Counters to the Declaration of Independence
(Bentham and John Lind)

• When he turned to the Declaration of
  Independence, Bentham thought that it was a based
  upon a glaring begged question. Whether or not
  colonists should be subjected to regulations and
  taxes was precisely the question. That
  possibility could not be rule out by the
  assertion of rights that regulations and taxes
  were wrong. To make such an assertion was to
  claim what needed to be proven. Bentham also
  never doubted that Parliamentary sovereignty was
  complete. There is no right, he said, which
  when the abolition of it is advantageous, should
  not be abolished. Late in his life, Bentham
  somewhat regretted his opposition to the American
  Revolution, but explained that it was rooted in
  the frivolity of claims being made not the cause
  itself. Americans should have made their case by
  pointing to the impossibility of good government
  at such a distance, and the advantage of
  separation to the interest and happiness of both
  parties.
• As the famous scholar of Jurisprudence, H.L.A.
  Hart has said, Bentham also argued that there is
  an unexplained and indefensible inconsistency in
  both asserting that men have inalienable rights
  to enjoy life and liberty and to pursue happiness
  and also accepting the necessity of government,
  since the exercise of the powers which every
  government must have and use will at times
  involve the taking of life, the limitation of
  liberty, and the interference with the ways in
  which men choose to pursue their happiness.
  Quoting Bentham, Hart asks, If the right of
  pursuit of happiness is a right inalienable why
  (how) are theives restrained from pursuing it by
  theft, murderers by murder, and rebels by
  rebellion?
• For Bentham and Linds case against the
  Declaration see H.L.A. Hart, Bentham and the
  United States, Journal of Law and Economics, 19
  No. 3, 1776 The Revolution in Social Thought
  (October, 1976), 547-567 Bentham, Short Review
  of the Declaration in David Armitage, The
  Declaration of Independence A Global History
  (Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press, 1992),
  173-186.

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John Calhouns Critique of the Declaration of
Independence (The most dangerous of all
political errors)

• The Southern theorist of nullification wrote and
  spoke numerous times against the Declaration of
  Independence, especially the hypothetical
  truism that all men are created equal. All men
  are not created, Calhoun asserted. Only two, a
  man and a woman, were created. Everyone
  thereafter was born and was born neither free nor
  equal. This proposition, according to Calhoun,
  was no necessary part of our justification in
  separating from the parent country. The
  Revolution resulted from the breach of our
  chartered privileges and the lawless
  encroachment on our acknowledged and
  well-established rights by the parent country.
  It also played no role in the creation of
  institutions immediately following Independence.
• The proposition that all men are created equal
  is, according to Calhoun, a hypothetical truism
  because men cannot exist in a state of
  individuality (which is the only state in which
  he would truly be free and equal. In society and
  under government, man is neither free nor equal.
  Man is thus not equal in the state of nature. The
  true state of nature of man is in society and
  under government. This is the state which his
  Creator formed him, into which he is impelled
  irresistibly, and in which only his race can
  exist and all its faculties be fully developed.
  Society and government are thus necessary to man
  and the power of government is thus paramount to
  the individual because the individual and indeed
  the race depends upon the existence of
  government. Government, however, has no right to
  exercise power to control individual liberty
  beyond what is necessary to the safety and
  well-being of society.
• It follows from understanding that government
  must exercise power to control individual liberty
  in order to insure the safety and well being of
  society that government must be stronger or
  weaker and individual liberty greater or less
  depending upon the mental and moral development
  of the people. Liberty is the noble and highest
  reward bestowed upon those most able to exercise
  it. It requires effort to attain it and not all
  men and classes are equally entitled to it. If
  implemented the proposition that all men are
  created equal would lead to anarchy and then
  military despotism.
• See Calhouns Oregon Bill Speech, 1848_at_
  http//teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.a
  sp?document944

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The Declaration as American Scripture or a
Secular Statement of the American Civil
Religion

• The Declaration as American Creed
• Americans have no shared ethnicity and not
  necessarily a shared history. What it means to be
  an American is to accept certain beliefs. The
  scholar Ralph Barton Perry has written
• The Declaration of Independence contains the
  essential ideas of American democracy, and has
  remained its creed and standard throughout the
  years of its subsequent development. These
  principles have invariably been invoked in times
  of crisis or of patriotic fervor as constituting
  the mutual bond of American nationality. (Ralph
  Barton Perry, The Philosophy of the Declaration
  in A Casebook on the Declaration of Independence,
  ed. Robert Ginsberg (New York, 1966), 173.
• Similarly, the historian Phillip Gleason has
  written To be an American, a person did not
  have to be of any particular national,
  linguistic, religious, or ethnic background. All
  he had to do was to commit himself to the
  political ideology centered on the abstract
  ideals of liberty, equality, and republicanism.
  Thus, the universalistic ideological character of
  American nationality meant that it was open to
  anyone who willed to become an American. 1
• 1 Phillip Gleason, American Identity and
  Americanization in Concepts of Ethnicity. W
  Peterson, M Novak and P. Gleason ed (Cambridge
  Harvard University Press, 1982).

36
The Declaration as a Statement of American Civil
Religion

• Lincolns Apple of Gold in a Frame of Silver.
  Lincolns emphasis on equality to combat slavery.
  
• The Declaration as a Clarion of Freedom within
  the United States Fredrick Douglass, Elizabeth
  Cady Stanton, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham
  Lincoln.

37
The Declaration of Independence as a Model (The
Subsequent History of the Declaration of
Independence).

• Beginning of a Genre - There have been 115
  declarations of Independence across the world
  inspired by the Declaration of Independence. It
  has served as a force for anti-colonial
  rebellions. The Declaration of Independence
  really has served as the shot heard round the
  world. Countries with declarations modeled on
  the American Declaration include Haiti, Vietnam,
  Venezuela, Hungary, Greece, and Liberia.