On 4 July 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, brazenly declaring: “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.” Before this moment, centuries of social traditions and political structures determined otherwise. Written in less than a month’s time, these 35 words would alter the trajectory of global history.
At the behest of the Second Continental Congress, a committee of five men led by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams crafted a document so radical in thought and deed that its repercussions were seismic in scope and scale. Taking inspiration from Enlightenment era philosophers John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, as well as Thomas Paine’s then recently published pamphlet Common Sense, the framers argued that the right to govern was not inherited, but was instead a natural right and derived from well-reasoned social contracts intended to serve the collective will of the people and to benefit the common good.
Initially, American colonists did not set out to create a new nation. In the decade preceding the Declaration of Independence, as loyal British subjects, they tried to find common ground with king and Parliament. When those efforts failed, Congress believed it had no choice but to charge King George III of becoming a despot, committing no fewer than twenty-seven “abuses and usurpations,” all designed to deny the American colonists’ natural rights to life, liberty, and property: he prohibited their movement beyond the Appalachians; he levied taxes against them while denying their equal representation in Parliament; he installed officials and troops to surveil the colonists and regulate their activities. Finally, on 23 August 1775, King George struck the final blow to compromise: he declared the colonies in a state of rebellion. On 4 July 1776, Congress resolved to declare themselves “… free and independent States, absolved from all allegiance to, or dependence upon, the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain.”
The eight-year-long war that followed the adoption of the Declaration of Independence and ended in victory for the Americans also located them at their first philosophical versus practicable crossroads. As John Adams later observed, the revolution was not the war itself, but rather the “Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.” At the core of the Revolution were the 35 words that defined the rights to which all men were entitled: life, equal dignity before the law, and the freedom to thrive. From the nation’s beginning, however, for whom and how these rights were to be safeguarded proved problematic and at times violently divisive. Yet, even in those convulsive moments the Declaration of Independence remained firmly intact, ultimately guiding Americans to arouse the collective will of the people to serve the common good.
250 years later, Americans once again find themselves at the crossroads of history. Will we reaffirm that the self-evident truths averred in the Declaration of Independence are more than lofty ideals? Will we continue to strive to live up to the self-evident truths and serve as the torch bearer for other nations to take up the idealism and cause of equality for all? The Declaration of Independence reminds us to find the answers in those 35 words that are at the heart and soul of the nation.