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Review by Roger Bishop
The Declaration of Independence is our nation's "sacred text." It tells us who we are, or aspire to be, as a people. Thomas Jefferson, often regarded as the document's sole author, noted that it was "to be an expression of the American mind, and to give that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion."
That "occasion" was the rising tide for liberty among the people as the Second Continental Congress, our country's first government, hoped for reconciliation with Great Britain but, of necessity, faced life and death decisions with regard to military, political, financial and diplomatic matters. For noted historian Pauline Maier, "the full story of the Declaration" cannot "be told apart from the Independence it declared and the process that led to it." She also believes it important that we understand how the Declaration has been reinterpreted over the years into the document we know and revere.
Maier greatly enlarges our understanding of these matters in her magnificent new book "American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence." Many readers may be surprised as well as enlightened. For example, she explains that there were at least 90 other "declarations of Independence" that Americans in towns, counties and colonies adopted between April and July 1776.
"Nothing," other than these, she writes, "provides a better explanation of why the American people finally chose to leave the British Empire and to take up the reins of government themselves." The timing to mobilize support for such declarations, led by John Adams and others, was crucial. "A similar attempt six months earlier would have failed." Maier quotes extensively from these other declarations, which demonstrate deference to the Continental Congress and an emphasis on grievances only in the recent past. For example, "George III's hiring of German soldiers to fight the colonists was cited almost everywhere and seems to have been decisive in alienating large numbers of colonists from the Crown." As for idealism, "concern for American 'virtue,' so much emphasized by recent historians, was a distinctly minor theme. The most commonly mentioned benefits were more concrete," including economic advantages.
Maier emphasizes that the Declaration we remember "was the work not of one man, but of many." Jefferson was one of the Committee of Five appointed to prepare a draft declaration to be considered by the entire Congress. The Committee then asked Jefferson to write a working draft. But others on the Committee, including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, made changes. When the document was presented to Congress, it was cut by one-fourth and other changes were made.
Maier dissects the Jefferson text, focusing on form, content and probable sources. She evaluates his arguments and often finds them weak or unsubstantiated. Jefferson said years later he didn't know whether his ideas had come from reading or reflection, although "I know only that I turned to neither book nor pamphlet while writing it." As for originality, he noted that he "did not consider it part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether, and to offer no sentiment which had ever been expressed before." Regardless of what you have read on this subject before, Maier makes it alive and exciting.
For the first 15 years after it was adopted, the Declaration of Independence was virtually forgotten, but it became embroiled in the partisan politics of the 1790s and continued to be of interest as the revolutionary war veterans died and more Americans came to honor their heritage.
Through the years, particularly with Abraham Lincoln, the Declaration was identified with equality. "The Declaration of Independence was, in fact, a peculiar document to be cited by those who championed the cause of equality. Not only did its reference to men's equal creation concern people in a state of nature before government was established, but the document's original function was to end the previous regime, not to lay down principles to guide and limit its successor." Nevertheless, Maier acknowledges that the "Declaration has served to bind one generation after another in a continuing act of national self-definition."
This is a stimulating and exciting book to read. The author takes a subject we think we know so well and shows us how much more we can learn. Her authoritative and very readable study is essential reading for anyone who wants to know the true history of the Declaration of Independence.
Roger Bishop is Contributing Editor to this publication.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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