The Declaration of Independence

Walter Isaacson & Wayne Diehl

The Fourth of July this year is an especially momentous occasion as we celebrate the

250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It is not popular among many today to honor America. It depends a lot on where you live it seems. I recently visited my son in Alabama, and my daughter-in-law made an interesting comment. “People here don’t hate America,” she said. Living in California, I often I hear it said that “things have never been worse.” It isn’t that I believe those people hate our country but I always recoil at that opinion. The most cursory glance of history proves otherwise but I have given up trying to point that out in response to such inflexible negativity.

I was born in Philadelphia and received a good dose of patriotism from my school, church and a mother and father who both served in the military during World War II. I remember the Fourth of July parade through the center of our quiet suburban section of the City of Brotherly Love, and the houses streaming with the stars and stripes fluttering red, white and blue in the breeze. Our backyard barbecue went on into the night until we watched fireworks from the front porch. Outside of Christmas, it was the most exciting day of the year.

Growing up in the sixties I saw dogs attacking black people for wanting to send their children to all white schools and the Vietnam War unfolding on our television screen. The assassination of President Kennedy was the most devastating experience of my childhood. It was followed a few years later by the killing of Martin Luther King and just two months after that, Bobby Kennedy was shot down. Those events all but extinguished my patriotic sensibilities.

Recently, however, something helped me to better appreciate who we are as a nation and a people. I had the opportunity and privilege this past February to meet the renowned journalist, professor, editor and writer, Walter Isaacson, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. He has written many in-depth biographies, including those about Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, and Benjamin Franklin. He was appearing at the Library to discuss his latest book, “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written.” The sentence that the title refers to is the second one of the Declaration of Independence:

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.

Isaacson breaks down the entire sentence in pieces to illustrate the amazing, unprecedented piece of work that the Declaration was. Thomas Jefferson wrote the original draft and it was edited primarily by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams who made changes, crossing out words and altering phrases. For instance, Jefferson originally wrote, “We hold these truths to be sacred,” but Franklin lined out “sacred “and wrote in “self-evident.” Franklin wanted to ensure the founders’ goal of creating a new type of nation that was not based on “the dictates of dogma or religion.”

Next, he focuses on the first word, We, which is also the first word of the Constitution

written eleven years later. The Founders created a government on the idea of a social contract, not on the divine right of kings. It is an agreement between the government and “we the people” for the common good. This was a revolutionary idea at the time; that a nation be created based on the rule of the people.

He moves on to discuss “Created Equal” and what it signified to Jefferson and his peers. To them, created equal asserted that Americans would not be subject to a system of hereditary social class or be ruled by royalty or an aristocracy. As for “All Men,” even though the word men, or mankind, has been synonymous to humankind, that was not what they meant or intended. The exclusion of blacks, Native Americans, women, and even some white men without property, was intentional.

That is not to say they were heedless of the hypocrisy of proclaiming equality and freedom for all while literally one fifth of the population were enslaved. Jefferson, who owned some six hundred slaves and fathered children with at least one of them, wrote in the draft that the slave trade was “a cruel war against human nature.” It was edited out. Forty one of the fifty six signers of the Declaration were slave owners. If there was going to be a United States, those against slavery would have to bury their distaste and compromise.

Most of the men who established our democracy were Deists. They believed in a supreme

being but rejected the concept that God took a personal interest in the affairs of humans. Many of them, Jefferson included, denied the divinity of Jesus. Nowhere in the Declaration or the Constitution does the word Christian appear. Instead the writers agreed to use the word Creator to state where their Unalienable Rights came from. The statement that these rights were Self-Evident rather than Sacred was a result of the Founders embracing the Enlightenment which emphasized reason, science and empirical evidence and promoted individual liberty, religious tolerance and natural rights. As Isaacson tells us, these truths were hardly self-evident at the time. They were controversial and radical.

“The Greatest Sentence Ever Written” is not simply a sentimental patriotic song of praise to America. Isaacson does not shy away from the problems of today but he urges us to judge the greatness of the sentence by the aspirational, moral direction it set up for our country. It gave us a standard to strive for which has helped us to end slavery, emerge from the Jim Crow era, and give everyone, no matter their race, religion or gender, the right to vote. Have we eradicated racism, prejudice or bigotry? No. Unfortunately we have not eradicated any sin from the human species. But despite what the media, the politicians and those who want to keep us separated and at each other’s throats preach, those attitudes are no longer openly accepted in government or society. America is severely flawed, as are all people, but We have made undeniable progress. The key now is to continue to guard and protect the rights for those who had to fight so hard to

get them.

In his thoughts for the future, Isaacson writes, “Take any issue…healthcare, housing,

schools… and ask what balances can we find that will strengthen our common good? What institutions can instill a sense of shared patriotic service across class line? What policies can help give every kid an equal opportunity?” He also urges us to create new outlets and media platforms “that seek to connect us to our common ground rather than inflaming our resentments…and enraging us.”

I find his ideas encouraging. If we want to improve things, conversation and compromise are much more effective than anger and hatred. Isaacson refers us to the example of Benjamin Franklin and connecting the moral arc of his life to the country at large. Franklin organized police and fire departments, a library, a hospital, a school and donated money to every church in Philadelphia among many other philanthropic endeavors. As for slavery, he admitted that the biggest mistake of his life was owning two slaves while he had his printing business. He went on to increasingly denounce the practice saying it “has long disgraced our nation and religion.” When he was eighty-one he became the president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. Franklin not only helped to craft the Declaration and it’s extraordinary second sentence, he also lived a life dedicated to the betterment of We. “Compromisers,” he declared, “do not make great heroes but they do make great democracies.”

So on this special Fourth of July, appreciate where we came from, the advances we have

made in social equality, the freedoms we enjoy, and commit to working together to retain them and to improve the lives of everyone. Oh, and pick up and read a copy of the book.