DOI -- ITS PURPOSE

PART III

The historian Philip F. Detweiler, who carefully studied the
changing reputation of the Declaration of Independence in its first fifty
years, looked for the Declaration's influence on the declarations or bills
of rights that eight states attached to their constitutions during the
revolutionary period. They, too, he noted, failed to use the language of
the Declaration of Independence. Of course, the Declaration of Independence
was emphatically not a bill of rights in the American sense, that is, a
statement of fundamental rights that government must honor and protect: it
corresponded to the first, not the second part of the English Declaration
of Rights. There are, however, good historical reasons why the Declaration
of Independence is so easily confused with a bill of rights. After all, the
words from its second paragraph that are today remembered beyond all
others-"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"-were originally adapted from a draft
of the Virginia Declaration of Rights written by George Mason and amended
by a committee of the Virginia convention.

In fact, the words of the Mason draft made their way into several other
revolutionary state bills of rights, and seem to have had a far greater
impact than either the Declaration of Independence or the Declaration of
Rights that the Virginia convention finally adopted, both of which were
themselves descended from the Mason draft .2' What might seem to be minor
differences of wording are critical in tracing its lineage. Where the
Declaration of Independence said men were "created equal," the
Mason/committee draft asserted that all men are born equally free and
independant, and have certain inherent natural rights, of which they
cannot, by any compact, deprive or divert their posterity; among which are
the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and
possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
[Italics added

The Virginia convention changed the opening phrase to say "That all men are
by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights"
(again, italics added), which had few if any echoes in the eighteenth
century.24 Those who drafted state bills of rights with assertions of human
equality seem to have begun, like Jefferson, with the Mason/committee
version either as they encountered it in the press or, later, as it
appeared in some previous state bill of rights. But, again like Jefferson,
they felt free to make adjustments in the text. Pennsylvania's 1776
"Declaration of the Rights of... Inhabitants," in whose creation Benjamin
Franklin played a part, said "That all men are born equally free and
independent," but changed the next phrase so it said that all men "have
certain natural, inherent and inalienable rights," then completed the
paragraph making further minor changes in the Mason text. Similarly, the
Massachusetts "Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants," which John
Adams drafted in 1780, said "All men are born free and equal," which was
close to Mason, then rephrased the rest of the paragraph: and have certain
natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the
right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of
acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking
and obtaining their safety and happiness. Vermont's 1777 Declaration of
Rights followed the Pennsylvania model. And in 1784 New Hampshire said that
"All men are born equally free and independent," then offered still another
version of Mason's statement on rights:

All men have certain natural, essential, and inherent rights; among which
are-the enjoying and defending life and liberty-acquiring, possessing and
protecting property-and in a word, of seeking and obtaining happiness.25

There, at least, and perhaps also in the Massachusetts document, was an
answer to the much-asked question about what the "pursuit of happiness"
meant in the revolutionary era. All of the above, New Hampshire seemed to
say-life, liberty, and property.

In none of these documents is there any evidence whatsoever that the
Declaration of Independence lived in men's minds as a classic statement of
American political principles. Not one revolutionary state bill of rights
used the words "all men are created equal." Nor, for that matter, did the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen adopted by the French National
Assembly on August 26, 1789, which is sometimes said to be a descendant of
the American Declaration of Independence. DURING THE FIRST fifteen years
following its adoption, then, the Declaration of Independence seems to have
been all but forgotten, particularly within the United States, except as
the means by which Americans announced their separation from Great Britain.
The histories and political writings of the 1780s generally describe the
document "primarily as the act of independence." Participants in the
extensive debates over the creation and ratification of the federal
constitution mentioned the Declaration, again, very infrequently and then
generally cited its assertion of the people's right to "abolish or alter
their governments" and to found new ones that "to them shall seem most
likely to effect their safety and happiness." 2
SOURCE: AMERICAN SCRIPTURE, Making the Declaration of Independence by
Pauline Maier, Vintage Books-A Division of random Books, Inc, N. Y. (July
1998) pp. 164-166

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The Declaration is not only part of our history; we are part of its
history. We have cited it, over the years, for many purposes, including the
purpose of deceiving ourselves; and it has become a misshapen thing in our
minds. Jefferson never intended it for a spiritual Covenant; but it has
traveled in an Ark that got itself more revered the more it was battered.
The best way to honor the spirit of Jefferson is to use his
doubting intelligence again on his own text. Only skepticism can save him
from his devotees, return us to the drier air of his scientific maxims, all
drawn with the same precision that went into his architectural sketches.
The pollster on the street wants us to "endorse" Jefferson's Declaration.
But Jefferson would be the first to ask what such an exercise could mean.
Despite his hostility to Plato, he liked Socrates and thought the
unexamined life not worth living. Even more, the unexamined document is not
worth signing. The Declaration has been turned into something of a blank
check for idealists of all sorts to fill in as they like. We had better
stop signing it (over and over) and begin reading it. I do not mean seeing
it. I mean reading it.
That is a more difficult task than one might at first suppose. The
Declaration is constantly invoked but rarely studied. There have, in fact,
been only three important books on the document written in this
century-John Hazelton's in 1906, settling the outstanding historical
problems of the paper's passage and signing; Carl Becker's in 1922,
enshrining the Lockean interpretation of its content; and Julian Boyd's
first volume of the Jefferson Papers in 1950, establishing the text with
magisterial thoroughness. Other books have done little but recast,
popularize, or misquote these seminal works in three different fields
connected with the Declaration.
Why such exiguous scholarship around a paper so loved, so often put
to questionable political use, so omnipresent at the merely verbal level? A
preliminary hint or two may be given here, to be explored more fully later.
For one thing, the Declaration is not a legal instrument, like the
Constitution. Each phrase of the latter document has been tested in courts
and in legal classrooms, under strict rules of interpretation, with
consequences of the most serious kind riding on the results of such
inquiry. Men go free or go to jail, depending on the reading of a phrase.
The Declaration, having no such force of law, has not undergone this
discipline of "construction," strict or loose.
Besides, for the Constitution we have the long drafting process
recorded in Madison's notes, the arguments of the framers voiced in
protracted debate, the records of ratifying conventions in each state,
along with the authoritative exposition of federal doctrine by "Publius."
There are no notes from the drafting or acceptance of the Declaration,
which was by comparison the work of a few days. Nor did the Declaration
call forth early attack or exposition of a fruitful sort. It had, indeed,
astonishingly little immediate effect in the world of ideas, and quickly
sank into an obscurity not fully dispelled for almost half a century. When
serious scrutiny did begin, it was occasioned by distorting acrimony. As
the document grew in importance, so did the myths and partisan uses. The
time of obscurity yielded to almost a century of blinding glare and
misrepresentation, until Hazelton began the scholarly reclamation of the
paper.
SOURCE: Inventing America, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, by
Garry Wills, Vintage Books (June 1979) Prologue, pp. xiii-xxiv
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CONCLUSION
The Declaration of Independence had a function, a role to play and
that role was to (1) explain to the world why the Continental Congress had
passed a Resolution on July 2, 1776 that
created Independence from England, (2) seek foreign aid from other European
nations, most notably France and perhaps Spain..
All the additional meanings that have been heaped on afterwards,
the religious meanings, the moral meanings, the hints and implication that
it a fundamental founding document of this nation or that it is THE
founding document of this nation, that it is a preamble to the
Constitution, that it proves this is a Christian Nation, that it bases our
laws on Christianity or the Bible, etc have all been added by others many
years, many generations after the founders wrote, debated, passed and
signed it. None of those invented, imagined, created meaning were part of
its original meaning or purpose.
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THE SERIES
The Declaration of Independence (1776)
* Introduction
* Jefferson's Declaration of Independence did not use the word "Creator"
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* Declaration of Independence is not law
* The Declaration didn't "found" anything
* Purpose and meaning of Declaration of Independence
* Dclaration of Independence — Preamble
* Lincoln's reinventing of the Declaration of Independence
* The United States Supreme Court and the Declaration of Independence
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