Posts Tagged ‘United States Declaration of Independence’

Jefferson changed ’subjects’ to ‘citizens’ in Declaration of Independence

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

By Marc Kaufman from The Washington Post

“Subjects.”

That’s what Thomas Jefferson first wrote in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence to describe the people of the 13 colonies.

But in a moment when history took a sharp turn, Jefferson sought quite methodically to expunge the word, to wipe it out of existence and write over it. Many words were crossed out and replaced in the draft, but only one was obliterated.

Over the smudge, Jefferson then wrote the word “citizens.”

No longer subjects to the crown, the colonists became something different: a people whose allegiance was to one another, not to a faraway monarch.

Scholars of the revolution have long speculated about the “citizens” smear — wondering whether the erased word was “patriots” or “residents” — but now the Library of Congress has determined that the change was far more dramatic.

Using a modified version of the kind of spectral imaging technology developed for the military and for monitoring agriculture, research scientists teased apart the mystery and reconstructed the word that Jefferson banished in 1776.

“Seldom can we re-create a moment in history in such a dramatic and living way,” Library of Congress preservation director Dianne van der Reyden said at Friday’s announcement of the discovery.

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Jack Miller on the Importance of American History for Civic Education

Monday, May 24th, 2010

In the most recent edition of the National History Club News Letter, Jack Miller discusses his own discovery of American History as the key to civic education and the preservation of liberty.

PRESERVING THE GIFT OF LIBERTY
Growing up, I never gave much thought to the importance of learning history. At that time in my life, it seemed to be nothing more than an exercise in remembering dates and names. But, later, I learned that it is about so much more. I found that among the great lessons and

Jack Miller

PRESERVING THE GIFT OF LIBERTY

Growing up, I never gave much thought to the importance of learning history. At that time in my life, it seemed to be nothing more than an exercise in remembering dates and names. But, later, I learned that it is about so much more. I found that among the great lessons and wisdom to be discovered from history are ideals, a philosophy of how one should live one’s life, and about what works and what doesn’t work in creating a free society where each individual can achieve to their own highest potential.

I learned that the freedom and opportunities our country afforded me are what allowed me to build a successful company and accumulate wealth. It was an America where, if you worked hard and focused, you could achieve to the best of your ability. Over time, I began to understand that the principles established in the American Founding made that possible. Concepts such as “all men are created equal and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and that governments are formed to protect those rights. These were the great promises pronounced in the Declaration of Independence and made into law in the Constitution.

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Founding Amateurs?

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

Jack Miller Teaching Fellow, Gordon Wood, contributed an Op-Ed piece to the New York Times on 5/2/2010

By Gordon Wood

THE American public is not pleased with Congress — one recent poll shows that less than a third of all voters are eager to support their representative in November. “I am not really happy right now with anybody,” a woman from Decatur, Ill., recently told a Washington Post reporter. As she considered the prospect of a government composed of fledgling lawmakers, she noted: “When the country was founded, those guys were all pretty new at it. How bad could it be?”

Actually, our founders were not all that new at it: the men who led the revolution against the British crown and created our political institutions were very used to governing themselves. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams and John Adams were all members of their respective Colonial legislatures several years before the Declaration of Independence. In fact, these Revolutionaries drew upon a tradition of self-government that went back a century or more. Virginians ran their county courts and elected representatives to their House of Burgesses. The people of Massachusetts gathered in town meetings and selected members of the General Court, their Colonial legislature.

Of course, women, slaves and men without property could not vote; nevertheless, by the mid-18th century roughly two out of three adult white male colonists could vote, the highest proportion of voters in the world. By contrast, only about one in six adult males in England could vote for members of Parliament.

If one wanted to explain why the French Revolution spiraled out of control into violence and dictatorship and the American Revolution did not, there is no better answer than the fact that the Americans were used to governing themselves and the French were not. In 18th-century France no one voted; their Estates-General had not even met since 1614. The American Revolution occurred when it did because the British government in the 1760s and 1770s suddenly tried to interfere with this long tradition of American self-government.

Of course, a deep distrust of political power, especially executive power, had always been a part of this tradition of self-government. Consequently, when the newly independent Americans drew up their Revolutionary state constitutions in 1776, most states generally limited the number of years their annually elected governors could successively hold office.

“A long continuance in the first executive departments of power or trust is dangerous to liberty,” declared the Maryland Constitution. “A rotation, therefore, in those departments is one of the best securities of permanent freedom.” In addition to specifying term limits for its plural executive, the radical Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 required that after four annual terms even the assemblymen would have to give way to a new set of legislators so they would “return to mix with the mass of the people and feel at their leisure the effects of the laws which they have made.”

At the same time, the Articles of Confederation also provided that no state delegate to the Congress could serve more than three years out of six.

In the decade after the Declaration of Independence, however, many American leaders had second thoughts about what they had done amid the popular enthusiasm of 1776. Since many of the state legislatures were turning over roughly 50 percent of their membership annually and passing a flood of ill-drafted and unjust legislation, stability and experience seemed to be what was most needed.

As a consequence, many leaders in the 1780s proposed major changes to their constitutional structures, including the abolition of term limits. In Pennsylvania, reformers eliminated rotation in office on the grounds that “the privilege of the people in elections is so far infringed as they are thereby deprived of the right of choosing those persons whom they would prefer.”

The new federal Constitution, itself a reaction to the excessive populism of 1776, also did away with any semblance of term limits, much to the chagrin of Thomas Jefferson and many others uneasy over the extraordinary power of the presidency. Jefferson thought that without rotation in office the president would always be re-elected and thus would serve for life. When he became president he stepped down after two terms and thus affirmed the precedent that Washington had established — a precedent finally made part of the Constitution by the 22nd Amendment in 1951.

Although federal term limits have been confined to the presidency, the fear of entrenched and far-removed political power, as the present anti-incumbency mood suggests, remains very much part of American popular culture. Yet precisely because we are such a rambunctious and democratic people, as the framers of 1787 appreciated, we have learned that a government made up of rotating amateurs cannot maintain the steadiness and continuity that our expansive Republic requires.

Gordon S. Wood, a professor emeritus of history at Brown, is the author, most recently, of “Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815.”

See Gordon Wood video on the American Founding Fathers.

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Am I on the “Right Side” of History?

Monday, April 19th, 2010

By Scott Yenor

The Assembly Room in Philadelphia's Independen...

Constitution Hall

Pres. Obama thinks Iranian protesters will be “on the right side of history.”  An obscure Arkansas congressman supported the cap and trade bill because it was on “the right side of history.” Opponents of extending government’s control over the delivery of health care is, as NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof contends, are “on the wrong side of history.” Bill Clinton knew that he was “on the right side of history” and that Barack Obama would be “on the right side of history.” A pro-same-sex marriage group is called “the right side of history campaign.” Even after legal recognition for same-sex marriage was denied in a Maine referendum, Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign (a same-sex marriage advocacy group) beamed: “It’s still inevitable. It’s always been inevitable.”

The idea that history has a right side is connected to the idea that history has an end.  History ends with the appearance of a universal, omni-competent administrative state, which recognizes each citizen as equal and free and with the disappearance of repression and national difference, and the eradication of political, social, and cultural prejudice. Those on the right side of history possess a prophetic wisdom about where history is headed despite the actions of individuals at any particular time.

Resistance is futile—much like Nazi resistance to the Allies or the South’s attempt to cling to its peculiar institution. This is the trope’s rhetorical power.  Since resistance is futile, why resist?   Being “on the right side of history” gives rise to conviction, which sustains acts opposed by today’s benighted public opinion. The public may oppose cap and trade or gay marriage or an extension of government control over health care, but controversial and unpopular decisions will be baptized with the blessing of history.

The view that we know the direction of History (I now use a capital letter to designate its capital importance) seems to take hold among those apprehensive about History’s direction as well. Resignation is indeed a rational reaction to an inevitable.  Others resist. Whittaker Chambers, once told the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948: “I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side. . .but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism.” Yet the short span of 40 years showed that the losing side had won, something in itself illustrative about our sometimes inability to detect the direction of History.

Purveyors of “right side of history” progressivism can be false prophets too.  Does the persistence of Britain’s National Health Service look as “inevitable” today as it did in 1947?  Does Canada’s?  After all, as Ben Stein’s father, Herb, quipped, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Was AFDC reform inevitable?  Was it inevitable that the United States would turn around its historic crime wave?

If History’s end is inevitable, why fight for it?  Since History is coming anyway, why is it necessary to campaign on its behalf?  Faith in a progressive prophecy justifies our elected officials in opposing the public in order to be on the right side of history, but those fighting to bring it about show that that end is not inevitable or determined.

The clearest wisdom on these matters is seen in how the American Founders and their latter day heir, Abraham Lincoln, thought about the future of slavery.  From today’s perspective,

slavery’s abolition may seem inevitable, and indeed more than a few progressives treat slavery as something flattened by History’s steamroller.  That is not how it appeared to John Jay and Lincoln.  Jay, rightly charged by English abolitionists with hypocrisy for condemning slavery in principle but tolerating it in practice, discussed how the abolition of slavery could come about. It was by the spreading of the doctrine of human rights, which serve as a “little lump of leaven which was put into three measures of meal: even at this day, the whole mass is far from being leavened, though we have good reason to hope and to believe that if the natural operations of truth are constantly watched and assisted, but not forced and precipitated, that end we all aim at will finally be attained in this country.”  There was nothing inevitable about the future—statesmen would still have to mold public opinion in the direction of natural equality.

All three of Lincoln’s greatest speeches before becoming president—the Peoria speech on restoring the Missouri Compromise; the Dred Scott speech; and his “Crisis of the House Divided” speech—deal with the consequences of America’s failure to uphold the “natural operations of truth.” Slavery seemed to be on the march, spilling over the lines that had contained it.  Public sentiment and law had turned against blacks—freed and slave.  The Declaration of Independence had been reinterpreted to exclude members of the human family, and had been denigrated as an instrument merely useful for asserting the rights of Englishmen instead of being a statement of right good for all times. Some denied the truth about human equality; others saw slavery as a positive good.

In response, Lincoln did not stand up to proclaim that these moves were “on the wrong side of history.”  In fact, his melancholy about perhaps being on the losing side is not entirely dissimilar to Chamber’s.  Yet, like Chambers, he resisted and not in the name of History, but in the name of justice, truth and right.  Better to lose elections or die on the losing side than allow slave power to triumph!  Lincoln’s central effort is to show that all acknowledge by their actions that slaves are human beings and that the Declaration’s promises are the key to “the progressive improvement in the condition of all men everywhere.”

Lessons from these episodes abound.  A few years ago, it was fashionable to display one’s opposition to Pres. Bush’s action and to show one’s virtue with the bumper sticker with an Edmund Burke quotation:  “All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Could it mean that there is no right side of history?  Could evil triumph?  Luckily we had “good people” bumper stickering to put an end to this reign of terror.

Lincoln’s actions show that, not History alone, but rhetoric informed by truth and evidence, move people.  Relying on History alone—History secretly controlled by reason—destroys the incentive to effort, undermines the ground of judgment, and destroys humanity.  Lincoln and the Founders believe in progress, and progress implies an end.  They see the place of human effort in bringing about that end, which means that it may not ever come about.  Theirs ennobles human effort, as it combines, darkly, with our grasp of truth and right to achieve human progress.

There is nothing inevitable but death and taxes.  The desire to evade the one has led some to wish an increase in the other, but they will not inevitably get their wish.

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The views expressed in this essay are not necessarily those of the Jack Miller Center.

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Founding Principles: Video Transcript

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Founding Principles

Each of us can come up with our own list of the great ideas that give life to American political and economic institutions.  However, we may be surprised at the similarity of our lists.  That reflects the power exerted by the ideas debated with such intensity by our founders.  Certainly there would be differences in our lists, just as the founders differed. However, over the past five years, we have talked with hundreds of profound students of American history, politics and literature.  Whenever we have paused during Miller Summer Institutes or other programs to write such a list, the result has been a short list of seven to twelve great ideas.  We hope you will reflect on the great principles cited that follow and perhaps inspire you to draw up your own list.  Few exercises can be of more value to you as a citizen of our great nation.

In “A Defense of American Constitutions” (1787) John Adams, on the individual’s right to own private property:

“The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.  If “Thou shall not covet” and “Thou shall not steal” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”

Alexander Hamilton, (Federalist #71, 1788) on the separation of powers in government:

“The same rule which teaches the propriety of a partition between the various branches of power, teaches us likewise that this partition ought to be so contrived as to render the one independent of the other…  The representatives of the people, in a popular assembly, seem sometimes to fancy that they are the people themselves, and betray strong symptoms of impatience and disgust at the least sign of opposition from any other quarter,  as if the exercise of its rights, by either the executive or judiciary, were a breach of their privilege and an outrage to their dignity.”

Thomas Paine, in Common Sense (1776), on the rule of law:

“But where say some is the king of America?  I’ll tell you, he reigns above and doth not make havoc of mankind like the royal brute of Great Britain.  Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter;  let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the Word of God;  let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king.  For as an absolute governments the king is law,  so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

George Washington, (Letter to the Hebrew Congregation, Newport, 1790), on the freedom of religion:

“The Citizens of the United States of American have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy:  a policy worthy of imitation.  All possess alike liberty of conscious and immunities of citizenship.  It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoy the exercise of their inherent national gifts.  For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under it’s protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

Abraham Lincoln, (“Reply to Senator Douglas, Chicago” 1858) on the principal of equality:

“We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years,  and we … find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers;  they were iron men;  they fought for the principal that they were contending for…  We have-besides these, men descended by blood from our ancestors-among us, perhaps half our people, who are not descendants at all of these men…  but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;” and then they feel that … is the father of all moral principal in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration…”

Regarding individual liberty, George Washington said:

“If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

And, the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances…  The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated… No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…  In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury…”

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The Declaration of Independence

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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. 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.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they 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. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

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