It is hard for me to celebrate this 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Because I assume that when Trump gives his speech today, he won't talk about the Declaration of Independence. He will talk about himself--about how he's the greatest president and the most powerful human being who has ever lived. I am old enough to remember the Bicentennial--July 4, 1976--when Gerald Ford was President. He had become President in 1974 after Richard Nixon had resigned in disgrace. In his Inaugural Address, Ford declared: "Our long national nightmare is over. We are a government of laws and not of men." Now the President of the United States brags that as President he has the power to do anything he wants to do.
To celebrate the Bicentennial, President Ford went to Philadelphia and delivered a long speech. He didn't talk about himself. Instead, he talked about the Declaration of Independence. I knew something about his work on that speech because some of my professors at the University of Chicago, where I was a graduate student in political science, had been invited to the White House to talk with Ford about his speeches for the Bicentennial.
Last year, in an interview with ABC News, Trump was asked what he thought about the Declaration of Independence. "Well, it means exactly what it says, it's a declaration," he said. "A declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot. And it's something very special to our country."
A "declaration of unity"? Hardly. From the beginning the Declaration announces that it will "dissolve the political bands which have connected" the American colonies to Great Britain, and it becomes a declaration of war. Of course, Trump wouldn't know that because he has never read the Declaration of Independence.
But there is a tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence on July 4th. I remember well attending a Bicentennial party at George Anastaplo's house, where we took turns reading the Declaration aloud. That tradition will be continued today at the National Archives in Washington, in Philadelphia, and elsewhere.
I hope that many Americans will carry on that tradition by reading not only the text of the Declaration but also some of the good books on the Declaration that have been published recently. One of those is Steven Sarson's The Course of Human Events: The Declaration of Independence and the Historical Origins of the United States (University of Virginia Press, 2025).
Sarson raises the question of whether the Declaration is to be celebrated today. Most of us would probably say yes, of course, we should celebrate the Declaration for its proclamation of universal equality and liberty in the most famous section of the Declaration ("We hold these truths to be self-evident . . ."). But Sarson argues that to understand the original meaning of the Declaration for those who signed it, we need to read this second paragraph of the Declaration in the context of the whole document. If we do that, he claims, we will see that the opening words--"When in the Course of human events"--introduce a universal history of humanity that begins with the Creation of man in the state of nature, moves through the British immigration and settlement of the American colonies, through the colonial debates over British rule in America, and then finally to American independence.
In that history, Sarson asserts, we will see that yes originally all men were created equal and free in the state of nature and endowed with unalienable rights. But then governments were instituted to secure those rights. And whenever government fails to secure those rights, 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."
We will then see that the American people in the colonies decided that their safety and happiness required that they enslave Africans and wage war against "the merciless Indian Savages." This made it clear that the American people did not believe that their governments should secure the equal natural rights of slaves and Indians.
Sarson explains:
The authors of the Declaration of Independence never intended that the self-evident truths of equality and unalienable rights be indiscriminately applied under the government and law of the United States. Absolute equality and liberty existed in the state of nature. . . . But the social contract nevertheless required that perfect natural equality and liberty be abandoned in civil government and society. . . . For although the authors of the Declaration meant that all people were created equal as self-sovereign individuals and with equal endowments of rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they did not mean that all were born with equal natural or civil capacities or competencies. Some were men, some were not. Some were white, some were not. Some were economically independent, some were not. Some were intelligent, educated, industrious, sober, and generally virtuous, some were not. Most of the founders believed that these inequalities of capacity and competence should translate into civil governance and law. . . . In short, the authors of the Declaration of Independence envisioned a natural law republic that would secure the safety and happiness of its own citizens, not a natural rights republic that would institute equality and liberty for all (207-208).
Sarson says that this Declaration of Independence as it was originally understood by its signers is not worth celebrating because it supported a governmental system that denied the human rights of slaves, women, poor people, and Indians. But within a few years after the Declaration was issued, many Americans--particularly those arguing for the abolition of slavery--stressed the "self-evident truths" of the second paragraph and interpreted the Declaration as a charter for universal equality and liberty. That Declaration is worth celebrating, Sarson says, but only if we understand that what we're celebrating contradicts the original meaning of the Declaration.
Sarson agrees with those historians who criticize the signers of the Declaration of Independence for denying that government should enforce equal liberty for all people. But there's a clever twist in Sarson's reasoning because he argues that the Declaration of Independence does affirm equal natural rights--but only in the state of nature before the institution of government. Because once human beings enter civil society, become "one people," and establish government, it is "the Right of the People" to recognize that human beings are unequal in their natural and social capacities and traits, and therefore they will have unequal roles in society. Some will be masters because they are white Europeans, and others will be slaves because they are black Africans. Men will take the leading roles in society, while women will be assigned to the domestic roles of wife and mother. The Europeans will expand their territorial claims on the American continent by expelling the American Indians from the western territories. Thus it is the right of the American people to deprive some people of their life, their liberty, and their pursuit of happiness if that is necessary for the safety and happiness of the American people.
I disagree. I think that when we celebrate the Declaration as teaching that just government must secure the natural rights of equal liberty for all people under that government, we really are celebrating the original meaning of the Declaration. Even though that securing of natural human rights is never fully achieved, it does constitute what Abraham Lincoln called "the standard maxim for a free society" that can be approximated over time.
In support of that conclusion, I have argued that denying the equal liberty of slaves, women, and American Indians violates the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
There are lots of weaknesses in Sarson's arguments for his reading of the Declaration. But here I'll point only to the most obvious one. If the interpretation of the Declaration as a promise of equal liberty for all men is mistaken, because that's not how it was understood by those who wrote and signed the Declaration, then we would expect that the signers of the document would have corrected this mistaken interpretation. In particular, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams lived exactly 50 years after the Declaration was first issued because amazingly they both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration. So Jefferson and Adams had 50 years in which they could have corrected the mistaken interpretation of the Declaration advanced by the abolitionists. But while Sarson quotes extensively from the founders, he cannot quote any remark from the founders that makes this correction.
There was one occasion in particular where Jefferson could have made this correction, and he didn't. Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806) was a distinguished African-American mathematician and scientist. He was the child of a free black mother and a formerly enslaved father from Africa. In 1791, he was appointed to the surveying team that laid out the District of Columbia. In the same year, he wrote a long letter to Jefferson, who was then the Secretary of State.
In that letter, Banneker condemned slavery as an unjust violation of "the rights of human nature." He also thought that Jefferson had clearly seen "the injustice of a state of slavery" when he wrote the Declaration of Independence:
it was now Sir, that your abhorrence thereof was so excited; that you publicly held forth this true and invaluable doctrine, which is worthy to be recorded and remembered in all succeeding ages. "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, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
But then he accused Jefferson of contradicting these principles of equal liberty "in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves." Banneker attributed this to Jefferson's "narrow prejudices" about black people.
Along with his letter, Banneker enclosed a copy of his Almanac that he had just prepared, which showed his impressive knowledge of mathematics and astronomy.
Here is Jefferson's letter in response:
No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talent equal to those of the other colours of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence both in Africa and America. I can add with truth that no body wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the condition both of their body and mind to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstances which cannot be neglected, will admit.--I have taken the liberty of sending your almanac to Monsieur de Condorcet, Secretary of the Academy of sciences at Paris, and member of the Philanthropic society because I considered it as a document to which you whole colour had a right for their justification against the doubts which have been entertained of them.
Both of these letters were published as a separate pamphlet in Philadelphia in 1792.
If Sarson were right in his interpretation of the original meaning of the Declaration of Independence, then we would expect Jefferson to explain to Banneker that the natural rights to equal liberty apply to the state of nature but not to civil society, and that it is "the Right of the People" to establish a government that deprives slaves of their natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But Jefferson says nothing like that. He is just silent about Banneker's interpretation of the Declaration as declaring the injustice of slavery.
Sarson says nothing about Banneker's letter and Jefferson's response. And so he does not allow his reader to see that Jefferson refused to take the opportunity to confirm Sarson's interpretation of the Declaration of Independence.
To me that's clear evidence that Sarson's interpretation of the Declaration distorts its original meaning as understood by Jefferson and others.
That means that we can celebrate the Declaration of Independence today as originally understood by the American founders as a charter of human liberty and equality.
And we need not be distracted by Trump's celebration of himself.
