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Understanding: Declarations and Independence
How should we understand the 4th of July? How does it mark independence, and why did a declaration matter? The document speaks for itself on the last question, and this is worth our reflection in our own day, with talk again of regional alienation.
The 4th of July was the date in 1776 on which prominent representatives, from the 13 American colonies, put their signatures to a document proclaiming formal independence from the British Empire. However, if we paid attention to the combined holiday on June 14, Flag Day and the Army Birthday, the colonies had already been at war with the motherland for a year. Victory, recognition by the Empire, was years away and not on the 4th of July. So, on July 4, 1776, was “independence” as an aspiration, not yet realized.
Until July 2, 1776, the official position of the rebel colonies was that the Government was betraying the trust between the sovereign, the King, and his loyal subjects. On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted for independence. Yet, they did not just send a copy of the day’s journal to the colonies and the Crown’s representative. Instead, the 4th saw the signing of a truly revolutionary document.
Why compose a declaration? The Continental Congress needed to secure internal support, set conditions for external support, including within Parliament, and set guard rails, limits on the conditions under which rebellion was justified. So they wrote:
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.
To what do the laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle any people?
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.
Quite a set of rights, and quite a caution as to how far things must go, before moving to independence. “Prudence” is seldom heard in our contemporary discourse. Perhaps understanding prudence, illustrated by the Founders’ example, would help in our current discontents.
Published in Group Writing
“It’s been more than a year since Concord and Lexington. Dammit man, we’re at war! Right now!”
It’s always amazing to go through that list of abuses, too.
This is part of our Group Writing Series under July’s theme of Understanding. If you want to shed light on an event of the past, perhaps the storming of the Bastille in another revolution, you can sign up to do so here.
Yeah. My favorite is this passage;
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
This coulda been written about the Obama Administration.
I bet Obama’s swarm was larger than King George’s.
Unfortunately many people today don’t even know what the Declaration of Independence is. Sigh
Or who we had our freedom from or the significance of 1776 or…just so much more.
I do find the list of grievances interesting. There are several of the accusations against King George that in principle can be said today about the federal government.
I just listened to Mike Rowe’s podcast. It reprised a story he told a couple years ago, about signers of the Declaration of Independence:
http://mikerowe.com/2016/07/otw-onepercenters/
“The EAGLE!!!”
“The Turkey.”
At least the ones who’ve never even heard of it can still be educated. It’s the ones who were taught that the Declaration was a document written by greedy slave-owning white males who were chiefly upset because they were being asked to pay their fair share of taxes who may be beyond reach…
“THE EAGLE!!!”