American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence

"American Scripture is the best book on the origins of the Declaration of Independence. Pauline Maier covers the subject as well as anyone ever did. She builds the context for the declaration. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter One important contribution Pauline Maier made was to show that the declaration wasn’t that original. She shows that preceding the actual writing of the declaration, there were about 80 or 90 declarations issued by small groups and colonies. She also points out that the draft by Jefferson was amended quite considerably by the Congress. Maybe 40 per cent of his draft was taken away and replaced. The United States was founded on an ideal. As for the lie, I wouldn’t use that term. Hannah-Jones is referring, of course, to slavery. But there was slavery all over the world in 1776. Slavery had existed for thousands and thousands of years without substantial criticism. People in the eighteenth century, all over the world, took slavery and indentured labor for granted. The American Revolution, and its assertion that all men are created equal, created the first anti-slavery movement in the history of the world. The first meeting of anti-slavery advocates was held in Philadelphia in 1775. That’s not coincidental. The Revolution sparked an American anti-slavery movement. “The Declaration of Independence, which is what we celebrate on the Fourth of July, is America’s saving grace because it is what holds us together” The United States did not end slavery immediately, but they did end it in the North. Slavery in the North was not like in Virginia, where 40 per cent of society was enslaved or South Carolina, where 60 per cent of the population was enslaved. Nonetheless, at the time of the Revolution, slavery existed in the Northern colonies. 14 per cent of New York City was enslaved. 12 per cent of my own state of Rhode Island was enslaved. The Revolution and the declaration led to slavery being abolished in all of the Northern States by 1804. It was grandfathered in, but the legal support for slavery disappeared. That was a revolutionary development in human history. To argue otherwise is to ignore the context of the past. That’s right. The Revolution created the anti-slavery movement. It took another 80 years to finally end slavery, with the Civil War. But in 1776, at lot of people thought that slavery would die a natural death. Indications of that in Virginia, for example, led many to the illusion that slavery would be wiped off of the United States map. We know they were wrong, therefore we indict them for not knowing the future; I think that’s the wrong way to write about history. But, nonetheless, that’s the mood we’re in right now and there is not much you can do about it, except to put the past in context."