America Had More Than One Founding and More Than One Set of Founders

Read today, the Declaration of Independence is a freedom document. It stands for absolute human equality and represents the highest ideals of the American republic. On July 4, we celebrate it as much as we celebrate independence itself.

But as scholars like Garry Wills and Pauline Maier have made clear, this relative consensus on the meaning and significance of the Declaration is the product of political, ideological and social developments over time.

“During the first fifteen years following its adoption,” Maier writes in “American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence,” “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 Declaration as we understand it was forged by struggle. Not the struggle with Britain but the struggle within the independent United States for freedom and equality against the weight of the Constitution and the American political system. As you might imagine, the key that shaped our understanding of the Declaration was the fight to end slavery.