Thomas Jefferson was only thirty-two when, in the spring of 1775, he was chosen by the Virginia legislature, sitting as a revolutionary convention in defiance of the royal governor, to be a member of his state’s delegation to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Jefferson’s views had appeared rather radical to his more conservative colleagues back home, but in Philadelphia he came in contact with men from all of the colonies whose ideas about independence from Great Britain paralleled and confirmed his own. As events during the winter of 1775–76 hastened toward what he felt was the inevitable rupture, Jefferson worked steadily and successfully behind the scenes to bring about a unified posture toward the parent country. When, in June 1776, a definitive break seemed imminent, he was asked to join a committee already formed of Benjamin Franklin and John Adams to draw up a statement explaining to the world the action should it occur.
Franklin and Adams, although older and politically more experienced, chose Jefferson to produce a draft of a statement, which they would then present—after any necessary changes—to the Continental Congress for approval. In fact, the changes were few, and the Declaration was and is largely the work of Jefferson. The Congress approved it, and it was promulgated and signed by the delegates on July 4, the date that is reckoned as the birthday of the United States as a “separate and equal nation.”
There are three good reasons to read The Declaration of Independence. One is, on the simplest level, patriotic. It behooves all Americans to read the half-dozen founding documents of the republic to which they belong, in order to remind themselves of what it stands for. This would probably be true were the Declaration gibberish.
It is not gibberish, of course. Franklin and Adams were right to choose Jefferson as the author of the piece; his talents uniquely qualified him for the task. Not only was he a graceful and elegant writer but he was also well versed in the literature of political thought. The Declaration is the work of an author who is both a scholar of his subject and a supreme stylist. The combination makes the document enormously effective.
Thus the second reason to read the Declaration is because of what it says not just to Americans but also to everyone who would understand how and why governments are formed among men.
The third reason to read the Declaration is that it is very short—only three pages. This makes it easy to practice a kind of reading that we rarely do even when reading poetry, in which we read something over and over, much of it out loud, listening for nuances of meaning, making absolutely sure we understand the meaning before we go on to the next sentence, asking ourselves the three leading questions that good readers always must ask themselves: What does it say? Is what it says true? and What of it? (That is: What are the main or salient points of the argument? Are the conclusions to which they move logically correct, and do you feel that these are true? And what follows from either your agreement or disagreement?)
Indeed, not all of the Declaration, even though it is only three pages long, need be read in this intensely analytical manner. More than half of the document consists of a list of “injuries and usurpations” by “the present King of Great Britain,” all having, as Jefferson declares, “in direct object, the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.” Regarding these grievances, which involve matters of fact, you may reserve judgment unless you are yourself a scholar of the Revolutionary Period in American history. Read the list of grievances, assume they are valid, then return to the first page of the Declaration. That is the meat of it; everything else depends on it.
The fundamental doctrine of the right of revolution, or at least of secession from a tyrannical overlord, is based on Jefferson’s (correct) reading of John Locke’s Essay on Civil Government. The doctrine, in a nutshell, holds that a people who are now tyrannized by a government that may once have been legitimate have every right to rebel, or at least secede, in order to protect themselves.
Jefferson could have left it at that; but he did not, and to his ambition we owe some of the most trenchant sentences in the history of political writing. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” he wrote. All men are equal; all have natural rights; these include life, liberty, and “the pursuit of happiness”; governments derive their justice from the consent of those who are governed; and when a government ceases to have the consent of the governed it becomes, in the most profound sense, illegitimate. All of this and more is contained in the ringing words of that single first page.
Commentaries many hundreds of pages long have been written about that page and those sharp, memorable sentences. Some day you may wish to read some of the commentators. But do not put off reading the Declaration because you have not read anything about what it means. Jefferson wrote it for everyone, and everyone includes you. He wanted to say something that he hoped everyone would understand and agree with. I think he succeeded.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
1809–1865
The Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a backwoods cabin several miles south of Hodgenville, Kentucky. His mother, described as “stoop-shouldered, thin-breasted, sad”—characteristics that her son inherited—died when the boy was nine. His stepmother, however, was kind to him, sympathizing with his efforts to obtain what small education he received, placing no obstacles in his path even if she could not help him to follow it. He used to walk miles to borrow a book, read it by candlelight, and then walk the same miles back again to return it. Such industry marked all that he did.
He became a lawyer and was soon attracted to politics. His career, of course, is known by everyone: how, after a long series of failures and disappointments, he was nominated by the Republicans for the presidency in the election of 1860, and, in a divided election, was chosen by a minority of the electors. He entered upon his duties as president of the United States in March 1861; three weeks later the Civil War erupted, partly if not wholly because of his enormous unpopularity in the South, where he had been born.
The Civil War was one of the first total wars, waged by both sides with every available resource. The North had more resources, of men and money as well as weapons, and in the end it won. The South had a spirit that for a long time the North could not match, which was why the war lasted four years.
Lincoln, better than anyone, knew what the North needed, which was not only guns but also brave men to fire them, and not just slogans but words full of meaning to inspire the brave men. He sought the brave men and found them, in the persons of Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, Sedgwick, and many thousands of lesser-known heroes. He undertook to provide the words himself, and insofar as they served to shape and focus the Union effort, he may be said to have won the war with them. At any rate they were wonderful words, the likes of which no politician has said since, and very few before him.
More than anything else, the words of Lincoln had to do with the legitimacy of the war and with its justice. This question obsessed him, for he knew that he—and millions of his countrymen—could not win the war if they did not think they were in the right. The biggest battle of the war took place at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 1, 2, and 3, 1863. For the first time, the Army of the Potomac met General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and defeated it. President Lincoln was asked to come down to Gettysburg from Washington by train on November 18, 1863, to deliver a few remarks at the dedication of the military cemetery at the site of the battle.