Near the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson reflected on the meaning of the Declaration of Independence. Here are his words from a letter he wrote to Richard Lee on May 8, 1825;
“When forced, therefore, to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion.”
Jefferson’s description is so simple it downplays the lasting significance of the most important document to come from the Founding. The Declaration is all the things Jefferson mentions, and more.
The Declaration of Independence is the official articulation and explanation behind Richard Henry Lee’s Resolution, which called for independence (more on that here). The Continental Congress had heard Lee’s Resolution on June 7th, they voted in favor of it on July 2nd, and then approved the Declaration of Independence on July 4th.
The philosophical ideas of the Declaration have forged a new world. The principle of “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” was then revolutionary. Our Founders were declaring something different. These were not new ideas, but it was going to be new in practice in such a large scale.
The longest part of the Declaration is the listing of specific grievances, 27 in all, against King George III. The infractions range from truly authoritarian, such as “He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly” and “For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world,” to overtly poetic, in “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.”
The red-hot rhetoric served a specific purpose. Historian Dumas Malone writes, “[Jefferson] was wandering in no mist of doubt, seeking the totality of truth. His task as a statesman was to grasp the essence of the controversy, and as the penman of independence to set it forth – not in neutral shades but in bold contrasts of black and white.”1
Timing is so very important in politics. The time to strike for independence in colonial American was in the summer of 1776. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was out and wildly popular, Virginia had declared herself independent, and Massachusetts was already at war. The time was right, and Jefferson was able to capture it with, as Jefferson said, “the proper tone and spirit.”
Today the Declaration of Independence is still celebrated and revered as one of the world’s most consequential documents. Of all the significant events and dates that contributed to the birth of our country, (Jamestown, Yorktown, the Constitutional Convention, etc.) we hold July 4th as the one day to close-up shop and celebrate not just the creation of the United States but also the creation of the era where self-government finally took the reins of civilization.
1Jefferson & His Time: Volume 1; Jefferson the Virginian by Dumas Malone