The Declaration of Independence: Not a Sacred Text?

Pauline Maier, Historian Who Described Jefferson as ‘Overrated,’ Dies at 75 - Douglas Martin, New York Times:

One of her most influential books, “American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence,” published in 1997, was inspired by a visit to the National Archives in Washington, where in looking at the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, she was struck by the thought that the documents, encased under bulletproof glass, seemed “pretty dead,” she recalled.

The purpose of “American Scripture,” she said, was to chip away at the mythology that had come to surround the Declaration in the 19th century, culminating in Abraham Lincoln’s elevating it to nothing less than “the father of all moral principles.” Her research suggested that people in 1776 saw it less grandly: as simply an announcement that America was now independent and a rationalization as to why.

The Declaration was drafted by a committee, though Jefferson unquestionably wrote most of it. For example, she said, members of the Continental Congress struck down the adjective “unremitting” to characterize the king of England’s “injuries and usurpations,” and replaced it with “repeated.” She wrote that a full quarter of Jefferson’s original text was deleted — “sensibly” so, she said.

Professor Maier dismissed Jefferson’s grand philosophical language, particularly in the oft-quoted second paragraph. She called his reference to “self-evident” truths a distillation of Locke, Milton and others that was “absolutely conventional among Americans of his time.” She called Jefferson “the most overrated person in American history.”

Of particular interest to historians was her examination of some 90 other declarations of independence written by towns, associations, militias and counties in America around the same time. Each listed reasons for separating from England, and together they provided a panorama of political moods at the moment of independence.

Writing in The New York Times Book Review, Richard Alan Ryerson, editor in chief of the Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society, said Professor Maier had succeeded in her argument that the Declaration should not be regarded as “sacred text.” But others disputed her minimizing Jefferson’s importance. “We know nothing that would deny Jefferson the principal credit,” R. S. Hill wrote in National Review.

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Jefferson himself about the Declaration:

Letter to Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
May 8, 1825

[This is an abridged version of the document.]

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 out 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.

All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney ...

Source: Thomas Jefferson: Writings, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Library of America, 1984), 1500-1501.