To Whom It May Concern
The Declaration is in four parts and all of them have some bearing on the present.
The first explains why the Declaration is issued. The words are so familiar that their significance is gone; but if we remember that days were spent in revision and the effect of every word was calculated, we can assume that there are no accidents, that the Declaration is precise and says what it means. Here is the passage:
"When, in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
The first official utterance of America is based on human necessity—not the necessity of princes or powers.
It is the utterance of a people, not a nation. It invokes first Nature and then Nature's God as lawgivers.
It asks independence and equality—in the same phrase; the habit of nations, to enslave or be enslaved, is not to be observed in the New World.
And finally "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind"; the first utterance of America is addressed not to the nations of the world, but to the men and women who inhabit them.
Human—people—Nature—Nature's God—mankind.
These are the words boldly written across the map of America. A century and a half of change have not robbed one of them of their power—because they were not fad-words, not the catchwords of a revolution; they were words with cold clear meanings—and they destroyed feudalism in Europe for a hundred and sixty years.