The Declaration of Independence: An Address

by Winslow Warren

How far the words of the Declaration applied to negro slaves will always be disputed, but that Jefferson intended no exception is to be gathered from his oft-quoted expressions, and from the fact that in the original draft the British Government were severely condemned for establishing slavery here and not repressing the slave trade. The historian Bancroft expressed in his history the Jeffersonian view, saying, “The heart of Thomas Jefferson in writing the Declaration, and of Congress in adopting it, beat for all humanity; the assertion of right was made for all mankind and all coming generations, without any exception whatever, for the proposition which admits of exceptions can never be self-evident.”

It should be added that at that time, North and South, it was the opinion that slavery would soon disappear, and it was only unforeseen inventions which changed the situation. But taking whatever view we please of the intention of the makers in this regard, there can be no question that the Declaration announced important and high ideals for the future. Jefferson emphasized this when he said, “It is indeed an animating thought that while we are securing the rights of ourselves and our posterity we are pointing out the way to struggling nations who wish like us to emerge from their tyrannies also,” and again, “Every man and every body of men on earth possesses the right of self government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature.” And so Charles Sumner later said, “The words that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed are sacred words, full of life-giving energy. Not simply national independence was here proclaimed, but also the primal rights of all mankind.” Abraham Lincoln said, “In these early days the Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all and thought to include all;” and again, “If that Declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book in which we find it and tear it out.” These statements have been echoed and re-echoed by all our great statesmen, from Washington and Adams and Jefferson to Webster, Sumner, and Lincoln; they have even been asserted more than once in political platforms of great parties, and wherever the voice of dissent was feebly raised and doubters found, it was until recent times invariably among the apologists for slavery, or among those who feared interference with it, never by the men whom we of the present day look upon as leaders, or whose interpretation we would ever have been willing to follow.

No one assumes that the Signers foresaw all the temptations and difficulties likely to arise as the nation grew stronger,—that was as impossible as for their wildest dreams to compass its marvellous growth; but they knew full well that the doctrines they asserted would have to meet severe tests and their sublime confidence in the virtue and constancy of the people is the more manifest that they were willing to take the risk of future conditions. If they were wrong in those doctrines, how can we avoid the conclusion that they have been given greater credit for wisdom and foresight than they were justly entitled to, or that the wisdom of all our great statesmen is impugned, who for so many years have asserted and boasted of the truths set forth.

What the Revolutionary statesmen urged upon the people as fundamental truths were endorsed as such for more than a century, yet if they were mere phrases or visionary theories, the eloquence and statesmanship of all the great statesmen before our day or in our day, until within a few years, goes for nought.

Rufus Choate, to be sure, in the stress of a political campaign urging the claims to the Presidency of James Buchanan, termed the Declaration “glittering and sounding generalities of natural right;” but this was looked upon as exuberant rhetoric, and the expression was never taken seriously by the country, nor accepted as a matured opinion in contravention of the main doctrines of the Declaration.

More recently men of standing and character have apparently adopted and even extended Choate’s theory,—it has been maintained that governments rest upon the consent of some of the governed, and this is true and not apart from the Declaration if it means that governments rest upon the will of the majority, for that carries with it the right of all to be heard,—but it is absolutely foreign to the Declaration if by “some of the governed” is intended only the more enlightened part of the people,—that is, the minority,—for then it upholds a theory differing not at all from that of an oligarchy, or even a despotism, and does not represent popular government as we have understood it.

It has been said also that the Declaration applied only to civilized peoples, intelligent enough to maintain Republican government, or to those of sufficient capacity to govern themselves and to better themselves by such self-government, or even farther, that the Declaration is untrue as a general proposition and only applied to the existing situation in America in 1776.

No such qualifying phrases can be found in the Declaration itself, and if such were in the minds of the statesmen of the day it is passing strange that men who had the power to express themselves in so lucid and straightforward a way never hinted then or thereafter at any such limitations.

It certainly was not the view of the Continental Congress when at the end of the war it said, “Let it be remembered that it has ever been the pride and boast of America that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature,” and the historic glory of the American Revolution is immensely lessened if we accept the Declaration with qualifications, for on such a theory nothing was established by that war except the ability of the Revolutionists, with the aid of France, to bring the rebellion to a successful conclusion, and to establish here a Republic, the Declaration becoming to the rest of the world of academic interest only as a skilfully worded statement of provincial grievances. We all must desire to ascertain if possible whether those who hold the theories I have stated are correct, and whether our predecessors have been cherishing illusory and transitory principles or eternal truths, for if the former are right our compass now points in a new direction, and we may as well change our course to correspond, even though we reach the well-worn track that European nations have been following since we originally steered away from them.