Tag

Declaration of Independence

Franklin and Jefferson Blog

Franklin and Jefferson

When Thomas Jefferson submitted his fair copy of the Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress, he was unnerved at the prospect of members of the Congress, scrutinizing his document and suggesting changes. While the Congress was mulling over Jefferson’s Fair Copy of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)—who himself was part of the Congress-appointed, five-member committee to…
M. Andrew Holowchak
July 22, 2026
Is Jefferson “The Most Overrated Person in American History”? Blog

Is Jefferson “The Most Overrated Person in American History”?

In American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997), Pauline Maier takes herself to advance the points that Karl Becker wanted to advance in his book on the Declaration, some 70 years earlier, but was prohibited from advancing, because of the conservative time in which he lived. She begins with astonishment that the Declaration of Independence is today treated as…
M. Andrew Holowchak
July 1, 2026
Declarations of Independence: Meanings and Memory Blog

Declarations of Independence: Meanings and Memory

The two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence is an appropriate moment to reflect upon how far Americans, both elites and regular people, have strayed from the principles of the movement for American independence from Britain. At its worst, the popular culture will celebrate the country’s “birthday” with celebrity entertainers performing in “kitschy” Hollywood…
John Devanny
June 29, 2026
Justice Clarence Thomas, Harry Jaffa, and the Declaration of Independence Blog

Justice Clarence Thomas, Harry Jaffa, and the Declaration of Independence

In a speech given on April 15, at the University of Texas, to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Justice Clarence Thomas explained the meaning of formal equality before the law, saying: Despite the multiplicity of laws and customs that reeked of bigotry, it was universally believed among those blacks with whom I lived and who had…
Wanjiru Njoya
June 12, 2026
Distorting the Declaration Blog

Distorting the Declaration

No "conservative" has done more damage to the interpretation of the American past than Harry Jaffa. He spent his career attaching the conservative movement to Abraham Lincoln and more importantly to a distorted version of the Declaration of Independence. Modern conservatism relies on Jaffa's version of the Declaration, and with the 250th anniversary of the adoption of Jefferson's work this…
Abbeville Institute
April 7, 2026
State Sovereignty? Blog

State Sovereignty?

The United States of America, bases its legal argument of national union, and national sovereignty over the individual states; on the  premise that the individual states were never individually sovereign nations unto themselves, and that they united to form a sovereign nation or federal state. However,  investigation reveals that the individual states were indeed founded as (thirteen) fully separate sovereign nations,…
Brian McCandliss
August 25, 2025
Jefferson’s Declaration Blog

Jefferson’s Declaration

On June 9, 1776, the Continental Congress appointed a committee of five men—Virginian Thomas Jefferson, New Englander John Adams, Pennsylvanian Benjamin Franklin, New Yorker Robert Livingston, and New Englander Roger Sherman—to draft a declaration of American independence. The motivation for the document—the one given to the committee by the Congress—is certainly conveyed in the opening salvo of Jefferson’s draft: to…
M. Andrew Holowchak
July 7, 2025
What are We Celebrating on July 4? Blog

What are We Celebrating on July 4?

On July 4, Americans will have a day of celebration with cookouts, parades, and fireworks.  Yet how many really understand just what we are celebrating?  Why is there a Pride Month but not an American Patriotism Month? What was actually the purpose of the Declaration of Independence?  What specifically did it state?  Why do our unalienable freedoms that were enshrined…
Carole Hornsby Haynes
July 4, 2025
“A Most Uncertain Response to the Declaration of Independence . . . .” Blog

“A Most Uncertain Response to the Declaration of Independence . . . .”

The interesting thing about the relationship of post-colonial American literature to the events of 1776 is the way in which a pious regard for the nation’s founders and for the enterprise which they set in motion has, among our writers, co-existed with a most uncertain response to the Declaration of Independence itself and to the loftiest aspirations which gather upon…
M.E. Bradford
February 3, 2025
George III and the Revolution Blog

George III and the Revolution

In Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), Jefferson writes of King George III’s unwillingness to use his “negative” to abort unjust proposals. Jefferson again writes similarly is in his first draft of Declaration of Independence, two years later. Jefferson here lists a “long train of abuses & usurpations,” at the hand of King George III. Those, he…
M. Andrew Holowchak
October 1, 2024
My New Favorite Song Blog

My New Favorite Song

I have a new favorite song.  I discovered it during the promotional build-up to the annual football contest between two worthy academic institutions: The University of Michigan and The Ohio State University. I don’t know whether the song has a title, but it is sung to the tune of “ The Old Grey Mare” (she ain’t what she used to…
Arnie Sidman
July 23, 2024
A Book on Jefferson’s Declaration That is About Everything but the Declaration Blog

A Book on Jefferson’s Declaration That is About Everything but the Declaration

A review of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (Liveright, 2015) by Danielle Allen “The Declaration of Independence matters because it helps us see that we cannot have freedom without equality,” writes Danielle Allen in the first sentence of her prologue. Its claim to freedom, in fact, rests on “it so clear-eyed about…
M. Andrew Holowchak
July 12, 2024
Invoking the Rule of Completeness on Independence Day Blog

Invoking the Rule of Completeness on Independence Day

Political hucksters—both Left and Right—are dusting off copies of the Declaration of Independence in preparation for the July 4th observances.  At most, they are making sure to quote correctly the language of paragraph two which speaks of self-evident truths about liberty and equality. Seldom does a modern rhetorician even glance at the remainder of the document. On this Independence Day,…
William J. Watkins
July 4, 2024
The GOAT of Political Documents Blog

The GOAT of Political Documents

“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 & 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…
M. Andrew Holowchak
July 2, 2024
Profiteering from Farcicality Blog

Profiteering from Farcicality

In August 2019, The New York Times, prompted by a notion of Nikole Hannah-Jones, began its 1619 Project—an attempt to rewrite completely America’s history by considering the year 1619 as the real birth of the American nation. In the words of New York Times Magazine editor-in-chief, Jay Silverstein: 1619 is not a year that most Americans know as a notable…
M. Andrew Holowchak
November 20, 2023
Jefferson and Moral Equality Blog

Jefferson and Moral Equality

In the prior section and independent of my argument on Jefferson’s first draft of his Declaration, I have shown that Jefferson observed there to be a rough sense of human equality while living in Colonial America, which did not have the social stratification of European countries. Yet the Colonists embraced the institution of slavery, where people, Whites and Blacks, were…
M. Andrew Holowchak
July 13, 2023
Jefferson and Equality Blog

Jefferson and Equality

From "The disease of liberty": Thomas Jefferson on History and Liberty (Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2023) “All men are created equal,” I aim to show, is the axial “self-evidence truth” that Thomas Jefferson expresses in his Declaration of Independence. What, then, is one to make of the curious, unobvious claim? That cannot be answered until one expiscates what Jefferson means…
M. Andrew Holowchak
July 5, 2023
July 4 is About History Blog

July 4 is About History

The Hope is Southerners Will Recall. The Greater Hope is That Yankees Will Learn. Occasionally, if you tune your ears toward the radio or television with the constant chat and talk, you will pick up certain casual remarks such as just happened to be carried by David Webb the other day.  “We had a ‘Civil War’ and then moved on,”…
Paul H. Yarbrough
July 4, 2023
Lincoln’s Repudiation of the Declaration of Independence Blog

Lincoln’s Repudiation of the Declaration of Independence

Perhaps the biggest falsehood ever pedaled about Abraham Lincoln is that he was devoted to the principles of the Declaration of Independence.  Exactly the opposite is true; he repudiated every one of the main principles of the Declaration with his words and, more importantly, his actions.  In our time the odd and ahistorical writings of Harry Jaffa and his “Straussian”…
Thomas DiLorenzo
July 5, 2022
The Professor and the Proposition Blog

The Professor and the Proposition

As the “Exceptional Nation” totters and pratfalls further toward perdition, some on what is commonly, if not entirely accurately, known as the “Right” are calling for the various factions to unite beneath a single banner – a band of brothers, as it were – to battle shoulder-to-shoulder against the Bolshevik plague-beast. Several such tocsins have resounded from the San Bernardino…
Enoch Cade
May 17, 2021
Richard Henry Lee Blog

Richard Henry Lee

Richard Henry Lee was a patriot, Anti-Federalist, and statesman from his “country,” Virginia.  He led the charge for independence in 1776 and was a powerful figure in Virginia political life.  He served one term as president of the Continental Congress and was elected a United States Senator from Virginia immediately after the ratification of the Constitution.  His role in the…
Brion McClanahan
July 2, 2018
The Latest 18th Century Fake News Blog

The Latest 18th Century Fake News

The "fake news" pejorative has become commonplace in modern public discourse, so much so that social media outlets have taken it upon themselves to "police" so-called "fake news" stories and warn people about their dangers. This was largely due to the supposed impact "fake news" had on Trump supporters in 2016. To these self-appointed gatekeepers of truth, honesty, and the…
Brion McClanahan
April 27, 2017
Thomas Jefferson, Southern Man of Letters, Part II Clyde Wilson Library

Thomas Jefferson, Southern Man of Letters, Part II

Several generations after his lifetime Jefferson became best known, as he still is, of course, for these words "All men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Here is another important lesson in understanding history. The American Founders tend to be treated as…
Clyde Wilson
November 11, 2015
South Carolina’s “Long Train of Abuses” Review Posts

South Carolina’s “Long Train of Abuses”

Just as we have always been told that America was founded by Pilgrims in search of religious freedom, we have also been told that Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence was based on British philosopher John Locke’s theories of “natural rights” and “social contract”. Jefferson was influenced by Enlightenment ideas and ideals but the indictments against the king…
Becky Calcutt
June 30, 2015