It’s the Fourth of July, and because this year marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, there have been extra banners, new stories, celebrations, and fireworks. 

I am grateful to have been born an American. It’s also true that I am displeased with many of the government’s recent actions and am currently worried about the economy, the war, political polarization, and the erosion of some of our democratic institutions and traditions.

I’m glad that the American colonists overthrew their imperial rulers. I celebrate the republican form of government that was created. Most of all, I appreciate many of the sentiments expressed in the Declaration.

I also think we should be honest about our history.

A mobile “Freedom Truck” currently located on the national mall will be traveling the country. Created by PragerU and Hillsdale College in partnership with the White House and featuring videos with Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hesgeth, it has generated controversy. Some people have expressed concerns about the exhibit.

The exhibit smoothes over some of the complexities and less positive aspects of our past. There’s also an AI generated video of John Adams that has Adams saying a phrase associated with a conservative media personality. It includes a Voices of Liberty section with supposed quotes from current everyday Americans that appears to have been fabricated. Beth English, executive director of the Organization of American Historians, called it “a nationalist spectacle” rather than thoughtful public engagement with the meaning of the 250th anniversary.

Everyone views the past through their own lens, of course, and that lens can be affected by the times they live in. Right now, I feel wary about violent uprisings in the U.S., especially after the events of January 6, 2021. That’s when a mob of supporters of President Trump stormed the Capitol trying to prevent certification of the legitimate election of Joseph Biden. The mob illegally broke in, trampled and beat officers with bats and pipes (Britannia), vandalized and looted, and sought out their enemies, including the “traitor” Vice President Mike Pence. 

One’s view of violent resistance depends on whether you find the cause to be just. Few doubt that victims of the Holocaust or enslaved people were justified in trying to resist their captivity in whatever ways possible. 

Undoubtedly the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and believers in QAnon felt the violent insurrection to “Stop the Steal” of the election was justified. However, recounts in closely contested states confirmed Biden’s victory, dozens of separate state and federal courts dismissed cases disputing the election count, including judges appointed by Trump. Nonpartisan groups  have fact-checked Trump’s lies about the election results. Evidence suggests Trump and his advisors knew that he lost fair and square and intentionally lied and pursued desperate and illegal  measures, even pressuring election officials, including the Republican secretary of state in Georgia to “find 11,780 votes.” 

The January 6 violent insurrection resulted in deaths and increased polarization in the country. Donald Trump and the insurrectionists intentionally sowed mistrust in our democratic institutions – even before the 2020 election even took place. I feel confident that in the future the vast majority of future Americans will agree it was not a just cause. 

In 1776 and the years leading up to the Declaration of Independence, American patriots also sometimes used intimidation and violence. There are some differences with the January 6 insurrectionists, however. For one, the colonists’ campaign began with trying to improve relations with Britain, and it took place over years, starting around 1765 when Britain stopped its policy of salutary neglect of the colonies. 

Patriot leaders used a variety of legal methods to express their unhappiness with the new taxes like the Stamp Act. They repeatedly petitioned the colonial governors and sent a representative to deliver a respectful Olive Branch Petition to try to avoid war. They expressed a willingness to pay their share for defense of the colonies, but asked for a voice – at least some representation – in matters of taxation decided by Parliament. Other protest methods included public meetings, demonstrations, civil disobedience, and a colony-wide nonconsumption movement. 

Still, it’s true that there were times when colonial mobs – even years before the Revolution began – impatiently resorted to violence. In North Carolina in 1770, an angry group of Regulators ravaged the home of a hated corrupt official, paraded their enemy through the streets, destroyed shops, stole goods, and disrupted court proceedings on two days, even placing excrement on the judge’s chair. In Boston, locals taunted and threw stones at British soldiers.

Why Revolution

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes,” explained the Declaration of Independence. Its authors asserted that a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires they should declare the causes which impel them.” Justifying their dissolving of political bands with Britain, the Second Continental Congress listed a “long train of abuses.”

Basically, many American colonists were no longer happy with the relationship with Great Britain. An empire always looks to benefit from its colonies and Britain was now asking the colonies to pay more to support and protect the empire from European and Native American threats with a series of new taxes. The King was tightening his control over colonial trade and moving to suppress the colonists’ rebelliousness with new heavy-handedness related to the judicial system and colonial legislatures. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has a great annotated Declaration of Independence explaining each of its grievances.

I don’t want to oversimplify the revolution. People had different reasons to want independence. The cry of no taxation without representation came in part because many were enamored with (classical) ideas about republicanism and Locke’s social contract. Many were fed up with corruption by powerful and unaccountable officials, many of whom acquired their wealth or power from connections rather than through merit or consent of the governed. Many patriot supporters had economic motives. Some religious groups, including Baptists and Presbyterians, disliked being forced to pay to support the established Anglican Church and wanted full religious freedom. New Englanders were incensed by the closing of Boston’s port and the presence and behavior of British troops who they had to house.

Not all patriots had goals I like. Some land-hungry American colonists on the western frontier were incensed by the Royal Proclamation Act of 1763, which barred them from taking Indian lands west of the Appalachian mountains. The Declaration referred to the danger posed by “merciless Indian savages.” Many tribes hoped the British would win the war – yet some fought with the American colonists. (It was complicated.)

Many enslaved people rooted for the British, too, especially after the royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, promised freedom for all slaves who joined the British army. One thousand or more did so. 

Although some patriot leaders condemned slavery, slaveholders certainly didn’t subscribe to ideas about equality or freedom for all. Representatives from Southern states insisted that Jefferson’s originally drafted passage condemning slavery be deleted. 

None of the Founding Fathers envisioned citizenship or greater respect for women. 

Still, there is much to laud about the language and legacies of the Declaration. First and foremost, there’s what has become its most important phrase:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

These were fairly radical ideas. At a time when monarchies based on inheritance and tyrannies dominated much of the world order, the colonial patriots proposed a republic. And as for the purpose of government, Americans declared that rather than existing to rule over people, governments existed to serve the people. Governments were legitimate only with the consent of the governed, which should come through some form of representation. Governments should support the basic human desires for freedom and happiness. 

Many Americans thought these ideas – and independence from Britain – worth fighting for. Over 230,000 Americans served in the Continental Army. An estimated 8624 Americans were killed in combat, and in this period with limited medical knowledge, 18,000 more soldiers died from diseases like smallpox and dysentery. Tens of thousands of British, French, Hessian, and Indians also died. An eight-year war caused suffering and personal and economic sacrifices both for soldiers and their families. 

And because not all colonists supported independence, the war caused serious internal tensions with Loyalists, making it almost a civil war. Harsh treason laws made neutrality impossible.

Legacies

The Declaration and the American Revolution had a mostly positive legacy. They influenced other independence movements against imperial powers, which often asserted they too deserved the rights of “Free and Independent states.” Indeed, the American Revolution seemed to usher in an age of revolution – including the French Revolution, Haitian rebels battling both French rule and slavery, an Irish movement to throw off British rule, and anti-imperialism in many Latin American countries. (There were some unfortunate efforts, too, such as those by the Confederate States of America and the white minority of Southern Rhodesia). 

The commonly understood meaning of the Declaration changed over time, says Stanford historian Jack Rakove. In the beginning, the Continental Congress meant that American colonists as a [group of] people had the same rights to self-government as other nations; that’s what they meant by “equal,” not individual equality. But especially in the decades after the revolution, Americans came to understand it as a profound statement of natural, inalienable, individual rights.

This idea of individual equality and freedom has become the promise of America. 

African Americans immediately perceived the significance of the Declaration’s language for their circumstances. Prince Hall, a free Black person living in Boston, presented to the Massachusetts Legislature a petition for freedom on behalf of seven enslaved people in January 1777:

[Y]our Petitioners apprehend that they have, in common with all other Men, a natural & inalienable right to that freedom, which the great Parent of the Universe hath bestowed equally on all Mankind, & which they have never forfeited by any compact or agreement whatever – But they were unjustly dragged, by the cruel hand of Power, from their dearest friends, & some of them even torn from the Embraces of their tender Parents….

Substantial steps were needed before the Declaration’s promises would be redeemed. First, the Founding Fathers had to set up a government that actually served the needs of Americans. The Articles of Confederation proved insufficient, so the leaders went back to the drawing board. In the Preamble to the new Constitution, they reinforced the idea of self-governance by saying, “We the People of the United States… do ordain and establish this Constitution….”  

Which kinds of people were part of the “people” referred to in the Preamble? It took a long time before many groups of Americans – indeed, the majority – were truly included. It was decades before many non-property-holding white men actually had a voice in voting, and much longer before formerly enslaved people and women did. It took many decades before that Constitution included amendments guaranteeing that a state could not deprive any person equal protection of the laws. It would take a century for serious efforts to implement that amendment.

In my view, the best legacy of the Declaration of Independence is how it has inspired many social movements in the U.S. to eliminate discrimination such as those based on race or ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or disabilities.These groups regularly referred to the Declaration.

For example, on July 4, 1876, on the centennial of the Declaration, Susan B. Anthony read a Declaration of the Rights of Women of the United States that echoed the Declaration by listing numerous grievances – not against the King, but against men for denying women their civil and political rights.

We declare our faith in the principles of self-government; our full equality with man in natural rights; that woman was made first for her own happiness, with the absolute right to herself – to all the opportunities and advantages life affords for her complete development…. We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever.

Reassured by the language of this foundational document, in the years after 1776, many people facing disadvantages or barriers believed they had rights and courageously acted to get them enforced. Many Americans have chosen to ally with their fellow citizens, loved ones, and neighbors in those efforts.

“All men are created” provides hope that all children will have equal opportunities and the freedom to pursue their dreams. 

Happy Fourth of July.