How the Declaration of Independence United a Nation and Defined Liberty

This post is excerpted from the new book, National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster).

To the delegates of the Continental Congress, the Declaration of Independence was not an abstract idea. It was a pressing administrative task following the vote for independence on July 2, 1776, essential for legitimizing America’s struggle against King George III and Parliament. It also served as a tool to secure foreign support, particularly from France.

The Declaration was also a covenant—invoking the Creator and uniting a people to defend against tyranny while preserving traditional rights. Its authority stemmed from a righteous cause. As Congress edited Thomas Jefferson’s draft on July 2 and 3, it refined his argument and made explicit the divine sanction underpinning the document.

Grounded in natural rights theory, English common law, classical thought, and Judeo-Christian theology, the Declaration articulated the eighteenth-century understanding of liberty and equality among men of property and learning. It championed the traditional liberties of Englishmen, distinguishing between positive rights granted by governments and natural rights derived from God. This defense of rights was rooted in man’s inherent dignity, as later articulated by political philosopher Harry Jaffa: rights that could not be “alienated” or surrendered to any authority failing to uphold its responsibilities.

A document as radical as indicting a king and declaring all men equal was also deeply conservative. Liberty was a straightforward concept, but equality was far more complex than Jefferson’s famous phrase suggested. Equality was not an end in itself but a safeguard for liberty—ensuring that God-given rights, both individual and communal, were protected. These arguments, however, were not absolute, especially regarding slavery.

The most impassioned section of Jefferson’s draft was a condemnation of the slave trade, though not slavery itself. Nearly all Founding Fathers, including slaveholders like George Mason, decried chattel slavery as a moral and political evil. In 1765, Mason had written that slavery was the cause of Rome’s “destruction,” calling it an evil “pathetically described by Roman historians.” Jefferson himself had declared in his Summary View of the Rights of British America that “the abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.”

The hypocrisy of a slaveholding society demanding freedom was widely noted in the colonies, often from the pulpit. It was understood that holding fellow humans in bondage while demanding liberty was a contradiction that could not be ignored.