The Declaration of Independence of US - Research Paper Example

?“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.” With these words Thomas Jefferson began the Declaration of Independence. He set out the reasons that the Founding Fathers in the young colonies of the Americas used to justify their rebellion against the British government in setting out on their own as an independent nation. These reasons were high-minded and, on the surface at least, principled in their approach to political and economic freedoms, as they relied on notions of self-determination, economic and political equality, and philosophical justification of a right to be who one wants to be. Unfortunately, the words are also almost entirely false as a guide for actual guarantees of the kinds of freedoms espoused in the document, at least as such guarantees might have applied to anyone in the colonial society who was not, like Jefferson, a white, male, wealthy landowner with political and economic connections. In fact, even as Jefferson penned the words, the formal and informal seats of power in the colonies were occupied by men who owned slaves, controlled wealth, and abused the rights of women. How then can Jefferson justify using the words? In this brief essay, the approach of Jefferson and the ruling class that founded the nation to the ideals of political and economic freedoms and equality that they argued for will be reviewed in order to show how they violated the very terms established as reasons for their revolution. Specifically, the ways in which Jefferson and other founding fathers acted against the words of the Declaration in regards to slaves, women and the non-wealthy working classes will be reviewed. Following a review of their actions toward each of these constituent groups, a reevaluation of the language of the Declaration will be conducted and a summary analysis of the ultimate value of the founding principles contained in it will be offered. Although it is difficult to argue against the eloquence of the political principles contained in Jefferson’s words in the Declaration, it is easy to see hypocrisy in his application of those words to the actual realities of his own family and community. In fact, as Damon Root argues there was a gap between espoused principles and political practices that resulted in an almost perfect paradox as realized in the person and figure of Jefferson. Nowhere was this gap more readily seen than on the issue of slavery. Root claims “The celebrated author of the Declaration of Independence, which famously declares that ‘all men are created equal’ and are born with the inalienable rights to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ … was also a slaveholder, a man whose livelihood was rooted in the subjugation of hundreds of human beings, including members of his wife’s family and his own.” Having penned words which seemed to indicate that he believed in a form of basic equality among all persons, Jefferson lived a life which did not square with those words because he held in his formal possession as a legal and professional matter the actual freedoms of a large number of persons, both men and women. He owned them and could do with them as he pleased, including – among other things – utilizing their physical labor for his economic benefit and utilizing their bodies for his sexual enjoyment. That mere fact, without regard to what kind of slave owner Jefferson actually was, whether he was kind or considerate to those who came under his purview, is enough to suggest that Jefferson either did not take his own words seriously or he believed that they had some application to the broader society, such as the international community, but not to himself. Any other conclusion would require one to find Jefferson simply being an outright hypocrite. Of course, this is one possible interpretation for his actions, and there were those, even in his day, who reached for it. Root quotes the English essayist Samuel Johnson, who noticed the discrepancy and asked “How is it… that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?” While Root also goes on to suggest that Jefferson ultimately had larger objectives in mind for his development of the Declaration than simply attempting to promote an extension of political freedoms – that, for example, he espoused political his ideas primarily in order to remove monarchical rules and establish republican government without regard to how that rhetoric would change his own society if applied – it must be asked why Jefferson thought it was acceptable to use such words to justify his own actions but would not allow those same words to be used against him by others who had similar grievances. Root quotes Frederick Douglass to formalize this objection, who asked why a slave should believe an argument that men are entitled to liberty when he does not even have control over his own body. Just as no man will accept that slavery is right for himself, we may ask why Jefferson thought it was right for other. Further, we may look at Jefferson’s actions rather than his mere words and ask “why should anyone listen to what Master Jefferson … had to say about liberty and equality?” Of course, slavery was not the only the example of discrepancy between words and actions found in the Jefferson’s rhetoric. The treatment of women in the colonies, too, showed a basic rejection of the political principles which were argued for in the Declaration. Freedman claims that the exclusion of women from the Declaration was done almost without thought. Women were shut out of public life. They did not vote, hold office, or even attend town meetings. Jefferson did not mention women in any of his drafts. Later he wrote that American women were ‘too wise to wrinkle their foreheads with politics.’ (71) The paternalism evidenced in this view is obvious. While women were not owned, as slaves were, they were thought to informally belong to the men in their lives, and men such as Jefferson thought that they could behave towards them as they pleased, at least as far as their political and economic situations were concerned. One may easily imagine Jefferson smiling at the silly naivete of the women in his life when they asked about some political or economic concern of the time and telling them not to worry their pretty little heads about it. Again, it does not really matter whether Jefferson was kind or considerate to women. The fact is when he developed his political rhetoric he left them out of his system. Despite the fact that women made up essentially half the population and were responsible for most of the domestic duties of households in the colonies, when Jefferson went to write the Declaration it did not even occur to him to build their interests into the document. Of course, one may ask whether it is necessary to actually include women formally. It may be enough that their interests are protected by the men in their live. But if it did not matter, then why did he not do it? In the best case scenario it is an example of rank paternalism. We are driven to the conclusion that Jefferson meant that only men are created equal. One has to wonder why Jefferson did not include mention of women in the Declaration. Finally, one may also wonder whether Jefferson even meant in reality that all men are created equal. Specifically, Jefferson and other members of the ruling class did not seem to welcome the lower classes, including small farmers and laborers, under the umbrella of their political reforms. Their interest in establishing the new nation was to get out from under the taxing authority and the legal oppression of the English monarchy. This might be taken as a sign that Jefferson truly wanted to establish a society where men (and women) were free and equal. But in reality, members of the working class were thought to be potential opponents of the new government that Jefferson and his colleagues wanted to establish. This was because, as McGuire argued, they benefited from the status quo, using its economic decentralization to avoid higher taxation and to seek debt relief. With the imposition of English rule removed, the wealthy classes that Jefferson and his colleagues represented could crack down on the lower classes in order to exploit their economically weakened positions (16). The reasoning behind their movement to political freedom, according to McGuire, was that the Founding Fathers “represented more than one economic activity and owned more than one economic asset” (33). A given founder such as Jefferson, for example, may have been “a slaveowner, a financier, and an owner of western lands” as well as a representative of a state or local government that almost by definition had economic interests in line with his own. So the effort to remove English rule was an exercise in self interest. However, to have extended the same rights they sought for themselves to the population at large would have worked against that self interest. It is no surprise, perhaps, that Jefferson did not then include those members of the population that did not own land and hold the same political and economic ties as he did in his development of the notion that “all men are created.” While the Declaration of Independence has ultimately served to inspire the extension of political and economic rights and freedoms to the very populations that were initially excluded, the fact remains that those populations were in fact initially excluded. When Jefferson wrote the famous words that began his Declaration, the rhetoric was adjusted to legitimate the movement to rebellion. It was beautiful rhetoric, but rhetoric nonetheless. From this review, it is clear that the words did not mean what they appeared to mean on their surface. They did not extend rights to slaves, women, or the working classes. They merely went to protect the interests of the ruling class. As such, they were an example of saying one thing and doing another that perhaps makes the notion of the Founding Fathers as a principled and high-minded group of revolutionaries coming together to formulate a governmental experiment that would eventually inspire democracy among populations around the world, a little less believable. Works Cited Freedman, Russell. Give me liberty!: The Story of the Declaration of Independence. New York: Holiday House, 2000. Jefferson, Thomas. Declaration of Independence. Internet. 30 April 2011. . McGuire, Robert. To Form a More Perfect Union: A New Economic Interpretation of the United States Constitution. Oxford: Oxford University, 2003 Root, Damon. “The Trouble with Thomas Jefferson: The Eloquent founder’s Original Sin.” Reason. January 2009. Internet. 30 April 2011. . Read More