Editorial: Declaration today
The Declaration of Independence never was merely an announcement of a separation of the American Colonies from the British Crown. If it had been designed to serve no other purpose than that of a notice to King George III that his tyrannical rule was rejected, Thomas Jefferson and those associated with him in the writing of the text would not have troubled to explain their objectives so carefully. A simple proclamation of the setting up of a new government might have sufficed, had nothing else been involved.
But larger issues were represented in the proceedings of the Congress in Philadelphia in 1776. A philosophy of human society tracing back for ages was destined to come to practical fulfillment there and then. For the first time in modern history, several millions of ordinary people were to attempt to govern themselves. It was their intention to have “certain inalienable rights” as a common endowment. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” they said, were included in their conception of their goal. The signers gambled their necks on behalf of their ideal of freedom and security. It was not an afterthought on their part that they appealed to the Supreme Judge of the universe for the rectitude of their aims. Neither was it a secondary idea with them when, “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence,” they pledged all that they had, not forgetting their sacred honor.
The high objectives of the Declaration, however, were not achieved simply by being advertised to mankind. Indeed, the very fact that they had been published undoubtedly made them for the moment more difficult of attainment. News of their publication stiffened the resistance of the Hanoverian despot in London. The Revolution had been in progress since Lexington and Concord in April 1775; Bunker Hill had proved that “the shot heard ‘round the world” had been fired in earnest; the war had been carried into Canada by Arnold and Montgomery; Howe had been driven out of Boston. Immediately ahead, though, were the defeats in Long Island, at White Plains, on Lake Champlain and in New Jersey. Washington retired into Pennsylvania, leaving the enemy in possession of New York and most of New England. The tide was turned at Trenton and Princeton, yet there were Brandywine and Germantown before Saratoga, Valley Forge before Monmouth Court House, the Wyoming and Cherry Valley massacres and the loss of Savannah and Charleston before Cowpens and Eutaw Springs. A scant year before Yorktown the patriot cause seemed largely hopeless. Likewise infeasible appeared the more comprehensive purposes of the Declaration during the period following the Peace of Paris. From 1784 to 1789, the Colonies quarreled among themselves, suffered the consequences of their isolation, saw rebellion among their veterans, heard threats of foreign aggression. The Federal Constitution was the answer, but a whole decade after its ratification it still was regarded as an experiment almost surely doomed to fall.
Perhaps it is characteristic of liberty that it is hard to gain, hard to hold. There are observers who believe that it would not be worth having if it were easily achieved or easily kept. Such a theory is confirmed by the experience of the American community. Each generation in succession must win the nation’s freedom anew. It is a law of the cosmos that struggle is necessary for survival. The sequence of sacrifice runs through the annals of America like the crimson threads in the flag. Possibly it is a comfort to the families and the friends of the fighters now overseas to remember that they are spiritual kin to the heroes of Ticonderoga and Kings Mountain, New Orleans and Chapultepec, Gettysburg and Manila and Château-Thierry. The Declaration means more today because of Tarawa and Anzio and Cherbourg and the glorious promise contained therein.
