The Declaration of Independence Promotes Individual Liberty More than Collective Self-Determination

This is true despite claims to the contrary by some on both the left and right.

The Declaration of Independence. (National Archives.)

 

The connection between individual liberty and the principles of the Declaration of Independence should be obvious. After all, the most famous passage in the Declaration states that all men have the rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" and that "to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men." But, in recent years, it has become common in some circles on both right and left to argue that the Declaration and the American Revolution were really about collective self-determination by a community.

For right-wing nationalists, this position enables them to assimilate the American experience to standard nationalist narratives under which governments exist primarily to advance the interests of a specific racial, ethnic, or cultural group. For left-wing critics of the Declaration and Revolution, such as legal scholar Kermit Roosevelt (see also here),  it allows them to highlight the slavery and racial inequality of early America and claim that our real Founding did not come until the abolition of slavery during and after the Civil War (if even then).

Such attempts to reinterpret the Revolution as being about collective rights are off-base. As already noted, the Declaration emphasizes that the protection of individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the main purpose of government. That's about as far from communitarian collectivism as you can get! To the extent collective self-determination matters, it is only in so far as it helps protect individual liberty and happiness.

Moreover, the Declaration does not claim that ethnic, racial, cultural or any other kinds of groups have any inherent collective rights to self-determination. Rather, it indicates the secession and revolution are justified only when the "Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends" (referring to the previously mentioned individual rights). And even then, overthrowing the government is only defensible in response to "a long train of abuses and usurpations." Complaints about "light and transient" causes —or mere belief that a new government would fit the society's character better—are not enough.

The famous passage stating that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed" is in some tension with the stricture that secession and revolution are justified only in extreme circumstances.  Perhaps the Declaration means that consent, once given, cannot be lightly withdrawn. More radically libertarian interpretations of the consent principle are also possible. No real-world government truly has the consent of the governed in more than a very minimal sense of the term. Regardless, the consent principle further reinforces the Declaration's focus on individual rights.

Perhaps most important, the Declaration omits any claim that Americans have a right to independence because they are distinct from the British in ethnicity, race, or culture. No such claim would have made sense, given that most Americans (at least white Americans) were of the same ethic and cultural groups as most Britons (English and Scots). Instead, the justification for independence is based on the British Empire's violations of universal liberal principles.

Most of the items on the list of grievances in the Declaration have to do with British violations of individual rights (e.g.—detention without trial and destruction of civilian lives and property) or undermining of institutions that protect those rights (e.g.—colonial assemblies; trial by jury). Nothing on the list has anything to do with protecting racial, ethnic, or cultural distinctiveness.

Indeed, the point condemning British interference with immigration is in part an appeal to liberal universalist principles of freedom of movement regardless of ethnic or cultural background. George Washington made that more clear in 1783. In his famous General Orders to the Continental Army, issued at the end of the war in 1783, he stated that one of the reasons the United States was founded was to create "an Asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions."

Roosevelt and many other critics of the Revolution rightly point out that the existence of slavery undermined the moral standing of the Revolution. There is obvious hypocrisy in simultaneously fighting for freedom, while keeping slaves yourself, as many of the rebels did. That, of course, includes Thomas Jefferson, the main author of the Declaration.

This blatant inconsistency is often taken to imply that Jefferson and the others didn't really mean it when they proclaimed that "all men are created equal." Perhaps they only had white men in mind. On this point, ironically, modern left-wing critics of the Revolution are in agreement with Chief Justice Roger Taney's notorious opinion in Dred Scott, and similar statements by other pre-Civil War defenders of slavery. They too argued that the Declaration was really only about self-determination for white men.

Many of the Founders were indeed hypocrites when it came to slavery. And they do deserve severe criticism for it. But many of them—Jefferson included—knew slavery was wrong. He famously denounced slavery as "a moral depravity" and "the most unremitting despotism."  Jefferson and many others recognized that slavery could not be squared with the principles they espoused.

For that reason, the Revolution gave a boost to the abolitionist cause in both the US and Europe. Most obviously, it gave rise to the First Emancipation—the abolition of slavery in the northern states, without which further abolition could not have occurred.

Roosevelt and others also point to the Declaration's language condemning the British for inciting "domestic insurrections amongst us," and suggest it implies that keeping slavery in place was a key motive for rebellion. The British did indeed promise to free Virginia slaves who fought for them against the rebels. But that measure was not the cause of the revolt. It was adopted in response to it. And in addition to trying to enlist freed slaves, the British also engaged in far more extensive recruitment of white American Loyalists.

It was still hypocritical of the rebels to condemn the freeing of slaves to engage in "insurrection" against them even as they themselves rebelled against Britain due to lesser injustices than slavery. But maintaining slavery was not the purpose of the Revolution, a point underscored by the way in which its success paved the way for large-scale emancipation.

Despite important progress, the revolutionaries failed to live up to their own principles, when it came to slavery, as well as a number of other issues. That failure deserves censure. But those principles were nonetheless about universal individual rights, not collective power or ethnic particularism. And the success of the Revolution led to major expansions of liberty—including key steps towards the abolition of slavery—even if it did not go nearly as far as it should have.

We haven't fully realized the principles of the Declaration and Revolution even today. Far from it. But much progress has been made, and there is room for much more.

Abraham Lincoln's famous 1857 assessment of the Declaration remains valid:

I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects…. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, or yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them…

They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.

They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all: constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, every where.

Frederick Douglass' famous 1852 speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" is also relevant here.  He forcefully condemned America's injustice and hypocrisy on slavery, but also praised key virtues of the Revolution, the Declaration, and the people responsible for them:

They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was "settled" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final;" not slavery and oppression.