
It took a decade for the Declaration of Independence to matter in American life - hhs
https://news.stanford.edu/2019/07/02/americans-forgot-declaration-independence/
======
smacktoward
_> Rarely during the late 1770s and 1780s was the Declaration publicly read or
celebrated. Instead, most Americans celebrated their state constitutions and
the promise of liberty contained within them. Or they celebrated their local
declarations from 1776. Only during the 1790s was the Declaration revived..._

It seems relevant here that the late 1770s and 1780s was also the same period
when the United States was governed under the Articles of Confederation,
rather than the Constitution we have today (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederation_Period](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederation_Period)).

The Articles of Confederation established a much weaker central government
than the later Constitution would. So it would make sense, in a regime where
the several states were still regarded as near-sovereign entities, that people
would look to the founding documents of their state as the guarantors of their
liberty. And it also makes sense that, when the weak central government proved
unable to meet the challenges of the time and people started thinking about
replacing it with a stronger one, new attention would be drawn to documents
like the Declaration that spoke from a national perspective.

~~~
phkahler
From the article "Rarely during the late 1770s and 1780s was the Declaration
publicly read or celebrated. Instead, most Americans celebrated their state
constitutions and the promise of liberty contained within them. Or they
celebrated their local declarations from 1776."

Though it doesn't say when those state constitutions were enacted, it sounds
like the states were already separate things. That would explain the lack of
interest in the declaration of independence at the time.

"But Wilson thought its significance lay elsewhere: in confirming that the
United States was born a nation rather than a series of independent states."

If there were state constitutions prior to that, I'd say who cares what Wilson
thought - facts are facts. Besides, how can you have someone sign from every
state if those states are not already meaningful entities? I think a better
stance is to say the nation was formed over a period of time, based on a set
of principles and ideas (most importantly "we are separate from the old
world"). Documents only served to formalize what was happening and agree on
how to settle some differences.

~~~
gumby
Indeed, Massachusetts has the oldest constitution still in force in North
America (older than the US federal constitution). People mostly felt loyalty
to their own state and that was one reason for opposition to the v2 national
constitution, even when it was clear the v1 articles were inadequate.

Even so, they are united _States_ (as opposed to, say, Australia where the so-
called "states" are for all intents and purposes merely administrative
subdivisions of the continent, and could be remade by passing a law in the
federal parliament)

Source: Massachusetts high school education in a school 150 years older than
the MA constitution.

~~~
bigger_cheese
>Even so, they are united States (as opposed to, say, Australia where the so-
called "states" are for all intents and purposes merely administrative
subdivisions of the continent, and could be remade by passing a law in the
federal parliament)

I don't think this is accurate. Prior to federation there were no Australian
states, there were 6 independent colonies.

The status of the states are part of the Australian Constitution to make
changes (such as creating a new state) would require amending the constitution
and thus a referendum.

The Australian States have quite a bit of power its one of the "challenges" we
have here because of the way our constitution is written in order for a
referendum to pass it requires a double majority you need an overall majority
as well as a majority in a majority of states (i.e 4 out of 6 states must also
have majority support) this is one of the reasons constitutional amendments
are so difficult and rarely pass here.

Similar thing with our senate (Upper house) each state has equal
representation in the senate so both Tasmania and New South Wales have 12
Senators despite much smaller population in Tas. This is in contrast to House
of Representatives (our lower house) is not equal (there are 5 seats in
Tasmania vs 47 in NSW) this has a lot of implications in our political
process.

As far as people not feeling loyalty to their state that's mostly true but
there is still a lot of friendly (or not so friendly rivalry) especially in
sporting events.

~~~
gumby
I actually learned this when visiting Parliament House last year (though it
was part of an off-the-tour side discussion +). Having lived in both countries
I think the independence of the US states is radically and fundamentally
stronger than that of the Australian states, especially since (and because)
income tax was federalised 75 years ago.

The only place I know that even comes close to the US independence of the
states is Germany.

\+ I was visiting a friend who works there; later went out to dinner with him
and a colleague who is a constitutional lawyer and who was quite familiar with
the American system as well.

~~~
bigger_cheese
I know nothing about US system so I can't really compare the two. The only
reason I know anything about our own constitution is I had to do a school
project on Sir Henry Parkes way back in high school.

Personally I kind of have opposite view about the states I do think there
needs to be a trade off between federal and state power our current system is
flawed but probably strikes a good balance. I'm sympathetic to fact that
someone living in say Regional QLD has different needs to Melbourne or Sydney
and I don't want a system where power is consolidated in the big population
centers and no one else's vote really matters but at the same time I'd like
voting power to be more proportional as it stands someones vote in Tasmania
holds a lot more weight federally then voters from many of the other states
due to equal (rather than proportional representation) of the states.

------
chrisco255
The U.S. was still at war until 1783. The declaration wouldn't have meant
anything if the U.S. had lost. Jefferson was the original author, although it
did undergo edits at the behest of Congress.

It's also pretty well established that the document was complete by July 2nd
(so the mention about Jefferson going shopping on the 4th is sort of weird)
and most of the Congress had signed it then, but not all...so it went into
effect July 4th.

The declaration was read in town squares all over the country. It wasn't
forgotten about while people were dodging musket fire by red coats. It's sort
of a ridiculous assertion.

It's just: war is messy. And the business of laying the foundations for a
country afterwards is fraught with risk and uncertainty.

~~~
garmaine
Jefferson was the assigned leader of the committee that wrote the declaration.
It's really more accurate to say he was the editor.

It's not universal opinion, but it's very likely that most of the declaration,
especially the most-quoted parts ("inalienable rights", "life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness", etc.) were written by Thomas Paine. However as a
very recent immigrant from England, crediting Paine would have been
politically unthinkable.

~~~
wahern
"[R]econstruction of Thomas Jefferson's 'original Rough draught' of the
Declaration of Independence before it was revised by the other members of the
Committee of Five and by Congress":

[https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html](https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html)

It already contains all of those. If anything, Jefferson was cribbing from
George Mason. But all of these men were well read (e.g. in the works of John
Locke), and they presumably were well read in each others' publications
considering their political and social associations.

~~~
garmaine
There was a book about it in 1947 that was never really refuted. But
basically, the famous writing style of the declaration doesn't match any of
Thomas Jefferson's pre-1776 writings at all. Nor anyone else on the committee
of 5. And the "original draft" of Jefferson's contains copy errors indicating
itself was copied from another source. There's also the fact that the content
--very anti-slavery, and very anti-monarchy--doesn't much resemble Thomas
Jeferson's contemporary philosophy either.

There is one thing it does resemble, very closely: Common Sense, written by
Thomas Paine and released in the same year. Here you can read them side-by-
side:

[https://richardmasta.liberty.me/wp-
content/uploads/sites/582...](https://richardmasta.liberty.me/wp-
content/uploads/sites/582/2016/07/001.jpg)

One of the other reasons we know the "original rough draft" of Jefferson's
that you mention was a copy of another document is that John Adams also made a
copy of the original draft, and his is different. Notably his draft includes a
lot of weird (by American standards of the day) punctuation, spelling, and
word choice which is typical of Paine's writing but was edited out of
Jefferson's "rough draft."

In any case I did point out that this is not a universal belief. But I will be
bold enough to say that we can divide historians into two groups: the vast
majority who were taught that Jefferson wrote it and believe it, and the few
who have actually looked at the evidence and concluded that someone else did,
quite probably Thomas Paine. The evidence is that compelling.

(Thomas Jefferson never in his life claimed that he write the declaration. He
in fact played down his involvement numerous times. It was, however, necessary
in the sphere of global politics that the declaration be perceived to have
been written by the continental congress, which Jefferson was a member of, and
not a dirt poor recent immigrant who was the editor of a failing newspaper
that and happened to be friends with Jefferson, Adams and Franklin.)

~~~
wahern
Thank you. I've read Paine's Rights of Man and understood him to be at least
as capable a writer and thinker as Jefferson and others, but didn't know (or
at least didn't remember) much about the details of his associations.

Perhaps because I read Rights of Man I've always thought of Paine as a (two-
way) bridge between American and Continental revolutionary thought and
activism, neglecting to appreciate his other _direct_ roles in historical
affairs--as opposed to the more indirect influence of Common Sense.

~~~
garmaine
Paine was also directly involved in the French Revolution, and was elected to
serve in the french assembly (or whatever the revolutionaries called their
congress), which he did even though he didn't speak a word of french.

He was a very interesting character.

------
zcid
As a side note, his home town, Charlottesville, canceled the holiday
celebrating Thomas Jefferson's birthday[0][1]. It seems to me that our society
is too focused on condemning historical persons for their flaws than
celebrating them for their noteworthy deeds.

[0][https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jul/2/charlottesvi...](https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jul/2/charlottesville-
drops-thomas-jeffersons-birthday-h/)
[1][https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/07/03/as-trump-
predi...](https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/07/03/as-trump-predicted-
charlottesville-cancels-thomas-jeffersons-birthday/)

~~~
plurinshael
Well, yes. It was unmitigated praise for men like Jefferson for a lot of
years, which sent the message that those flaws you mentioned were nonexistent
or unimportant. Now our society is attempting to demonstrate to people of
color that those flaws as you say, which constitute extremely egregious crimes
against humanity no matter how commonplace they were amongst the aristocracy
of the time, were in fact real and were in fact important. The country remains
rather divided on the subject but it sounds like these city officials are
trying to say that black lives do, in fact, matter.

~~~
chrisco255
The country fought a bloody war 160 years ago to settle that dispute and it
was pretty resoundly settled.

Not only that but there isn't a country on the planet that doesn't have
equally horrific past. But that's horrific to us only because Jefferson and
the colonists won. And their philosophy won. There's nothing inevitable about
the destruction of monarchy. We might have been ruled by Kings and lords for
another 2000 years. Who the hell knows?

The people aggravating other people for celebrating American heritage have
sick aims. No amount of time or human sacrifice will be enough until all pride
in U.S. is snuffed out. And then, what are we left with?

~~~
pulisse
> The country fought a bloody war 160 years ago to settle that dispute and it
> was pretty resoundly settled.

And yet laws that explicitly treated African-Americans differently were in
force 100 years after that.

~~~
chrisco255
Yes and yet Americans helped save the Jews from extinction and yet they
defeated Nazism and imperialism and held off communism and prevented South
Korea from being dominated and won two world wars that could have ended in all
of the Western hemisphere being conquered.

Of course, there's nothing black and white about history, it's all shades of
grey. That goes without saying.

~~~
rfrey
There is only one nation in the world where a large number of people believe
America defeated the nazis.

~~~
chrisco255
Yeah I know Stalin and the Russians had a lot to do with it too. But the U.S.
fought on two fronts. As if the imperial Japanese and their slaughter of
Chinese people was any better than the Nazis.

And suppose the U.S. stayed out of that war, what would have Stalin done with
Europe, supposing they won outright?

------
lkrubner
Joseph J. Ellis, in his book "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary
Generation", makes the case that it wasn't till the 1810s and 1820s that
Americans began to argue about the origins of the country, and increasingly
settle upon July 4th, 1776, as the starting point of the country.

It's an unusual decision, because most countries base their holidays around
when the first battles occur. The French celebrate Bastille Day, which is July
14th. But in the USA there are no celebrations on April 19th, which is a bit
surprising. The heroism shown at the battles of Lexington and Concord are
forgotten, whereas a bunch of men signing a document is raised to the level of
something epic. And it is said that the USA began in 1776, instead of 1775. If
the French followed such reasoning, they would say that the French Revolution
began on September 20th, 1792, because of the Battle of Valmy.

To suggest that the USA begins on July 4th of 1776 represents a victory for
Thomas Jefferson, and for the factions associated with him. The key thing is
that Jefferson's factions were very popular during the 1810s and 1820s, when
Americans were making up their minds about how they should understand the
origin of the country.

[https://www.amazon.com/Founding-Brothers-Revolutionary-
Josep...](https://www.amazon.com/Founding-Brothers-Revolutionary-Joseph-
Ellis/dp/0375705244/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2ZBS7D3LOFWUF&keywords=revolutionary+brothers&qid=1562183943&s=books&sprefix=revolutionary+brother%2Cstripbooks%2C186&sr=1-2)

~~~
WalterBright
> The heroism shown at the battles of Lexington and Concord are forgotten,
> whereas a bunch of men signing a document is raised to the level of
> something epic.

The signers were heroes, too, because signing the DoI was a hanging offense.
If the Revolution had failed, they would have all hung and they knew it. They
were all prominent men, and their families would have been likely ruined as
well.

------
eaguyhn
A more interesting story is how the Constitution came about, and how the
Confederation nearly split apart during ratification.

------
tomohawk
The war did not end until 1783. The document had an immediate and huge impact
in that defined just how real the breach was with the mother country. When
news reached New York City, there was actually a riot. Many of the signers
paid a steep price, and certainly many who rallied to the cause did as well.

------
peterwwillis
Oh man, I'm so glad this reminded me of _" What to the Slave is the Fourth of
July?"_ by Frederick Douglass. It's a thrilling, masterful speech.

