Hy In A Narrow Sense Was Jefferson

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Ilya KostyukovskyMrs. RussoAP American History I29 October 1998Why in a Narrow Sense Was Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence Unnecessary and Why in a Broad Sense Was It So Necessary. In June 1776 a 33-year-old Virginian, working in a room rented from a bricklayer, wrote-in the words of Moses CoitTaylor-a “passionate chant of human freedom whose influence has been as momentous as that of any other single human creation” (Aptheker 100). He made no claim to originality. On the contrary he strove to present the “common sense of the matter”; to convey, as he said, the “American mind.” In a brief declaration he stated the essential facts driving the colonists to separation and the theory of government which, to those colonists, was so universally held to appear “self-evident.” The Americans in their “manifesto of revolution” begin by declaring that “a decent respect to the opinion of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel” them to their eventful actions. This itself is new and reflects the essence of the Declaration’s political philosophy-the supremacy of the people. Believing in this supremacy and staking their lives on an attempt to establish it, they naturally are impelled to explain their cause and their motivation to all of the people of the world. The declaration of those causes and grievances was absolutely revolutionary (Bailyn 65-67). As Boorstin says:For the first time in history men did not revolt blindly. They revolted with their ideas, which they so eloquently proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence (Boorstin 58). The most important word in the introduction is “necessary,” which in the eighteenth century carried strongly deterministic overtones. To say an act was necessary implied that it was determined by natural laws and was beyond the control of any human creation. Characterizing the Revolution as necessary suggested that it was not merely preferable, defensible, or justifiable. It was as inescapable, as inevitable, as unavoidable within the course of human events as the motions of the tides or the changing of the seasons within the course of natural events (Becker 149-153). Investing the Revolution with connotations of necessity was particularly important because, according to the law of nations, recourse to war was lawful only when it became “necessary”; only when friendly negotiation had failed and there were no other alternatives for settling the differences between two states. Indeed, the notion of necessity was so important that in addition to appearing in the introduction of the Declaration, it was invoked twice more at crucial junctures in the rest of the text and appeared frequently in other congressional papers after July 4, 1776 (Malone 41, 43).Labeling the Americans “one people” and the British “another” was also performed several important strategic functions within the Declaration. First, because two alien peoples cannot be made one, it reinforced the notion that breaking the “political bands” with England was a necessary step in the course of human events. America and England were already separated by the more basic fact that they had become two different peoples. The gulf between them was much more than political; it was intellectual, social, moral, cultural and therefore, according to the principles of nature, could not be repaired (Goff 135-138, 140).Second, once it was established that Americans and Englishmen were two distinct peoples, the conflict between them was less likely to be seen as a civil war. The Continental Congress knew America could not withstand Britain’s military might without foreign assistance. However, it also knew America could not receive assistance as long as the colonies were fighting a civil war as part of the British empire. To help the colonies would constitute interference in Great Britain’s internal affairs. The crucial factor in opening the way for foreign aid was the act of declaring independence (Bailyn 72-73). However, by defining America and England as two separate peoples, the Declaration reinforced the perception that the conflict was not a civil war; thereby, as Congress noted in its debates on independence, making it more “consistent with European delicacy for European powers to treat with us, or even to receive an Ambassador” (74).Third, defining the Americans as a separate people in the introduction eased the task of invoking the right of revolution in the preamble. That right, according to eighteenth-century revolutionary principles, could be invoked only in the most dire of circumstances-when “resistance was absolutely necessary in order to preserve the nation from slavery, misery, and ruin”- and then only by “the Body of the People.” If America and Great Britain were seen as one people, Congress could not justify revolution against the British government for the simple reason that the body of the people, of which the Americans would be only one part, did not support the American cause. For America to move against the government in such circumstances would not be a justifiable act of resistance but “a sort of Sedition, Tumult, and War . . . aiming only at the satisfaction of private Lust, without regard to the public Good” (Aptheker 104). By defining the Americans as a separate people, Congress could more readily satisfy the requirement for invoking the right of revolution that “the whole Body of Subjects” rise up against the government “to