The Forgotten Document
To distract attention, to put people's minds on useless or bewildering
projects is a bit of sabotage, in a total war. It is well enough to
divert people, for a moment, so that they are refreshed; but no one
has the right to confuse a clear issue or to start inessential
projects or to ask people to look at anything except the job in hand.
For five minutes, I propose a look at the Declaration of Independence,
because it is the one document essential to our military and moral
success; it is the standard by which we can judge the necessity of all
projects; and although our destiny, and the means to fulfill it, are
written into it, the Declaration is the forgotten document of American
history. We remember the phrases too often repeated by politicians and
dreamers; we do not study the hard realistic plan of national action
embodied in every paragraph of the instrument.
The famous phrases at the beginning give the moral, and revolutionary,
reason for action; the magnificent ground plan of the character and
history of the American people is explained in the forgotten details
of the Declaration; and nothing in the conservative Constitution could
do more than delay the unfolding of the plan or divide its fruits a
little unevenly.
I suggest that the Declaration supplies the _motive_ of action for
today; the moment we understand it, we have a definition of America, a
specific blueprint of what we have been, what we are, and what we can
become--and the action necessary for our future evolves from this;
moreover the unnecessary action is likewise defined. Our course before
we were attacked and our plans for the world after the war may seem
the mere play of prejudice and chance; but the destiny of America
will be determined not by the affections of one group or the fears of
another, nor by hysteria and passion; our fate will be determined by
the whole course of our history--and by our decision to continue its
direction or to reverse it.
The rest of this book flows out of this belief in the decisive role of
the Declaration, but it does not attempt to indicate a course of
action in detail. For the sake of illustration I cite these instances.
_Q._ Should the U.S. try to democratize the Germans or accept the view
that the Germans are a race incapable of self-government?
_A._ The history of immigration, based on the Declaration, proves that
Germans are capable of being good and great democratic citizens.
_Q._ Can the U.S. unite permanently with any single nation or any
exclusive group of nations?
_A._ Our history, under the Declaration, makes it impossible.
_Q._ Can the U.S. join a world federation regulating specific economic
problems, such as access to raw materials, tariffs, etc.?
_A._ Nothing in the Declaration is against, everything in our history
is for, such a move.
_Q._ Can the U.S. fight the war successfully without accepting the
active principles of the Totalitarian States?
_A._ If our history is any guide, the only way we can _lose_ the war
is by failing to fight it in our own way.
I have already indicated the possibility that our whole military grand
plan must be based on variety, which is the characteristic of America
created by specific passages in the Declaration; I am sure that the
whole grand plan of civilian unity (the plan of morale and propaganda)
has to return to the leading lines of our history, if we want to act
quickly, harmoniously and effectively; and the peace we make will be
another Versailles, with another Article X in the Covenant, if we make
it without returning to the sources of our strength.
So, if we want to win in the field and at home, win the war and the
peace, we must be aware of our history and of the principles laid down
in 1776 and never, in the long run, betrayed.
_To Whom It May Concern_
The Declaration is in four parts and all of them have some bearing on
the present.
The first explains why the Declaration is issued. The words are so
familiar that their significance is gone; but if we remember that days
were spent in revision and the effect of every word was calculated, we
can assume that there are no accidents, that the Declaration is
precise and says what it means. Here is the passage:
"_When, in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for
one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected
them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth,
the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and
of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions
of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the separation._"
The first official utterance of America is based on _human
necessity_--not the necessity of princes or powers.
It is the utterance of a people, not a nation. It invokes first Nature
and then Nature's God as lawgivers.
It asks independence and equality--in the same phrase; the habit of
nations, to enslave or be enslaved, is not to be observed in the New
World.
And finally "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind"; the first
utterance of America is addressed not to the nations of the world, but
to the men and women who inhabit them.
_Human--people--Nature--Nature's God--mankind._
These are the words boldly written across the map of America. A
century and a half of change have not robbed one of them of their
power--because they were not fad-words, not the catchwords of a
revolution; they were words with cold clear meanings--and they
destroyed feudalism in Europe for a hundred and sixty years.
The practical application of the preamble is this: whenever we have
spoken to the people of other nations, as we did in the Declaration,
we have been successful; we have failed only when we have addressed
ourselves to governments. The time is rapidly coming when our only
communication with Europe must be over the heads of its rulers, to the
people. It does not seem practical; but we shall see later that, for
us, it has always been good politics.
_The Logic of Freedom_
The next passage in the Declaration is the one with all the
quotations. There can be little harm in reprinting it:
"_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. That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form
of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed,
will dictate that Governments long established should not be
changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experiences hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to
suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by
abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a
long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the
same object, evidence a design to reduce them under absolute
Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off
such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future
security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these
Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them
to alter their former System of Government The history of the
present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries
and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment
of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let
Facts be submitted to a candid world._"
Starting off with a rhetorical device--the pretense that its heresies
are acceptable commonplaces, this long paragraph builds a philosophy
of government on the unproved and inflammatory assumptions which it
calls "self-evident". The self-evident truths are, in effect, _the
terms agreed upon by the signers_. These signers now appear for the
first time, they say "_we_ hold", they say that, to themselves,
certain truths are self-evident. The first three of "these truths" are
some general statements about "all men"; the fourth and fifth tell why
governments are established and why they should be overthrown. These
two are the objective of the first three; but they have been neglected
in favor of adolescent disputation over the equality of men at birth,
and they have been forgotten in our adult pursuit of happiness which
has often made us forget that life and liberty, no less than large
incomes, are among our inalienable rights.
The historians of the Declaration always remind us of John Locke's
principle that governments exist only to protect property; when States
fail they cease to be legitimate, they can be overthrown; and Locke is
taken to be, more than Rousseau, the inspiration of the Declaration.
The Declaration, it happens, never mentions the right to own property;
but the argument for revolution is essentially the same: when a
government ceases to function, it should be overthrown. The critical
point is the definition of the chief duty of a government. The
Colonists, in the Declaration, said it is to secure certain rights to
all men; not to guarantee privileges granted by the State, but to
protect rights which are born when men are born, in them, with
them--inalienably theirs.
So the Declaration sets us for ever in opposition to the totalitarian
State--for that State has all the inalienable rights, and the people
exist only to protect the State.
The catalogue of rights is comparatively unimportant; once we agree
that the State exists to secure inherent rights, the great
revolutionary stride has been taken; and immediately we see that our
historic opposition to Old Europe is of a piece with our present
opposition to Hitler. The purpose of our State is not the purpose of
the European States; we might work with them, side by side, but a
chemical union would result only in an explosion.
There is one word artfully placed in the description of the State; the
Declaration does not say that governments derive their powers from the
consent of the governed. It says that governments instituted among men
to protect their rights "derive their _just_ powers from the consent of
the governed". Always realistic, the Declaration recognizes the
tendency of governors to reach out for power and to absorb whatever the
people fail to hold. The idea of consent is also revolutionary--but the
moment "inalienability" is granted, consent to be governed _must_
follow. The fascist state recognizes _no_ inalienable right, and needs
no consent from its people.
It is "self-evident", I think, that we have given wrong values to the
three elements involved. We have talked about the "pursuit of
happiness"; we have been impressed by the idea of any right being ours
"for keeps", inalienable; and we have never thought much about the
fundamental radicalism of the Declaration: that it makes government
our servant, instructed _by us_ to protect our rights. The chain of
reasoning, as the Declaration sets it forth, leads to a practical
issue:
All men are created equal--their equality lies in their having
rights;
these rights cannot be alienated;
governments are set up to prevent alienation;
power to secure the rights of the people is given by the people
to the government;
and if one government fails, the people give the power to
another.
So in the first three hundred words of the Declaration the purpose of
our government is logically developed.
_Blueprint of America_
There follows first a general and then a particular condemnation of
the King of England. This is the longest section of the Declaration.
It is the section no one bothers to read; the statute of limitations
has by this time outlawed our bill of complaint against George the
Third. But the grievances of the Colonials were not high-pitched
trifles; every complaint rises out of a definite desire to live under
a decent government; and the whole list is like a picture, seen in
negative, of the actual government the Colonists intended to set up;
and the basic habits of American life, its great traditions, its good
fortune and its deficiencies are all foreshadowed in this middle
section. Here--for the sake of completeness--is the section:
"_He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary
for the public good._
"_He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and
pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his
Assent should be obtained, and when so suspended, he has utterly
neglected to attend them._
"_He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large
districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of
Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and
formidable to tyrants only._
"_He has called together legislative bodies at places, unusual,
uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public
Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with
his measures._
"_He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with
manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people._
"_He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause
others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of
Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise;
the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of
invasion from without, and convulsions within._
Here I omit one "count", reserved for separate consideration.
"_He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his
Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers._
"_He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of
their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries._
"_He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of
Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance._
"_He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies, without
the Consent of our legislatures._
"_He has affected to render the Military Independent of and superior
to the Civil power._
"_He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign
to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent
to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For quartering large bodies of
armed troops among us: For protecting them by a mock Trial from
punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants
of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the
world: For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of Trial by
jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended
offenses: For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a
neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government,
and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and
fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these
Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable
Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For
suspending our own Legislatures and declaring themselves invested with
power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever._
"_He has abdicated Government here by declaring us out of his
Protection and waging War against us._
"_He has plundered our seas, ravished our Coasts, burnt our towns, and
destroyed the lives of our people._
"_He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries
to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun
with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the
most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized
nation._
"_He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high
Seas to bear Arms against friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves
by their Hands._
"_He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored
to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian
Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction
of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these Oppressions
We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated
Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose
character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is
unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have We been wanting in
attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to
time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable
jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of
our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native
justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our
common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably
interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf
to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore,
acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our Separation, and hold
them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace
Friends._"
The eighteen paragraphs of denunciation fall into seven general
sections:
The King has thwarted representative government;
he has obstructed justice;
he has placed military above civil power;
he has imposed taxes without the consent of the taxed;
he has abolished the rule of Law;
he has placed obstacles in the way of the growth and prosperity
of the Colonies;
he has, in effect, ceased to rule them, because he is making war
on them.
So the bill of complaint signifies these things about the Founders of
our Country:
They demanded government with the consent, by the
representatives, of the governed.
They cherished civil rights, respect for law, and would not
tolerate any power superior to law--whether royal or military.
They wished for a minimum of civil duties, hated bureaucrats,
wanted to adjust their own taxes, and were afraid of the
establishment of any tyranny on nearby soil.
They wanted free trade with the rest of the world, and no
restraints on commerce and industry.
They intended to be prosperous.
They considered themselves freemen and proposed to remain so.
These were the rights to which lovers of human freedom aspired in
England or France; they were the practical application of Locke and
Rousseau and the Encyclopedists and the Roundheads. Little in the
whole list reflects the special conditions of life in the colonies;
troops had been quartered in Ireland, trial by jury suspended in
England, tyrants then as now created their Praetorian guard or Storm
Troops and placed military above civil rights, and colonies from early
time had been considered as tributaries of the Mother Country.
_The Practical "Dream"_
The American Colonists were about to break the traditions of European
settlement, and with it the traditions of European government. And,
with profound insight into the material conditions of their existence,
they foreshadowed the entire history of our country in the one
specification which had never been made before, and _could_ never have
been made before:
"_He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for
that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners;
refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and
raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands._"
This amazing paragraph is placed directly after the sections on
representative government; it is so important that it comes before the
items on trial by jury, taxation, and trade. It is a critical factor
in the history of America; if we understand it, we can go forward to
understand our situation today. The other complaints point toward our
systems of law, our militia, our constant rebellion against taxes, our
mild appreciation of civil duties, our unswerving insistence upon the
act of choosing representatives; all these are details; but this
unique item indicates how the nation was to be built and what its
basic social, economic, and psychological factors were to be.
This brief paragraph condemns the Crown for obstructing the two
processes by which America was made:
Immigration
Pioneering
With absolute clairvoyance the Declaration sets Naturalization, which
means political equality, in between the two other factors.
Naturalization is the formal recognition of the deep underlying truth,
the new thing in the new world, that one could _become_ what one
willed and worked to become--one could, regardless of birth or race or
creed, _become an American_.
So long as the colonies were held by the Crown, the process of
populating the country by immigration was checked. The Colonists had
no "dream" of a great American people combining racial bloods and the
habits of all the European nations. They wanted only to secure their
prosperity by growing; they constantly were sending agents to
Westphalia and the Palatinate to induce good Germans to come to
America, one colony competing with another, issuing pamphlets in
Platt-Deutsch, promising not Utopia with rivers of milk and honey, not
a dream, but something grander and greater--citizenship, equality
under the law, and land. Across this traffic the King and his
ministers threw the dam of Royal Prerogative; they meant to keep the
colonies, and they knew they could not keep them if men from many
lands came in as citizens; and they meant to keep the virgin lands
from the Appalachians to the Mississippi--or as much of it as they
could take from the Spaniards and the French. So as far back as 1763,
the Crown took over _all_ title to the 250,000 square miles of land
which are now Indiana and Illinois and Michigan and Minnesota, the
best land lying beyond the Alleghenies. Into this territory no man
could enter; none could settle; no squatters' right was recognized; no
common law ran. Suddenly the natural activity of America,
uninterrupted since 1620, stopped. The right of Americans to move
westward and to take land, the right of non-Americans to become
Americans, both were denied. The outcry from the highlands and the
forest clearing was loud; presently the seaboard saw that America was
one country, its true prosperity lay within its own borders, not
across the ocean. And to make the unity clear, the Crown which had
taken the land, now took the sea; the trade of the Colonies was
broken; they were cut off from Europe, forbidden to bring over its
men, forbidden to send over their goods. For the first time America
was isolated from Europe.
So the British Crown touched every focal spot--and bruised it. The
outward movement, to and from Europe, always fruitful for America, was
stopped; the inward movement, across the land, was stopped. The
energies of America had always expressed themselves in movement; when
an artificial brake on movements was applied, friction followed; then
the explosion of forces we call the Revolution.
And nothing that happened afterward could effectively destroy what the
Revolution created. The thing that people afterward chose to call "the
American dream" was no dream; it was then, and it remained, the
substantial fabric of American life--a systematic linking of free
land, free trade, free citizenship, in a free society.
A grim version of our history implies that the pure idealism of the
Declaration was corrupted by the rich and well-born who framed the
Constitution. As Charles Beard is often made the authority for this
economic interpretation, his own account of the economic effects of
the Declaration may be cited in evidence:
the great estates were broken up;
the hold of the first-born and of the dead-hand were equally
broken;
in the New States, the property qualification was never accepted
and it disappeared steadily from the old.
And the Ordnance of 1787, last great act of the Continental Congress,
inspired by the Declaration, created the Northwest Territory, the
heart of America for a hundred years, in a spirit of love and
intelligence which the Constitution in all its wisdom did not surpass.
That is what the Declaration accomplished. It set in action _all_ the
forces that ultimately made America. The action rose out of the final
section, in which, naming themselves for the first time as
"Representatives of the United States of America", the signers declare
that "these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and
Independent States...." In this clear insight, the Declaration says
that the things separating one people from another have already
happened--differences in experiences, desires, habits--and that the
life of the Colonies is already so independent of Britain that the
purely political bond must be dissolved.
"_WE, THEREFORE, the Representatives of the United States of America,
in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the
world for the rectitude of our intentions do, in the Name, and by
authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and
declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be,
Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all
Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection
between them and the State of Great Britain is and ought to be totally
dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full
Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish
Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States
may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm
reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to
each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor._"
So finally, as a unity of free and independent States, the new nation
arrogates to itself four specific powers:
To levy war
conclude peace
contract alliances
establish commerce.
Only these four powers, by name; the rest were lumped together, a
vast, significant et cetera; but these were so much more significant
that they had to be separately written down; three of
them--war--peace--alliances--are wholly international; the fourth,
commerce, at least partly so. The signers of the Declaration made no
mistake; they wished to be independent; and in order to remain
independent, they were fighting _against_ isolation.
The error we must not make about the Declaration is to think of it as
a purely domestic document, dealing with taxes and election of
representatives and Redcoats in our midst; it is the beginning of our
national, domestic life, but only because it takes the rule of our
life out of English hands; and the moment this is done, the
Declaration sets us up as an independent nation among other nations,
and places us in relation, above all, to the nations of Europe.
At this moment our intercourse with the nations of Europe is a matter
of life and death--death to the destroyer of free Europe or death to
ourselves; but if we live, life for all Europe, also. Like parachute
troops, our address to Europe must precede our armies; we have to know
what to say to Europe, to whom to say, how to say it. And the answer
was provided by the Declaration which let all Europe come to us--but
held us independent of all Europe.