The Declaration of Independence and the Pursuit of Equality

The Ideas behind the Declaration

The Second Continental Congress declared that all human beings shared natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Legitimate governments were founded through consent of the governed, and a people retained the right to resist tyrannical governments that threatened natural rights. The Declaration helped justify separation from Britain and the establishment of a new government. Its concepts were drawn from the pages of philosophical, political, and legal books and shaped by conditions in the colonies. No concept, however, was more potentially transformative, or more consequential to later generations, than the idea that “all men are created equal.”

Born in West Africa around 1753, enslaved, and sold at the age of seven to a White family in Boston, Phillis Wheatley would become a literary prodigy and a staunch supporter of the American revolutionary cause. Her landmark 1773 book of poetry helped confirm for readers in Europe and America the idea that neither race nor gender limited a person’s capacity for achievement.

In every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance.

—Phillis Wheatley to the Reverend Samson Occom, printed in the Connecticut Gazette, March 11, 1774

Frontispiece and title page of book of poetry published in 1773 with portrait of Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. London, 1773. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC06154)

Title page of Thomas Paine's Common Sense

Thomas Paine, Common Sense (Philadelphia, 1776), repr. London, 1793. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC08643)

Thomas Paine’s pamphlet proposing separation from Britain was published in Philadelphia in January 1776. Paine shocked readers by calling King George a “Tyrant,” a word printers would not use when the pamphlet reached England. Paine believed that human beings were “originally equals,” that monarchies created inequality, and that “in America the law is King.”

In America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.

—Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Title page of late seventeenth-century book by philosopher John Locke

Mezzotint from 1768 showing religious figure pointing at a book

The American Revolution

In 1763, few people in Britain or America anticipated American independence. With Britain’s victory over France in the Seven Years’ War, White colonists considered themselves among the freest people in the world. However, the British government soon tightened commercial regulations, limited western land settlement, and imposed new taxes. Colonists claimed these new rules denied their right to equal treatment as subjects in the British Empire. What began as a political protest against Britain ultimately became a revolution that transformed society. Poor White men, women, African Americans, and Native Americans all sought to pursue equality on their own terms.

Hand-drawn map of eastern seaboard of North America focused on positions of British troops

Official printed document with heading "By the King, a Proclamation"

Official document with signatures of Iroquois delegates, represented by various animal sketches

Engraving showing British soldiers firing into crowd in Boston

Political cartoon showing a tax collector being tarred and feathered

Political cartoon featuring a variety of women made to look preposterous

The American Revolutionary War started with the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, and spread across North America more than a year before American independence.

The public papers as well as private accounts have Witnessed to the Bravery of the Peasants of Lexington, & the spirit of freedom Breath’d from the Inhabitants of the surrounding Villages.

—Mercy Otis Warren to Catharine Macaulay, August 24, 1775

View of open field with British soldiers firing on colononists who are dispersing

Page of colonial newspaper from 1775 featuring a reprint of Dunmore's proclamation

Declaring Independence

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.

The Second Continental Congress deliberated Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence for nearly three full days. Though members of Congress objected to several passages—removing some and rewriting others—they kept the words, “all men are created equal.” The idea of equality was central to the Enlightenment philosophy of natural rights, but after it appeared in the Declaration, it acquired new political significance. Throughout the new nation and beyond, people from all walks of life immediately began to demand equality, and have continued to do so for generations.

Portrait of Abigail Adams from early nineteenth century

Abigail Smith Adams, portrait by Gilbert Stuart, 1800/1815. (National Gallery of Art)

In March 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John, the Continental Congressman. Abigail urged John, as he contemplated laws for the new nation, to “Remember the Ladies” and not give husbands “unlimited power” over their wives. John made light of Abigail’s plea, quipping that the Revolution had “loosened the bands of Government every where.”

[I]n the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies . . . Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.

—Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 31, 1776

To refute the Declaration of Independence, the British ministry hired a lawyer and penman named John Lind. Lind drafted a lengthy pamphlet defending King George III. In the final pages, Lind—collaborating with philosopher Jeremy Bentham—disputed the theory of natural rights and ridiculed Jefferson’s assertion that “all men are created equal.” They made a provocative question explicit: Equal in what way?

"All men," they tell us, "are created equal." This surely is a new discovery; now, for the first time, we learn, that a child, at the moment of his birth, has the same quantity of natural power as the parent, the same quantity of political power as the magistrate.

Portion of Jefferson's rough draft of the Declaration focused on slavery

Portion of Jefferson's rough draft of the Declaration focused on Native Americans

Copy of the Declaration of Independence printed in South Carolina

Crowd in a city gathered around a man reading a document (presumably the declaration of independence).

Three Native American signatures from the Treaty of Watertown

Limits of Independence

A great number of Negroes who are detained in a state of Slavery . . . apprehend that they have, in common with all other Men, a natural and unalienable right to that freedom, which the great Parent of the Universe hath bestowed equally on all Mankind.

—Lancaster Hill, Peter Bess, Brister Slenser, Prince Hall, et al., “The Petition of a Great Number of Negroes Who Are Detained in a State of Slavery,” January 13, 1777.

The Declaration of Independence was a radical document that promised freedom and equality for all. But as the American Revolution unfolded, a glaring gap emerged between promises and reality. Freedom, equal rights, and full citizenship were reserved primarily for White men who owned property. Meanwhile, poor people, women, Black people, and Indigenous peoples remained largely excluded. Property ownership mattered. Some free African American men with property and Indigenous people were permitted to vote, especially those living in urban areas. Women in New Jersey could vote from 1776 through 1807. Within a generation, poor White men demanded—and began to receive—unrestricted voting rights. But women, Black people, and Indigenous peoples were often denied freedom, justice, and equality. In response, they harnessed the Declaration’s language and spirit to fight for freedom and equal rights.

Engraved portrait of Benjamin Banneker on the title page of Benjamin Bann[e]ker’s Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanac, for the Year of Our Lord 1795 (Philadelphia: Jacob Johnson & Co., [1794]). (Maryland Center for History and Culture)

On August 19, 1791, the free-born African American scientist and astronomer Benjamin Banneker wrote to Thomas Jefferson to challenge Jefferson’s contention that Black people were inferior to White people. Banneker cited the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence to argue that slavery was wrong, largely because it robbed people of their natural equality. On August 30, 1791, Jefferson responded, “no body wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the condition” of enslaved people.

Sir, suffer me to recall to your mind that time, in which the arms and tyranny of the British crown were exerted, with every powerful effort, in order to reduce you to a state of servitude . . . You were then impressed with proper ideas of the great violation of liberty, and the free possession of those blessings, to which you were entitled by nature . . . how pitiable is it to reflect . . . in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren, under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others.

—Benjamin Banneker to Thomas Jefferson, August 19, 1791

Following the Revolution, only White men who owned property were allowed to vote. But poor White men used protests and petitions to insist that they deserved equal suffrage rights. Nearly all White men in the United States gained full citizenship rights by 1856.

The rights of suffrage are to a free people, what the rights of conscience are to individuals; and neither can be infringed or attacked, without violating the laws of nature and the inherent privileges of man.

—[Anonymous], Rights of Suffrage, Hudson, NY, Ashbel Stoddard, 1792

Twentieth-century depiction of Prince Hall

Letter from Lucy Knox to her Husband Henry Knox

Document concerning negotiations between Patriots and Penobscots

I hope you will not consider yourself as commander in chief of your own house—but be convinced . . . that there is such a thing as equal command.

—Lucy Flucker Knox to Henry Knox, August 23, 1777

Domestic Legacies

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

—Declaration of Sentiments, 1848

In the decades after independence, the ideals of the Declaration of Independence were still not fully realized for all Americans. Native Americans continued to assert their sovereignty and resist land incursion from the United States. Citing the language of the Declaration of Independence, some groups of Americans sought to abolish slavery and expand women’s rights. In the wake of the Civil War, protests by those who faced political oppression, legal restrictions, or customary exclusion grew louder. They resisted the violent dispossession of Native American lands, racial discrimination against Black citizens, and immigration policies that excluded certain nationalities. They attempted to turn the Declaration’s promise of equality into reality.

Portraits of several women who were famous proponents of Womens' Suffrage in the 19th century

Poster with a fantastical Civil War battle in the background and a union soldier in the foreground waving a US flag

Photograph of one adult and three children in San Francisco's Chinatown

Global Legacies

From Eurasia to Africa to the Americas, there have been more than 100 declarations of independence since 1776, as well as additional declarations of rights. The US Declaration offered a globally recognized model for how to announce changes in sovereignty. Yet it was not universally embraced by revolutionaries. Many people in other new nations saw it as irrelevant to local circumstances. Others found it too exclusionary. For example, in the early nineteenth century, Haiti, Mexico, and Colombia experimented with antislavery declarations of independence that made even greater promises to protect equality. Just as the US Declaration influenced the world, the world influenced the Declaration’s legacy at home. Perhaps “all men are created equal” could be enacted even more fully.

The Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, etching by Charles Thévenin, ca. 1793. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

American democracy inspired the French Revolution in 1789. But France’s steps toward equality soon surpassed those of the United States. In turn, the French Revolution’s violent radicalization led observers worldwide to reexamine their own governments, and to ask how much equality was too much. Thomas Jefferson was serving as US minister to France when the revolution began. He tried to shape France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, but his influence was marginal.

In the same way that French people revolted against monarchy, enslaved people in the colonial French Caribbean revolted against slavery. The result was the abolitionist nation of Haiti, which declared independence in 1804 and gradually broadened global understandings of human rights. Haiti’s example terrified enslavers while inspiring abolitionists and enslaved people in the United States and around the world.

In the 1810s and 1820s, colonies in North and South America shook off colonial rule. Most of the new nations pursued limited antislavery reforms and enfranchised men of African and Indigenous descent. In the United States, abolitionists used the example set by former Spanish colonies to argue that multiracial republics were possible.

As the nineteenth-century Americas became a hub of democratic innovation, European revolutionaries struggled. France had a dictator, Napoleon, by 1802 and restored its monarchy in 1814. Greece invoked global revolutionary traditions upon declaring independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1822 but soon became a conservative monarchy. Hierarchy proved difficult to completely set aside. Europeans—and their African and Asian colonies—would issue more declarations of independence in the twentieth century.

A group of greek revolutionary men dressed in exotic garb looking inconsolable as a fire rages in the background.

Greek revolutionaries console each other after losing a battle to Ottoman armies. They had named one of their fortifications after Benjamin Franklin. Failure of Military Operation, painting by Henri Decaisne, 1826. (Benaki Museum)

Five people including two women holding pots on their had, one shoeless man holding a hat, and what appears to be a well dressed married couple.

Photograph of a Iroquois leader wearing a headress and wampum belt

Coda

As David Armitage, historian of the global impact of the Declaration writes, “the US Declaration of Independence created both an encouraging example and an elusive ideal for later self-determination movements. . . . Over time and around the world, the US Declaration increasingly came to animate and inspire other movements for self-determination. Of the 193 states currently represented at the United Nations, more than half have a document considered as a declaration of independence. The US Declaration was the first.”

Credits

Funding provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities *

*Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Project Director: Denver Brunsman, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of History, George Washington University

Scholarly Advisors

Leslie M. Alexander, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History, Rutgers University
Caitlin Fitz, Associate Professor of History, Northwestern University
Vanessa M. Holden, Associate Professor of History, Director of African American and Africana Studies, and Director of the Central Kentucky Slavery Initiative, University of Kentucky
Benjamin H. Irvin, Associate Professor of History and Executive Editor of the Journal of American History, Indiana University
Alyssa Mt. Pleasant, Assistant Professor of Native American Studies, University at Buffalo (SUNY)
Eric Slauter, Associate Professor of English, Deputy Dean of the Humanities Division, and Master of the Humanities Collegiate Division, University of Chicago
Rosemarie Zagarri, Distinguished University Professor of History, George Mason University