David Hejmanowski has been judge of the Delaware County Probate/Juvenile Court since 2015. He graciously agreed to write a column for Delaware Source commemorating America’s 250th birthday.
If there are more famous words in the history of American government than “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” we would be hard-pressed to identify what they are.
And yet, they were not Jefferson’s first choice, nor was their survival or public issuance ever assured.
As our nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of the delegates to the Continental Congress affixing their names to Jefferson’s work, we would be wise to take a moment and appreciate the truly remarkable act that those men took part in on a sweltering July day in Philadelphia.
Jefferson’s original choice of words, as shown in drafts now housed at the Library of Congress, was actually, “we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.” On June 21, he passed the draft to Ben Franklin, with a request that Franklin edit the draft.
It was Franklin who chose to ground the language in the more philosophical sounding “self-evident.”
He wanted the Declaration to be a force of political reason, since it was launching a nation that was rejecting a divinely crowned monarch.
The edits weren’t over with that change. The Continental Congress made 86 more edits and removed nearly a quarter of the original text that Jefferson had written. Even after all of that, it was no certain thing that the Continental Congress would adopt the document and issue their Declaration.
As I sit writing this on the evening of July 1, I can hear fireworks going off in the neighborhood. How fitting it is, not just that they are being fired, but that they are being set off earlier than the fourth.
That’s because Congress actually voted to break from Great Britain on the second. The fourth was the day that they approved the edited Declaration and informed the new nation.
The great risk we face two and a half centuries later is not that we will lose sight of these men or their works, but that we will, in our adoration of what they achieved, forget that they were mere mortals – farmers, teachers, lawyers, doctors, ministers – leaders, yes, but men who faced the world’s most formidable army and made the choice to, in the words of delegate John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, “brave the storm on a skiff made of paper.”
These men were committing treason against the crown, and they knew it. The penalty for treason in the British Empire at the time was death – and death by being hanged, drawn and quartered.
There is a famous story (likely apocryphal) that at the time of the signing Ben Franklin said to his fellow delegates, “we must all hang together or we will most assuredly hang separately.”
They were great men, yes, but with all the foibles of mortals. As an example, Jefferson’s original draft included a passage condemning the King for waging “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere.” Southern delegates insisted on its removal.
And we often forget that their first attempt at governing this new nation, the Articles of Confederation, was an abject failure. It took a constitutional convention more than a decade later to form our modern system of government.
And yet, that’s what makes this whole 250-year ongoing experiment in self-governance and freedom so wonderfully, magnificently, remarkable.
It has survived a horrific civil conflict, two world wars, the assassination of four presidents, multiple economic depressions, and alternating periods of great unity and startling dissension. And yet it’s still here, still functioning, still flexible and malleable but tied to its core principles and documents all at the same time. Through all of this, for two and a half centuries, the rule of law has prevailed.
John Adams, a man of remarkable intelligence and determination who has only begun to be appropriately appreciated in the past few decades, wrote home to his wife Abigail on July 3. He told her the following:
The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
So celebrate. Set off fireworks (carefully!), enjoy parades, fire up the grill and take in the Central Ohio Symphony concert.
But when you do those things, remember that the figures we venerate were mere mortals, just like us, and that their great success is that they knew we would have our ups and downs just as they did.
During his remarks at the Constitution Convention in 1787, Ben Franklin rose to voice support for the proposed system of government, saying it was as good as any that could be conceived. But he also issued a warning that all forms of government eventually “end in despotism… when the people become so corrupted as to need despotic government.”
As he left the convention a passer-by asked him whether the Convention had produced a monarchy or a republic. Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
We’ve kept it for 250 years, and we can keep it for 250 more if we remain grounded in the principles that have kept that “skiff made of paper” afloat for so long.
