Intro (00:02):

Welcome to The Future of Liberty, a project of Liberty Fund hosted by Mitch Daniels.

Mitch Daniels (00:16):

Welcome to this latest installment of The Future of Liberty. This year we will be celebrating the 250th birthday of our founding document, the statement that the world associates with the great leap forward for freedom that the American experiment brought to the world. No better person to join us than Dr. Michael Auslin, whose recent book, National Treasure, teaches me and I suspect all its readers a great deal that we didn’t know before about that document, its history and its meaning over the course of time. Dr. Auslin, thank you for being with us.

Dr. Michael Auslin (00:54):

Thank you for having me.

Mitch Daniels (00:55):

Let’s just start with the pure physical aspects. This document has had Perils of Pauline existence over those years. We’re very fortunate that we actually have it, and can go view it in the archives and other places. Tell us a little about that.

Dr. Michael Auslin (01:12):

Absolutely. I think that was actually where I started with the book. I was going to write a very short book, about 40,000 words, on why the document exists. I mean, how did it survive? And you’re right. Everyone knows the text, we know the words, we know the great stirring phrases, but there was no guarantee that what we call the official parchment declaration would have survived. And so we could be celebrating the 250th or the 200th or whichever anniversary without the document that most symbolized, the actual physical piece of material that most symbolized the declaration, though we would have had other printings and broad sides. And that’s really where I got fascinated, was the idea. I’m a historian and cultural historian and I guess you’d call it material history. Why do certain things persist and others don’t?

(02:05):

So, I was going to write a really short book on that. It turned out to be a much longer book, sort of three books in one as opposed to one. But my first question was, how did this make it through? And by almost every account, it really shouldn’t have. Even in the Revolutionary War, of course, it was fleeing with the Continental Congress on the road. And of course, had Congress or anyone carrying the papers of Congress been captured by the British as they were running away, they certainly would have destroyed it, or it would have been sent to London as this sort of folly of the Americans and the war. So, from the very beginning, its existence was in doubt. It was very roughly treated, simply because no one knew if this experiment would work, if the country would prevail. And there was no tradition of saving in a sort of conservatory sense for the nation or the broader people saving documents. Documents may have been saved, but it was largely accidental.

(03:09):

So, the parchment declaration was rolled up. It was shoved into boxes, cabinets, and bags and moved around. It took a huge toll. So, if you go see it today, it looks terrible, sadly. Versus the Constitution, which actually looks great because the Constitution wasn’t nearly as interesting to people. So, it was just sort of folded and kept in the dark. Whereas the declaration, they kept taking it out, unrolling it, showing it to people, rolling it back up. Of course, we get to 1814 here in Washington, and literally by a miracle, the document is saved. If the State Department had listened to the best military advice of the time, which said the British won’t come to Washington, it’s almost certain that it would have been incinerated when the State Department, which was a small building next to the White House, was burned along with the White House.

(04:03):

So, that itself was a miracle and that it was kept for us. After that, its fame began to grow. And so then the question was, do we show it to the people? How do we care for it? But there was no science of conservation, no science of preservation. So, they hung it up just a few blocks from where we are right now in the old patent office, which is now the National Portrait Gallery. They did what they thought was best, which was basically sowing it to a backing of paper. So, you can even see little holes in it today where they sewed it the first time. They also put it in the sunlight, so it’s fading. They didn’t really know until the 1950s any real serious science of conservation and preservation. So, they were doing things that they thought would work, but they used glue and string and all these things that just took a terrible toll on the document.

(04:54):

And worse, at certain points, thankfully this never actually happened, when people became really worried about preserving it, they would form committees to decide how to protect it. Those committees came up with all kinds of crazy ideas. Some calligraphers even suggested retracing over the original text by hand. So there were many ways the document could have been destroyed. Its real permanence as a state paper didn’t come until the 1920s, when it was enshrined in the Library of Congress. Then, in 1951, it was placed in the special cases that lasted about half a century before being redesigned in 2003. In other words, it’s really only been about a century that the document’s future has been largely assured. At every stage before that, it could have been ripped, torn, lost, burned, or simply crumbled into dust.

Mitch Daniels (05:52):

If I recall correctly, you could say the true original document was essentially destroyed in the printing process. It was taken apart so it could be reproduced and reprinted. So we no longer have the version that actually contained Jefferson’s own handwriting.

Dr. Michael Auslin (06:10):

Right. That’s a great point. It’s like the movie National Treasure, for example, it’s one of the really exciting parts of the history. So, what we do have are Jefferson’s own rough drafts that he has in the Library of Congress, which will be put on display this year. And then because he was so upset about what Congress did to his draft, he wrote out other drafts. And so we have a number of drafts. What we don’t have though is when he finished the draft and the committee of five had gone over it, he took their edits. We don’t really know who did what on the editing and he wrote what he called the fair copy. It meant just a clean copy. That was sent to the Continental Congress. It was debated, looked over and then debated again. It was clearly edited because what Congress did was take out an enormous amount, about a quarter, of what Jefferson had written.

(07:01):

And then Congress said, “We approved this. This is the declaration,” with some sheet of paper. And that day, July 4th, when they adopted it, of course, July 2nd was the vote for independence, but the declaration to tell the world what had been done, adopted on July 4th, it was walked a few blocks over to a printer named John Dunlap in Philadelphia, and it was printed. Whatever paper came out of Congress should have been considered the official Declaration of Independence. That’s what they all saw and said, “This is it.” And that disappeared the moment it left the building. And as you point out what most likely happened,but we don’t know because nobody took notes. Today, every second of its existence is charted. We have no idea what happened, but most likely it was cut up into strips and given to different compositors because they were printing what were called broadsides, these large sheets by order of Congress to send out to the new country, tell people that they were Americans, that they were no longer British, sent it to George Washington, read it to the troops.

(08:06):

So, they had to print these up very quickly. We don’t know how many they printed, a couple hundred for sure. All on the night of July 4th, the morning of July 5th, then they started sending them out and they were in such a rush to get these things out because the war’s not going well and we’re close to losing. Nobody thought to take those strips of paper that Congress had given its approval to and put it back together. So, the truth is, we don’t actually know if what was printed was exactly what Congress approved. We know there were some slight differences, capitalization, a word slipped in here or there, but it’s part of the great mystery of this document.

Mitch Daniels (08:42):

Your book corrects a few misimpressions we have from history. Maybe you could call them myths. You just mentioned one of the important ones. The declaration at the time might have seemed an afterthought because on the 2nd of July, not the 4th, they’d voted on the Lee Resolution, actually voting to declare our independence. At the time, Adams and others thought that would be the day we all remembered that would be the event, not the declaration itself.

Dr. Michael Auslin (09:16):

Absolutely. Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, that July 2nd would be the greatest day in American history, the ‘epocha’ of America. He said it would be celebrated with shows, fireworks, bands, and the like. But at some point, someone decided to place the date “In Congress, July 4th, 1776” at the top of the document. Jefferson himself had not written that at the top of the original manuscript. I mean on the printed broadsides, not the handwritten version. Legally, that date was correct, because the formal declaratory statement was made on July 4th. But in reality, it was explaining what had happened two days earlier. So suddenly, the first printings of the Declaration by John Dunlap, which were then copied by local printers and picked up by newspapers, all carried the date July 4th.

(10:16):

And so, suddenly, people believed independence had been declared on July 4th. Of course, there was no internet or anything like that to inform people on July 2nd that independence had already been declared. In fact, it took weeks for many people to hear about it. The first public reading was in Philadelphia on July 8th. So from one perspective, you could say that was the first moment ordinary Americans really knew about it, even though copies had already been sent out. It still took days for the post riders to deliver the news. So, in many ways, our focus on July 4th is really a historical accident. Within a year, even Adams had accepted July 4th as the date of celebration. But Adams was really the person who pushed independence through Congress, so July 2nd was, in a sense, Adams’s day. July 4th became Jefferson’s day because those were the words that were officially adopted. And Adams, of course, was not entirely thrilled about that.

Mitch Daniels (11:12):

Mainly his words. As you said.

Dr. Michael Auslin (11:13):

Mainly.

Mitch Daniels (11:14):

Congress threw out some, and we’ll come back to this subject, including a condemnation of slavery.

Dr. Michael Auslin (11:19):

Absolutely.

Mitch Daniels (11:19):

But Congress, Jefferson’s colleagues, had decided it was too inflammatory for the time.

Dr. Michael Auslin (11:28):

Yes. There were two major excisions made from Jefferson’s draft. One was a fairly brutal critique of the British people that came across as personal and mean spirited. That section was toned down in part because there were still so many loyalists in the colonies, and the revolutionaries hoped either to bring them over to their side or at least keep them neutral. Of course, many thousands of loyalists would eventually leave, but the delegates did not want to completely throw the conflict in their faces. It was a very fraught moment. Adams later said that at the time of independence, about a third of the population supported it, a third opposed it, and, in good American fashion, a third had no idea. So that was one section they removed. The second, as you mentioned, was a long and passionate condemnation of the slave trade.

(12:24):

It was not actually a condemnation of slavery itself, although Jefferson had made his views on slavery clear elsewhere. He described it as a poison and hoped it would eventually disappear. But in the Declaration, what he specifically condemned was the slave trade. Jefferson had previously tried to restrict or ban the trade, only to have those efforts rejected by King George. So in the draft, he placed the blame squarely at the King’s feet. Both Southern and Northern interests objected to this passage. In the South, especially in South Carolina and Georgia, the economy depended heavily on enslaved labor. This was before the full plantation system of the 19th century, but slavery was already central to tobacco farming and other agricultural production. At the same time, Northern mercantile and shipping interests also profited from the slave trade. They made money both from transporting enslaved people across the Atlantic and from shipping the goods produced through slave labor.

(13:23):

So, Jefferson was really deeply wounded that this was taken out. And it just shows that from the very beginning, as they decided essentially to kick the can down the road, that this problem, this poison was at the heart of the American experiment and they were going to have to deal with it.

Mitch Daniels (13:43):

You say he laid these things at the feet of King George. He laid a lot of things at his feet. Our friend, Lord Andrew Roberts, has written that the declaration, the 26 of its 28 criticisms are invalid or not true or so forth. And he coined this wonderful phrase. He calls our beloved declaration hypocritical, illogical, mendacious, and sublime.

Dr. Michael Auslin (14:15):

It’s a great line.

Mitch Daniels (14:16):

As our greatest authority on the declaration, how do you react to that characterization?

Dr. Michael Auslin (14:24):

For Americans at the time, the 28 charges were the core of the document. It was basically a legal case that was being laid out and Jefferson very logically did so. Today, very few people read them. Of course, they’re not mostly relevant, though there are some interesting echoes that come up in political discourse, but we forget how important the charges were. And even Congress felt that Jefferson had gone overboard, that he had conflated certain things that the king in parliament, which is never mentioned in the document, had done. He made it sound as though things that had been done once had been done forever. He’s essentially making this case for tyranny, and even Adams said he never thought George was a tyrant, but in the logic of the time, this idea of tyranny was, of course, a denial of liberty and rights, that the colonists as Englishmen felt were theirs.

(15:22):

And it wasn’t that the colonists were asking for new rights. They were arguing that these were rights they already possessed and that those rights were being taken away. Andrew’s argument is largely supported by historians who have studied the issue. Several of the complaints in the Declaration clearly reflected real grievances. Quartering soldiers without consent was a major one, as were taxation without representation, obstruction of justice, and interference with local assemblies. The British made it more difficult for colonial legislatures to meet and sometimes forced them to gather in different locations. Those were the grievances that really resonated with people. Other accusations were more controversial. For example, the charge that the British were stirring up slave rebellions was softened by Congress. Delegates worried both that the issue was too inflammatory and that publicizing it could be dangerous. Some also felt the accusation went too far. Later in the war, the British would promise freedom to enslaved people who revolted and joined their side, but at the time most of the charges in the Declaration were viewed, at minimum, as embellishments of real events.

(16:27):

And it’s important to remember that, even as the Declaration was being passed, there were still strong voices against independence. People like John Dickinson of Pennsylvania believed reconciliation with Britain was still possible. Others felt the colonies could return to the old relationship with Britain as long as their rights were protected. So there was concern that Jefferson’s original draft burned too many bridges because of how strongly it attacked the British. If reconciliation were still possible, where would that leave them? Now, for the most part, the path had already been set. The die was cast, and the Americans were moving toward independence. But right up until that moment, even while they were trying to explain to the world what they had done, many people still hoped for a return to the old system, just with their rights restored. So some of the charges in the Declaration were seen as going a bit too far. It was, in a sense, like a lawyer delivering a dramatic closing argument to a jury. And as Andrews points out, not every accusation fully holds up, but the core argument does.

Mitch Daniels (17:23):

One thing your book and Lord Roberts’s book both emphasize is just how contingent all of this was, how many different ways the Revolution could have failed to happen at all. In fact, he points out that if George III had been the kind of tyrant other rulers were at the time, people like Napoleon or Catherine the Great, the rebellion likely would have been crushed. And then we would never have had this document, or, as you put it, it might simply have been carried off to Britain for them to gloat over.

Dr. Michael Auslin (18:01):

It’s wonderful that we are still debating the tactics and strategy of the Revolution. Many of our wars did not begin well. The Revolutionary War certainly did not, and neither did the Civil War, at least for the North during the first two or three years. People also forget that in World War II, the United States was on the defensive early on. It took time before the country truly gained momentum in both the Pacific and Europe. In that sense, the Revolutionary War followed a familiar pattern. There were many moments when events could easily have gone the other way. If Washington had been captured in New York, or if the attacks at Trenton and Princeton had failed, the entire course of the war might have changed. But there is also a flip side to that argument. If the British and the colonies had not stumbled into open conflict at Lexington and Concord, and if that uncertain political period had dragged on longer, events also could have unfolded very differently.

(19:08):

Would you have had the same number of American troops encircling Boston? Would the British have had to withdraw from Boston? All of these different attempts at what everyone, a little bit like the Civil War, thought would be very quick and decisive in the beginning, certainly from the British side, turned out to be utter miscalculations and they really never found the generals who could carry it through. And on the American side, it’s almost completely forgotten, but we’re just celebrating the 250th anniversary of the disastrous Canadian campaign, and we could have lost almost everything with that. We see it with hindsight, obviously, we know what happened and we can celebrate, but this was such a close-run thing.

Mitch Daniels (19:55):

Well, let’s use some hindsight on other questions that are surely being debated this 250th year. My question is, were Jefferson and the other drafters and the ratifiers, were they looking beyond their times or were they prisoners of their times when they said, for instance, all men are created equal at a time when that only applied to some men?

Dr. Michael Auslin (20:26):

It’s a great question, and one we still debate today. One of the enduring debates about the Declaration is whether it is primarily a document about liberty or a document about equality. Those are the two great claims at its center: the claim of liberty and freedom, and the claim of equality. To Jefferson and most of the signers, though, those ideas were closely connected. Equality was not the ultimate end in itself. It was the means by which people could possess liberty, to live freely within a political system as equals, not as subjects subordinate to someone else. That understanding reflected their belief in natural law and natural rights, rights that come from God and therefore cannot be bargained away, surrendered, or taken by another person.

Mitch Daniels (21:12):

Rights coming from God and not from any government.

Dr. Michael Auslin (21:14):

That’s right. That the rights precede government, as Jefferson writes, the only legitimate function of government is to be established to protect those rights. It doesn’t give you rights. And even just a few months ago, we had a sitting US senator say this idea of rights coming from God is something that you hear in Iran. And no, you hear it from Jefferson and the founding fathers and from John Locke and from others in our Anglo enlightenment tradition and from our Judeo-Christian tradition going back to rights coming from God. 

Mitch Daniels (21:49):

Or from nature. It’s sometimes put that way.

Dr. Michael Auslin (21:52):

Or nature. Well, it’s interesting because they said in the document, Jefferson writes, “Nature and nature’s God.” So, you have this enlightenment concept of nature, and then you have this biblical concept of the God of nature. And the two are joined together in Jefferson’s mind, and I would say in the minds of most of the signers.

(22:11):

So, just to answer your question then, are they ahead of their time? I think there are men of their times, deeply of their times. They are well-read in the Bible, in Protestant theology broadly construed obviously in enlightenment thought, as we’ve just been talking about, and common law, English common law. They were not ahead of their times, but the greatness of the declaration, the greatness of this document that they wrote and edited and then promulgated for the world is that in future times, its capaciousness could increase to accept groups and people that were not, in their minds, yet of that political community.

Mitch Daniels (22:53):

Right. What we can’t know is whether they were imagining this. I mean, succumbing to, I think one of our most unfortunate current tendencies, sometimes called presentism, people look back and want to superimpose today’s values and mores and the expanded view of freedom that we have on people who were living in a very precarious moment, trying to create a new nation. That was their, I think, principal aim here. So, let’s talk about the issue that comes up. It’s a little tiresome anymore, but it’s still important, and that’s how they treated slavery here and then subsequently in the Constitution. Was it a compromise such that without it, you don’t have a nation at all, or was it sort of an unacceptable blot even at the time?

Dr. Michael Auslin (23:50):

Well, it’s very complicated because the Declaration itself makes no mention of slavery. Once again, the issue was effectively pushed down the road. Then, with the Constitution, we get the infamous compromise that, for purposes of representation, enslaved people would be counted as three fifths of a person. The founders were trying to solve a problem no one had really attempted before: how representation would work in a republic and who exactly would be represented. Native Americans, for example, were generally excluded from this framework, while enslaved people were included in a limited way because the framers were trying to create a political balance among the states. At the same time, many of the founders clearly saw slavery as a moral stain. In the book, I include passages from figures such as George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, and others describing slavery as an evil. They often argued that it harmed both sides, that it was an evil for the person who was enslaved and also an evil for the enslaver.

(24:50):

They looked back at Rome and argued that slavery had contributed to the fall of the Roman Republic because it made slave owners indolent, lazy, and ultimately cruel. The more you read the writings of the founders, the more complicated the picture becomes. Jefferson, of course, has been heavily criticized by some people over the past several years. But when you read more of what he actually wrote, it is clear that he opposed slavery in principle and hoped it would eventually end, even though he did not see an obvious path toward ending it. The same is true of George Washington. There has been a great deal of controversy over how these figures are remembered today, especially in places like Philadelphia. But Washington also wrote very clearly about his opposition to slavery.

(25:39):

In his will, Washington, of course, provided for the manumission of his enslaved people after Martha’s death. But even at the time of his own death, he arranged for the younger enslaved people to be freed earlier, educated, trained, and given financial support so they could sustain themselves independently. As Ron Chernow writes in his biography of Washington, this was a remarkable act. I forget the exact word he uses, but I believe he describes it as something close to magnificent. For that reason, broad condemnations of Washington are often historically inaccurate, and I would argue the same is true in many cases with Jefferson. The founders generally wanted slavery to end, but they did not see a clear path toward ending it, and their generation was not ultimately the one forced to resolve the issue politically. Still, I do not think their moral doubts were unresolved. They understood that slavery was wrong.

Mitch Daniels (26:32):

No, they pressed forward the boundaries of human freedom further than anyone had before.

Dr. Michael Auslin (26:39):

Absolutely.

Mitch Daniels (26:39):

The fact that they felt constrained by the circumstances of their time to go that far and no further, to some of us is not an indictment.

Dr. Michael Auslin (26:49):

And as Gordon Wood, one of the leading American historians, recently said, expecting people of the past to think exactly as we do today is simply unhistorical. At the same time, the founders were dealing with several different layers of meaning within both the Declaration and the Constitution. To them, the idea of equality was absolute in one sense: all men were equal in the eyes of God, and all possessed natural rights. That theme was later taken up most powerfully by Lincoln. The difficulty came when they tried to apply those principles to a specific political community. Were enslaved people considered equal members of that political community? No. But were they considered equal as human beings? That was a different question.

(27:42):

There are very strong arguments to say that yes, they considered them fully equal. This, for example, was an argument of Harry Jaffa, the great conservative political philosopher, that they didn’t write that all Englishmen are created equal or all property owners are created equal. They wrote all men are created equal. Now, as always, you run into difficulties very quickly, and how do you account for them within the system? And that’s where Jefferson wasn’t saying that slaves would be given an equal role in the system, but as human beings, they were equal.

Mitch Daniels (28:13):

Walter Isaacson, in his excellent short book, points out that, while this does not excuse the founders’ contradictions, the word ‘men’ in medieval and early modern usage often meant humanity in general. You used a great word for the language of the Declaration: capacious. And it really is. That language is broad enough that it has been invoked by many different groups over time, including some that many of us would regard as opponents of freedom. There is an irony in hearing the Declaration quoted by people founding communist regimes or by radical political movements like the Black Panther Party. But that also speaks to the power and universality of its language. Different groups have tried to claim its promises and apply them to their own causes. So I think the important question is not simply who has quoted the Declaration, but how they understood its principles and whether they actually upheld the ideals of liberty and natural rights that the document describes.

Dr. Michael Auslin (29:12):

Well, I think it begins with the undeniable and enduring power of the idea of liberty, because all of these groups were arguing for their own understanding of what liberty meant. And that, of course, is where the complications begin. I would actually start with our own history. Not long ago, I was speaking with a very well-known media figure and telling him about the book. At the time, I was writing the Civil War chapters, and he said, “Oh, the Confederates hated the Declaration of Independence because it said all men are created equal.” And I replied, “Well, not exactly.” In fact, the Confederates often used the Declaration itself as part of their justification for leaving the Union.

(29:59):

Government is only legitimate if it rests on the consent of the governed. And this had sort of blown their minds that, well, the Confederates liked it. I said, “No, they loved the declaration.” So, it would actually start with there. As we understand the idea of liberty today, it certainly cannot encompass the idea of enslaving anyone or owning another human being. But the Confederates, the South had very sophisticated arguments about, first of all, consent of the governed and how political communities are put together. It doesn’t mean they were correct arguments or as we would interpret them, moral, but they based it on the declaration.

(30:40):

And even in the North, up until the Civil War, and in some cases even during it, you can find newspapers arguing that the South did in fact have the right to secede under the principle of consent of the governed. Their position was often that secession had to occur peacefully and could not be carried out through violence. So that debate existed even within the United States itself. And then, as you point out, you see similar patterns in other countries. The Soviet Union, for example, always emphasized the elections it held and claimed democratic legitimacy, even within an authoritarian system.

Dr. Michael Auslin (31:12):

The people’s republics, right?

Mitch Daniels (31:13):

Yes.

Dr. Michael Auslin (31:14):

In the Soviet model, everyone was supposedly equal, but no one was truly free. There was equality without liberty. In China as well, the rhetoric has often emphasized equality, even though some people are clearly far less free than others. That tension has appeared repeatedly throughout modern history. You can see it very explicitly, for example, in Ho Chi Minh’s 1945 Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, which directly echoed language from the American Declaration. In fact, the American Revolution inspired dozens of declarations of independence around the world. Many of them were more radical than the American version and often followed the French model, especially the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. But the American Declaration was still a major influence. So figures like Ho Chi Minh drew on its language and ideals, even while interpreting them in very different political ways.

Mitch Daniels (31:48):

Was cultural appropriation.

Dr. Michael Auslin (31:50):

Yes, it really was. The American Declaration gave later movements a sense of legitimacy. It really did. Ho Chi Minh, for example, begins the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence by directly quoting from the American Declaration. But as you point out, it is much easier to repeat the words than to embrace the spirit behind them. Ho Chi Minh was ultimately pursuing a leveling revolution, one that emphasized equality through the removal of property rights and individual liberties. That was very different from the American understanding of liberty. And you see something similar with the Black Panthers. When they released their Ten Point Program in 1966, the final section, I believe it was the last two paragraphs of Point Ten, reproduced almost verbatim the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. Their argument was essentially this: ‘We no longer consent to this government.’ In that sense, they were drawing a parallel to the colonists’ argument for separation. That was the key distinction they were making.

(32:48):

Most of the people throughout American history who have quoted the Declaration were not arguing for separation, but for inclusion. Women’s rights advocates in the nineteenth century are a great example. Many leaders within the Black community arguing for civil rights were also making that case. They wanted to join the broader nation and participate fully in the political community on equal terms. Women were demanding the right to vote. During the civil rights era, activists were demanding the end of Jim Crow and equal protection under the law. Their argument was not that they wanted to leave the American system, but that they wanted to be fully included within it. Only a smaller number of movements have interpreted the Declaration in a separatist way by looking back to 1776 and saying, “The American colonists separated from Britain, and we want to do the same.” Some militia movements, for example, have made arguments along those lines, claiming that they no longer consent to the government and therefore wish to separate from it. What fascinates me is that the same document can speak to so many different kinds of people and movements. That is because the Declaration wrestles with the most fundamental questions about how people live together in a political and social community.

Mitch Daniels (33:54):

One of the fascinating things I learned in the book was that on the 50th anniversary of the declaration, it was read by the then president, John Quincy Adams, and that’s the occasion on which he gave his very famous speech with its formulation that the US goes not forth in search of monsters to slay. It’s a very current discussion. As we’re having this conversation, the nation’s involved in challenging what some might consider one of those monsters.

Dr. Michael Auslin (34:33):

Right. It was actually the 45th.

Mitch Daniels (34:36):

Sorry, yes.

Dr. Michael Auslin (34:38):

At the time, John Quincy Adams was serving as Secretary of State, though he would later become president. And of course, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration is remembered because both his father, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson died on that very day. It was an extraordinary shock to the nation. What made the occasion even more remarkable was that the actual parchment Declaration was publicly displayed and read for the first time, at least as far as we know. It was carried from the State Department to the Capitol, the galleries were opened, and thousands of people came to witness it. You’re right that John Quincy Adams read the document and then delivered what became one of the most important speeches in American history, including the famous line that America goes, “not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” But he also did something else that was significant. During that fiftieth anniversary celebration in 1826, he connected the Declaration more explicitly than many had before to the deeper principles and meaning of the American nation itself.

(35:32):

Until roughly the 1820s, the Declaration of Independence was, in many ways, something of an afterthought. It had done its job on July 4th, and then the Americans won the Revolution. So the document survived, it was not discarded or carried off to Britain as a symbol of a failed rebellion, but it gradually faded from the center of political life. First came the Articles of Confederation, and then the Constitution. The major debates of the early republic were constitutional and legal debates. People were arguing about separation of powers, the role of government, federal authority, and similar questions. The Declaration did not really address those issues directly. In fact, during the debates over the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, written by John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, almost never mention the Declaration at all. There is only one indirect reference to it. And that is striking, because you might expect the Declaration to be cited constantly, yet it largely was not.

(36:26):

So, the Declaration is really overshadowed. It reemerges, as I mentioned in our very first question, after the war of 1812, its survival gives it a sort of cache. The idea that America had once again beaten the British, the greatest empire on earth for the second time in a generation gave the justification that the declaration offers to why this nation should exist, a new lease on life. And people start to get much more interested in it. And this is the beginning of the cultural life of the declaration. They begin making artistic reproductions and facsimiles of it, which we still have today, but it’s not until Adams reads it and then gives his speech that he says, “This is really the wellspring of the American idea.” And in fact, he says, “This gives life to our constitutional republic.” And until then, people hadn’t really thought of it in those terms.

(37:21):

So it is really from that moment, almost half a century after 1776, that the Declaration enters a new phase and becomes central to American political life. At the same time, it stands somewhat above ordinary politics. It is not like the Constitution. You cannot amend or repeal the Declaration unless you were to dissolve the United States itself, whereas the Constitution can be amended and, in theory, even replaced. So the Declaration exists above day to day politics, yet it deeply influences them. Ever since then, nearly every major American debate, slavery, civil rights, women’s rights, immigration, the role of government, separation of powers, has been argued in constitutional terms. But the spirit underlying those debates comes from the Declaration and from what it says about how a people choose to live together as a political community.

Mitch Daniels (38:17):

You describe the declaration as serving three important roles in our national life as a relic in the sense of a sacred relic, which we have been discussing how often it’s been brought forth for that purpose, as a source of our ideals, but you also say as a cultural unifier, how’s that last part working? It’s a little harder to see that in America in 2026.

Dr. Michael Auslin (38:56):

I think the biggest takeaway from writing what is essentially a 250 year history of the country is, first of all, that we are still here. The nation has endured. We have gone through periods far worse than our own and still managed to survive. From the very beginning, Americans have worried about whether the country could hold together. That concern goes all the way back to Franklin’s famous, perhaps apocryphal, remark at the Constitutional Convention: “A republic, if you can keep it.” The durability of the Union has always been the central question, because without a unified country, as the Civil War demonstrated, you no longer really have a country at all. So to me, one major lesson is that the United States has repeatedly gone through crises, adapted, and changed, while still preserving certain core principles. And throughout those moments, the Declaration has continually been invoked. It was central to Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, and later it helped frame America’s involvement in global struggles for liberty during World War I and World War II.

(39:57):

It was an icon and a beacon during the Cold War. It was the end goal of the civil rights movement. It’s always been what we have come back to in ways that have been often very divisive to get to, but ultimately we’ve come together. I think that the difference today, or one of them, is that we don’t teach the civics as much. We have a much more contested view of our history, and we don’t take the time as often to educate both the youth as well as those who are older on their patrimony, on how we got here, on how you live together in a political community, but there are groups like Liberty Fund, that is its Raison d’être. And we have an enormous strength of groups like Liberty Fund and other groups, civics oriented groups that are trying to fill in this gap that maybe the schools aren’t doing. What I think we may need is as much as we should focus on civics, we also need to focus on civility. And I think it’s in the declaration from the beginning.

(41:10):

The very first line of the Declaration says, “When in the course of human events, one people finds it necessary.” It does not say thirteen colonies or thirteen states. In fact, Jefferson originally wrote “a people,” but most likely Franklin revised it to “one people.” So from the very beginning, the idea of unity is built into the founding document itself. That is also why the founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to one another. They did not make that pledge to a future government or even to their individual states. They pledged it to each other as fellow citizens. At its core, I think this reflects the idea of civic friendship. We hear that phrase more often now, but it is actually an ancient concept that goes back to Aristotle. It is the idea that citizens have both rights and responsibilities toward one another. One reason you do not abuse power when you hold it is that, someday, you may no longer have it, and you would not want to be treated unjustly yourself. As Aristotle described it, democracy involves “ruling and being ruled in turn.” That is really one of the core principles of democratic life.

Mitch Daniels (42:14):

On the subject of civility, compromise and so forth, Walter Isaacson is in this book. Do you like his formulation, “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written?”

Dr. Michael Auslin (42:26):

I do. It’s a nice way to put it all together, but I think it’s the greatest document ever written. I think there’s more to it than just that sentence.

Mitch Daniels (42:37):

I think he would agree with that. Somewhere in the book he quotes Franklin as saying, “Compromise may not make great heroes, but it does make great democracies.” And both the Declaration and the Constitution reflect that lesson. They remind us that democratic government requires negotiation, restraint, and a willingness to live together despite disagreement. Those are lessons we sometimes seem to be forgetting today.

Dr. Michael Auslin (43:01):

Absolutely. Independence itself was the product of compromise. The Declaration took the form it did because of compromise, and certainly the Constitution that followed was built through compromise as well. But these compromises also happened at the individual level. They required people to step forward and put the larger cause above their personal preferences. A great example is the vote for independence on July 2nd. As you mentioned, Richard Henry Lee introduced three resolutions on June 7th, 1776, one of which called for independence. So June 7th is an important date to remember because that was the moment Congress formally put the question on the table: either the colonies would move toward independence or they would not. Congress then delayed the vote for several weeks in order to gather delegates and persuade the holdouts. At that point, about eight colonies supported independence, four opposed it, and one was undecided. The leaders knew independence would probably pass, but if they had voted immediately on June 7th, it would not have been unanimous. That mattered enormously for strategic reasons. They did not want Britain to see divisions among the colonies and begin exploiting them by driving wedges between the states or peeling individual colonies away from the cause.”

Mitch Daniels (44:16):

All hang together so we don’t hang separately.

Dr. Michael Auslin (44:18):

Exactly. The leaders also understood that what they were trying to do had to appeal as broadly as possible. It was not enough simply to pass a declaration of independence. They needed the cause to command widespread support. So they took those three weeks to build consensus. Even when Congress reconvened on July 1st, the outcome was still uncertain. South Carolina remained opposed, though it was beginning to waver, and Delaware was divided. At the time, voting was done by colony delegation rather than by individual delegates. So there were thirteen votes in total, one for each colony. The delegates within each colony delegation would vote among themselves, and then the colony would cast a single vote. The leaders believed independence would ultimately pass, but they still were not certain how unified the outcome would be. Pennsylvania, one of the largest and most influential colonies alongside Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts, was also deeply divided, which made the situation even more precarious.

(45:23):

So what happens on July 1st? After nine hours of debate, with John Adams arguing relentlessly against John Dickinson, South Carolina proposes postponing the vote for one more day, until July 2nd. They said they were doing it for the sake of unanimity, suggesting that, given another day, they might be persuaded to join the other colonies in supporting independence. The South Carolina delegates signaled they were prepared to go along with the consensus. At the same time, John Dickinson, the often forgotten founder and one of the most eloquent Americans of the era, the author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, decided along with Robert Morris, the great financier of the Revolution, not to attend the vote the following day. Their absence allowed Benjamin Franklin and the pro independence delegates to carry Pennsylvania in favor of independence. So in that sense, they compromised for the greater good. And even though Dickinson opposed independence at that moment, he still went on to enlist in the army afterward.

(46:21):

So there were compromises at every level. And then, of course, you have the famous ride of Caesar Rodney through the thunder and rain from Dover, Delaware, to Philadelphia. Delaware’s delegation was split three ways: one delegate favored independence, one opposed it, and Rodney, who was ill at home and suffering from cancer, was absent. He rode roughly eighty miles through the night in a storm to reach Philadelphia in time for the vote. According to the story, he arrived exhausted, covered in mud, and out of breath after riding through thunderstorms. He entered the chamber just as the vote was taking place and cast the deciding vote for Delaware, making the delegation two to one in favor of independence. That helped produce unanimity among the colonies that voted. New York still abstained because its delegates had not yet received formal instructions, but the twelve colonies that did vote supported independence unanimously.

(46:59):

And even that moment was the product of compromise by different individuals and different colonies. So I completely agree with you. From the very beginning of the country, compromise has been part of the American system. Sometimes compromise is unpalatable. Sometimes it merely delays a conflict. And sometimes it represents the highest form of statesmanship. But when we forget the importance of compromise, and equally when we forget that we are all fellow citizens within a republic, then we are in real trouble. At that point, politics becomes an irreconcilable zero sum struggle in which every disagreement feels existential. Yet even during that extraordinarily fraught moment in 1776, the founders were still able to find paths toward compromise and common purpose.”

Mitch Daniels (47:41):

We like to close these conversations with the same question. And with your rare grasp of the sweep of American history, you’re an ideal person to pose it to. And the question is, in the year 2050, will Americans be more or less free than we are today?

Dr. Michael Auslin (48:00):

Well, I’m an eternal optimist. We have already come through so much as a country, and I think our national DNA contains this constant balancing act between equality and freedom. That tension is never going to disappear. In some cases, people argue that you must limit equality in order to preserve freedom, while in other cases they argue that certain freedoms must be limited in order to secure greater equality. That debate has always been part of American life. At the same time, I think a sober historian would recognize that the conditions of modern life have changed dramatically. The scale and complexity of government, the enormous population and territorial size of the United States, and especially the unprecedented power of technology, are all things the founders could never truly have anticipated. Those developments inevitably shape how we think about liberty, about what it means to be free, and about how much freedom people believe they need in a modern society.

(49:04):

They worried even then that a republic stretching across an entire continent could not survive. Nothing like it had really existed before. In both 1776 and 1787, many people feared what a stronger federal government might become. Some of the men who argued most forcefully for independence, including Patrick Henry, later opposed the Constitution itself. They warned that it would create a standing army, and they were right. They warned it would lead to permanent taxation, and they were right about that as well. They also feared it would create an intrusive government reaching, as Patrick Henry reportedly said, into ‘every nook and cranny’ of life. Many people today would argue that our government is vastly different from the one our great great grandparents experienced. So I think freedom will continue to evolve as an idea. Liberty has never been entirely static. But if we continue returning to those foundational principles, the belief in natural rights, in rights that come from God rather than from government, then I think we will continue to remain Americans in the deepest sense of the word. As long as we strive to defend those principles, understand them, and uphold them, the core of the American experiment endures.

Mitch Daniels (50:08):

Dr. Michael Auslin, your book is not just perfectly timed in this anniversary year, but aptly named National Treasure. Your book itself is a national treasure, just like the document that it teaches so much about. Thank you for that scholarship and for joining us today.

Dr. Michael Auslin (50:30):

Thank you for having me.

Mitch Daniels (50:31):

And thanks to our viewers for joining us for this most recent edition of The Future of Liberty.

Outro (50:38):

The Future of Liberty has been brought to you by Liberty Fund, a private educational foundation dedicated to encouraging discussions of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.