Declaration of independence what was its influence on the constitution

Cheap labor in large quantities was the critical factor that made these commodities profitable, and planters did not care who provided it — the indigenous population, white indentured servants and eventually African slaves — so long as they were there to be exploited.

To say that this system of exploitation was morally corrupt requires one to identify when moral arguments against slavery began to appear. One also has to recognize that there were two sources of moral opposition to slavery, and they only emerged after One came from radical Protestant sects like the Quakers and Baptists, who came to perceive that the exploitation of slaves was inherently sinful. But the great problem that Jefferson faced — and which many of his modern critics ignore — is that he could not imagine how black and white peoples could ever coexist as free citizens in one republic.

There was, he argued in Query XIV of his Notes , already too much foul history dividing these peoples. And worse still, Jefferson hypothesized, in proto-racist terms, that the differences between the peoples would also doom this relationship. He thought that African Americans should be freed — but colonized elsewhere. Yet we also have to recognize that he was trying to grapple, I think sincerely, with a real problem. No historical account of the origins of American slavery would ever satisfy our moral conscience today, but as I have repeatedly tried to explain to my Stanford students, the task of thinking historically is not about making moral judgments about people in the past.

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Armed Forces. On the centennial of the Tomb of the Unknown Solider, Stanford scholar Laura Wittman reflects on how the historic monument came to be a widespread symbol for public grief and mourning. Stanford News is a publication of Stanford University Communications. Stanford , California Skip to content. Menu Search form Search term. Facebook Twitter Email. Rosen: [] And Ken Kersch is professor of Political Science at Boston College, studying American political thought and constitutional developments.

He has written several books on this subject, including the forthcoming American Political Thought: An Invitation, and I must make a plug for Ken's most recent book which I have just devoured with great profit and interest, Conservatives and the Constitution: Imagining Constitutional Restoration in the Heyday of American Liberalism.

Ken, it is an honor to have you as well. Rosen: [] Danielle, let's jump right in. The Declaration has been invoked by constitutional movements on both the left and the right throughout American history and we're going to explore each of those movements, but just to introduce our listeners, tell us about the broad ways that the Declaration has been invoked by progressive movements on behalf of equality.

Allen: [] The wonderful thing about the Declaration is that it has a principle of change in it, it endorses a principle of change. When you take that all important second sentence about the self-evident truths, it concludes by saying that it's the right of the people to alter or abolish the government if it's not doing its job of securing rights, and institute a new version thereof, and that principle of change has been picked up throughout time.

Lincoln, of course, re-founded the polity on the principle of equality invoked at the Declaration and so many of his political choices were motivated by it. Martin Luther King Jr. Up to the present day, I think you'll find that I like to say it's really The Tea Party was motivated by a lot of people who grabbed the Declaration and used its text history to write out a new series of grievances and progressives operating now in the wake of Donald Trump's election are doing the same thing with the Declaration of Independence.

It really It's a text that belongs to everybody and has a principle of change in it and therefore has been an engine of progressive action in the country throughout its history.

Rosen: [] Ken, as Danielle says, the Declaration belongs to everyone and has and has been invoked by everyone and it has been also specially invoked by conservatives throughout American history, starting with the founding. Give us a sense of some of the leading invocation by conservatives' movements, of the Declaration. Kersch: [] I certainly agree with Danielle, not only that the Declaration of Independence belongs to everybody, but I'd make a related statement about that and that is that it has been ubiquitous in American political thought throughout the country's history.

The Declaration of Independence has always been cited on diverse sides of important political struggles in American history, and the categories of progressive and conservative obviously change over time. One thing I would say about the Declaration of Independence and its relation to the Constitution and ultimately to conservatism, is that the Declaration of Independence is what scholars have referred to as a credal document.

It states fundamental principles of free governments in liberal regimes and many thinkers across American history, I'll just cite Abraham Lincoln who is obviously one of the most prominent, famously referred to the Constitution, I mean, the Declaration of Independence as the apple of gold in a picture of silver.

The apple of gold being the Declaration and the picture of silver, by that, Lincoln means a picture frame of the Constitution. The conservative thinker, Harry Jaffa, referred to the Declaration with his own metaphor, as the soul of the American political regime and the Constitution is its body.

I would say that contemporary conservatives have invoked the Declaration very prominently in recent years, but if we look back across American history, one thing and we can talk more about this, is that different types of conservatives have invoked the Declaration for different propositions over the course of American history. Frankly, that depends on whether or not they are liberal conservatives who tend to emphasize limited government and natural rights, or whether they are traditionalist conservatives.

In the past there has been a tradition of conservatives, some sliver of conservatives, particularly before the Civil War, denying the principles of the Declaration of Independence and natural equality, while also emphasizing things like government by consent and limited government and contract. Within the conservative thought, it actually is invoked for different purposes, and has been over the course of American history.

Rosen: [] Thank you for introducing us to the distinction among conservatives who have invoked the Declaration and also for introducing us to a concept that you've called, declaration-ism, namely that the Constitution is best interpreted in light of the principles of the Declaration. Danielle, let's now begin at the beginning, around the Founding Era, and give us a sense of the first time that the Declaration was invoked on behalf of constitutional arguments as early as the Founding Era abolitionists, such as the African American abolitionist, David Walker, born in , invoked the Declaration on behalf of the self-evident claim that all men are created equal and the slavery itself violated principles of natural rights.

Were those the first invocations of the Declaration? Give us a sense of how the Declaration was invoked. Allen: [] I'm going to take you earlier than that, two important moments. You're right about one, abolitionism, the other is, just as Ken was saying, the Constitution. On the front of abolitionism, the very first person, period, to use the Declaration for something other than the purposes of independence was a free African American in Boston named Prince Hall.

He invoked the language of the Declaration, the nature of inalienable rights and the creation of all to have these, inaudible submitted it to the Massachusetts Assembly into, sorry, January of , seeking an end of slavery in Massachusetts and emancipation. His petition was not immediately successful, but in fact by in the state constitution, Massachusetts did also use the language of the Declaration of Independence. That then was followed by Supreme Court decisions in the state of Massachusetts in , ruling slavery unconstitutional in the Massachusetts State Constitution.

Abolitionism crystallized in those years, between and , by drawing on the language of the Declaration of Independence. People don't realize that that key moment, the Declaration launched abolitionism and slavery was ended in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Vermont by that point, early in the s.

That's one really important invocation. The second one is that James Wilson, founding father signer of the Declaration and the Constitution and one of the first Supreme Court Justices, stood up in the Constitutional Convention and read the Declaration in full to the assembled gathering to make the case that the new country had been founded on a complete people, a whole national people, not on a treaty among separate states.

He provided the intellectual basis for a popular founding for the country and nationalists founding throughout the Constitutional Convention, he consistently referred back to the Declaration to make that argument. Those are your two earliest uses of the Declaration to redefine domestic politics, the case of abolitionism with Prince Hall and James Wilson providing an intellectual grounding for the Constitution at the convention.

Rosen: [] Wow! That is so fascinating. We have at the Constitution Center, Wilson's original draft of the Constitution, the very first draft and as you say, his notion that we, the people of the United States as a whole where sovereign was key to Lincoln's insisting that the session was unconstitutional. I hadn't known that he invoked the Declaration and thank you so much for teaching us about those two crucial connections and early invocations of the Declaration. Ken, can you beat that and tell us about early invocations of the Declaration, either before the Constitution was ratified or just after, and did the Framers of the Constitution themselves think that the Declaration had legal or constitutional relevance or status?

Kersch: [] I can't beat that. However, I would say that in a way, while the particular in vocation of it, that Danielle spoke of, is especially interesting because it's abolitionism. Most people tend to date the abolitionist movement when the Declaration was perhaps most famously and broadly invoked to the s and I think what Danielle very interestingly in line with some recent scholarship has emphasized is that this really, these invocations go back to the very founding.

Again, I want to underline that I think invocations of the Declaration of Independence very much from the moment it was ratified were ubiquitous, and they were ubiquitous anytime someone claimed that their fundamental God-given rights had been violated.

Or, conversely, anytime someone claimed that the government was surpassing its powers that had been delegated to it by the people. Therefore, when I say the Declaration of Independence is credal, it's almost impossible to separate out political discussion in America across its entire history from invocations of the Declaration of Independence because anytime you ask about Anytime the issue of fundamental liberty comes up, anytime the issue of equality comes up and any time the issue of government by consent comes up, the Declaration of Independence and for that matter, July 4th, comes up as a touchstone of argument about those broader credal principles of the American polity.

Rosen: [] Danielle, is there anything more you can tell us about invocations of the Declaration in the Constitution making era at the convention and then take us up through the abolitionist period and describe the invocation of the Declarations by abolitionists in the years leading up to the Civil War? Allen: [] Thanks Jeff. Yes, there is a really important moment in the convention that deserves attention.

The all important sentence that I mentioned, the sentence about self evident truths lays out the job of citizens of a democratic republic. That job is to judge whether their government to securing their rights and then if it's not, to lay the foundations to institute new government. In that moment, in June of , when they decided to pursue the question of independent states, simultaneously set up a committee to write the Declaration, the preamble, the statement of principle and a committee to draft the Articles of Confederation, the document that would organize the powers of government.

When we come to the Constitutional Convention, this notion that there are two tasks for citizens of a Democratic Republic returns and the Committee of Detail, which James Wilson served on, they paused, they had been They were a smaller committee within the convention who in the middle of the summer were given the job of actually nailing down the text. That is an implicit endorsement of the Declaration in its role as that statement of principle, that credal document as Ken was saying, to explain the meaning, the weight, the haves, the content, the aspiration, the goals of the document, the constitution that would organization the powers of government.

Wilson was He read the Declaration, he invoked it regularly in the convention, and then in the context of this small committee he served on, they'd directly engage the question of whether it would stand as that foundational principle and the decision was, yes, it was going to stand. That's how important it was to the founding.

You're right that after the founding, it was primarily abolitionists who picked up its language and you mentioned David Walker, who was an incredibly famous African American writer, thinker who really helped motivate people to rethink the ideals of American independence and what that meant for individuals as well as for collective society. Of course, interestingly abolitionists very quickly became connected as well to the efforts of women to make space for themselves inside the ideals of the Declaration.

In the middle of the 19th century, you get the Seneca Falls Declaration, where we get the rewrite in words, all people are created equal, all human beings are created equal, not just men, and women, self consciously right themselves into the story of the Declaration of Independence. Rosen: [] Ken, you mentioned Harry Jaffa, a conservative thinker and his notion that Lincoln's invocation of the Declaration were central to conservative thought. Tell us about the significance of the Declaration to Lincoln, who famously in the Gettysburg Address, referred not to the founding but to the July 4th, four score and seven years ago to the date of the Declaration.

What was the constitutional significance of the Declaration for Lincoln and his new birth of freedom? Kersch: [] Let me frame this, including Lincoln's thought and including Jaffa's thought, by going back to the time of the drafting of the Declaration itself, by Thomas Jefferson and the committee. One of the key things to recall about the dynamics of the Declaration of Independence is that even as it was being written, there was a deep suspicion that the country Even as this great credal document about liberty and equality and popular government and government by consent was being written and praised by the likes of James Wilson and many others as July 4th was being celebrated, there was this undercurrent of unease.

The unease of course, was that because of chattel slavery, the country at the moment it was articulating this creed, was also violating the creed and at the moment of declaring it, they were repudiating it. Chattel slavery became the preeminent example of this, although as Danielle noted, other groups, including women, the women at Seneca Falls, would come to argue that their rights under the Declaration of Independence, their natural rights to be treated as equals were being violated.

Lincoln, in the Lincoln—Douglas debates in a way split the baby. The Declaration of Independence expresses the ideals on which the United States was founded and the reasons for separation from Great Britain. The Bill of Rights is the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. Elegant facsimiles on parchment paper are perfect for educational purposes or to decorate your home or office. For the patriot and lover of our nation's history, get our founding documents framed and in your home.

Located on the upper level of the National Archives museum , the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom is the permanent home of the original Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United States, and Bill of Rights. Through Founders Online, you can read and search through thousands of documents and records to and from George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison and see firsthand the growth of democracy and the birth of the Republic.