Taxation without representation was bad enough. But Thomas Paine, in his pamphlet “Common Sense,” helped the American colonists understand that no one had a divine right to rule, not even a king.
From that point on, the movement to break from England and King George was unstoppable. Representatives from each colony, who were meeting in Philadelphia to handle the problems with England, decided in June of 1776 to write down the reasons for independence and appointed a committee to do so.
Thomas Jefferson, on the committee, was given the task, or the “honor,” as historian Walter Isaacson says, of writing the first draft. As soon as he finished, he sent a copy to Benjamin Franklin, the elder statesman. “Will Doctor Franklin be so good as to peruse it, and suggest such alterations as his more enlarged view of the subject will dictate?”
On July 2, the Continental Congress voted for independence, then heard a reading of what Jefferson and the committee had prepared, a document called the Declaration of Independence. “They edited it heavily,” writes Isaacson, who tells the story in “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written” (Simon and Schuster, 2025, 67 pages).
“Large sections were eviscerated, most notably the one that criticized the king for perpetuating the slave trade. Jefferson was distraught,” Isaacson writes. But the second sentence remained as composed. Isaacson calls it “the greatest sentence ever crafted by human hand.”
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 sentence was “mellifluous,” says Isaacson. It was grand and revolutionary. “Self-evident” was a word from the Enlightenment, the philosophical movement of the time which championed the power of human reason. It named a certain kind of reason obtained from thought alone, as opposed to observation. It was a strong and stirring word, and Isaacson traces it from Franklin to his friend, Scottish philosopher David Hume. Franklin suggested it in place of Jefferson’s original word “sacred.”
But enslaved people, free African-Americans, Native Americans and women might have scoffed at the idea that equality was self-evident. It certainly wasn’t evident to everyone. There was much work to be done. Above all, says Isaacson, the words of the second sentence were aspirational.
In 1776, one-fifth of the population in the colonies was enslaved. Slavery was legal in each of the thirteen colonies. Most of the signers, including Jefferson, “exhibiting the moral contradiction at the core of America’s founding,” had slaves.
Eighty-seven years later, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln reminded the nation of its founding principles when he spoke at the cemetery in Gettysburg, where 7,058 soldiers had died for those principles. We were, he said, a nation “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Isaacson closes his chapter on equality with the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Isaacson reminds us that “the arc did not bend itself. It was, and remains, a constant American struggle to make the phrase ‘all men are created equal’ truly inclusive.”
“The concept common ground has always been part of humanity’s struggle to create a good society,” writes Isaacson, beginning his move to present-day issues. The term could refer to actual land, as in the grazing lands provided for the commoners in feudal England, or to services such as schools, fire and police protection, libraries and so forth that a community supports together. It can also refer to ideas. The second sentence of the Declaration served that purpose. “These truths became the creed that bound a diverse group of pilgrims and immigrants into one nation.”
The ideal of common ground is essential to any good community, says Isaacson, and he believes that in these days of wealth accumulation, we have forgotten some of our original principles. In particular, the American Dream depends on equal opportunity for all. We must strive for that, he says. He chastises those today who reject compromise. He looks back to something Franklin often said. “Compromisers many not make great heroes… but they do make great democracies.”
Isaacson highlights the moral arc in the life of Franklin, who once owned two slaves. “By the 1760s, they had wandered off, and Franklin made no attempt to prevent that,” and he considered the enslavement of these two men as the greatest mistake of his life. He worked to make amends for that mistake. He helped establish schools for Blacks, spoke out against slavery, and headed an abolition society. He thought education should be structured to provide opportunities for all, and said that service “should indeed be the great aim and end of all learning.”
And we should learn from Franklin, says Isaacson. We should question the very purpose of an economy. Yes, it should create growth and wealth, but its chief purpose should be “to create a good society.” A good, stable society where individuals can be free and flourish and live together in harmony. That requires nurturing the sense that we share common rights, common grounds, common truths, and common aspirations. Democracy depends on this,” he says.
It was “the ideal of common ground and the American Dream that our founders fought for 250 years ago. And that’s what we must continue to fight for today so that we can preserve, for ourselves and our posterity, the rights and aspirations that we all share, including to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” I agree with Isaacson about the greatest sentence, written for us at our founding, and I am grateful for his call to action. It seems an appropriate way to celebrate our good fortune.
(Anne Bevilacqua is a Haywood County resident who loves books.)