Together they made a broader definition of equality part of the constitutional order, and they gave the national government an effective basis for challenging racial inequalities within the states. The original Constitution, by contrast, involved a set of political commitments that recognized the legal status of slavery within the states and made the federal government partially responsible for upholding “the peculiar institution.” As my late colleague Don Fehrenbacher argued, the Constitution was deeply implicated in establishing “a slaveholders’ republic” that protected slavery in complex ways down to 1861.īut the Reconstruction amendments of 1865-1870 marked a second constitutional founding that rested on other premises. The Declaration, in its remarkable concision, gives us self-evident truths that form the premises of the right to revolution and the capacity to create new governments resting on popular consent. I view the Declaration as a point of departure and a promise, and the Constitution as a set of commitments that had lasting consequences – some troubling, others transformative. confronting its history of systemic racism, are there any problems that Americans are reckoning with today that can be traced back to the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. His new book, Beyond Belief, Beyond Conscience: The Radical Significance of the Free Exercise of Religion will be published next month. His book, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (1996), won the Pulitzer Prize in History. Rakove is the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor of political science, emeritus, in the School of Humanities and Sciences. Here, Rakove reflects on this history and how now, in a time of heightened scrutiny of the country’s founders and the legacy of slavery and racial injustices they perpetuated, Americans can better understand the limitations and failings of their past governments. It was only in the decades after the American Revolutionary War that the phrase acquired its compelling reputation as a statement of individual equality. Because they possessed this fundamental right, Rakove said, they could establish new governments within each of the states and collectively assume their “separate and equal station” with other nations. Rather, what they declared was that American colonists, as a people, had the same rights to self-government as other nations. On July 4, 1776, when the Continental Congress adopted the historic text drafted by Thomas Jefferson, they did not intend it to mean individual equality. They contain some of the most powerful and inspirational words and had a major impact on other democracies, all over the world.With each generation, the words expressed in the Declaration of Independence have expanded beyond what the founding fathers originally intended when they adopted the historic document on July 4, 1776, says Stanford historian Jack Rakove. History buffs will find great pleasure in displaying framed Declaration of Independence posters, alongside other documents that have shaped American history. The document was used extensively over the course of time and Abraham Lincoln relied on it often, especially when he made the Gettysburg address in 1863. Just as the name suggests, the Declaration of Independence was supposed to declare the sovereignty of the United States, opposed to England’s King George III. ![]() The document that is displayed in Washington is actually an engrossed copy that was signed at the beginning of August and it is also celebrated in artwork. The framed Declaration of Independence posters available here are including both the original draft by Thomas Jefferson and the changes made by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. The Declaration of Independence was ratified on July 4 and was then published and distributed to people, so they could get familiar with the text.
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