declaration of independence equality essay

Equality in the US Declaration of Independence

Introduction, broadening of the phrase.

Bibliography

The declaration of independence and the notion of equality are topics that have been explored at length, especially due to disagreements regarding the meaning of equality. The term “all men are created equal” coined by Thomas Jefferson in 1776 1 arguably meant something different from how equality as it is applied today. The focus of this essay is to examine the people included in this statement at the time of writing. Additionally, it will explore whether the phrase has broadened to include other groups of people with time. At the time of writing, the term equality applied to the white men who were under British rule and who sought autonomy from it.

Who was Included in the Declaration?

The Declaration of Independence emphasized that there was a need to separate Americans from the political powers to which they were connected. This idea was the opening statement before Jefferson continued to express the need to eliminate tyranny over the States. Therefore, it can be argued that the notion of equality of all men insinuated that they European men in the thirteen states needed to be held in equal terms to those in Britain in terms of political power. The thirteen states were colonies of Britain at the time of writing and a revolution was to take place to lead them to independence. At this time, slavery was still a norm, which insinuated that equality did not extend to them.

The fact that the equality of all men did not apply to other people can be illustrated using several examples. The first one is the observation that the declaration did not address the issue of slavery, which was to be questioned later by several authors. For instance, a keynote address in 1852 by Frederick Douglas 2 examined what the Fourth of July meant to the slave. In this case, the speaker observed that equality meant liberty, humanity, and justice from the tyranny of Britain but not slavery and oppression. A second example is how the natives were treated by the whites in America before, during, and after the declaration. According to Gordon-Reed 3 , the Native Americans were not part of the Americans unless they met one key condition: assimilate with the white people. In this example, it means that the white Europeans were the people referred to by the declaration. It is important to notice that while these classifications are hardly visible in the declaration itself, it is how the different groups of people were treated even after the independence.

To illustrate that the two groups, natives and slaves, were not part of the declaration, it is important to notice that slavery continue several years after the independence. By the time Douglas 4 was presenting his keynote address, 76 years had passed since the declaration, and slavery was still upheld by the government and the pollical classes. Racial inequality has persisted for millennia, which illustrates the fact that not all races were part of the declaration. Another example can be that women were also not included and that only the white males were deemed to be created equal. The words used in the declaration referenced only men, which can be interpreted to mean that men were superior in society. However, it can be argued that the language used at the time of writing preferred to use the term ‘man’ to mean human being.

There is evidence to suggest that gender inequality existed at and after the time of the declaration, which elaborates on the third example. Writings from such authors as Maya Angelou illustrated that legal protection of women was achieved many years later during the feminist movements 5 . There may be other examples of groups that were not regarded in the same manner in the declaration, including immigrants and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community 6 . The bottom line is that the declaration only regarded the white men in America as equal to those in Britain in an attempt to justify the call for independence. To Jefferson 7 , the connection to British rule was tyrannical. However, it is difficult to illustrate that he held the same sentiments to both the treatment of women and slaves in the colonies.

The phrase “all men are created equal” has significantly broadened over time. The main argument is that the people who have been left out in the declaration have consistently sought to use the phrase in the pursuit of equality. Many such efforts have been documented in American history where certain groups have had to fight for their rights and to be treated equally. Most notably, the American Civil War started on April 12, 1861 and ended on April 8, 1865. One of the core themes was the abolishment of slavery. The result of the war included the abolishment of slavery across the United States. However, the key outcomes following the war are the 13 th , 14 th , and 15 th amendments to the United States constitution. These amendments are among the first attempts of the American society to use equality in an all-inclusive manner where gender, race, color, or past servitude were no longer hindrances to the application of equality. The case of West Virginia described by Zucconi 8 illustrates how even the politics changed after the civil war. The state constitution became abolitionist despite the efforts of certain groups to fight abolitionism.

The fight for racial equality has continued today with many incidences taking place to warrant the persistence of the movements. A resume of Reverend Addie Wyatt, a faith-based activist, can explain how equality was pursued by the former slaves. During the Great Depression Wyatt, as did most southern blacks, fled to Chicago and sought to work in a factory. She was a member and leader of several social movements that advocated for equality of the black workers both in Chicago and across the United States. Her activism is a testament to the fact that she and members of the movements believed that the concept of equality should be extended to them as members of a race. The focus on gender was also part of the activism as illustrated in such movements as the Coalition of Labor Union Women 9 . The civil rights movements had the effect of forcing legislation of equality. The bottom line is that equality of all means has been expounded through the social movements as more groups of people sought to be part of the declaration.

Feminism is another concept that can illustrate further broadening of the phrase that all men are created equal. Such writers as Maya Angelou wrote about feminism, using the term feminism to describe political, cultural, and economic movements seeking to establish legal protection and equal rights for women 10 . Sociological and political theories dealing with the issue of gender difference may have dominated the debate. However, it is the notion that all people are created equal that supported the key arguments against discriminatory behavior in American society. Black writers often wrestled with the desire to change an unjust society, especially the female writers who supported the ideals of feminism. After the civil war, it can be argued that the country entered an era of transformation where several groups took advantage of the opportunities presented to them in the fight against social injustices. Therefore, it can be argued that anti-racism, anti-discrimination, and anti-slavery movements have all sought to expand the interpretation and application of the concept of equality to include all social groups.

In conclusion, it can be argued that the phrase “all men are created equal” literally meant the male gender represented in the British colonies of America. Three examples have been presented to support this argument, which has focused on illustrating why other groups of people were left out. The persistence of slavery meant that Jefferson’s statement referred to the British colonial power over the slave masters. The Native Americans were also left out unless they were willing to assimilate with the whites. Lastly, women were also treated as inferiors and only movements helped them gain the same status as men. It has also been illustrated that the meaning has expanded throughout the history of the country. Most importantly, the civil rights movements, including those advocating for the equality of blacks and feminist activism, have sought to have equality applied to these discriminated groups.

Douglas, Frederick. “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” 1852. Web.

Gordon-Reed, Annette. “Thomas Jefferson’s vision of equality was not all-inclusive. But it was transformative.” Time.  2020. Web.

Hameed, Madiha. “The concepts of feminine, slavery, and discrimination by Maya Angeloue.” Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities 26, no. 9 (2019): 19-32.

Jefferson, Thomas. “Declaration of Independence.” 1776. Web.

Rocksborough-Smith, Ian. “Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality by Marcia Walker-McWilliams.” Labor 80 (2017): 346-348.

Zucconi, Adam. “To “whiten” the mountains: Abolishing slavery in West(ern) Virginia, 1861−1863.” presentation, Virginia Forum, Longwood University, Farmville, Va 15 (2019): 67-96.

• Thomas Jefferson, “Declaration of Independence.” 1776. Web.
• Frederick Douglas, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” 1852. Web.
• Annette Gordon-Reed, “Thomas Jefferson’s vision of equality was not all-inclusive. But it was transformative.” Time.  2020. Web.
• Douglas, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?”
• Madiha Hameed, “The concepts of feminine, slavery, and discrimination by Maya Angeloue.” Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities 26, no. 9 (2019): 19-32.
• Gordon-Reed, “Thomas Jefferson’s vision of equality was not all-inclusive.”
• Jefferson, “Declaration of Independence.”
• Adam Zucconi, “To “whiten” the mountains: Abolishing slavery in West(ern) Virginia, 1861−1863.” presentation, Virginia Forum, Longwood University, Farmville, Va 15 (2019): 67-96.
• Ian Rocksborough-Smith, “Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality by Marcia Walker-McWilliams.” Labor 80 (2017): 346-348.
• Hameed, “The concepts of feminine, slavery, and discrimination by Maya Angeloue.”

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Understanding Jefferson: Slavery, Race, and the Declaration of Independence (July 2021)

By: Hans Eicholz July 1, 2021

• Lead Essay Understanding Jefferson: Slavery, Race, and the Declaration of Independence (July 2021)
• Response Essay Intentions, Context, and Principles: Jefferson’s Slavery Problem
• Response Essay Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Race
• Response Essay Eicholz, Jefferson, and the Declaration of Independence
• Response Essay How White Was Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence?
• Conversation Comments My Response to the Responses
• Conversation Comments Closed Systems and Open Futures
• Conversation Comments Final Response

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• Liberty Matters - Understanding Jefferson: Slavery, Race, and the Declaration of Independence

Peter S. Onuf July 6, 2021

Susan Love Brown July 8, 2021

Lucas E. Morel July 13, 2021

"Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free . . ."

[A] different idea has taken place with the people of America, more favorable to the natural rights of mankind . . . And upon this ground our Constitution of Government . . . sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal-and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws, as well as life and property-and in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves. [3]

Hannah Spahn July 15, 2021

Hans Eicholz July 20, 2021

Hannah Spahn July 22, 2021

Lucas E. Morel July 27, 2021

Peter S. Onuf July 29, 2021

Susan Love Brown August 3, 2021

"In Notes there is both the attempt to square his own inconsistencies in the elements of his thoughts with himself and the European intellectual world he is addressing, but equally important, he is speaking as a Virginian to fellow Virginians. These considerations diverted him away from the higher public reason of the Declaration. The Notes certainly contain conflicting sentiments in the chapters on manners and laws, but they permit the kind of special pleading and political maneuvering that would have signaled to other Virginians that he was perhaps not so radical after all..."

Hans Eicholz August 5, 2021

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Declaration of Independence, and Principle That All Men Are Created Equal

The Declaration of Independence made a bold assertion about human nature and natural rights. The central claim that “all men are created equal” had profound implications for the American regime of liberty. The “self-evident truth” of human equality meant that humans had equal natural rights, equally gave their consent to create a republican government, had equal dignity, and were equal under the law.

Throughout history, most societies were either monarchies, aristocracies, or despotisms. In those societies, leaders and elite social classes (or those of a certain ethnicity or religion) had certain rights and privileges that common people did not have. These societies were characterized by inequality.

The Enlightenment and ideas of John Locke significantly influenced the founders’ belief that all humans were created equal and had equal natural rights. The Declaration stated, “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 nature of the political regime was then shaped by this idea of natural human equality.

Again, influenced by Locke, the Declaration stated that all were equally free and independent to give their consent to create a free, representative government. The Declaration stated, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This was the basis of social contract or social compact theory. It created an equal citizenry and self-governance in a republic.

The citizens in the republican government enjoyed equality under the Constitution. The Constitution created an equal rule of law for all in which they could enjoy their liberties. It equally protected the individual rights of all citizens and guaranteed due process. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution reads, “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Constitution banned titles of nobility and aristocratic privileges showing that it was a republican constitution not one that supported oligarchy, or rule by the few.

The principle of equality protected the liberties of all citizens to create a just society. All citizens enjoyed equal political liberty by giving their consent to representative government at all levels and by participating in government. All possessed freedom of conscience regarding their religious beliefs and worship. They also had economic equality. This understanding of equality did not mean that all people had the same amount of income or property, but that they had property rights and ought to have equal opportunity to pursue their happiness and keep the fruits of their labor in a free society. During the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln explained that the idea, “You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it,” is the “tyrannical principle” of monarchy and slavery.

Human beings had the same natural rights and enjoyed equality under the law in the political regime, but they were unequal in some important and obvious ways. The founders understood that human beings can never be perfectly equal in society because of the differences among individuals. Humans are unequal in physical strength, intelligence, talents, abilities, and character. Thus, individuals have different faculties, abilities, and virtues to make use of in pursuing their happiness. These differences result in social inequalities especially in terms of how much wealth a person might earn or some advantages in opportunities. Republican government must guard against allowing natural inequalities to create the conditions under which oligarchy and tyranny rule, but it can never create a utopian society of perfect equality.

For the founders, human equality was an axiomatic principle that was universally true for all people at all times. However, the principle was increasingly challenged by the middle of the nineteenth century. Senator John C. Calhoun called the equality principle an “utterly false view of the subordinate relation of the black to the white race” and the idea of equality of the races “an error.” In the infamous Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) decision, Chief Justice Roger Taney opined that, “it is too clear for dispute that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included,” in the Declaration of Independence. In his 1858 debates with Lincoln, Senator Stephen Douglas stated, “I hold that the signers of the Declaration of Independence had no reference to negroes at all when they declared all men to be created equal.” In 1861, the vice-president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, said that the “corner-stone [of the Confederate States of America] rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.”

Many abolitionists and statesmen, including Frederick Douglass and Lincoln, took exception to the arguments of the opponents of black equality and inclusion in the Declaration of Independence. Their repeated claims that blacks were equal human beings endowed with equal natural rights was a significant demand for racial egalitarianism.

The equality principle continued to influence American thinking about their republican regime. While Lincoln continued to believe in the self-evident truth of the Declaration, he conceded that it was being fundamentally challenged before and during the Civil War. Lincoln was a student of ancient Greek mathematician Euclid and used the language of a proposition in the Gettysburg Address. The proposition of human equality was either true or false, and he believed in its truth and that it could be proven. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. He opened the speech by stating, “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.” Using the biblical language of the Gettysburg Address, King rhetorically appealed to the liberty and equality of the Emancipation Proclamation and Declaration of Independence. He referred to the equality principle of the Declaration of Independence as a “promissory note” because it had been unfulfilled for black Americans. “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men – yes, black men as well as white men – would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” King had not given up on the American ideal of equality. Black Americans attended the March on Washington and demonstrated peacefully in places like Birmingham to make that promise a reality.

The principle of equality has powerfully stood at the core of the American regime for more than two centuries. The challenges and debates over the principle have animated American deliberations about their national character of their free government and free society throughout that time and will continue to do so.

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Text of the Declaration of Independence

Note: The source for this transcription is the first printing of the Declaration of Independence, the broadside produced by John Dunlap on the night of July 4, 1776. Nearly every printed or manuscript edition of the Declaration of Independence has slight differences in punctuation, capitalization, and even wording. To find out more about the diverse textual tradition of the Declaration, check out our Which Version is This, and Why Does it Matter? resource.

        WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.           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—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.           He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.           He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.            He has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyrants only.           He has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures.           He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.           He has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and Convulsions within.            He has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.           He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.           He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.           He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.           He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures.           He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.           He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:           For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us:           For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:           For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:           For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:           For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:           For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:           For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule into these Colonies:           For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:           For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever.           He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.           He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.           He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.           He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.           He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.           In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.           Nor have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them from Time to Time of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our Connections and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of Consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends.           We, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great-Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Signed by Order and in Behalf of the Congress, JOHN HANCOCK, President.

Attest. CHARLES THOMSON, Secretary.

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The first amendment, the declaration, the constitution, and the bill of rights.

by Jeffrey Rosen and David Rubenstein

At the National Constitution Center, you will find rare copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. These are the three most important documents in American history. But why are they important, and what are their similarities and differences? And how did each document, in turn, influence the next in America’s ongoing quest for liberty and equality?

There are some clear similarities among the three documents. All have preambles. All were drafted by people of similar backgrounds, generally educated white men of property. The Declaration and Constitution were drafted by a congress and a convention that met in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia (now known as Independence Hall) in 1776 and 1787 respectively. The Bill of Rights was proposed by the Congress that met in Federal Hall in New York City in 1789. Thomas Jefferson was the principal drafter of the Declaration and James Madison of the Bill of Rights; Madison, along with Gouverneur Morris and James Wilson, was also one of the principal architects of the Constitution.

Most importantly, the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are based on the idea that all people have certain fundamental rights that governments are created to protect. Those rights include common law rights, which come from British sources like the Magna Carta, or natural rights, which, the Founders believed, came from God. The Founders believed that natural rights are inherent in all people by virtue of their being human and that certain of these rights are unalienable, meaning they cannot be surrendered to government under any circumstances.

At the same time, the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are different kinds of documents with different purposes. The Declaration was designed to justify breaking away from a government; the Constitution and Bill of Rights were designed to establish a government. The Declaration stands on its own—it has never been amended—while the Constitution has been amended 27 times. (The first ten amendments are called the Bill of Rights.) The Declaration and Bill of Rights set limitations on government; the Constitution was designed both to create an energetic government and also to constrain it. The Declaration and Bill of Rights reflect a fear of an overly centralized government imposing its will on the people of the states; the Constitution was designed to empower the central government to preserve the blessings of liberty for “We the People of the United States.” In this sense, the Declaration and Bill of Rights, on the one hand, and the Constitution, on the other, are mirror images of each other.

Despite these similarities and differences, the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are, in many ways, fused together in the minds of Americans, because they represent what is best about America. They are symbols of the liberty that allows us to achieve success and of the equality that ensures that we are all equal in the eyes of the law. The Declaration of Independence made certain promises about which liberties were fundamental and inherent, but those liberties didn’t become legally enforceable until they were enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In other words, the fundamental freedoms of the American people were alluded to in the Declaration of Independence, implicit in the Constitution, and enumerated in the Bill of Rights. But it took the Civil War, which President Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address called “a new birth of freedom,” to vindicate the Declaration’s famous promise that “all men are created equal.” And it took the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, to vindicate James Madison’s initial hope that not only the federal government but also the states would be constitutionally required to respect fundamental liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights—a process that continues today.

Why did Jefferson draft the Declaration of Independence?

When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in 1775, it was far from clear that the delegates would pass a resolution to separate from Great Britain. To persuade them, someone needed to articulate why the Americans were breaking away. Congress formed a committee to do just that; members included John Adams from Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin from Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman from Connecticut, Robert R. Livingston from New York, and Thomas Jefferson from Virginia, who at age 33 was one of the youngest delegates.

Although Jefferson disputed his account, John Adams later recalled that he had persuaded Jefferson to write the draft because Jefferson had the fewest enemies in Congress and was the best writer. (Jefferson would have gotten the job anyway—he was elected chair of the committee.) Jefferson had 17 days to produce the document and reportedly wrote a draft in a day or two. In a rented room not far from the State House, he wrote the Declaration with few books and pamphlets beside him, except for a copy of George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights and the draft Virginia Constitution, which Jefferson had written himself.

The Declaration of Independence has three parts. It has a preamble, which later became the most famous part of the document but at the time was largely ignored. It has a second part that lists the sins of the King of Great Britain, and it has a third part that declares independence from Britain and that all political connections between the British Crown and the “Free and Independent States” of America should be totally dissolved.

The preamble to the Declaration of Independence contains the entire theory of American government in a single, inspiring passage:

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.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

When Jefferson wrote the preamble, it was largely an afterthought. Why is it so important today? It captured perfectly the essence of the ideals that would eventually define the United States. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” Jefferson began, in one of the most famous sentences in the English language. How could Jefferson write this at a time that he and other Founders who signed the Declaration owned slaves? The document was an expression of an ideal. In his personal conduct, Jefferson violated it. But the ideal—“that all men are created equal”—came to take on a life of its own and is now considered the most perfect embodiment of the American creed.

When Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address during the Civil War in November 1863, several months after the Union Army defeated Confederate forces at the Battle of Gettysburg, he took Jefferson’s language and transformed it into constitutional poetry. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” Lincoln declared. “Four score and seven years ago” refers to the year 1776, making clear that Lincoln was referring not to the Constitution but to Jefferson’s Declaration. Lincoln believed that the “principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society,” as he wrote shortly before the anniversary of Jefferson’s birthday in 1859. Three years later, on the anniversary of George Washington’s birthday in 1861, Lincoln said in a speech at what by that time was being called “Independence Hall,” “I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender” the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

It took the Civil War, the bloodiest war in American history, for Lincoln to begin to make Jefferson’s vision of equality a constitutional reality. After the war, the Declaration’s vision was embodied in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, which formally ended slavery, guaranteed all persons the “equal protection of the laws,” and gave African-American men the right to vote. At the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, when supporters of gaining greater rights for women met, they, too, used the Declaration of Independence as a guide for drafting their Declaration of Sentiments. (Their efforts to achieve equal suffrage culminated in 1920 in the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.) And during the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his famous address at the Lincoln Memorial, “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men—yes, black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

In addition to its promise of equality, Jefferson’s preamble is also a promise of liberty. Like the other Founders, he was steeped in the political philosophy of the Enlightenment, in philosophers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, Francis Hutcheson, and Montesquieu. All of them believed that people have certain unalienable and inherent rights that come from God, not government, or come simply from being human. They also believed that when people form governments, they give those governments control over certain natural rights to ensure the safety and security of other rights. Jefferson, George Mason, and the other Founders frequently spoke of the same set of rights as being natural and unalienable. They included the right to worship God “according to the dictates of conscience,” the right of “enjoyment of life and liberty,” “the means of acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety,” and, most important of all, the right of a majority of the people to “alter and abolish” their government whenever it threatened to invade natural rights rather than protect them.

In other words, when Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and began to articulate some of the rights that were ultimately enumerated in the Bill of Rights, he wasn’t inventing these rights out of thin air. On the contrary, 10 American colonies between 1606 and 1701 were granted charters that included representative assemblies and promised the colonists the basic rights of Englishmen, including a version of the promise in the Magna Carta that no freeman could be imprisoned or destroyed “except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” This legacy kindled the colonists’ hatred of arbitrary authority, which allowed the King to seize their bodies or property on his own say-so. In the revolutionary period, the galvanizing examples of government overreaching were the “general warrants” and “writs of assistance” that authorized the King’s agents to break into the homes of scores of innocent citizens in an indiscriminate search for the anonymous authors of pamphlets criticizing the King. Writs of assistance, for example, authorized customs officers “to break open doors, Chests, Trunks, and other Packages” in a search for stolen goods, without specifying either the goods to be seized or the houses to be searched. In a famous attack on the constitutionality of writs of assistance in 1761, prominent lawyer James Otis said, “It is a power that places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.”

As members of the Continental Congress contemplated independence in May and June of 1776, many colonies were dissolving their charters with England. As the actual vote on independence approached, a few colonies were issuing their own declarations of independence and bills of rights. The Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, written by George Mason, began by declaring that “all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” 

When Jefferson wrote his famous preamble, he was restating, in more eloquent language, the philosophy of natural rights expressed in the Virginia Declaration that the Founders embraced. And when Jefferson said, in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, that “[w]hen in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,” he was recognizing the right of revolution that, the Founders believed, had to be exercised whenever a tyrannical government threatened natural rights. That’s what Jefferson meant when he said Americans had to assume “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.”

The Declaration of Independence was a propaganda document rather than a legal one. It didn’t give any rights to anyone. It was an advertisement about why the colonists were breaking away from England. Although there was no legal reason to sign the Declaration, Jefferson and the other Founders signed it because they wanted to “mutually pledge” to each other that they were bound to support it with “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” Their signatures were courageous because the signers realized they were committing treason: according to legend, after affixing his flamboyantly large signature John Hancock said that King George—or the British ministry—would be able to read his name without spectacles. But the courage of the signers shouldn’t be overstated: the names of the signers of the Declaration weren’t published until after General George Washington won crucial battles at Trenton and Princeton and it was clear that the war for independence was going well.

What is the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?

In the years between 1776 and 1787, most of the 13 states drafted constitutions that contained a declaration of rights within the body of the document or as a separate provision at the beginning, many of them listing the same natural rights that Jefferson had embraced in the Declaration. When it came time to form a central government in 1776, the Continental Congress began to create a weak union governed by the Articles of Confederation. (The Articles of Confederation was sent to the states for ratification in 1777; it was formally adopted in 1781.) The goal was to avoid a powerful federal government with the ability to invade rights and to threaten private property, as the King’s agents had done with the hated general warrants and writs of assistance. But the Articles of Confederation proved too weak for bringing together a fledgling nation that needed both to wage war and to manage the economy. Supporters of a stronger central government, like James Madison, lamented the inability of the government under the Articles to curb the excesses of economic populism that were afflicting the states, such as Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts, where farmers shut down the courts demanding debt relief. As a result, Madison and others gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 with the goal of creating a stronger, but still limited, federal government.

The Constitutional Convention was held in Philadelphia in the Pennsylvania State House, in the room where the Declaration of Independence was adopted. Jefferson, who was in France at the time, wasn’t among them. After four months of debate, the delegates produced a constitution.

During the final days of debate, delegates George Mason and Elbridge Gerry objected that the Constitution, too, should include a bill of rights to protect the fundamental liberties of the people against the newly empowered president and Congress. Their motion was swiftly—and unanimously—defeated; a debate over what rights to include could go on for weeks, and the delegates were tired and wanted to go home. The Constitution was approved by the Constitutional Convention and sent to the states for ratification without a bill of rights.

During the ratification process, which took around 10 months (the Constitution took effect when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify in late June 1788; the 13th state, Rhode Island, would not join the union until May 1790), many state ratifying conventions proposed amendments specifying the rights that Jefferson had recognized in the Declaration and that they protected in their own state constitutions. James Madison and other supporters of the Constitution initially resisted the need for a bill of rights as either unnecessary (because the federal government was granted no power to abridge individual liberty) or dangerous (since it implied that the federal government had the power to infringe liberty in the first place). In the face of a groundswell of popular demand for a bill of rights, Madison changed his mind and introduced a bill of rights in Congress on June 8, 1789.

Madison was least concerned by “abuse in the executive department,” which he predicted would be the weakest branch of government. He was more worried about abuse by Congress, because he viewed the legislative branch as “the most powerful, and most likely to be abused, because it is under the least control.” (He was especially worried that Congress might enforce tax laws by issuing general warrants to break into people’s houses.) But in his view “the great danger lies rather in the abuse of the community than in the legislative body”—in other words, local majorities who would take over state governments and threaten the fundamental rights of minorities, including creditors and property holders. For this reason, the proposed amendment that Madison considered “the most valuable amendment in the whole list” would have prohibited the state governments from abridging freedom of conscience, speech, and the press, as well as trial by jury in criminal cases. Madison’s favorite amendment was eliminated by the Senate and not resurrected until after the Civil War, when the 14th Amendment required state governments to respect basic civil and economic liberties.

In the end, by pulling from the amendments proposed by state ratifying conventions and Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, Madison proposed 19 amendments to the Constitution. Congress approved 12 amendments to be sent to the states for ratification. Only 10 of the amendments were ultimately ratified in 1791 and became the Bill of Rights. The first of the two amendments that failed was intended to guarantee small congressional districts to ensure that representatives remained close to the people. The other would have prohibited senators and representatives from giving themselves a pay raise unless it went into effect at the start of the next Congress. (This latter amendment was finally ratified in 1992 and became the 27th Amendment.)

To address the concern that the federal government might claim that rights not listed in the Bill of Rights were not protected, Madison included what became the Ninth Amendment, which says the “enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” To ensure that Congress would be viewed as a government of limited rather than unlimited powers, he included the 10th Amendment, which says the “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Because of the first Congress’s focus on protecting people from the kinds of threats to liberty they had experienced at the hands of King George, the rights listed in the first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights apply only to the federal government, not to the states or to private companies. (One of the amendments submitted by the North Carolina ratifying convention but not included by Madison in his proposal to Congress would have prohibited Congress from establishing monopolies or companies with “exclusive advantages of commerce.”)

But the protections in the Bill of Rights—forbidding Congress from abridging free speech, for example, or conducting unreasonable searches and seizures—were largely ignored by the courts for the first 100 years after the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. Like the preamble to the Declaration, the Bill of Rights was largely a promissory note. It wasn’t until the 20th century, when the Supreme Court began vigorously to apply the Bill of Rights against the states, that the document became the centerpiece of contemporary struggles over liberty and equality. The Bill of Rights became a document that defends not only majorities of the people against an overreaching federal government but also minorities against overreaching state governments. Today, there are debates over whether the federal government has become too powerful in threatening fundamental liberties. There are also debates about how to protect the least powerful in society against the tyranny of local majorities.

What do we know about the documentary history of the rare copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights on display at the National Constitution Center?

Generally, when people think about the original Declaration, they are referring to the official engrossed —or final—copy now in the National Archives. That is the one that John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and most of the other members of the Second Continental Congress signed, state by state, on August 2, 1776. John Dunlap, a Philadelphia printer, published the official printing of the Declaration ordered by Congress, known as the Dunlap Broadside, on the night of July 4th and the morning of July 5th. About 200 copies are believed to have been printed. At least 27 are known to survive.

The document on display at the National Constitution Center is known as a Stone Engraving, after the engraver William J. Stone, whom then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams commissioned in 1820 to create a precise facsimile of the original engrossed version of the Declaration. That manuscript had become faded and worn after nearly 45 years of travel with Congress between Philadelphia, New York City, and eventually Washington, D.C., among other places, including Leesburg, Virginia, where it was rolled up and hidden during the British invasion of the capital in 1814.

To ensure that future generations would have a clear image of the original Declaration, William Stone made copies of the document before it faded away entirely. Historians dispute how Stone rendered the facsimiles. He kept the original Declaration in his shop for up to three years and may have used a process that involved taking a wet cloth, putting it on the original document, and creating a perfect copy by taking off half the ink. He would have then put the ink on a copper plate to do the etching (though he might have, instead, traced the entire document by hand without making a press copy). Stone used the copper plate to print 200 first edition engravings as well as one copy for himself in 1823, selling the plate and the engravings to the State Department. John Quincy Adams sent copies to each of the living signers of the Declaration (there were three at the time), public officials like President James Monroe, Congress, other executive departments, governors and state legislatures, and official repositories such as universities. The Stone engravings give us the clearest idea of what the original engrossed Declaration looked like on the day it was signed.

The Constitution, too, has an original engrossed, handwritten version as well as a printing of the final document. John Dunlap, who also served as the official printer of the Declaration, and his partner David C. Claypoole, who worked with him to publish the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser , America’s first successful daily newspaper founded by Dunlap in 1771, secretly printed copies of the convention’s committee reports for the delegates to review, debate, and make changes. At the end of the day on September 15, 1787, after all of the delegations present had approved the Constitution, the convention ordered it engrossed on parchment. Jacob Shallus, assistant clerk to the Pennsylvania legislature, spent the rest of the weekend preparing the engrossed copy (now in the National Archives), while Dunlap and Claypoole were ordered to print 500 copies of the final text for distribution to the delegates, Congress, and the states. The engrossed copy was signed on Monday, September 17th, which is now celebrated as Constitution Day.

The copy of the Constitution on display at the National Constitution Center was published in Dunlap and Claypoole’s Pennsylvania Packet newspaper on September 19, 1787. Because it was the first public printing of the document—the first time Americans saw the Constitution—scholars consider its constitutional significance to be especially profound. The publication of the Constitution in the Pennsylvania Packet was the first opportunity for “We the People of the United States” to read the Constitution that had been drafted and would later be ratified in their name.

The handwritten Constitution inspires awe, but the first public printing reminds us that it was only the ratification of the document by “We the People” that made the Constitution the supreme law of the land. As James Madison emphasized in The Federalist No. 40 in 1788, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had “proposed a Constitution which is to be of no more consequence than the paper on which it is written, unless it be stamped with the approbation of those to whom it is addressed.” Only 25 copies of the Pennsylvania Packet Constitution are known to have survived.

Finally, there is the Bill of Rights. On October 2, 1789, Congress sent 12 proposed amendments to the Constitution to the states for ratification—including the 10 that would come to be known as the Bill of Rights. There were 14 original manuscript copies, including the one displayed at the National Constitution Center—one for the federal government and one for each of the 13 states.

Twelve of the 14 copies are known to have survived. Two copies —those of the federal government and Delaware — are in the National Archives. Eight states currently have their original documents; Georgia, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania do not. There are two existing unidentified copies, one held by the Library of Congress and one held by The New York Public Library. The copy on display at the National Constitution Center is from the collections of The New York Public Library and will be on display for several years through an agreement between the Library and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; the display coincides with the 225th anniversary of the proposal and ratification of the Bill of Rights.

The Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are the three most important documents in American history because they express the ideals that define “We the People of the United States” and inspire free people around the world.

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What Does “Created Equal” Mean?

A society that puts equality ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.

Editor’s note: This essay is an excerpt of the new Hoover Press book  Milton Friedman on Freedom , edited by Robert Leeson and Charles G. Palm. This essay by Friedman originally appeared in the book Free to Choose: A Personal Statement .

“Equality, liberty”—what precisely do these words from the Declaration of Independence mean? Can the ideals they express be realized in practice? Are equality and liberty consistent one with the other or are they in conflict?

Since well before the Declaration of Independence, these questions have played a central role in the history of the United States. The attempt to answer them has shaped the intellectual climate of opinion, led to bloody wars, and produced major changes in economic and political institutions. This attempt continues to dominate our political debate. It will shape our future as it has our past.

In the early decades of the Republic, equality meant equality before God; liberty meant the liberty to shape one’s own life. The obvious conflict between the Declaration of Independence and the institution of slavery occupied the center of the stage. That conflict was finally resolved by the Civil War. The debate then moved to a different level. Equality came more and more to be interpreted as “equality of opportunity” in the sense that no one should be prevented by arbitrary obstacles from using his capacities to pursue his own objectives. That is still its dominant meaning to most citizens of the United States.

Neither equality before God nor equality of opportunity presented any conflict with liberty to shape one’s own life. Quite the opposite. Equality and liberty were two faces of the same basic value—that every individual should be regarded as an end in himself.

A very different meaning of equality has emerged in the United States in recent decades—equality of outcome. Everyone should have the same level of living or of income, should finish the race at the same time. Equality of outcome is in clear conflict with liberty. The attempt to promote it has been a major source of bigger and bigger government and of government-imposed restrictions on our liberty.

Equality Before God

When Thomas Jefferson, at the age of thirty-three, wrote “all men are created equal,” he and his contemporaries did not take these words literally. They did not regard men—or as we would say today, persons—as equal in physical characteristics, emotional reactions, mechanical and intellectual abilities. Thomas Jefferson himself was a most remarkable person. At the age of twenty-six he designed his beautiful house at Monticello (Italian for “little mountain”), supervised its construction, and, indeed, is said to have done some of the work himself. In the course of his life, he was an inventor, a scholar, an author, a statesman, governor of the State of Virginia, president of the United States, minister to France, founder of the University of Virginia—hardly an average man.

The clue to what Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries meant by equal is seen in the next phrase of the Declaration—“endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Men were equal before God. Each person is precious in and of himself. He has unalienable rights, rights that no one else is entitled to invade. He is entitled to serve his own purposes and not to be treated simply as an instrument to promote someone else’s purposes. “Liberty” is part of the definition of equality, not in conflict with it.

Equality before God—personal equality—is important precisely because people are not identical. Their different values, their different tastes, their different capacities will lead them to want to lead very different lives. Personal equality requires respect for their right to do so, not the imposition on them of someone else’s values or judgment. Jefferson had no doubt that some men were superior to others, that there was an elite. But that did not give them the right to rule others.

If an elite did not have the right to impose its will on others, neither did any other group, even a majority. Every person was to be his own ruler—provided that he did not interfere with the similar right of others. Government was established to protect that right—from fellow citizens and from external threat—not to give a majority unbridled rule. Jefferson had three achievements he wanted to be remembered for inscribed on his tombstone: the Virginia statute for religious freedom (a precursor of the US Bill of Rights designed to protect minorities against domination by majorities), authorship of the Declaration of Independence, and the founding of the University of Virginia. The goal of the framers of the Constitution of the United States, drafted by Jefferson’s contemporaries, was a national government strong enough to defend the country and promote the general welfare but at the same time sufficiently limited in power to protect the individual citizen, and the separate state governments, from domination by the national government. Democratic, in the sense of widespread participation in government, yes; in the political sense of majority rule, clearly no.

Similarly, Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French political philosopher and sociologist, in his classic Democracy in America, written after a lengthy visit in the 1830s, saw equality, not majority rule, as the outstanding characteristic of America. “In America,” he wrote, “the aristocratic element has always been feeble from its birth; and if at the present day it is not actually destroyed, it is at any rate so completely disabled, that we can scarcely assign to it any degree of influence on the course of affairs. The democratic principle, on the contrary, has gained so much strength by time, by events, and by legislation, as to have become not only predominant but all-powerful. There is no family or corporate authority. . . . America, then, exhibits in her social state a most extraordinary phenomenon. Men are there seen on a greater equality in point of fortune and intellect, or, in other words, more equal in their strength, than in any other country of the world, or in any age of which history has preserved the remembrance.”

Tocqueville admired much of what he observed, but he was by no means an uncritical admirer, fearing that democracy carried too far might undermine civic virtue. As he put it, “There is . . . a manly and lawful passion for equality which incites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.”

It is striking testimony to the changing meaning of words that in recent decades the Democratic Party of the United States has been the chief instrument for strengthening that government power that Jefferson and many of his contemporaries viewed as the greatest threat to democracy. And it has striven to increase government power in the name of a concept of “equality” that is almost the opposite of the concept of equality Jefferson identified with liberty and Tocqueville with democracy.

Of course the practice of the Founding Fathers did not always correspond to their preaching. The most obvious conflict was slavery. Thomas Jefferson himself owned slaves until the day he died—July 4, 1826. He agonized repeatedly about slavery, suggested in his notes and correspondence plans for eliminating slavery, but never publicly proposed any such plans or campaigned against the institution.

Yet the Declaration he drafted had either to be blatantly violated by the nation he did so much to create and form or slavery had to be abolished. Little wonder that the early decades of the Republic saw a rising tide of controversy about the institution of slavery. That controversy ended in a Civil War that, in the words of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, tested whether a “nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal . . . can long endure.” The nation endured but only at a tremendous cost in lives, property, and social cohesion.

Equality of Opportunity

Once the Civil War abolished slavery and the concept of personal equality—equality before God and the law—came closer to realization, emphasis shifted, in intellectual discussion and in government and private policy, to a different concept—equality of opportunity.

Literal equality of opportunity—in the sense of identity—is impossible. One child is born blind, another with sight. One child has parents deeply concerned about his welfare who provide a background of culture and understanding; another has dissolute, improvident parents. One child is born in the United States, another in India or China or Russia. They clearly do not have identical opportunities open to them at birth, and there is no way that their opportunities can be made identical.

Like personal equality, equality of opportunity is not to be interpreted literally. Its real meaning is perhaps best expressed by the French expression dating from the French Revolution:  Une carrière ouverte aux les talents —a career open to the talents. No arbitrary obstacles should prevent people from achieving those positions for which their talents fit them and for which their values lead them to seek. Not birth, nationality, color, religion, sex, or any other irrelevant characteristic should determine the opportunities that are open to a person—only his abilities.

On this interpretation, equality of opportunity simply spells out in more detail the meaning of personal equality, of equality before the law. And like personal equality, it has meaning and importance precisely because people are different in their genetic and cultural characteristics and hence both want to and can pursue different careers.

Equality of opportunity, like personal equality, is not inconsistent with liberty; on the contrary, it is an essential component of liberty. If some people are denied access to particular positions in life for which they are qualified simply because of their ethnic background, color, or religion, that is an interference with their right to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” It denies equality of opportunity and, by the same token, sacrifices the freedom of some for the advantage of others.

Like every ideal, equality of opportunity is incapable of being fully realized. The most serious departure was undoubtedly with respect to the blacks, particularly in the South but in the North as well. Yet there was also tremendous progress for blacks and for other groups. The very concept of a melting pot reflected the goal of equality of opportunity. So also did the expansion of free education at elementary, secondary, and higher levels, though this development has not been an unmixed blessing.

The priority given to equality of opportunity in the hierarchy of values generally accepted by the public after the Civil War is manifested particularly in economic policy. The catchwords were free enterprise, competition, laissez-faire. Everyone was to be free to go into any business, follow any occupation, buy any property, subject only to the agreement of the other parties to the transaction. Each was to have the opportunity to reap the benefits if he succeeded, to suffer the costs if he failed. There were to be no arbitrary obstacles. Performance, not birth, religion, or nationality, was the touchstone.

One corollary was the development of what many who regarded themselves as the cultural elite sneered at as vulgar materialism—an emphasis on the almighty dollar, on wealth as both the symbol and the seal of success. As Tocqueville pointed out, this emphasis reflected the unwillingness of the community to accept the traditional criteria in feudal and aristocratic societies, namely, birth and parentage. Performance was the obvious alternative, and the accumulation of wealth was the most readily available measure of performance.

Another corollary, of course, was an enormous release of human energy that made America an increasingly productive and dynamic society in which social mobility was an everyday reality. Still another, perhaps surprisingly, was an explosion in charitable activity. This explosion was made possible by the rapid growth in wealth. It took the form it did—of nonprofit hospitals, privately endowed colleges and universities, a plethora of charitable organizations directed to helping the poor—because of the dominant values of the society, including, especially, promotion of equality of opportunity.

Of course, in the economic sphere as elsewhere, practice did not always conform to the ideal. Government was kept to a minor role; no major obstacles to enterprise were erected; and, by the end of the nineteenth century, positive government measures, especially the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, were adopted to eliminate private barriers to competition. But extralegal arrangements continued to interfere with the freedom of individuals to enter various businesses or professions, and social practices unquestionably gave special advantages to persons born in the “right” families, of the “right” color, and of the “right” religion. However, the rapid rise in the economic and social position of various less privileged groups demonstrates that these obstacles were by no means insurmountable.

In respect of government measures, one major deviation from free markets was in foreign trade, where Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures had enshrined tariff protection for domestic industries as part of the American way. Tariff protection was inconsistent with thoroughgoing equality of opportunity and, indeed, with the free immigration of persons, which was the rule until World War I, except Orientals. Yet it could be rationalized both by the needs of national defense and on the very different ground that equality stops at the water’s edge—an illogical rationalization that is adopted also by most of today’s proponents of a very different concept of equality.

Equality of Outcome

That different concept, equality of outcome, has been gaining ground in this century. It first affected government policy in Great Britain and on the European continent. Over the past half-century it has increasingly affected government policy in the United States as well. In some intellectual circles the desirability of equality of outcome has become an article of religious faith: everyone should finish the race at the same time. As the Dodo said in Alice in Wonderland, “Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.”

For this concept, as for the other two, equal is not to be interpreted literally as identical. No one really maintains that everyone, regardless of age or sex or other physical attributes, should have identical rations of each separate item of food, clothing, and so on. The goal is rather fairness, a much vaguer notion—indeed, one that it is difficult, if not impossible, to define precisely. “Fair shares for all” is the modern slogan that has replaced Karl Marx’s, “To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability.”

This concept of equality differs radically from the other two. Government measures that promote personal equality or equality of opportunity enhance liberty; government measures to achieve fair shares for all reduce liberty. If what people get is to be determined by fairness, who is to decide what is fair? As a chorus of voices asked the Dodo, “But who is to give the prizes?” Fairness is not an objectively determined concept once it departs from -identity. Fairness, like needs, is in the eye of the beholder. If all are to have fair shares, someone or some group of people must decide what shares are fair—and they must be able to impose their decisions on others, taking from those who have more than their fair share and giving to those who have less. Are those who make and impose such decisions equal to those for whom they decide? Are we not in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”?

In addition, if what people get is determined by fairness and not by what they produce, where are the prizes to come from? What incentive is there to work and produce? How is it to be decided who is to be the doctor, who the lawyer, who the garbage collector, who the street sweeper? What assures that people will accept the roles assigned to them and then carry out those roles in accordance with their abilities? Clearly, only force or the threat of force will work.

The key point is not merely that practice will depart from the ideal. Of course it will, as it does with respect to the other two concepts of equality as well. The point is rather that there is a fundamental conflict between the ideal of fair shares, or of its precursor, “to each according to his needs,” and the ideal of personal liberty. This conflict has plagued every attempt to make equality of outcome the overriding principle of social organization. The end result has invariably been a state of terror: Russia, China, and, more recently, Cambodia offer clear and convincing evidence. And even terror has not equalized outcomes. In every case, wide inequality persists by any criterion; inequality between the rulers and the ruled, not only in power but also in material standards of life.

The far less extreme measures taken in Western countries in the name of equality of outcome have shared the same fate to a lesser extent. They, too, have restricted individual liberty. They, too, have failed to achieve their objective. It has proved impossible to define fair shares in a way that is generally acceptable or to satisfy the members of the community that they are being treated fairly. On the contrary, dissatisfaction has mounted with every additional attempt to implement equality of outcome.

Much of the moral fervor behind the drive for equality of outcome comes from the widespread belief that it is not fair that some children should have a great advantage over others simply because they happen to have wealthy parents. Of course it is not fair. However, unfairness can take many forms. It can take the form of the inheritance of property—bonds and stocks, houses, factories; it can also take the form of the inheritance of talent—musical ability, strength, mathematical genius. The inheritance of property can be interfered with more readily than the inheritance of talent. But from an ethical point of view, is there any difference between the two? Yet many people resent the inheritance of property but not the inheritance of talent.

Look at the same issue from the point of view of the parent. If you want to assure your child a higher income in life, you can do so in various ways. You can buy him (or her) an education that will equip him to pursue an occupation yielding a high income; or you can set him up in a business that will yield a higher income than he could earn as a salaried employee; or you can leave him property, the income from which will enable him to live better. Is there any ethical difference among these three ways of using your property? Or again, if the state leaves you any money to spend over and above taxes, should the state permit you to spend it on riotous living but not to leave it to your children?

The ethical issues involved are subtle and complex. They are not to be resolved by such simplistic formulas as fair shares for all. Indeed, if we took that seriously, youngsters with less musical skill should be given the greatest amount of musical training in order to compensate for their inherited disadvantage and those with greater musical aptitude should be prevented from having access to good musical training, similarly with all other categories of inherited personal qualities. That might be fair to the youngsters lacking in talent, but would it be fair to the talented, let alone to those who had to work to pay for training the youngsters lacking talent or to the persons deprived of the benefits that might have come from the cultivation of the talents of the gifted?

Life is not fair. It is tempting to believe that government can rectify what nature has spawned. But it is also important to recognize how much we benefit from the very unfairness we deplore. There’s nothing fair about Marlene Dietrich’s having been born with beautiful legs that we all want to look at or about Muhammad Ali’s having been born with the skill that made him a great fighter. But on the other side, millions of people who have enjoyed looking at Marlene Dietrich’s legs or watching one of Muhammad Ali’s fights have benefited from nature’s unfairness in producing a Marlene Dietrich and a Muhammad Ali. What kind of a world would it be if everyone were a duplicate of everyone else?

It is certainly not fair that Muhammad Ali should be able to earn millions of dollars in one night. But wouldn’t it have been even more unfair to the people who enjoyed watching him if, in the pursuit of some abstract ideal of equality, Muhammad Ali had not been permitted to earn more for one night’s fight—or for each day spent in preparing for a fight—than the lowest man on the totem pole could get for a day’s unskilled work on the docks? It might have been possible to do that, but the result would have been to deny people the opportunity to watch Muhammad Ali. We doubt very much that he would have been willing to undergo the arduous regimen of training that preceded his fights or to subject himself to the kind of fights he has had, if he were limited to the pay of an unskilled dockworker.

Still another facet of this complex issue of fairness can be illustrated by considering a game of chance, for example, an evening at baccarat. The people who choose to play may start the evening with equal piles of chips, but as the play progresses, those piles will become unequal. By the end of the evening, some will be big winners, others big losers. In the name of the ideal of equality, should the winners be required to repay the losers? That would take all the fun out of the game. Not even the losers would like that. They might like it for the one evening, but would they come back again to play if they knew that, whatever happened, they’d end up exactly where they started?

This example has a great deal more to do with the real world than one might at first suppose. Every day each of us makes decisions that involve taking a chance. Occasionally it’s a big chance—as when we decide what occupation to pursue, whom to marry, whether to buy a house or make a major investment. More often it’s a small chance, as when we decide what movie to go to, whether to cross the street against the traffic, whether to buy one security rather than another. Each time the question is who is to decide what chances we take? That in turn depends on who bears the consequences of the decision. If we bear the consequences, we can make the decision. But if someone else bears the consequences, should we or will we be permitted to make the decision? If you play baccarat as an agent for someone else with his money, will he, or should he, permit you unlimited scope for decision making? Is he not almost certain to set some limit to your discretion? Will he not lay down some rules for you to observe? To take a very different example, if the government (i.e., your fellow taxpayers) assumes the costs of flood damage to your house, can you be permitted to decide freely whether to build your house on a floodplain? It is no accident that increasing government intervention into personal decisions has gone hand in hand with the drive for fair shares for all.

The system under which people can make their own choices—and bear most of the consequences of their decisions—is the system that has prevailed for most of our history. It is the system that gave the Henry Fords, the Thomas Alva Edisons, the George Eastmans, the John D. Rockefellers, the James Cash Penneys the incentive to transform our society over the past two centuries. It is the system that gave other people an incentive to furnish venture capital to finance the risky enterprises that these ambitious inventors and captains of industry undertook. Of course, there were many losers along the way—probably more losers than winners. We don’t remember their names. But for the most part they went in with their eyes open. They knew they were taking chances. And win or lose, society as a whole benefited from their willingness to take a chance.

The fortunes that this system produced came overwhelmingly from developing new products or services or new ways of -producing products or services or of distributing them widely. The resulting addition to the wealth of the community as a whole, to the well-being of the masses of the people, amounted to many times the wealth accumulated by the innovators. Henry Ford acquired a great fortune. The country acquired a cheap and reliable means of transportation and the techniques of mass production. Moreover, in many cases the private fortunes were largely devoted in the end to the benefit of society. The Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie Foundations are only the most prominent of the numerous private benefactions that are so wonderful as a consequence of the operation of a system that corresponded to “equality of opportunity” and “liberty” as these terms were understood until recently.

One limited sample may give the flavor of the outpouring of philanthropic activity in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In a book devoted to “cultural philanthropy in Chicago from the 1880s to 1917,” Helen Horowitz writes: “At the turn of the century, Chicago was a city of contradictory impulses: it was both a commercial center dealing in the basic commodities of an industrial society and a community caught in the winds of cultural uplift. As one commentator put it, the city was ‘a strange combination of pork and Plato.’ A major manifestation of Chicago’s drive toward culture was the establishment of the city’s great cultural institutions in the 1880s and early 1890s (the Art Institute, the Newberry Library, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the University of Chicago, the Field Museum, the Crerar Library). . . . These institutions were a new phenomenon in the city. Whatever the initial impetus behind their founding, they were largely organized, sustained, and controlled by a group of businessmen. . . . Yet while privately supported and managed, the institutions were designed for the whole city. Their trustees had turned to cultural philanthropy not so much to satisfy personal aesthetic or scholarly yearnings as to accomplish social goals. Disturbed by social forces they could not control and filled with idealistic notions of culture, these businessmen saw in the museum, the library, the symphony orchestra, and the university a way to purify their city and to generate a civic renaissance.”

Philanthropy was by no means restricted to cultural institutions. There was, as Horowitz writes in another connection, “a kind of explosion of activity on many different levels.” And Chicago was not an isolated case. Rather, as Horowitz puts it, -“Chicago seemed to epitomize America.” The same period saw the establishment of Hull House in Chicago under Jane Addams, the first of many settlement houses established throughout the nation to spread culture and education among the poor and to assist them in their daily problems. Many hospitals, orphanages, and other charitable agencies were set up in the same period.

There is no inconsistency between a free market system and the pursuit of broad social and cultural goals or between a free market system and compassion for the less fortunate, whether that compassion takes the form, as it did in the nineteenth century, of private charitable activity or, as it has done increasingly in the twentieth, of assistance through government—provided that in both cases it is an expression of a desire to help others. There is all the difference in the world, however, between two kinds of assistance through government that seem superficially similar: first, 90 percent of us agreeing to impose taxes on ourselves in order to help the bottom 10 percent and, second, 80 percent voting to impose taxes on the top 10 percent to help the bottom 10 -percent—William Graham Sumner’s famous example of B and C deciding what D shall do for A. The first may be wise or unwise, an effective or an ineffective way to help the -disadvantaged—but it is consistent with belief in both equality of opportunity and liberty. The second seeks equality of outcome and is entirely antithetical to liberty.

Who Favors Equality of Outcome?

There is little support for the goal of equality of outcome despite the extent to which it has become almost an article of religious faith among intellectuals and despite its prominence in the speeches of politicians and the preambles of legislation. The talk is belied alike by the behavior of government, of the intellectuals who most ardently espouse egalitarian sentiments, and of the public at large.

For government, one obvious example is the policy toward lotteries and gambling. New York State—and particularly New York City—is widely and correctly regarded as a stronghold of egalitarian sentiment. Yet the New York State government conducts lotteries and provides facilities for off-track betting on races. It advertises extensively to induce its citizens to buy lottery tickets and bet on the races—at terms that yield a very large profit to the government. At the same time it tries to suppress the numbers game, which, as it happens, offers better odds than the government lottery (especially when account is taken of the greater ease of avoiding tax on winnings). Great Britain, a stronghold, if not the birthplace, of egalitarian sentiment, permits private gambling clubs and betting on races and other sporting events. Indeed, wagering is a national pastime and a major source of government income.

For intellectuals, the clearest evidence is their failure to practice what so many of them preach. Equality of outcome can be promoted on a do-it-yourself basis. First, decide exactly what you mean by equality. Do you want to achieve equality within the United States? in a selected group of countries as a whole? in the world as a whole? Is equality to be judged in terms of income per person, per family, per year, per decade, per lifetime, income in the form of money alone? Or including such nonmonetary items as the rental value of an owned home; food grown for one’s own use; services rendered by members of the family not employed for money, notably the housewife? How are physical and mental handicaps or advantages to be allowed for?

However you decide these issues, you can, if you are an egalitarian, estimate what money income would correspond to your concept of equality. If your actual income is higher than that, you can keep that amount and distribute the rest to people who are below that level. If your criterion were to encompass the world—as most egalitarian rhetoric suggests it should—something less than, say, $200 a year (in 1979 dollars) per person would be an amount that would correspond to the conception of equality that seems implicit in most egalitarian rhetoric. That is about the average income per person worldwide.

What Irving Kristol has called the “new class”—government bureaucrats, academics whose research is supported by government funds or who are employed in government-financed think tanks, staffs of the many so-called general interest or public policy groups, journalists and others in the communications -industry—are among the most ardent preachers of the doctrine of equality. Yet they remind us very much of the old, if unfair, saw about the Quakers: “They came to the New World to do good and ended up doing well.” The members of the new class are in general among the highest paid persons in the community. And for many among them, preaching equality and promoting or administering the resulting legislation has proved an effective means of achieving such high incomes. All of us find it easy to identify our own welfare with the welfare of the community.

Of course, an egalitarian may protest that he is but a drop in the ocean, that he would be willing to redistribute the excess of his income over his concept of an equal income if everyone else were compelled to do the same. On one level this contention that compulsion would change matters is wrong; even if everyone else did the same, his specific contribution to the income of others would still be a drop in the ocean. His individual contribution would be just as large if he were the only contributor as if he were one of many. Indeed it would be more valuable because he could target his contribution to go to the very worst off among those he regards as appropriate recipients. On another level compulsion would change matters drastically; the kind of society that would emerge if such acts of redistribution were voluntary is altogether different—and, by our standards, infinitely preferable—to the kind that would emerge if redistribution were compulsory.

Persons who believe that a society of enforced equality is preferable can also practice what they preach. They can join one of the many communes in this country and elsewhere or establish new ones. And, of course, it is entirely consistent with a belief in personal equality or equality of opportunity and liberty that any group of individuals who wish to live in that way should be free to do so. Our thesis that support for equality of outcome is word-deep receives strong support from the small number of persons who have wished to join such communes and from the fragility of the communes that have been established.

Egalitarians in the United States may object that the fewness of communes and their fragility reflect the opprobrium that a predominantly capitalist society visits on such communes and the resulting discrimination to which they are subjected. That may be true for the United States but as Robert Nozick has pointed out, there is one country where that is not true, where, on the contrary, egalitarian communes are highly regarded and prized. That country is Israel. The kibbutz played a major role in early Jewish settlement in Palestine and continues to play an important role in the state of Israel. A disproportionate fraction of the leaders of the Israeli state were drawn from the kibbutzim. Far from being a source of disapproval, membership in a kibbutz confers social status and commands approbation. Everyone is free to join or leave a kibbutz, and kibbutzim have been viable social organizations. Yet at no time, and certainly not today, have more than about 5 percent of the Jewish population of Israel chosen to be members of a kibbutz. That percentage can be regarded as an upper estimate of the fraction of people who would voluntarily choose a system enforcing equality of outcome in preference to a system characterized by inequality, diversity, and opportunity.

Public attitudes about graduated income taxes are more mixed. Recent referenda on the introduction of graduated state income taxes in some states that do not have them, and on an increase in the extent of graduation in other states, have generally been defeated. On the other hand, the federal income tax is highly graduated, at least on paper, though it also contains a large number of provisions (loopholes) that greatly reduce the extent of graduation in practice. On this showing, there is at least public tolerance of a moderate amount of redistributive taxation.

However, we venture to suggest that the popularity of Reno, Las Vegas, and now Atlantic City is no less faithful an indication of the preferences of the public than the federal income tax, the editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post, and the pages of the New York Review of Books.

Consequences of Egalitarian Policies

In shaping our own policy, we can learn from the experience of Western countries with which we share a common intellectual and cultural background and from which we derive many of our values. Perhaps the most instructive example is Great Britain, which led the way in the nineteenth century toward implementing equality of opportunity and in the twentieth toward implementing equality of outcome.

Since the end of World War II, British domestic policy has been dominated by the search for greater equality of outcome. Measure after measure has been adopted designed to take from the rich and give to the poor. Taxes were raised on income until they reached a top rate of 98 percent on property income and 83 percent on earned income and were supplemented by ever heavier taxes on inheritances. State-provided medical, housing, and other welfare services were greatly expanded, along with payments to the unemployed and the aged. Unfortunately, the results have been very different from those that were intended by the people who were quite properly offended by the class structure that dominated Britain for centuries. There has been a vast redistribution of wealth, but the end result is not an equitable distribution.

Instead, new classes of privileged have been created to replace or supplement the old: the bureaucrats, secure in their jobs, protected against inflation both when they work and when they retire; the trade unions that profess to represent the most downtrodden workers but in fact consist of the highest paid laborers in the land—the aristocrats of the labor movement; and the new millionaires—people who have been cleverest at finding ways around the laws, the rules, the regulations that have poured from Parliament and the bureaucracy, who have found ways to avoid paying taxes on their income and to get their wealth overseas beyond the grasp of the tax collectors. A vast reshuffling of income and wealth has taken place, greater equity, hardly.

The drive for equality in Britain failed, not because the wrong measures were adopted, though some no doubt were; not because they were badly administered, though some no doubt were; not because the wrong people administered them, though no doubt some did. The drive for equality failed for a much more fundamental reason. It went against one of the most basic instincts of all human beings. In the words of Adam Smith, that condition is “The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition”—and, one may add, the condition of his children and his children’s children. Smith, of course, meant by that condition not merely material well-being, though certainly that was one component. He had a much broader concept in mind, one that included all of the values by which men judge their -success—in particular the kind of social values that gave rise to the outpouring of philanthropic activities in the nineteenth century.

When the law interferes with people’s pursuit of their own values, they will try to find a way around. They will evade the law, they will break the law, or they will leave the country. Few of us believe in a moral code that justifies forcing people to give up much of what they produce to finance payments to persons they do not know for purposes they may not approve of. When the law contradicts what most people regard as moral and proper, they will break the law—whether the law is enacted in the name of a noble ideal such as equality or in the naked interest of one group at the expense of another. Only fear of punishment, not a sense of justice and morality, will lead people to obey the law.

When people start to break one set of laws, the lack of respect for the law inevitably spreads to all laws, even those that everyone regards as moral and proper—laws against violence, theft, and vandalism. Hard as it may be to believe, the growth of crude criminality in Britain in recent decades may well be one consequence of the drive for equality.

In addition, that drive for equality has driven out of Britain some of its ablest, best-trained, most vigorous citizens, much to the benefit of the United States and other countries that have given them a greater opportunity to use their talents for their own benefit. Finally, who can doubt the effect that the drive for equality has had on efficiency and productivity? Surely, that is one of the main reasons why economic growth in Britain has fallen so far behind its continental neighbors, the United States, Japan, and other nations over the past few decades.

We in the United States have not gone as far as Britain in promoting the goal of equality of outcome. Yet many of the same consequences are already evident—from a failure of egalitarian measures to achieve their objectives, to a reshuffling of wealth that by no standards can be regarded as equitable, to a rise in criminality, to a depressing effect on productivity and efficiency.

Capitalism and Equality

Everywhere in the world there are gross inequities of income and wealth. They offend most of us. Few can fail to be moved by the contrast between the luxury enjoyed by some and the grinding poverty suffered by others.

In the past century a myth has grown up that free market capitalism—equality of opportunity as we have interpreted that term—increases such inequalities, that it is a system under which the rich exploit the poor.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Wherever the free market has been permitted to operate, wherever anything approaching equality of opportunity has existed, the ordinary man has been able to attain levels of living never dreamed of before. Nowhere is the gap between rich and poor wider, nowhere are the rich richer and the poor poorer, than in those societies that do not permit the free market to operate. That is true of feudal societies like medieval Europe, India before independence, and much of modern South America, where inherited status determines position. It is equally true of centrally planned societies, like Russia or China or India since independence, where access to government determines position. It is true even where central planning was introduced, as in all three of these countries, in the name of equality.

Russia is a country of two nations: a small privileged upper class of bureaucrats, Communist Party officials, technicians, and a great mass of people living little better than their great-grandparents did. The upper class has access to special shops, schools, and luxuries of all kind; the masses are condemned to enjoy little more than the basic necessities. We remember asking a tourist guide in Moscow the cost of a large automobile that we saw and being told, “Oh, those aren’t for sale; they’re only for the Politburo.” Several recent books by American journalists document in great detail the contrast between the privileged life of the upper classes and the poverty of the masses. Even on a simpler level, it is noteworthy that the average wage of a foreman is a larger multiple of the average wage of an ordinary worker in a Russian factory than in a factory in the United States—and no doubt he deserves it. After all, an American foreman only has to worry about being fired; a Russian foreman also has to worry about being shot.

China, too, is a nation with wide differences in income—between the politically powerful and the rest; between city and countryside; between some workers in the cities and other workers. A perceptive student of China writes that “the inequality between rich and poor regions in China was more acute in 1957 than in any of the larger nations of the world except perhaps Brazil.” He quotes another scholar as saying, “These examples suggest that the Chinese industrial wage structure is not significantly more egalitarian than that of other countries.” And he concludes his examination of equality in China, “How evenly distributed would China’s income be today? Certainly, it would not be as even as Taiwan’s or South Korea’s. . . . On the other hand, income distribution in China is obviously more even than in Brazil or South America. . . . We must conclude that China is far from being a society of complete equality. In fact, income differences in China may be quite a bit greater than in a number of countries commonly associated with ‘fascist’ elites and exploited masses.”

Industrial progress, mechanical improvement, and all the great wonders of the modern era have meant relatively little to the wealthy. The rich in Ancient Greece would have benefited hardly at all from modern plumbing: running servants replaced running water. Television and radio—the patricians of Rome could enjoy the leading musicians and actors in their home, could have the leading artists as domestic retainers. Ready-to-wear clothing, supermarkets; all these and many other modern developments would have added little to their life. They would have welcomed the improvements in transportation and in medicine, but for the rest, the great achievements of Western capitalism have redounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary person. These achievements have made available to the masses conveniences and amenities that were previously the exclusive prerogative of the rich and powerful.

In 1848 John Stuart Mill wrote: “Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle classes. But they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish.”

No one could say that today. You can travel from one end of the industrialized world to the other and almost the only people you will find engaging in backbreaking toil are people who are doing it for sport. To find people whose day’s toil has not been lightened by mechanical invention, you must go to the non-capitalist world: to Russia, China, India, or Bangladesh, parts of Yugoslavia or to the more backward capitalist countries—to Africa, the Mideast, South America and, until recently, Spain or Italy.

A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of -outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.

On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality. Though a by-product of freedom, greater equality is not an accident. A free society releases the energies and abilities of people to pursue their own objectives. It prevents some people from arbitrarily suppressing others. It does not prevent some people from achieving positions of privilege, but so long as freedom is maintained, it prevents those positions of privilege from becoming institutionalized; they are subject to continued attack by other able, ambitious people. Freedom means diversity but also mobility. It preserves the opportunity for today’s disadvantaged to become tomorrow’s privileged and, in the process, enables almost everyone, from top to bottom, to enjoy a fuller and richer life.

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America's Founding Documents

Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

Note: The following text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum .)  The spelling and punctuation reflects the original.

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Button Gwinnett

George Walton

North Carolina

William Hooper

Joseph Hewes

South Carolina

Edward Rutledge

Thomas Heyward, Jr.

Thomas Lynch, Jr.

Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts

John Hancock

Samuel Chase

William Paca

Thomas Stone

Charles Carroll of Carrollton

George Wythe

Richard Henry Lee

Thomas Jefferson

Benjamin Harrison

Thomas Nelson, Jr.

Francis Lightfoot Lee

Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania

Robert Morris

Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Franklin

John Morton

George Clymer

James Smith

George Taylor

James Wilson

George Ross

Caesar Rodney

George Read

Thomas McKean

William Floyd

Philip Livingston

Francis Lewis

Lewis Morris

Richard Stockton

John Witherspoon

Francis Hopkinson

Abraham Clark

New Hampshire

Josiah Bartlett

William Whipple

Samuel Adams

Robert Treat Paine

Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island

Stephen Hopkins

William Ellery

Connecticut

Roger Sherman

Samuel Huntington

William Williams

Oliver Wolcott

Matthew Thornton

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Bangor Daily News

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America’s 250th is worthy of celebration — and unity

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The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on  bangordailynews.com

David J. Bobb is president and CEO of the Bill of Rights Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advances civic and history education. He wrote this column for The Fulcrum.

It is hard to imagine Americans afraid to celebrate America. But as our nation’s 250th birthday approaches in 2026, there is already some nervous hand-wringing about how citizens should respond.

Should the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence be a time of celebration, a period of atonement for the uglier aspects of our history or a little bit of both?

It is a problem The New York Times saw coming in July 2023, when it looked at the difficulty of crafting a unifying national message “when fighting about American history seems to be the real national pastime.” An article in Time magazine similarly warned us to “get ready for controversy.”

But what if America’s 250th birthday became a unifying time for our nation, instead of the latest battle in the ongoing history wars?

Marking this historic milestone does not need to be a false, binary choice between untamed jingoism and self-loathing. We can acknowledge both the positive and negative aspects of our national history, while celebrating America’s ongoing journey toward the realization of its ideals.

When the Declaration of Independence embedded principles like equality and liberty into the foundation of our nation, Americans did not become equal and liberated overnight. Rather, the Declaration of Independence launched a journey and established a standard that made progress toward the goals of equality and liberty possible.

Ugly aspects of our history like slavery, Jim Crow, and denying women the right to vote make clear America has not always lived up to its principles.

But in each of those cases, the standards established at our nation’s founding became a rallying cry for progress.

Leaders such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. called for America to live up to its promises as part of the abolition and civil rights movements. Douglass believed equality and liberty were “saving principles.”

In fact, the women’s suffrage movement repeatedly invoked the founding principles of equality and liberty to argue for equal access to the ballot box.

At the heart of our American experiment is the recognition that we have a standard that we need to live up to. This recognition has meant that we are on a journey to more perfectly realize the promise of equality and liberty expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

While we have too often failed to live up to our standards, we can celebrate the progress we have made.

We have a free press providing our citizens with independent sources of information. Our press can and does hold local, state and national leaders to account, with protection from government reprisal.

The United States was one of just 35 countries to receive the highest “open” ranking in the 2023 Global Expression Report, which measures nations’ commitments to free expression.

Conversely, 86 nations were ranked as restricted, highly restricted or in crisis. People of every faith gather freely in houses of worship across our country without fear of government persecution. Or they exercise their right to practice no religion at all.

America’s journey has not been perfect, but our end goal — the full realization of equality and liberty for all people — is perfect. Keeping that destination in our sights requires constant reflection and, at times, course corrections.

We have done this work throughout our history, and we must continue to do so.

But we can take pride in the journey we collectively embarked upon as Americans. And as we prepare for America’s 250th birthday, we can celebrate the founding principles that established a framework for both our journey and our progress.

More articles from the BDN

The Declaration of Independence

What were the philos

Guiding Question:

• What were the philosophical bases and practical purposes of the Declaration of Independence?
• Students will examine the philosophical bases and practical purposes of the Declaration of Independence by analyzing key passages from the document.

Expand Materials Materials

Student materials.

• Background Essay: Declaration of Independence
• Background Essay Graphic Organizer and Questions

Declaration Preamble and Grievances Organizer: Versions A and B

Thomas jefferson looks back on the declaration of independence.

• Appendix C: The Declaration of Independence, with Line Numbers

Teacher Resources

• The Declaration of Independence Answer Key

Expand More Information More Information

For students who need additional scaffolding in vocabulary and reading comprehension, this lesson plan suggests having students interview three people as preparatory work and read the essay and accompanying organizer in class. Stronger readers can complete the essay and accompanying organizer for homework and begin class by posing the question “What does the Fourth of July mean to you?” to classmates and then having a class discussion. Two versions of the graphic organizer are provided for the second part of the activity. Version A contains shorter excerpts. Version B can be used with stronger readers. Students will consult Appendix A: Founding Principles and Civic Virtues Organizer and Appendix B: Being an American Unit Graphic Organizer from the first lesson in this curriculum.

Expand Prework Prework

Have students ask three people (siblings, friends, teachers, coaches, parents, etc.) what the Fourth of July means to them.

Expand Warmup Warmup

Allow students 5 minutes to discuss their answers to the homework question with a partner or in small groups, as best fits your classroom. When time has passed, ask students to share their responses with the class. Encourage students to look for patterns and move the conversation to the focus of the holiday being the celebration of ideals and principles in the Declaration of Independence.

Expand Activities Activities

• Distribute Background Essay and Background Essay Graphic Organizer and Questions to students. Have students look at the timeline, headers, and images to predict main ideas and concepts they will see in the essay. Read the essay aloud as a class or have students read individually (this can also be done as preparatory work for stronger readers). Students should complete the accompanying graphic organizer as they read. After reading, give students time to complete the three concluding questions on main ideas. Lead a brief discussion on the answers.
• Distribute Declaration Preamble and Grievances Organizer , either Version A or Version B. Complete the introduction and Preamble together (the introduction has been filled out as an example). Divide the class into pairs/small groups, and assign each group one section of the Declaration in the organizer. You may wish to have pairs/groups put their information on a poster or PowerPoint slide for ease of sharing with the class. After completing their assigned section(s), have groups share out to the class.
• Have students complete the concluding questions after the organizer. Lead a brief discussion on student answers.

Expand Wrap Up Wrap Up

Assess & reflect.

• Have students return to Appendix A: Founding Principles and Civic Virtues Organizer from the first lesson in this curriculum and complete the definitions of liberty and equality based on what they learned in this activity.
• Have students return to Appendix B: Being an American Unit Graphic Organizer from the first lesson in this curriculum and complete the applicable row as an exit ticket.

Expand Homework Homework

• Challenge students to find or take pictures of scenes that illustrate the main ideas of the Declaration of Independence. Post pictures to a class site or compile into a mural or collage.
• Have students research specific grievances listed in the Declaration.
• Have students research an individual who signed the Declaration of Independence and write a one- to two-page biography.
• Have students complete Thomas Jefferson Looks Back on the Declaration of Independence .

Student Handouts

Background essay: the declaration of independence, background essay graphic organizer and questions: the declaration of independence.

Next Lesson

The Guiding Star of Equality: The Declaration of Independence and Equality in U.S. History

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What was the Continental Congress's argument for Independence? Join Kirk Higgins, as he takes a line by line look at the the Declaration of Independence.

50 Fun 4th of July Trivia Facts to Add to Your American Knowledge

Which U.S. president was born on July 4th? 🤔

Every item on this page was chosen by a The Pioneer Woman editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

Here, you'll find fun July 4th trivia that you may not have known about. Hopefully, you feel a little more patriotic by the time you reach the end, and be sure to let us know in the comments which fact surprised you the most! (Chances are it has to do with hot dogs... more on that later. 😂)

King George III ruled England when the Colonies established independence.

It can be puzzling when you put American history and English history side by side. But, yeah, King George III was the leading man in England at the time. Fun fact: he declared that the colonies were " in a state of rebellion " when William Penn brought over the petition seeking independence for the Colonies.

The battles of Lexington and Concord were the first battles in the American revolution.

Yep! The "shot heard around the world" took place on April 19, 1775, ultimately starting the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the American War of Independence in general. Crazy to think it was all those years ago.

The Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks celebration in New York City is the largest display in America.

It's okay if you thought the display down in Pawhuska was the biggest. 😂 Though, you would be wrong, because it's over in NYC—and you can watch it live , even if you're not in the area!

The Treaty of Paris is what officiated American independence.

It wasn't until September 3, 1783 when the American Revolution officially ended. This is when the world saw the Treaty of Paris signed. It's important to note that this was a war not just fought by Great Britain and America, but France, Spain, and the Netherlands were also involved.

It is believed that there are 200 original copies of the Declaration of Independence printed.

That's apparently the number John Dunlap (an American printer) had in mind when producing them. Though, today there are only 26 known copies floating around.

It's technically a violation to wear the American flag as a clothing article.

It's pretty popular to wear American themed clothing on the 4th of July! Though, it might be worth noting that this is technically in violation of the The U.S. Flag Code , which says that "the flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery."

Edward Rutledge was the youngest person to sign the Declaration of Independence.

The man was just 26 years old when he helped shaped history! (The average age of signing members was about 45 years old.) Just goes to show you that you're never too young to make a difference.

Warren G. Harding created the term "Founding Fathers" that is still used today.

He first addressed the men as such at the Republican National Convention in the 1910s . This was sort of history in itself, since that is how many Americans refer to them today.

The shortest 4th of July parade is in Aptos, California.

The parade as a whole genuinely only takes up two city blocks, totaling just over a half mile long . Still, it's the spirit that counts and it's pretty darn cute if you think about it!

Americans spend billions of dollars on food alone for the 4th of July.

In fact, in 2023 it was predicted that Americans would be spending $9.5 billion on food in preparation for their patriotic festivities . Talk about a shopping spree!

The Liberty Bell is tapped 13 times on July 4th.

Every year on July 4, descendants of the Declaration of Independence signers tap the Liberty Bell 13 times. The tradition was created as a way to honor the original 13 colonies.

Massachusetts was the first state to make July 4th an official state holiday.

The New England state made it official on July 3, 1781.

Coney Island hosts a famous hot dog-eating contest every year on July 4th.

It takes place at Nathan's Famous Corporation's original and best-known restaurant in Coney Island, New York City. But if you can't make it in person, you can still watch the televised event from home!

Joey Chestnut currently holds the title of hot dog-eating world champion after setting the new record at Nathan's.

He ate a record-breaking 76 hot dogs and buns in the 2021 competition.

There have been 27 different versions of the U.S. flag.

The original flag featured 13 stars and stripes to represent the 13 colonies. Today's American flag features 50 stars and 13 stripes.

Former President Barack Obama's older daughter was born on the 4th of July.

Malia Obama, now 24, was born on July 4, 1998.

John Hancock was the first person to sign the Declaration of Independence.

His bold signature was so memorable that his name became synonymous with the word (as in, "Put your John Hancock on this form.").

President Zachary Taylor died after falling ill at a July 4 celebration.

He died on July 9, 1850, after only 16 months in office. The exact cause of his death is still debated by historians but many believe it had something to do with the large quantities of cherries and iced milk he had during the 4th of July festivities.

Apple pie has been a staple American dessert since the 1700s.

Settlers were looking for new traditions once they arrived to America. And one of the ways to reach this goal was through food—more specifically, pastries! Leaving behind their usual British scones and sweets, they were taught how to preserve apples and make pie crust from their fellow Dutch and German immigrants . Though earlier versions of apple pie did exist in other countries, the first recipe for apple pie in America was published in a cookbook in 1796.

Bristol, Rhode Island has the longest running 4th of July parade.

Dating all the way back to 1785, Bristol has held an annual Independence Day celebration—one that the town is known for. It's considered the oldest annual 4th of July celebration to date!

The proper way to fold an American flag is in the shape of a triangle.

The reason behind the triangular shape is so that it replicates the iconic "tri-cornered" hat that soldiers wore in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

Patrick Henry is the one who said “Give me liberty, or give me death.”

The famous line was actually one small part of a speech Patrick Henry gave to Peyton Randolph back in March 23, 1775—as a first formal request for the Virginia colony's right to freedom.

Betsy Ross is often credited with being the first person to sew the American flag.

Though it's not officially known who exactly sewed the first American flag, there is a long-standing belief that it was Betsy Ross—who completed the task at the request of General George Washington .

John Adams predicted that Independence Day would be a huge celebration for many generations to come.

In a letter he wrote to his wife, Abigail Adams, he declared that the day should be filled with games, sports, parades, and laughter. He basically planned the day for us!

Independence Day was once celebrated on July 5th.

The holiday fell on a Sunday in 1779, so Americans celebrated on Monday, the fifth of July .

Three U.S. presidents have died on the 4th of July.

James Monroe, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson all died on the patriotic day. (Adams and Jefferson passed in 1826, and Monroe passed five years later in 1831.)

There are some copies of the Declaration of Independence with a woman’s signature on it.

Mary Katharine Goddard wasn't one of the official signers in 1776, but the printer and publisher added her name to the Declaration of Independence after she was hired by Congress to print copies.

The 50th star was added to the American flag on July 4, 1960.

It symbolized Hawaii's admission as the U.S.'s 50th state.

John Adams thought Independence Day should be celebrated on July 2.

He had a point, given that the Continental Congress did declare its freedom from Great Britain on July 2, 1776 . However, an official document explaining this move to the public wasn't published until two days later, on July 4, 1776.

Americans consume a lot of hot dogs on July 4th. About 150 million, to be exact.

Yes, you read that right! According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, Los Angeles residents alone consume about 30 million pounds of hot dogs on July 4th . It's safe to say they're a holiday favorite!

The Nathan's Famous 4th of July hot dog eating contest began over a century ago.

According to the company itself, the first unofficial contest took place on July 4th, 1916 . The contest, which began with four immigrants competing to determine who was the most patriotic, ended up becoming one of the most widely known July 4th traditions in America.

Despite what you might have thought, only two men signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776.

You can thank John Hancock and Charles Thompson for this one. The rest of the delegates signed within the weeks that followed .

There are approximately 16,000 Independence Day fireworks displays that take place each year.

America's 4th of July tradition is a bit of a loud one, but iconic nonetheless. According to History.com, the custom dates back to 1777 .

When we look at the costs, Americans spend over $1 billion on fireworks every 4th of July.

This fact just blows our mind!

July 4th wasn't an official holiday until almost 100 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed.

It wasn't common to celebrate this patriotic event for the first few decades of America's independence. When it was established as an official holiday in 1870 , it became one of the most popular nonreligious celebrations in the United States.

There were only about 2.5 million people living in the United States in 1776.

That number is drastically different from the approximately 332 million people that live here today !

Hospitals receive a surplus of patients on July 4th due to fireworks-related injuries.

In 2020, an estimated 15,600 people were hospitalized with injuries related to fireworks. Learning proper firework handling protocol can help prevent these mishaps.

Our national anthem wasn't 'The Star-Spangled Banner' until 1931.

It took 117 years for the words written in 1814 by Francis Key Scott to gain federal recognition. Now, it is easily one of the most famous songs in the country.

The One World Trade Center in New York was designed to be 1,776 feet tall.

One of the most spectacular features of the building is its height, which represents the year America declared independence from Great Britain.

The Liberty Bell hasn't been rung since 1846.

The last time the bell rang was on Washington's birthday in February 1846, when a major crack appeared on the bell .

The first newspaper to print the Declaration of Independence was the Pennsylvania Evening Post .

They didn't waste any time, either. The Declaration was published in the paper's Saturday issue, on July 6, 1776. It was soon published in other newspapers throughout the colonies—and there was even a German translation of it printed in the Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote , which was a newspaper that catered to Pennsylvania's large German population.

George Washington celebrated the 4th of July in 1778 even though he was at war.

On July 4, 1778, George Washington treated U.S. soldiers to a double ration of rum and a cannon salute .

It was once considered disrespectful to keep your business open on the 4th of July.

Before the Civil War, people who kept their businesses open during the holiday were deemed unpatriotic. However, it became more acceptable after the war when storeowners started holding "patriotic" 4th of July sales.

It's a tradition in New England to eat salmon on the 4th of July.

Eating salmon and peas on Independence Day is a New England practice that dates back centuries . Many swear by the recipe, and have made it a staple for the American holiday. Will this be something you cook up for your July 4th barbecue?

There are other countries that celebrate America's independence on the 4th of July.

Countries like Denmark, England, Norway, Portugal, and Sweden all take part in hosting commemorations for the holiday. This is in part to honor their many citizens who emigrated to the U.S., but also as a move to attract tourists.

There is one U.S. president who was born on the 4th of July.

America's 30th president, Calvin Coolidge, was born on July 4, 1872.

A time capsule was buried by Paul Revere and Sam Adams.

On July 4, 1795, the two men placed the capsule under the Massachusetts State House in Boston. It was discovered more than two centuries later by workers fixing a leak. When state officials opened it, they discovered a pine tree shilling coin, a copper medal engraved with an image of George Washington, several newspapers, and a silver plate thought to be engraved by Paul Revere.

There are 31 towns in the U.S. that contain the word 'liberty.'

The largest town is Liberty, Missouri, with a population of 32,865 .

Josiah Soto is the assistant editor of news and social for The Pioneer Woman. He helps manage the website’s social channels, in addition to writing high-performing news and entertainment content daily. 

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