Most people think of the Declaration of Independence as the founding of America, but in many ways, that is not true. Just because we declared it so did not make it true. We first had to win a war against the greatest military power in the history of the world. As the king says in the musical Hamilton, “I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love!” If the colonists lost the war, the Declaration would be just a footnote in history.
Because of this, I do not believe Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration for the king, as it was doubtful the king would read it and suddenly change his mind. Instead, I believe the Declaration was written to convince the colonists that what they were doing was right. Breaking away from a monarch was a major step. Many people still believed kings ruled because they were chosen by God. Challenging the king was not just political rebellion; to many, it seemed like an act against God itself.
Jefferson’s goal was to show the colonists that opposing the king was not treason. This is why he included a long list of grievances against King George III, such as “He has refused his Assent to Laws” and “He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly.” These accusations were not really written to tell the king what he had done wrong; they were written to show the colonists why they were justified in separating from Britain.
To understand Jefferson’s argument, we must understand the ideas that influenced him. Jefferson was a product of the Enlightenment, an intellectual movement that encouraged people to question traditional ideas, including government. He was familiar with the writings of philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Montesquieu, but the thinker who influenced him most was John Locke.
Locke’s most important idea was the concept of natural rights. Before Locke, kings justified their power through the idea of the divine right of kings or the belief that God had chosen monarchs to rule. Under this system, power flowed downward: God gave authority to the king, and the king ruled over the people.
However, events in England challenged this belief. In 1688, Parliament invited King William III and Queen Mary II to replace King James II on the English throne. When William and Mary arrived, many people supported them, and James II fled. This event became known as the Glorious Revolution because it happened with little bloodshed and because the new monarchs accepted limits on their power.
The unintended consequence of the Glorious Revolution was that it weakened the idea of divine right. If Parliament could remove a king and replace him, then perhaps kings were not chosen only by God. After this, Locke developed his ideas about government and argued that divine right was not a legitimate foundation for political power.
Locke began his argument with the idea of the “state of nature,” a philosophical thought experiment about life before government existed. Unlike thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, who believed life without government was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” Locke believed humans were naturally rational and equal. In this state, people had natural rights that came from nature itself.
Jefferson adopted this idea in the Declaration when he wrote that people have “unalienable Rights,” including “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Locke described these rights as life, liberty, and property.
However, Locke recognized that the state of nature had problems. Because everyone was responsible for enforcing justice themselves, personal bias could lead to conflict and revenge. To solve this problem, people created governments. This was known as the social contract. People agreed to give up some freedoms and obey laws while the government promised to protect their natural rights.
This idea completely changed the way people thought about government. Rights did not come from the king; they came from nature, or, as Jefferson said, from the Creator. The government did not create those rights and could not take them away. Instead, government existed because people consented to its authority. Power flowed upward from the people to the government, not downward from God to the king.
This was the foundation of Jefferson’s argument. If a government violated the rights it was created to protect, then the people had the right to change or even replace that government. Jefferson explained this in the Declaration: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
However, Jefferson also warned that governments should not be changed for minor reasons. He wrote that “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” But when a government commits repeated abuses and attempts to establish tyranny, Jefferson argued, the people have “the right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”
This is why Jefferson listed the 27 grievances against King George. The purpose was to prove to the colonists that rebellion was not an act of betrayal; it was their right and duty under the principles of natural rights and government by consent.
Our Declaration of Independence remains one of the most influential political documents in history because its argument is not limited to 1776; it established the idea that governments exist to protect the rights of the people and that governments can lose their legitimacy when they fail to do so. Of course, there is one important reality: declaring a right is much easier than defending it. The colonists had to win a war before those words could become reality. The Declaration gave them the argument, but victory made it possible.
James Finck is a professor of American history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He can be reached at james.finck@swoknews.com. Thanks to the Southwest Ledger and the Lawton Constitution for sharing his column.
