In a few days, Americans will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. There will be fireworks, concerts, speeches, and millions of backyard barbecues.
But what precisely are we celebrating?
Most Americans know that on July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, explaining why the colonies were “dissolving the political bands” connecting them to Great Britain. Far fewer know that the actual act of separation took place two days earlier, when Congress approved Richard Henry Lee’s resolution declaring the colonies “free and independent States.”
More importantly, few Americans understand what those words meant.
Today, when we hear the phrase “the United States,” we naturally think of a single nation. But in 1776, the word “state” meant what we would today call a country. The Declaration itself says that the former colonies possessed “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.”
In other words, Congress did not create one new nation on July 2. It declared thirteen separate states—Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the others—to be sovereign political communities possessing the same powers as Great Britain, France, or Spain.
Seven years later, Great Britain itself recognized this reality in the Treaty of Paris:
“His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States.”
This is quite different from the story most Americans have in mind when they celebrate Independence Day.
Most Americans believe that a new nation (not thirteen new nations) was created that day. Politicians will likely confuse the matter even further with sophisms like “the birth of our democracy.” Democracy is not mentioned in any of the founding documents.
Now, it would be dishonest not to recognize that the Founders intended more than thirteen separate states. According to Thomas Jefferson’s autobiography, they moved directly on to the Articles of Confederation, defining something more than an alliance but far less than a monolithic nation state. According to the Articles, it was “a confederation.” The Articles describe the relationship as “a firm league of friendship” that agreed to delegate certain powers to a federal government, leaving all others to the individual states.
This is not just an academic point. It was the kind of relationship the colonists argued was their proper one to the British Empire before leaving it. In his A Summary View of the Rights of British America, Jefferson argued that the colonies were subject to the king but not to Parliament. As far as internal matters, including taxation, were concerned, only the local colonial governments had any legitimate authority. The king’s authority was limited to foreign policy and regulating trade.
We still call the government in Washington DC “the federal government,” but have lost the meaning of the word. A federal government governs a federation, not a nation. But the government in Washington DC acts as a national government in all but name.
Again, this is no mere pedantry. We are still arguing today over who makes rules over issues like abortion, gun regulation, and drugs. The Constitution leaves all these issues to the states, but since the early twentieth century progressives, both liberal and conservative, have used the Supreme Court to “discover” those powers in the Constitution, mostly through spurious readings of the Bill of Rights.
But the spirit of ’76 was to leave all such matters to local governance, not decided by supposed elites in a distant capital. And Washington DC is literally as distant to many U.S. states as London was in 1776 and culturally much more so to almost all of them.
Then, there is “our democracy.” The reason you don’t find the word democracy in the Declaration or the Constitution is that the Founders did not envision a government that did any mythical “will of the people” or “will of the majority.” Rather, the purpose of government according to the Declaration was to secure the inalienable rights of the individual.
Modern Americans often speak of “our democracy” as though elections determine what government ought to do. The Founders viewed matters differently. Elections were not intended to determine the purpose of government. That purpose was already fixed. The role of government was to secure the rights of individuals. Elections merely determined who would exercise the limited powers delegated for that end.
Read the rest at The Libertarian Institute…
Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupidand Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?