Ch. 1.1. Jefferson’s Draft: The Preamble’s Audience and Paragraph A
(Continued from Maier, pp. 129-33.)
A well-written preface should command the attention of its audience and begin to win them over to its message. But who was the intended audience? The Declaration of Independence claimed to be written from “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” and submitted its “facts to a candid world,” which has generally been taken to mean that it was intended for persons outside British North America and, given the need for foreign aid that made Independence urgent, was probably meant to enlist French support.
If that was the case, Congress acted in a most curious way after it finally adopted the document. To be sure, on July 8 a committee of Congress sent the Declaration to the American emissary in Paris, Silas Deane, with instructions that he should “immediately communicate the piece to the Courts of France, and send copies of it to the other Courts of Europe,” and also suggested that “it may be well … to procure a good translation of it into French, and get it published in the gazettes.” … But the original letter of July 8 was lost, and the later one arrived only on November 17, when news of American Independence, Deane said; “had been circulated through Europe for two months before,” which made his “pretending” to inform the French Court of that development a somewhat awkward formality…
In fact, on July 4, after finally approving the declaration and ordering it “authenticated and printed,” Congress voted that copies “be sent to the several assemblies, conventions and committees, or councils of safety, and to the several commanding officer of the continental troops; that it be proclaimed in each of the United States, and at the head of the army.” France and the other nations of Europe were not mentioned.
The situation in 1776 also gives strong reason to think that the Declaration of Independence was designed first and foremost for domestic consumption. Independence itself was critical to securing support from the French government, but the purposes of Independence and of the Declaration of Independence must be distinguished. The willingness of the French court to back the Americans was founded on its rivalry with Britain, not on any commitment to the justice of their cause. No American had any doubt about that. A document that cited the right of revolution in justifying American Independence and formally marked the end of monarchical authority could hardly have been designed primarily to awaken enthusiasm among the political servants of King Louis XVI.
Within the United States, however, the Declaration of Independence had many practical uses: it provided a vehicle for announcing Independence to the American people, and, if properly framed, might evoke a deeply felt and widespread commitment to the cause of nationhood and, above all, inspire the soldiers who would have to win the Independence that Congress proclaimed. For those purposes Congress specifically directed that the Declaration should be sent not only to the state assemblies, congresses, and conventions that were its immediate constituents and to their Committees of Safety, but to the commanders of the Continental Army, and that it be proclaimed not only in all the states, but at the head of the army.
The Declaration was, moreover, to be disseminated by print–the printer John Dunlap produced a broadside version the day after it was adopted–and also read aloud at public gatherings. But no piece of prose written to be spoken aloud was likely to begin with a “whereas” clause… Jefferson’s solution as it emerged from the drafting committee was far more successful:
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 & of nature’s god that entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
That sentence – and it is a single sentence – immediately conveyed a sense of epic importance. It suggested, without saying so directly, that the emergence of the American people to a “separate and equal” station among “the powers of the earth” was an event of note “in the course of human events” on which, of course, mankind would have an opinion. The appeal to “the laws of nature and of nature’s god” – a phrase whose rhythm adds grace to a sentence that would be prosaic without the redundant reference to “nature’s god,” whose laws were the same as the laws of nature-rather than to the “known laws and statutes” of Great Britain, to which the English Declaration of Rights had appealed, gave witness to the Independence that the Declaration announced.
The opening sentence also announced a purpose of the document-to “declare the causes” of separation from Britain, the provocations that, indeed, had made Independence “necessary.” That admirably introduced the rest of the Declaration and captured listeners’ attention by intimating that an interesting story was about to be told.
The reference to Americans as “a people” has attracted some discussion of what might be described as a chicken-and-egg question: can a people issue a document that makes them a people? That was, however, no problem for Jefferson, whose Summary View described the Americans as a people from the moment of settlement, one that had been divided and dismembered only by the unjust acts of seventeenth-century British kings. As a practical matter, moreover, the colonists’ consistent expression of respect and deference toward the Continental Congress demonstrated that they were in fact a people, with a sense of common identity and even established political bonds, well before July 1776.