The Catalyst is in the Mirror

Where Change Comes From

The late historian Pauline Maier, who I’ve talked about before, had a gift for working in the archives. She didn’t start with theory; she started with the record, and she found things there because she looked — relentlessly, creatively, with an open and thoughtful spirit. Examining the record of the past, she made a provocative argument: Thomas Jefferson wasn’t as important as we think, and the Declaration of Independence wasn’t that special.

Having soaked in the culture wars of the last twenty years, you begin to sigh heavily, anticipating the bold claim that stupid Jefferson was just a stupid dead white male who represented the stupid patriarchy. But that’s not it. Give me a minute.

Reading time backward, we see the drama of a formal declaration that people have chosen to dissolve the political ties that made them part of a nation. The Declaration of Independence is a flash of lightning, a sudden sharp departure: British today, American tomorrow. Bold move, dude.

That’s not it, Maier said. The Declaration of Independence was a declaration of independence that appeared at the tail of a long line of other declarations of independence; it recited no grievances that hadn’t been extensively rehearsed, used no fresh language, and offered no solutions that hadn’t already been offered. The Continental Congress itself had at least partially anticipated the maneuver a year earlier, with the Declaration on the Necessity of Taking Up Arms.

In the spring and early summer of 1776, as the members of the Second Continental Congress debated their choices, the American colonists they represented did the same. Men in Pennsylvania assembled in their militia battalions for discussion, and voted to commit to independence; the association of laborers in New York met in assembly; towns and counties gathered, talked, and documented their conclusions. Maryland’s representatives to the Continental Congress were bound by instructions from an assembly that hovered between being a provincial body and a postcolonial state body, and those instructions forbade them from joining a formal declaration of American independence; county meetings poured fourth demands that Maryland’s representatives be released to support a full and formal break with Great Britain.

In April of 1776, the chief justice of South Carolina informed grand jurymen in Charlestown that they were to regard themselves as having severed ties with the British king and parliament. The New York Union of Mechanics declared independence in May of 1776. That same month, as a newly formed state, Rhode Island did the same. “The British Government operated only to our destruction,” South Carolina’s chief justice explained. “Nature cried aloud, self-preservation is the great law; we have but obeyed.” April, 1776. Jefferson started writing in June.

Maier ends her book about the Declaration of Independence, American Scripture, with an appendix: a partial list of prior state, county, town, and association declarations of independence, e.g.:

The local people having these debates weren’t following; meeting to consider what course to take — frequently in the local public house, because beer is very helpful — people in towns and associations were obeying their conscience and probing the events of the day. When they look at recent events, the New York Mechanics in Union declared, and “view the iron hand that is lifted against us, behold it is our King.” The town of Malden, Massachusetts considered the shots fired at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775: “The expiring groans of our countrymen yet vibrate on our ears.” They made their own study, did their own evaluation, and reached the conclusion that their discussions suggested. Then they sent word up to their representatives, in a great outpouring of informed sentiment, and their representatives declared independence on behalf of a people who had already done the same. Jefferson didn’t innovate; he channeled a widely expressed view, in widely expressed terms.

The American Revolution proceeded from the organic growth of consensus, from open discourse and an engaged population that reached its own logical conclusions following a well-reasoned study of recent political events.

Do the same. No one is riding to the rescue; Rand Paul isn’t going to fix America. We’ve gone off course. Assemble for local action, and push upward.