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This introductory chapter sets out the focus of the book, namely the various ways politicians, associations, groups, and individuals have relied on the Declaration of Independence to justify changing policies, laws, and customs. The book's aim is to examine the evolving relevance of the Declaration of Independence. It attempts to uncover the extent to which the Declaration's readily recognizable statement about self-evident truths has influenced the course of history in the United States. It investigates whether the document's guarantee of equal liberty is substantive or merely ornamental. The humanitarian ideals on which the nation was founded have not always withstood the pressure of special interest groups. The document's message of universal freedoms nevertheless continues to be the national manifesto of representative democracy and fundamental rights.

Turmoil within the Democratic Party pitted those who backed the Lecompton Constitution against its detractors. The internal conflict split the party into sectional factions. The Republican Party benefited from the rift, gaining control of the government in 1860. Two divergent views emerged as to the meaning of the Declaration of Independence. In the South, the future Confederate president, Sen. Jefferson Davis, popularized the view that the Declaration created a state-centered polity. Its statement of rights applied only to members of the polity, none of whom were blacks. Northerners, in the meantime, began taking the lead of Republicans, who spoke of the Declaration as a document containing governmentally recognized protections for civil rights.

During the Jacksonian period of American history, the Declaration of Independence was incorporated into the mission statements of various antielitist causes. The document's statements about popular government offered interest groups a framework for demanding greater voice in politics and a reduction of social distinctions. In the short run, however, it was white males rather than society as a whole who benefited most from rising democratization. Jacksonian America became increasingly industrialized, as urban centers grew and markets expanded, helped along by new forms of transportation and mechanization. With the growth of commerce between states, the Declaration became a centerpiece for divergent movements: on the one hand it was a patriotic standard raised to celebrate the nation's expansion and interstate connection through new canals and railroads, but on the other it inflamed the sentiments of those who were leery of the growing power of federal government.

Popular involvement in government and policy making grew significantly during Andrew Jackson's presidency, but not all segments of society benefited equally. The Declaration of Independence continued to be a clarion call for a wide variety of social movements such as those advocating an end to business monopolies, the opening of public lands to settlers, the creation of common schools, and expansion of women's rights. Human rights debates about African Americans' and women's rights were even more contentious than those involving workers. If laborers needed public education to compete in an industrial economy, their grievances paled in comparison with those of slaves to whom southern laws denied the most basic rights (such as literacy), or married women who could not vote, no matter how well read.

Revolutionary notions of universal rights informed and inspired social activism after World War II. During the Civil Rights Era, as never before, all three branches of government advanced the principle of universal equality embedded in the Declaration of Independence: Congress passed a variety of laws, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, providing federal recourse against discriminatory practices; the Executive Branch desegregated the military and interstate transportation; and the Supreme Court asserted its role in protecting individuals against prejudice born of stigma and stereotype. The 1960s were a period of the greatest advances in civil rights since the Reconstruction Era. The patriotic furor against communism led to a widespread evaluation of whether the United States was true to the anti-authoritarian and human rights legacy of the Declaration of Independence.

Hope bloomed at the end of the Civil War that victory would prove the Declaration of Independence's statements about equality, liberty, and happiness to be far more than empty generalities. As at no time since the Revolution, the nation recognized that its tolerance of racial inequality was incompatible with the founding principles. The Constitution would need to be amended to eliminate the force of its slave-holding provisions. The Declaration would influence the dialogue of reform; it was an ancient but living manifesto with universal values, whose principle of equal inalienable rights was informed by the past as well as the wisdom of later generations.

American concerns for independence abroad took on a new urgency with the instigation of the Spanish-American War. The Declaration of Independence set the framework for national sovereignty in a changed world that witnessed the United States spreading its influence further abroad than might have been imagined by Thomas Jefferson and his revolutionary generation.

In the decade and a half leading up to the Civil War, the nation experienced a series of intense internal struggles. The United States incorporated an enormous amount of land to the west after victory in the Mexican American War. Heated debates in Congress, the press, and public then arose about governance of the newly acquired territories. Slavery was the most divisive issue of them all. On one side were those who argued that the Declaration of Independence and its principle of liberal equality prohibited expansion of so inhumane an institution. In the other corner were polemicists who asserted that slaves were not protected by the Declaration's statement of inalienable rights. The latter group argued that the Declaration was meant to protect only whites, their property, and their right to legal self-determination. A political movement arose to protect laborers from being treated like slaves, and to defend U.S. territories against encroachment by the South's peculiar institution. With the ascent of the Republican Party, a variety of reform causes, ranging from abolitionism to women's rights, were absorbed into the mainstream in the North but were greeted violently in the South.

The Great Depression of the 1930s shattered the era of general prosperity that the United States had enjoyed after the First World War. Labor groups discovered that at a time of great economic distress the principles of the Declaration of Independence informed their efforts for equality. From then through to the Second World War, the proposition that government was created by consent of the people to protect inalienable rights continued to energize disparate social movements. Having moved beyond the nineteenth-century debates over abolition and women's suffrage, which had so often invoked clauses of the Declaration of Independence, reformers turned to new matters. The supporters of economic and social equality began to petition the federal government to be more active in securing the Declaration's guarantees of the people's right to “safety and happiness”.

The influence of the Declaration on early nation building went well beyond its original purpose. A document that was first meant to announce and justify U.S. independence wound up influencing state and federal policies. The Declaration's statements on rights and self-governance extended its significance beyond announcing nationhood. States found no difficulty reconciling the document's passages on sovereignty with their own constitutional developments. But participants in proto-antislavery movements condemned states that retained slavery because the institution was so evidently contrary to the Declaration's assertion of universal liberty. Early women's rights advocates also took inspiration from the document to indict existing practices. The statement on rights created a national ethos that deepened the sense of unity in the new country and established an aspirational norm of equality.

The spike in immigration during the 1880s swelled the ranks of America's workers. America became one of the world's greatest industrial powers, in no small part due to the accomplishments of foreigners laboring in coal mines and quarries and on railroads. Many of them, especially Jews and Roman Catholics, suffered from religious discrimination. Protectionist opponents of immigration condemned the moralizing of anyone who “may try to smother us with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.” On the West Coast, the Chinese were the most common objects of bigotry. Denied citizenship, and consequently the right to vote, it was impossible for Chinese immigrants to establish an effective political lobby. The xenophobia did not go unchallenged. Although the immigration issue was quite different from those traditionally related to the Declaration of Independence, there were prominent voices who connected the topic to the nation's foundational principles.

One his tombstone Jefferson noted just three achievements-his authorship of the American Declaration of Independence; his authorship of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom; and his role in the founding the University of Virginia. This chapter argues that republicanism, separation of church and state, and education were at the heart of Jefferson's understanding of the meaning of the American Revolution. It traces the way that historians have treated each of these aspects of Jefferson's legacy.

The Declaration of Independence listed reasons to separate from Britain and principles for the new American polity. The decision to become politically autonomous of England was coupled with a framework for a new governmental structure beholden to the will of the people. However, the political, social, legal, and economic culture of the day did not match the Declaration's idealism; the document's contemporaries understood as much. The Declaration of Independence signaled an unwavering willingness to end the privileges of aristocracy, yet blacks, unpropertied white men, and women were barred from participating in representative democracy. The revolutionary generation began tackling its own shortcomings but left fulfillment of its legacy to future generations.

The Democratic-Republican Party dominated politics during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, with Thomas Jefferson as its leader for much of that period. This era of seeming political tranquility was punctured by debates about whether slavery should extend west to the Missouri Territory. The Declaration of Independence figured prominently in congressional deliberations, forever altering understanding of the document's central message and the country's self-image.

This chapter carefully analyzes the text of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address – beginning with the opening line, which evokes the Declaration of Independence rather than the Constitution – as the “preamble” to the new constitutional legal order. The author focuses on themes of nationhood, national identity, divine mission, equality and popular democracy, in contrast to the Constitution's original emphasis on a republic made up of free individuals.

It was easy enough to laud the Declaration's signers. Of greater moment was the need to live up to its dictates. Speaking at a Civil War veterans' reunion in 1875, Sen. Oliver Morton of Indiana happily proclaimed, “We are now a united country, and the great doctrines of the declaration of independence ... are now in operation.” Despite this rosy picture, the document's symbolic value did not change the fact, as William Lloyd Garrison put it, that although constitutional amendments had nominally bestowed on blacks equal privileges as citizens, the “Declaration of Independence still” had yet “to be carried out” in reality. Garrison also denounced the states for granting women less political power than the British had given the colonists.

Changes to the racial status quo occurred alongside an evolving understanding of women's rights. As they had from the inception of the women's rights movement, during the early decades of the nineteenth century activists of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era often looked to the Declaration of Independence to buttress their political message. Although the Reconstruction Amendments provided the national government with added power to make the Declaration's promise of self-government a reality, after the Civil War women's political rights trailed far behind men's.

No group of America's leaders has ever been more mindful of the law of nations than were the Founding Fathers. This chapter tells a little of that story. It begins with American perceptions of the law of nations during the Revolution and Confederation (1776-1789), focusing on Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. Second, it turns to the importance of the law of nations in the framing of the US Constitution (1787-1789), focusing on James Madison. Third, the chapter explores how the founders relied on international law in early American diplomacy. Finally, it looks to the incorporation of the law of nations in early American judicial practice, particularly the contribution made by John Marshall.

The Declaration of Independence looms large in American history. Although it lacks any explicit enforcement clause, the manifesto's statement of national purpose has inspired generations of Americans. Social movements have incorporated the Declaration's second paragraph and consent clauses into their demands for recognition of inalienable rights. The takeaway point from this book is not meant to be nostalgic but to provide clearer understanding of how the manifesto's core values have informed the U.S. public, its leaders, and even foreign nations as to the nature of justice, civility, and governance.

This chapter investigates three of the foundational texts of American culture: John Winthrop’s Model of Christian Charity, William Penn’s plan for the city of Philadelphia, and Thomas Jeffersons Declaration of Independence. Each document is analyzed in itself and as a prototype for later cultural practices. Legacies include religious and psychological confessionalism; phrenology; the grid system of the American landscape; the passion for numeracy; and the occlusion of racial minorities, especially Blacks.