American History in the Secondary School

ARTHUR M. WOLFSON, PH.D., Editor.

A STUDY OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

The Declaration of Independence is, in every way, an ideal document for study in a secondary school. Every student in the class is undoubtedly familiar with it; he has heard it quoted, in whole or in part, on numberless occasions; he thinks he knows all about it, and yet the teacher can easily show him that it contains vast stores of ideas which up to the present time he has never even suspected. No document in all American history is so easy of interpretation: the language is clear and simple; the phraseology is direct and unencumbered; the document is divided and subdivided so that anyone who takes the trouble can easily analyze it. The Declaration itself is to be found in almost every school history, and the sources and secondary authorities which illustrate it are easily accessible and not too difficult for the ordinary secondary school student.

Literature.

First, a few suggestions as to where these sources and secondary authorities may be found. Of primary importance is Macdonald’s “Select Charters Illustrative of American History—1606 to 1775;” second, though not so good, is Preston’s “Documents Illustrative of American History—1606 to 1863;” third, Hart’s “American History Told by Contemporaries,” Volume II, Part VI; fourth, the “American History Leaflets,” Numbers 11, 19, 21, and 33. Beside these the teacher may easily discover one or another of the documents in many other places. Of the secondary authorities, beside the ordinary histories of the American nation, all of which contain the leading facts and incidents upon which the Declaration is based, the teacher is referred especially to Friedenwald’s “Declaration of Independence.” Next to that, the most important works are Moses Coit Tyler’s “Literary History of the American Revolution,” and Frothingham’s “Rise of the Republic of the United States,” particularly the foot-notes. Furthermore, the teacher and the student will find illuminating essays on the political theories of the Declaration of Independence in Merriam’s “American Political Theories,” in A. Lawrence Lowell’s “Essays in Government,” in Leslie Stephen’s “English Thought in the Eighteenth Century,” and in Bryce’s “Studies in History and Jurisprudence.” By no means all of these works need be consulted; an examination of one or two of them will suffice.

The study of the Declaration falls naturally into three parts and students may therefore profitably be set to work separately or in groups on one of its three problems. First, there is the problem of the growth of the idea of independence; second, there is the problem of the validity and cogency of the numberless adverse criticisms of the Declaration. Is it merely a mass of “glittering and sounding generalities of natural right?” as Choate called it. Is it a partisan and unfair statement? Is its political theory false and therefore of no historical importance? Third, there is the possibility of submitting the Declaration itself to complete and thorough class-room analysis.

Idea of Independence.

Taking each of these problems separately, let us endeavor to set in order first, the sources which should be studied in tracing the growth of the idea of independence in the colonies. Up to 1761, though there had been causes for differences of opinion between the Crown and the colonies, none of these causes had led to an open breach. In 1761 came the difficulty about the Writs of Assistance in which James Otis took such a prominent part. Otis’ speech on the Writs of Assistance, and especially his “Vindication of the House of Representatives” and his “Rights of the Colonies” may therefore be studied with profit. In them will be found the first statement of the American theory of government. These documents may be found in Hart’s Contemporaries, in the American History Leaflets, and in various other places. Following then in quick succession come the various declarations of the colonies and the various petitions to the Crown, beginning with the Declaration of the Stamp Act Congress issued in 1765 and ending with the Olive Branch Petition issued in June, 1775. Most of these documents can be found most conveniently in Macdonald’s Select Charters and the teacher can make his own selection according to his taste and the size of his class. The only thing to be emphasized in the study of any or all of these documents is the fact that, as Friedenwald expresses it, in speaking of the First Continental Congress (Declaration of Independence, p. 28), “spirited and outspoken as were the resolutions of the Congress of 1774 in stating their demands, there is no sign among them all that can rightly be interpreted as indicating a wish for the establishment, even remotely, of an independent government.” The same facts can be gleaned from a study of Tyler’s “Literary History of the American Revolution,” Vol. I, p. 458 ff.

With the news of the rejection of the Olive Branch Petition which reached the colonies in November, 1775, begins a new phase of the American Revolution. Thenceforward, there is a rapid and steady growth of the idea of political independence. The development of this idea should be studied in such documents as the declarations of the various colonies, especially the Virginia Declaration of Rights, June, 1776, and in the writings of the Revolutionary leaders such as Thomas Paine’s pamphlet entitled “Common Sense” issued in January, 1776, and the correspondence of John Adams. The idea culminates, of course, in the Declaration of Independence.

“Under this aspect,” says Tyler (Vol. I, p. 477) comparing the Revolution to the Civil War, “the American Revolution had just two stages; from 1764 to 1776, its champions were Nullifiers without being Secessionists; from 1776 to 1783, they were Secessionists, and as events proved, successful Secessionists.”

Criticism of the Declaration of Independence began with the animadversions of John Adams in his letter to Pickering in 1822 and has continued ever since. First, it has been declared that the ideas expressed in the preamble are not new, that “there is not an idea in it,” as Adams said, “but what had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before;” second, that the document is partisan and that the statement of grievances is unfair to the British Crown and to Parliament; third, that the political philosophy contained in the preamble is false and contrary to the facts of history.

Jefferson’s Reply.

In a short paper like this it is impossible to examine each of these criticisms in detail. The teacher who is interested can easily find in Friedenwald and in Tyler and in the other authorities mentioned above full and adequate discussion of each of these charges. Here it must suffice to say in answer to the first charge that Jefferson himself in a letter to Madison, dated August 30, 1823, declared, “I did not consider it any part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether, and to offer no sentiment which had ever been expressed before.... I thought it a duty to be, on that occasion, a passive auditor of the opinions of others, more impartial judges than I could be of its merits and demerits.” In other words, Jefferson’s task was not to invent, as French publicists were prone to do on such occasions, new theories of government, but simply to express the ideas which were the product of the political discussion which was going on about him, and which would be familiar and acceptable to the men in America and in Europe to whom the Declaration was addressed.

That the document is partisan is of course true; but this is scarcely a valid criticism. Neither Jefferson nor any of his colleagues claimed to sit as judges between the colonies and the mother country. They were bound merely to put their claims as strongly as they could, and then leave the judgment of the case to “a candid world.”

Third, as long at the Declaration be studied merely as an historical document, it matters not whether its theories be false or true; it matters only that the student understand how completely its principles dominated the minds of the men who had a share in drawing up the document and the minds of men both in America and in Europe to whom it was addressed.

The Declaration Analysed.

Coming now to the analysis of the Declaration itself, we find that it falls naturally into three parts. First, there is the preamble in which Jefferson and his colleagues set forth the political theory current in the colonies in 1776; second, there is the enumeration of grievances by which the colonists hoped to prove that the king had violated their sacred rights, and finally there is the conclusion, namely, “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states.”

The political doctrine of the Declaration is well known. Summed up in a single phrase, it is commonly called the Compact Theory of Government; that is, that all men are born with certain “natural rights,” that to secure these rights they enter by their own consent into political unions (the compact), that when these natural rights are violated by those whom they have set up to govern them, they have a right to throw off the restraints of government, to enter into a new compact, “to provide new guards for their future security.” It used to be supposed that Jefferson derived this theory of government from the writings of the French philosophers, of whom Rousseau was the most famous. This idea, however, has long since been exploded. We know now that the American revolutionary statesmen from Otis to Jefferson were impregnated with good English ideas, that they looked to John Locke, not to Rousseau, as their master. The teacher should therefore make clear to his students just what the ideas of Locke were and especially the occasion which gave them birth. It is not a matter of chance that Locke’s Treatises on Government were issued in the period of the Revolution of 1688 and the student should be made to understand this. For a full discussion of the almost exact verbal relation between the Declaration of Independence and the writings of Locke the teacher is referred to the books mentioned at the beginning of this paper.

The Colonial Grievances.

Perhaps the most valuable class exercises in connection with the Declaration of Independence is an analysis of the grievances set forth in the document and the effort to find the specific acts upon which these statements are based. Several of them refer to acts and events whose history is obscure, but most of them can easily be traced to their sources. For a thorough analysis of the grievances, the teacher should go to Friedenwald, Chapters X and XI. Here we can give only the briefest outline. Thus, for instance, a search of the Journals of the Board of Trade will show that at least twenty important laws were rejected or suspended by the Crown in 1773, that the consideration of other laws was neglected sometimes as long as four or five years (Sections 1 and 2); that the king absolutely forbade his governors in 1767 and even earlier to allow the colonial assemblies to organize new counties in the Appalachian region unless they were willing to deprive these counties of representation (Section 3). The facts upon which Sections 4, 5, and 6 are based may be found in almost any school history. The grievances stated in Sections 7 and 8 are again somewhat obscure and cannot therefore be used with profit for class-room discussion. The next three sections, however, refer to acts and events which grew out of the attempted enforcement of the various acts of parliament between 1765 and 1775 and which can therefore be found without difficulty. Sections 12 and 13 likewise are based on facts which any student can discover in his text book. The facts upon which Section 14, which refers to the various acts of Parliament attempting to regulate colonial trade and colonial government, is based, the student can again discover by consulting his history; while the last four grievances which complain of acts done by the king since the outbreak of the Revolution can be analysed with the greatest facility.

The conclusion of the Declaration needs no special study. It follows naturally from the preamble, and from the statement of grievances which Jefferson and his colleagues now considered as proved. The irony, conscious or unconscious, of Jefferson’s use of the exact language of the Declaratory Act of 1766, always impresses the student when the comparison is made clear (Macdonald, Charters, p. 316). Another fruitful comparison is with the Dutch Act of Abjuration, of July 24, 1581 (Old South Leaflets, No. 72).

The student should be required to know exactly the language of the most significant phrases of the conclusion; indeed, certain striking and important phrases throughout the Declaration may very well be set to the students for exact memorization.