The Truth of Equality

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | July 1, 2023

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

Thomas Jefferson’s self-evident truth of equality did not apply to all men and not at all to women. Today, we just pretend it did.

But let’s back up.

Many historians believe our quest for independence began almost as soon as we showed up on North American shores. The Mayflower Compact, often considered foundational to our own Constitution with its call for “just and equal laws,” goes all the way back to 1620. It likely borrowed extensively from an even earlier and decidedly non-European document, the Iroquois Federation Constitution of 1570.

(Never mind that the Puritans, who arrived in 1630, were famously intolerant of anyone who didn’t agree with them. Unlike the Pilgrims who preceded them, the Puritans were hardcore followers of the Church of England, but they didn’t think it was quite strict enough. Maryland’s Act of Tolerance of 1649 was another setback that was actually uniquely intolerant of anyone’s religious beliefs not in concert with the Maryland Puritans.)

Skipping ahead more than a century, we get to Benjamin Franklin’s 1754 “Plan of Union” and the skeletal framework of independence that began taking shape. Little more than a decade later, the meat began growing on those bones, unwittingly abetted by the Stamp Act of 1765, inflicted on colonists by the British occupiers.

Though the Stamp Act was repealed a year later, it was replaced by equally onerous duties, taxes, and levies. The inevitable protests grew louder and larger, and by 1770, there was rebellion in the air when a group of British soldiers fired on protesters in Boston, killing five in what would come to be known as the Boston Massacre.

By then, revolution was brewing. In 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John, “…we are determined to foment a rebellion…” And so they did.

In the evening of April 18, 1775, Paul Revere, William Dawes, and others quietly warned the colonists British troops were on the march. The ensuing battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19 mark what many consider the official beginning of our Revolutionary War. (It should be noted Revere likely did not dash through streets yelling, “The British are coming!”, since most colonists at the time were still loyal to England and such noise would have surely alerted British troops. It’s more likely Revere, Dawes, and others rode quietly and carefully.)

In June of 1776, a committee of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston were tasked with creating a document declaring our independence. Three weeks later, the 33-year-old Jefferson presented a draft he had created mostly on his own.

It was not just the “We hold these truths” section we are often required to memorize in school; that’s the second paragraph of a 1,320-word document that is an indictment of King George III and his occupying minions. It’s not even focused on the famous taxation without representation issue we’ve been taught; there are 27 separate charges, and Jefferson doesn’t get around to taxes until number 17.

It should be noted that Jefferson, to his credit, included England’s slave trading as one of the charges against King George, but it was removed by the Second Continental Congress. At the time, slavery was legal in all 13 colonies and it would be another 90 years before slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment.

Our independence was declared on July 2, 1776, the day John Adams assumed would be celebrated far and wide. But the document wasn’t printed so it could be read by all colonists until July 4, the day we’ve celebrated ever since. It was not fully signed by delegates to the Second Continental Congress until August 2.

The ensuing war was long and bloody. It dragged on for seven years and, according to the American Battlefield Trust, 6,800 American militia and military died in battle, 6,100 were wounded, and another 17,000 died of disease while prisoners of the British. It finally ended when the British surrendered at Yorktown in 1783.

We didn’t live up to the promises in the introduction to our Declaration. Women were far from equal, considered the property of their husbands or fathers and not even allowed to vote until 1920. The scourge of slavery, one of our country’s two greatest sins, was codified into our Constitution and wasn't abolished until 1865. Its shadow still darkens a part of America’s heart.

But we started the slow march of progress on those days in 1775 and 1776. Sometimes it has moved glacially, but progress has been made. We rightfully celebrate our country but must remain mindful that our journey is a long way from the destination of equality. Even now there are political forces trying to restrict rather than expand the rights and freedoms at least implied by our words 247 years ago.

If we hold Jefferson’s truths to be self-evident, then we should commit to living by the credo that all of us are created equal.