Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality

As she reintroduces the Declaration’s famous second sentence about the equality of all men, Allen wonders if it is a “bad thing” that most readers only know certain parts, or “sound bites” (147). Allen suggests that all words, no matter how brief, offer insight into the opinions and principles of the speaker. This requires both that politicians be effective and clear communicators and that audiences be careful readers and listeners. As Allen writes, “The value of learning to read slowly and listen closely is not merely that we will understand the Declaration better, but that we will understand every politician better” (150).

To understand the Declaration’s claims about equality, Allen considers exactly how many “truths” the work and its authors consider “self-evident.” To arrive at her final tally, Allen relies on the Declaration’s final versions rather than its drafts. The punctuation there reduces the number of truths to three types: “truths about human beings […] about government […] about the right to revolution” (153). The first sentence explains that all people have equal rights from a creator. Government is the primary means for securing these rights, and people have a right to overthrow governments when they fail. 

Allen admits that the use of the word “men” in this sentence has been the subject of much debate, not only for her personally but many others. Does its use mean the Declaration is truly for everyone? To answer this, Allen turns to a deleted passage from Jefferson’s draft: the passage on slavery. In this deleted section, Jefferson describes Africans as “men” whose rights have been violated. So, when he says that “all men are created equal” (154), he must have truly meant it. Jefferson’s life brings out this contradiction: He was an enslaver, freed few of his enslaved laborers upon his death, and had children with one of those laborers, Sally Hemings. How can we reconcile this contradiction? Do those words have meaning if we take on the perspective of an enslaved person in 1776?

Allen admits that Jefferson’s status as an enslaver and the fact that the Declaration explicitly excludes Indigenous Americans make it difficult to embrace her arguments about equality and the capacity of every person to engage in moral judgment. Jefferson benefited on many levels from enslaving Black Americans, but this only partly explains how he could write one way and live another. The Declaration encourages us to form judgments based on reason and logic. However, humans also form opinions based on their environments—including environments that justified slavery and the subjugation of women. These environments form our habits, and such habits are difficult to relinquish. American history demonstrates this since George III only recognized the US’s independence due to military defeat, and the same process ended slavery in the United States. Allen argues that words matter because they provide a basis for eventual changes of habit, “tensions” on which future generations can build.