Our Founders undertook a grand experiment in 1776, announcing it to the world as a statement of principle. The Declaration of Independence spoke of equality, natural rights, and the consent of the governed. Its power never rested on words alone. Principles become real only when someone stands behind them.
The Declaration matters because they signed—because 56 brave men accepted responsibility for its claims, risked punishment in defiance, and bound their personal fate to its public meaning. Seen rightly, those signatures weren’t a flourish. They were a recognition of consequence. All the way back in 1754, with the French and Indian War, Benjamin Franklin captioned his famous cartoon of the segmented snake with a warning: Join, or Die. Paul Revere updated the graphic and repurposed the message for revolutionary use in 1774. The stakes were known.
With that act of commitment, the American character first appeared—restless, courageous, and idealistic. Not as a settled virtue, but as an aspiration, tested again and again through eras of uneven practice and resolute renewal. Two-hundred-and-fifty years on, the continuing question is not simply what the Declaration declared, but what it asks of us—its inheritors, by the good fortune of history.
The profound statement of rights recognized by our Framers, and the steadfast nature of their unity and resolve, read now with almost mystical—if not liturgical—significance:
- When in the Course of human events …
- … to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them …
- We hold these truths to be self-evident …
- … all men are created equal …
- … they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights …
- … among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness …
- … to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …
- … with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
From those words flowed the movement toward independence. But also to be held closely in mind this year are the gallery of sayings that captures the relentless determination of our ancestors into and through the Revolutionary War:
- Outside Boston: “The British are coming!”—Paul Revere (18 April 1775)
- At Lexington: “Stand your ground; don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”—Caption John Parker (19 April 1775)
- At Bunker Hill: “Men, you are all marksmen—don’t one of you fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”—Colonel Israel Putnam (17 June 1775)
- From sermons: “There is a time to pray and a time to fight. This is the time to fight.”—John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, sermon (c. 1775)
- At sea: “Don’t give up the ship!” and “I have not yet begun to fight!”—Captain James Mugford (19 May 1776), and Captain John Paul Jones (23 September 1779)
- In broadsides: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”—Thomas Paine, The American Crisis (19 December 1776)
And those of a captain in George Washington’s army are of sacred moment this year. Nathan Hale was but 20 years old and a schoolteacher when he joined a Connecticut militia unit in 1775. It was upon the gallows in Manhattan the next year, two months on from the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and having answered Washington’s call for a spy to go behind enemy lines, that he gave his final words. “I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
Ever after throughout our nation’s history, orators have evoked the highest ideals of the Declaration, summoning both the text and its authors as a spur to action in times of national change. Jointly eulogizing John Adams and Thomas Jefferson upon their deaths on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration, Daniel Webster considered it “the tree which they assisted to plant,” which had since “struck its roots deep” and “to the very centre” of this nation, with “its branches spread wide … and its top is destined to reach the heavens.” In his quest to end slavery, Frederick Douglass likened the Declaration as the “very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny,” as it states “saving principles” to which we must “be true … on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.” Seeking to avoid the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln saw the Declaration as “the electric cord” that “links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.” Arguing later in favor of the equality of women in all respects at the centennial, Susan B. Anthony harkened to the “broad principles of human rights” proclaimed there “as the corner stones of a republic” from which derive “all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States.” Pursuing civil rights in more recent times, Martin Luther King Jr. saw it as a “promissory note” to be drawn on a great “bank of justice” in America—and indeed, as “the American dream” itself.
To this list, we might safely add one more. The Declaration as this nation’s North Star—a fixed, reliable point that guides us, bringing us back whenever we stray from its principles. For we as Americans have always been realistic on our path forward. We proceed with optimism, while knowing that our path isn’t always smooth—not then, and not now. The way is difficult and ill-chosen at times.
Having provided the adage propelling us toward the struggle for independence, the very next month after signing the Declaration, Benjamin Franklin, together with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, provided the motto that we have since carried with us to this day: E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one. Not out of many, many—one. A single nation, united, contending together for liberty and equality for all and for all time, so that we each may live and pursue happiness in security and peace.
If we do nothing else in celebration this year, it will be success enough to remember the great debt that we owe to those who debated, and then had the courage to sign, our Declaration of Independence. Their work became our legacy. Their journey, a charge to carry forward. And because they signed, 250 years on, that magnificent document remains our North Star. Fixed in principle. Demanding in practice. And guiding us to proceed with purpose, resolve, and, most of all, unity.
Judge Charles R. Eskridge III is a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He is a member of the Garland R. Walker American Inn of Court in Houston, Texas.