After you’ve read Richard Samuelson’s fine tribute this weekend to the fighting spirit of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, enjoy this 2006 overview of Anglo-American Winston Churchill’s celebration of the Declaration:
On July 4, 1918, Winston Churchill chaired a meeting of the Anglo-Saxon Fellowship, an annual gathering to mark the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. That year, though, they had a more pressing reason to celebrate: the arrival of a million American soldiers in Europe to revive the Allied cause against Germany. Churchill, then serving as secretary of state for war, sought from the Declaration “inspiration and comfort to cheer our hearts and fortify and purify our resolution and our comradeship.” He found what he needed, and then some. The British soldier-statesman identified the timeless moral insights of the American Declaration and applied them powerfully to the chaos of conflict–and in a way that again speaks to a nation at war. Always the historian as well as the politician, Churchill observed that the Declaration was not just an American document. It followed the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights as “the third great title-deed” of Western democracy. It grew out of a long struggle to define and defend the rights of individuals against the state. The Declaration’s affirmation of personal liberty, the rule of law, and love of country anchors all political constitutions that hope to avoid “the shame of despotism” as well as “the miseries of anarchy,” he said.
Perhaps check out our reviews of some of historian Gordon Wood’s books on the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution. Or consider Wood’s own 2005 review for TWS of a pair of books, the first on George Washington by Paul Johnson and the second on Thomas Jefferson by Christopher Hitchens. Other worthwhile reviews include one of a book about John Jay, the “forgotten father,” and another of Robert Allison’s “concise history” of the Revolution.
For TWS elsewhere, read Bill Kristol’s 2008 New York Times column on the lessons from the Declaration. Here’s an excerpt:
Half a century ago the philosopher Leo Strauss remarked that the passage in which the Declaration of Independence proclaims its self-evident truths “has frequently been quoted, but, by its weight and its elevation, it is made immune to the degrading effects of the excessive familiarity which breeds contempt and of misuse which breeds disgust.” I’ve had occasion to test this claim. The last few years, we’ve spent July Fourth at the house of friends who have had the assembled company read the entire declaration. It’s a longer document than one thinks; the charges against the king take quite a while to get through. But I can report from firsthand experience that the declaration as a whole, and not just its most famous phrases, remains remarkably immune to the degrading effects of excessive familiarity. I was doubtful at first that reading the declaration would enhance the overall beer-and-hamburger experience of the day. But the effort has proved more thought-provoking and patriotism-stirring than I expected.
Or try Andrew Ferguson’s essay for First Things about the spirituality of Abraham Lincoln, an amalgamation of King-James-Bible Christianity and the civic spirit of the Revolution:
The question of why Providence should have willed such a calamity is foreshadowed in one final fragment to consider, written (most likely) in the early days of the war. In it Lincoln plays with the figure from Proverbs 25:11: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.” To Lincoln, the image illuminates the distinction between the picture and the frame, between a thing contained and that which contains it. In his reading, the Union is the frame that contains the golden principle: the proposition of liberty and equality”that all men are created equal”advanced by the Declaration of Independence. “The assertion of that principle , at that time [of the Revolution], was theword, ‘ fitly spoken ‘ which has proved an ‘apple of gold’ to us. The Union , and the Constitution , are the picture of silver , subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal , or destroythe apple; but to adorn , and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple” not the apple for the picture.” Read together, the fragments show Lincoln’s mind as it matures toward his two greatest utterances, the fullest expressions of his most fundamental ideas. These are, of course, the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural. They are not merely works of statecraft but homilies in a civil religion of his own devising, steeped in the cadences and rhetoric of the King James Bible. They were the consequence of Lincoln’s deepest contemplation and belief, arrived at with some care and (we may suppose) discomfort. At Gettysburg, Lincoln explained why the country”the Union”was worth preserving. It was not any Union that was being preserved, it was a particular kind of Union: a Union dedicated to a timeless proposition that existed before the Union was even conceived.
In our own pages, Ferguson wrote two years ago about the deleterious changes to the National Archives exhibit featuring our two founding documents:
At last visitors do get to ascend, though without grandeur. Off to the side of the exhibit, opposite the gift shop, a marble staircase leads to the rotunda where the nation’s charters are displayed. Earlier generations of curators and archivists referred to this room as “the shrine.” Now the word is used ironically if at all. After the bludgeoning administered by “Records of Rights,” the chance to see the Declaration and the Constitution seems less a patriotic mission than an afterthought. You enter through an unassuming side door. The little steps that used to raise you to eye level with the Declaration are gone, along with the imposing bronze showcase that set it above and apart. Now the founding documents are encased hip high, so you can look down on them. What an attraction for tourists! I’ve been to the Archives a few times lately, and I can’t measure the reaction of the Americans who have come from all over. Are they surprised to learn that the caretakers of the country’s patrimony are so contemptuous of it? Or is it old news by now?
And if you’ve exhausted our reading list and are just looking to unwind with a movie, you may find yourself looking back into your own archives for the VHS copy of the Will Smith flick Independence Day. (Most Americans aren’t interested in this summer’s reboot.) Before you watch it, though, read John Podhoretz’s 1996 review of what he called a “war movie” for the modern era.
Happy Independence Day!
