In 1825, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Henry Lee that his influences in deriving the free and equal principle in the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 signed by the Founding Fathers in Liberty Hall in Philadelphia, Pa.: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” included Aristotle, Marcus Tullius Cicero, John Locke and Algernon Sidney — philosophers whose lives spanned more than 2,000 years.
By then the American Revolution had already begun with the battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. The Continental Congress had already been founded in September 1774. George Washington was already named Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army in June 1775.
But there was still one missing ingredient: Independence.
Jefferson explained: “when forced therefore to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. this was the object of the Declaration of Independance. not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject; [. . .] terms so plain and firm, as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independant stand we [. . .] compelled to take. neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the american mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion.
Jefferson noted that the words themselves were centuries in the making: “all it’s authority rests then on the harmonising sentiments of the day, whether expressed, in conversns in letters, printed essays or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney Etc. the historical documents which you mention as in your possession, ought all to be found, and I am persuaded you will find, to be corroborative of the facts and principles advanced in that Declaration.”
So, what of these influences? Clearly based on Jefferson’s letter, they were classical, in part, and they were inspired by the Enlightenment writers, too, who were inspired by both the Bible and the classical sources.
The biblical references are explicitly all throughout Locke’s “An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding,” “The First Treatise of Government” and the “The Second Treatise of Government” and Sidney’s “Discourses Concerning Government” including the Old Testament, including Genesis, the New Testament and the Golden Rule, but Locke and Sidney also included Aristotle and Cicero and other classical thinkers. And so, the Founding was Judeo-Christian in part, and classical in part, considered by some to be the last act of the Renaissance.
On the biblical side, Sidney commented particularly on Deuteronomy 17 with reference to kings. Locke clearly was influenced by Genesis’ imago dei, or “image of God”: “men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure…” Here is Sidney was citing Genesis 1:27: “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…'”
Locke also cited Leviticus and Jesus’ Golden Rule: “The like natural inducement hath brought men to know that it is no less their duty, to love others than themselves; for seeing those things which are equal, must needs all have one measure…”
Locke did borrow the social contract from Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan but ultimately attributed the free and equal principle to the Bible’s created equality and its outgrowth in the Golden Rule, whereas Hobbes, who was also a Christian and still set the tempo for the state of nature and social contract theory the nation owes itself to, still justified free and equal on more so empirical and material grounds and yet still wrote of the Creator. At the time, it was truly revolutionary.
And it was built upon by Locke who also leaned on Richard Hooker, an Anglican priest, who wrote in “Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity” “we all being of one and the same nature”, deriving from being created in the image of God in Genesis, Leviticus and Jesus’ Golden Rule “like unto us” but he also commented on Aristotle’s Ethics, too: “that he cannot have sufficient honour done unto him, but the utmost of that we can do to honour him we must” and directly compared it to Deuteronomy 6’s “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” and reminded readers that Jesus quoted in Matthew 22 as the greatest commandment and the second greatest “love they neighbor”.
Hooker justified Aristotle’s inclusion, specifically arguing against English Puritans’ objections to considering the classics — a common controversy during the Renaissance and Enlightenment: “If Aristotle and the schoolmen be such perilous creatures, you must needes think yourself an happie man, whome God hath so fairely blest from too much knowledg in them…” and “unto our ability both of teaching and learning the truth of Christ, as we are but mere Christian men, it is not a little which the wisdom of man may add.”
Just as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas baptized the Sibyls and Virgil in “City of God” and “Summa Theologica”, respectively, in foretelling Jesus, it was perfectly common practice to draw on the ancients in their construction of secular civil structures, especially government. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment were led in many ways the rediscovery of many of these ideas, including but not limited to Aristotle and Cicero.
One part of Aristotle these thinkers were concerned with came from ”Politics” where he wrote of “the natures of the citizens are equal”: “in most constitutional states the citizens rule and are ruled by turns, for the idea of a constitutional state implies that the natures of the citizens are equal, and do not differ at all”. And against monarchy: “absolute monarchy, or the arbitrary rule of a sovereign over all the citizens, in a city which consists of equals is thought by some to be quite contrary to nature”.
In America’s tradition from natural rights, natural law and the social contract, it is then Genesis’ creation in the image of God and the Athenian ideal of equality that are the great equalizer in the Declaration of Independence’s “all men are created equal”.
Later, conceptions of “equal justice under law” (inscribed on the Supreme Court) were stated in Pericles’ funeral oration in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian Wars explaining the democratic ideal: “Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. Our government does not copy our neighbors’, but is an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit.” The same ideal eventually appeared in the post-Civil War era in the debates on the Fourteenth Amendment’s “equal protection of the laws”, which also agreed with Exodus 23 on the impartial administration of justice.
In the common law tradition, the Bible particularly was foundational in Edward Coke whereas William Blackstone was more of a classicist but still referenced the holy scriptures. “Due process” was originally from Edward III.
As for the separation of powers, cited heavily during the debates on the Constitution, was definitely from Montesquieu’s “Spirit of the Laws”, who got it from Polybius, who got it from Aristotle.
James Madison, author of the Virginia Plan which included the legislative, executive and judicial branches, cited Montesquieu in Federalist 47, writing: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with the accumulation of power, or with a mixture of powers, having a dangerous tendency to such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary to inspire a universal reprobation of the system. I persuade myself, however, that it will be made apparent to every one, that the charge cannot be supported, and that the maxim on which it relies has been totally misconceived and misapplied. In order to form correct ideas on this important subject, it will be proper to investigate the sense in which the preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct. The oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject is the celebrated Montesquieu. If he be not the author of this invaluable precept in the science of politics, he has the merit at least of displaying and recommending it most effectually to the attention of mankind.” It should be noted Locke (who came earlier) had his own view on powers being executive, legislative and federative, but he didn’t include judicial, that was Montesqieu.
In citing examples of republics and democracies, the Framers looked at Rome, Athens, Sparta and Carthage, all called republics. Pure democracy was specifically criticized for its tendency in producing factions and the “overbearing majority”.
And so, it was an accumulation of human ideas over centuries that guided Jefferson’s hand in the Declaration: Locke, Sidney and Hooker extensive citations of the Old and New Testament, in addition to showing where they agree with Aristotle in formulating “all men are created equal”.
Abraham Lincoln later cited the Declaration in favor of the abolition of slavery in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, stating, “I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal-equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, or yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all: constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, every where.”
And again in the Gettysburg Address in 1863, Lincoln stated: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…” Realizing the Declaration’s promise is in many ways why the Civil War is thought by some to be America’s Second Founding.
“All men are created equal” is America’s founding ideal — and it was centuries in the making and has taken many more years to be realized—and it is shared by all Americans, regardless of race, sex, age or party. We sometimes think of Jefferson when we think of the Declaration’s great words, but Jefferson was thinking of much more — the accumulated knowledge of all humanity.
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
