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When you are at your Fourth of July cookout or fireworks display this week, see if anyone mentions the Declaration of Independence.\u00a0 If they do, ask “which Declaration of Independence?”\u00a0 After all, there are more than one.<\/p>\nWhen you are at your Fourth of July cookout or fireworks display this week, see if anyone mentions the Declaration of Independence.\u00a0 If they do, ask “which Declaration of Independence?”\u00a0 After all, there are more than one.<\/p>\n
\u00a0In her 1997 book American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence<\/em>, historian Pauline Maier <\/a>describes the events leading up to July 4, 1776 and points to multiple “other” Declarations of Independence issued by local legislative bodies earlier that year.\u00a0 Declarations were issued in a variety of places, including Buckingham County (Virginia), Charles County (Maryland), and Natick, Massachusetts.\u00a0 In most cases, these “other” Declarations took the form of instructions from the citizens of a particular geographic area to their elected representatives in the state legislature or in the Continental Congress.\u00a0 After recounting the unjustified treatment of the colonies by the Crown, these documents authorize the peoples’ representatives to vote in favor of severing ties with England.\u00a0 However, some of these Declarations take a different form, such as a judge instructing a grand jury on the source of their legal authority in the absence of a Royal Governor.<\/p>\n Virtually all of these “other” Declarations are similar in structure and content to the “real” Declaration of Independence drafted by Thomas Jefferson and the Committee of Five that was charged with explaining the reasons for the Revolution by the Continental Congress.\u00a0 Critics of Ms. Maier have questioned whether it is accurate to characterize these written records as if they were in fact standalone Declarations of Independence from Great Britain.\u00a0 There may in fact be a bit of hyperbole in Ms. Maier’s designation.<\/p>\n \u00a0It is nonetheless striking to observe how rapidly the general public in the colonies, spread across a vast and somewhat isolated territory, arrived at a common understanding of both the need to separate from Great Britain and the philosophical justification (morally and politically) for taking such a step.\u00a0 At the close of 1775, most colonists still sincerely hoped to resolve their differences with the Crown and to remain a part of the British Empire.\u00a0 More significantly, their elected leaders serving in the Continental Congress shared that hope.\u00a0 By the time that Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the “real” Declaration of Independence was adopted in July of the following year, the public mood was decidedly in favor of independence.\u00a0<\/p>\n Is it possible that a spontaneous change of opinion swept across the colonies over the course of six months?\u00a0 Admittedly, the publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense<\/em>, and that pamphlet’s rapid circulation, did much to create a common framework for colonists to re-think their relationship with England.\u00a0 However, there is also evidence that a larger plan was at work.\u00a0 Maier’s analysis of the “other” Declarations of Independence reveals how a relatively small group of thinkers concluded that revolution was unavoidable and set out to move public opinion away from continued membership in the British Empire.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0These “other” Declarations served two purposes in furtherance of this plan.\u00a0 First, they united the general public around a similar factual chronology of abuses and around a similar legal justification that King George had broken his social contract with the colonies.\u00a0 Second, the instructions transmitted to the elected representatives of the people put pressure on reluctant lawmakers to support independence.\u00a0 Colonial assemblies where revolutionary spirit was the strongest adopted resolutions that had strikingly similar language, and these resolutions were then circulated among colonies that were dragging their heels.\u00a0 When the Pennsylvania assembly refused to change its instructions, denying their delegates the authority to vote in favor of independence, the Continental Congress issued a veiled call on the people of Pennsylvania to topple their standing government and replace their legislators (which they did).\u00a0 This sequence of events has all of the hallmarks of a coordinated modern campaign to generate “grassroots” support for a particular legislative objective.<\/p>\n \u00a0The “other” Declarations of Independence were clearly pieces of an overall strategy designed to lay the groundwork for a vote authorizing revolution, although the identity of the main architect of this strategy is lost in the mists of time (Maier sees John Adams’ fingerprints). \u00a0\u00a0Hundreds of years later, Walter Lippmann <\/a>would revolutionize the way that we understand politics by focusing on the means by which policymakers “manufacture” the consent of the general public.\u00a0\u00a0 Today we take for granted attempts by politicians to frame the public debate, to create a compelling narrative, and to otherwise define the way in which the general public will perceive a complex factual environment.\u00a0 These are the essential components of building public support for government initiatives in a democracy.\u00a0 Maier’s recounting of the history of the Declaration of Independence reminds us that these tactics are not modern inventions, but have an ancient pedigree.<\/p>\n