fessor woody holton from the university of south carolina. third we hear from professor eri c slauter from the university of chicago. finally, we hear from professor david armitage at harvard university known fo "the declaration of independence: a global history." everyone will speak about 10 to 12 minutes and then we have questions from the audience. >> i think you're all set. prof. brewer: thank you to organizers of this conference, which is terrific. when the delegates to the continental congress assembled in june of 1776, they faced a dilemma. fighting between colonists and british troops have been going on more than a year. political disputes over whether colonists needed to dissent to their own government and taxes remained at a standoff. some delegates sought peace and redfin scissors -- peace and reckons lesion with their king. only seven supported independence. new york, new jersey delaware, and south carolina were not yet ready to fight. congress chose a committee of five men to persuade the process. adams, franklin, sherman, and jefferson drafted the declaration. jefferson was 33 years old. relatively young and idealistic he knew this would be dangerous. in writing a document like this, each was committing treason. as we discussed this morning all men are created equal, and doubt rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. all societies have the right to overthrow government after a long train of abuses against those principles. these meant the government should not be based on heredity and god-given rights of kings. king george the third had become a tyrant. the committee listed his -- the king's attempts to be a tyrant. jefferson's dark scratches still have something to reveal. with emphases in placement reveal much about the thoughts i wrote -- of those who wrote the declaration. the committee accused the king of 18 acts of tierney. if the first 17 were related to the form of government they can impose on the colonies, pitting armies and navies in times of peace in the colony. repeatedly dismissing elected legislators and vetoing laws those legislatures had passed. the last section condemned the sink -- of the king's support of slavery across the empire. congress deleted it. it read -- there is a painting of them delivering it. and here's the last section. it read "he has waged cruel war against human nature itself violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this per article warfare the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the christian king of great britain. determine take keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative effort to restrain these extra vote commerce. and he has murdered in the people upon whom he -- the liberties of one people with crimes he urges them to commit against another. the king violet of the most fundamental rights of life and justice in itself by taking people into slaves, king supported a market expo commerce that made people into things that could be and sold. he also profited by vetoing laws that colonists passed to limit the importation of enslaved people. the king encourage those he enslaved to kill the new masters. the original draft again " we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable. that all men are treated equal and independent. that from that equal creation, they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life and liberty of the pursuit of happiness." that language word deliberately examined to africans in the deleted cause -- clause. placing these passages at the very ends of the list of the king's crimes emphasizes the connection between tierney and real slavery. georgia thursday third historical support of slavery was the ultimate example of his lack of respect for anyone and his belief in his own absolute power. the highs proof of his injustice. jefferson's conviction that slavery proved the kings injustice was in his own handwriting. jefferson emphasized "men." in this passage. when he referred to those in justly enslaved. he deliberately -- repeated his emphasis in the six copies of the declaration he made in his own hand to send the colleagues. i will point out -- here is a close-up of that particular passage in the original. here is the only other word capitalized like that and the whole declaration, which we talked about already, "the united states of america." here are two copies he wrote to send to men -- to friends, both with the same emphasis on "men." this is a copy that madison had. it is smaller but it is still there. his words speak to his emotion retracing the word indicates the emphasis of his thoughts, tracing a poetry more powerful than anywhere else. his words speak to his emotion. prosecutor basketball commerce, as some would of horrors. he insisted in not only including the excise tax in every version he made but underlining in black ink as you see here in the letter to madison. july 1, the day of the declaration was first discussed by the whole congress. only nine colonies voted to supported. two others were for britain from agreeing by their constituents. crucial was the south carolina delegate, edward rutledge, who wrote that "in the declarations and suppose that after congress voted to delete the portion on slavery, jefferson wrote in anger that the cause was struck out in complaisance to south carolina and georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves and still wish to continue it on the contrary. jefferson admitted that our northern brethren the a little tender under those censures who though it the people had few slaves, they had been considerable carriers of them to others. the new england states were already firmly in favor of independence, as was georgia. in order to recruit more colonies in the contest of england, unanimous consent ruled the day. it has become a tradition among historians to unlock the deleted passage on slavery as laughable. at best it is seen as the hypocrisy of the revolution, especially that of jefferson, who owned 174 slaves in 1776. the narrative and that's racism. it makes american freedom dependent upon american slavery. the independence of the white colonists was dependent on the labor of enslaved blacks. jefferson never meant to challenge slavery and it was ridiculous of him to blame the king of slavery. it was colonies like jefferson who created demands for slaves which led to the slave trade, it is claimed. most colonists did not condemn them that trade. condemning slavery was strange. it is assumed that congress moved -- removed it because he did not belong there and it was a better document without that laughable passage. but you didn't belong there. we have dismissed that passage with too much easier for the wrong reasons. just as we underestimate the junctures that may slavery what it became. condemning the king of england or supporting slavery was a logical -- was logical. the final condemnation of george the third was not simply a statement of expected principles or a chart of future policy. it was a claim about history. as jefferson indicated, virginia alone may 5 efforts to limit the slave trade by placing heavy duties on the invitation of slaves, all of which were vetoed by english kings. so did many other colonies. such royal vetoes were only one aspect of the conflict's history over the protection of the slave trade. even that royal instructions the governor's order them to veto any such duties, we cannot see every effort. when george the second appointed arthur dodge as the road governor, he was instructed that it is our will to the king pleasure that you do not give your consent to pass any law imposing duties on negroes. in 7074, the continental congress try to override the king's protection by punishing those who bought slaves, just like those who bought tea. -- jan we will neither be concerned in it ourselves or will we higher such vessels or such commodities or manufacturers to those who are concerned in it. overlooking the deleted cause shows our myopia. slavery was born neither from a free market or a democratic government. these included while proclamations that gave away land rights the colonies -- colonists who purchased slaves. 50 acres of slaves for every acre lot in virginia. supporting the slave trade with england's navy in particular. the deleted clause points some more of a century of promotion of slavery in the colonies. colonial assemblies also promoted slavery in the wider empire. many colonists made the decision to purchase slaves with the 50 acres some of that incentives. but this limited and confined who could vote. jefferson's hypocrisy was not simply a matter of choice. it was born in the legal system of the empire. jefferson inherited all of his slaves from his author and father in law, just as he did his government. all of the slaves were mortgaged. before 1782, it was legal -- it was illegal in virginia law to free slaves. even after that law was abolished, or anyone who freed slaves could be put to death. according to the law passed of that year, this is, in today's world, to neither sell or donate a car. or if i still had car payments, the car still belong to the banks. any mortgaged slave had another owner. this in the face of debt was given more force in virginia by a court decision in 1805 that said if anybody held and slid people, any creditor could take this slaves, sell them, and keep the money. even that decision was influenced by the treaty of paris that ended the american revolution which rejected the massive debts the former colonists owned to british merchants and the legal property in humans which were collateral for those debts, ensuring that this aspect of the resolution -- revolution was incomplete. despite this decision that challenged such ownership, the british common law allowed only people in mortgages over those people across the empire. the end of the war left the owning of people in fact. the legal tradition had been fostered by kings and protected by parliament and was ingrained in england's former colonies. as sermons in the church of england repeated, kings are born princes with the right to rule just as the child of the subject is born a subject and the child of a slave is born a slave. most subjects and slaves are born with the obligation to obey. this was the logic of heredity status. america got rid of it came with the revolution. but one part of that tierney. but not slavery, which was its fruits. even with this overarching legal structure, slavery was confirmed by the treaty that jefferson had choices. of course, he was a hypocrite for not simply overthrowing the whole legal principles that people could be property and born enslaved. i, too, am a hypocrite when i say american policies encourage an overreliance on fossil fuels with a potentially disastrous outcome for planet earth and that we have a moral responsibility to change our energy usage, and yet i turn on electric lights. my hypocrisy neither invalidates my moral judgment, nor makes them less true. just as jefferson's observations and moral claims were deeply rooted in his reliance on the legal and social and economic system he had inherited. and that many others including those who were in -- enslaved, were more problematic and horrified. slavery remained in some parts of the new nation and even later expanded. why? i did not write this paper to absolve jefferson from blame. i could not. but the most technology how laws and policies influence the choices he another is made, to urge us how and why these policies developed and to consider how laws and policies shape our choices today. most of all, i want to focus attention on those who disagreed with jefferson. men like edward rutledge of south carolina, who was terrified by equality and universal liberties. he wanted to keep the staff of power in "our own hands." how did they influence policy? the ultimate irony for jefferson and for so many others was that lurid dunmore's proclamation of to 7075, which jefferson referred at the end of the deleted clause encouraged many slaves to fight for the british. subsequently, england freed many of them. but jefferson still owed mortgages against those runaways, mortgages that made it more difficult for him to free others. once the power of empire is put back in the history of slavery the american revolution looks different. it becomes both more radical in its principles and potential for change and also less complete. disentangling the tangles of the empire was socially and legally difficult. it clarifies how the compromises set the stage for later conflict. the statement of principles that danielle allen clarified at the beginning of the document became open to misinterpretation without the deleted passage. during the constitutional convention 11 years later south , carolina and georgia intervened to protect slavery. this time threatening to abandon their union. south carolina's objection is woven into their leadership on slavery. it is an open question whether the continental congress would have been better served to ignore succulent as the man to delete the clause condemning slavery. on some fundamental level conceding on slavery again built a contradiction into america's political foundation. thank you. [applause] prof. holton: i am going to go ahead and start while you're fooling with that. i appreciate the invitation, and especially to read the article of danielle allen, called "punctuating happiness," which is the basis of the talk. i can tell you, it is the biggest compliment of anything i have read, which is it has made me more ambivalent than i ever was about the declaration of independence. professor allen establishes that all of the before congress versions of the declaration of independents have only a semicolon after that keyword "happiness." and that most of the after congress versions have more. her explanation for that is that it have to do with diacritical marks. today, and accent would be a diacritical mark. it just means it distinguishes a letter. but he had these marks that were probably meant to have pauses. and it is certainly true there are diacritical marks throughout the declaration. let me catch up with my slides here. but, i do not buy that the diacritical marks explanation as an explanation for why does -- why those dashes are there in the dunlap engrossed copy, also called the parchment version. here is why. there are other places -- that is a diacritical mark, this is dunlap's broadside in brief copy. you can see he thought that there should be quotation marks the first time. he got rid of them. in the later version. and all the others were replaced with just space. this one was replaced with a horizontal line. there are a couple problems for that. one, why would they be horizontal rather than vertical? professor alan says, well, maybe -- i think i am understanding you, this would is -- this one is different from the others in being a a three stroke diacritical mark. and that might explain why it represented differently from these other diacritical marks that got taken out. but i have looked through a small portion of jefferson's rough draft that has diacritical marks -- and there they are. i just emphasized the ones in the first two lines. notice all of them are either one or two. i can't find any three stroke diacritical marks. in professor alan's draft of her paper, she gives us another please worship uses that critical marks -- she gives us another place that uses diacritical marks. that is the inaugural address. you see at the top, the abbreviation for government. that looks like a three stroke diacritical, but i do not think it is that. i think that third stroke, apart from the others, is from the 't'from the abbreviation of government. i still do not see any examples from jefferson yet of three stroke diacritical marks, so i do not think that is the explanation for why we have a dash there in both the matlab version and the dunlap version. i think congress put them there, put that dash there for other reasons on purpose, which i will return to at the end. for me, the most -- and the greatest significance of professor allen's article is that it reminds us what really matters about second sentence of the declaration of independence, and i do consider it one sentence, even though i think that period may not be there by mistake. it reminds us when we pull phrases like "all men are created equal" or "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," we are kind of putting it out of context. as she pointed out, they are part of the bigger whole. a syllogism and the bottom-line of that syllogism is the right to secede. one society that has been in an alliance or confederation with another society has the right to secede. the things that are most famous and most popular clauses of the declaration of independence, "all men are treated equal," "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," those are kind of the yada, yada, yada sections. the bottom line is that right of secession. that is really what jefferson and the rest of congress were focusing on. another way to see they were focusing on that is to look at the kinds of changes that were made, by jefferson, the committee, and by congress. all of them focused on the issue of sovereignty. who ruled the colonies now, at what point does the right of revolution kicked in, as it did? danielle put up this slide already. that in the final version -- probably this first change was done by jefferson himself. he wrote citizens, eventually, but through hyperspectral imaging, the folks of the library of congress went backwards and found what was originally written was subjects. so, one change jefferson himself made was turning "subjects" into "citizens." he was not the only one who edited it. the committee edited this phrase to "advance from that subordination," which remained to dissolve the political bands. you see the difference between what i put in orange and what is in red. the orange is we are admitting we were previously inferior and we are going to declare independence. the red version to dissolve the political bands, that is saying we have been analyzed to great britain, in the same way the u.s. is an ally of great britain today. we are breaking an alliance, not out of a subordinate relationship. likewise, jefferson had written, he had referred to george iii as his present majesty. the same way we might refer to president obama as the president said yesterday, we might say that. but i would not say as the prime minister said, because you want not know which prime minister i was referring to. if i was referring to the leader of another state i would say the , present prime minister of great britain. do you see how the committee changed jefferson's line, which admitted that george iii was jefferson's king, to this new version, the present king of great written which says that george is the king of this other place i has been our ally but never our superior. there are other changes as well . jefferson had this great idea in writing the declaration of not mentioning parliament when he is listing all of the bad laws that parliament adopted the taxes and the quebec act and so forth. he does not even mention them. that wonderful line that jefferson has is george iii has combined with others passing their acts of pretended legislation. pretend legislation. as i told my students i am not a , princess, but i pretend to be one with my daughter sometimes. these are pretend laws, not real laws. it is these others, by not naming parliament, by not recognizing them on a piece of paper, you're not recognizing them in international law either. that was a great idea. on jefferson's part. but he goes on later to mention parliament twice later in the declaration of independence. congress got rid of both of those. if you read the declaration of independence, the final versions, the word "parliament," even though it is really about parliament, because george iii is almost as much of a figurehead -- well, he is not totally figurehead, but he is closer to elizabeth ii than elizabeth the first. so it is about parliament but it was not mentioned in the document. their focus was on sovereignty. they wanted to make it clear there only connection to britain has been through the king and now he is the king of great britain and no longer the king of america, the focus of -- was on sovereignty. with all of that in mind knowing that that second sentence of the declaration of independence is really about the right to secede, i want to propose that we should really refer to the declaration of independence as originally written and as adopted a loaded term, of course. especially since we are talking about the confederate fight. we will finally get it down in south carolina. here is georgia's ordinance of secession in 1861. i defy you to find that phrase in the declaration of independence. the declaration for no antagonism to the idea of kingship in general. it is only against this king. it was originally adopted by congress as an ordinance of secession. really, even more than ordinance of secession -- the american people got a hold of it. they turned it into something different. some of you may have read the wonderful book on the declaration which stresses that before it was adopted, before congress declared independence on july 2, 1776, there had already been 90 other decoration of independence at the local and provincial level. there is a fascinating thing going on in the spring of 1776. ordinary people demanding independence. they were demanding something more than independence. i want to stress that latter half right now. were demanding a more a gala terry and government. even before congress declared independence, people were envisioning what it would be like after work. we want to elect our governor in a way that had not been done out of england before. we wanted that governor not to have a veto power. we want to do get rid of the property requirement for voting. people are at the -- envisioning a more democratic system. i would describe the spring of 1776 as a spring of great expectations. of people expecting something a lot better. thomas boehner common sense, but we also have petitions from evangelicals speaking religious liberty, a greater separation between church and state as their sometimes allied thomas jefferson would say. this is the spring of 1776 in which abigail adams wrote her famous -- or member the ladies e? people are expecting something better, even before the declaration is written. that continues after the declaration is written. eric will talk about this, and then i will call for a rewrite. people are reinterpreting the declaration of independence to make it have a new meaning. it is these people who turn it into a charter of freedom. no longer an ordinance of secession, but a charter of freedom. replace secession there with a better document that resembles the declaration of independence today, and that is the universal declaration of human rights that eleanor roosevelt is holding onto. it got turned into a different document from what its founders wrote. if you think that is far-fetched, i will give you an example of another charter of freedom in the front of this building. i like putting the constitution up on the screen for my students and asked them with her favorite clauses are. freedom of speech comes up, gun rights comes up less and less. there is a kid in the back of the room with piercings that wants to remind us about unlawful search and seizure cruel and unusual punishment. freedom of press, freedom of religion. these are the things people like the most about this constitution that was signed september 17, 1777. none of those things are in a document that congress sent out to the states. those were added in the bill of rights, and once we got to the -- the 14th amendment equal protection under the law then the 19th amendment, people can vote no matter what. americans changed the meaning of the constitution. they turned it into a charter of freedom. let me go back to this declaration and then wrap up. if i am right that the declaration of independence was no more a gala terry and -- egalitarian -- it enables slavery, and you will see me disagree with holly on this but it is no more a gala terry and then the constitution in terms of antislavery. neither document uses the word slavery but they are all about slavery. it is not egalitarian in the sense of franchising women. it is not even anti-hierarchical. professor alan raises the -- possibility that the declaration is a freedom document in a different sense, one that is pregnant with significance for the modern day. she argues that the declaration -- by wanting to connect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness with governments secured a moment to secure these rights, by connecting those she is making what i will call an anti-antigovernment statement. that is, she is arguing that the authors of this declaration understood unique government to secure those rights. i want to repeat that was something out that she says. i want to start off by pointing out that the notion of the government as the protector -- that is a 20th century notion. that is federal government decisions that made a freer country. in the 18th century it doesn't make that association. the government is who you call and if you were a white person and a slaveholder. or if you wanted to take land from indians. even among whites, the government was the shears through which the rich least the poor. -- fleeced the poor. i want to make a different argument about this. i usually don't agree with the national review, but they are arguing -- and i'm not agreeing with them -- they are arguing -- they understand the significance of what professor alan is saying. government is necessary to secure freedom. that is that for them. while everyone else was celebrating this amazing discovery, they were poo-pooing. it would take away this notion the government is there to take away freedom, and even thomas paine would not go that far, but if we think about this for a different reason. if that dash is there to stress the phrase that comes before it. this is something that professor alan mentions in her paper that adams was into the idea of happiness. they have been repeating for more than a decade life liberty and property. we know that that is changed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. one reason to put a positive was to stress the word happiness. or, maybe the reason for the pause was to address the whole phrase. maybe the high school students are right. maybe with some kind of pause after happiness, with at least two is that you are focusing on the individual natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. the article may be more ambivalent about the declaration on the one hand. the notion of the second sentence as a syllogism convinces me more than ever that the declaration of independence is an ordinance of secession. on the other hand, by drawing attention to that phrase life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which i think congress intended to add an emphasis to that phrase that jefferson himself did not write here is a way in which it is a liberating -- liberation document. it is a document about individual rights, one that congress chose to emphasize. i am pausing because my notes say policy or. that technique is that you emphasized by causing. -- pausing. [applause] >> thank you so much. it is a great honor to be talking about the declaration of independence in this building. i want to thank daniella alan -- danielle allen for this. what does the declaration actually entail? for most americans this is the second passage. we hold these truths to be self-evident -- among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. in 1776, that is not how most americans would have seen the declaration. over the past two decades, scholars taught us to see a very different declaration. it may be these -- it may be the case that right now the divide between scholarship and public understanding is at an all-time high. in 1996, the grassroots of the congressional document was uncovered. it uncovered how that was intended for local issues around the colonies. she also mentioned in her pulitzer prize-winning book that many of the founders in 1776 to nazis as the founding text that we all revere. in 2007, it was revealed that the entirety of the second paragraph was little more than a minor premise. few at the time discussed these words. they focus on the long list of charges against king george that dominated the text. the declaration that the colonies were free and independent. they were far more important than the claims of individual and collective rights anybody of the opening of the second sentence of the opening paragraph. now we learn that the most famous sentence in the -- in american history is not famous at all. if we take this to be a semi colin, it is important that we consider how we came to have this. why did we come to a message that we did? how do we go from there to where we are now? these are the questions i hope to address now. with the help of newly digitized american newspaper and other publications, that we call new amenities -- humanities we cannot precisely trace what people thought about the declaration and its own time and begin to tell a more nuanced story about how and who gave us the declaration that we know. while most observers at the time or focused on other parts of the document, one set of observers thought this sentence was the most important statement -- opponents of slavery. abolitionists constituted a minority, but years lead -- years later it would become part of international law and a founding document of international politics they saw the declaration as an anti-slavery document. they partitioned the text in such a way that people saw the text as a nation committed to the proposition that all men are created equal. it now seems hard to believe that the declaration of independence was not consider the most important document that congress commissioned in the summer of 1776. other committees drafted it an alliance with other nations. the articles of confederation. as multilateral agreements between the states and foreign powers, these required more legislative claire -- what -- legislative care. several weeks before the founding of the now iconic parchment, the text was reproduced in a flurry of printing and newspapers. we now see many of them on our screen. many of our founding fathers did not see the text as the text we take it to be. as paul in mayor as recounted for many years, even the parchment copy to the state department was rolled up and out of sight. one group of americans was determined to keep our of it before the public. the declaration's rhetoric of freedom, quality, and rights, enter the world where slavery was a reality for a fifth of the population. the first newspaper printed in philadelphia by benjamin town on june, july 2 1776, the call this declared the colonies independent. rarely did liberty and slavery come together parts of poignantly as they did here. two members of the small anti-slavery movement at the time, the language of the declaration may have arrived as a blessing. a national document, written by some of america's founding men included the statement that all men are created equal. almost a mealy, antislavery activists incorporated those words into the argument against slavery. he was of mixed race. he had a black father and a white mother and called himself a lotto. -- the lotto. he embraced the key sentence as an avagard brain manuscript he had been working on with the loosely spelled 18th-century title of liberty further extended or free thought from the legality of slavery. there, and unedited pros on the title page, he cited the words congress, 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 those are the pursuit of happiness. he may have been among the very first to see a period where else a comma was used. other uses of the phrase sovereign. in a sermon given in 1778 emma a white antislavery minister from hanover, new jersey asked his listeners and readers if it is self-evident that it needs no proof, how in just, how in -- how inhuman or britons, for americans to not only attempt but to actually violate the strike? that same year, a quaker suggested that a nation that made declarations of quality and human rights all simultaneously supporting slavery risk line punishment during wartime. in 1783, david cooper of new jersey published an address to the rows of america on the inconsistency of the use of slavery in a land of liberty. code congress, he asked, had truly meant only the rights of white men and not of all men? invoking the language of the declaration was a powerful part of abolitionist frederick. a search for the phrase all men are crated equal reveals that a majority of the citations in the 15 years after 1776 or by opponents of the slave trade. they cornered the market on the citation of that phrase. former abolitionist societies in pennsylvania in 1788 and in maryland in 1791, and in new jersey in 1793 all worked the sentence into the constitution of their organization. even though the constitution itself that i congress the power to -- long before abolitionist became a potent force in america it became a linchpin in the move away from ciber. jefferson built on other undations from john locke that follow the sweeping language of virginia's decoration of rights. it enumerated the natural rights of life, liberty, and the right to pursue happiness. in massachusetts, the constitution adopted in 1780, began with the decoration of rights which held that all men are born free and equal and have certain national -- natural essential, and unalienable right including life, liberty, safety and happiness. the supreme court declared slavery unconstitutional in massachusetts vermont's that version of rights in the constitution of 1777 opened with similar language. they follow these instructions with a specific prohibition on slavery. it is important to note that all the rights and declarations partitioned the claims of a quality and rights, underrated from separate claims of the tools to securing those rights. it is significant to note that antislavery -- perhaps they simply wished to promote emancipation and to avoid the specter of slavery will. as the revolutionary war ended in 1783, legislators in rhode island prefaced with a direct citation with the claims of rights and equality in the second paragraph. by 1792, when almanac maker, an african-american, quoted the both true and invaluable document that all men are crated equal, thomas jefferson, in an exchange of letters across the nation. on the even of the civil war many free americans seemed to agree on the growing centrality of the growing paragraph -- for better or worse. in 1888, john c calhoun described the claim of a quality in the declaration as a politically unnecessary error. independence could have been announced without this false and dangerous idea which had lain dormant for many years and was not germinating and beginning to prove poisonous. abraham lincoln claimed that the court that all men are created equal is of no particle use. he saw a bold claim. further douglas agreed on the importance of the phrase but thought about a different a. he said its current conduct was clearly at odds with american heritage. to a slave year, the shouts of the liberty and equality were nothing but hollow mockery. by the time southern states begin issuing documents of secession, many more americans had taken the interpretive turn that calhoun dreaded, that lincoln longed for, and that frederick douglass on hypocritical. in doing so, they discovered in the decoration in the second paragraph, a radical commitment to equality and human rights that is early readers cannot have anticipated. at the time of this writing, very few in the newly formed united states formed a small group of equal this would have seen it as radical. we do so now as a testament in part to their efforts and to generations of readers since who have pressed the united states to live -- live up to those words. they insisted -- insisted its importance and meaning -- they used it to make antislavery arguments. in doing so, they help americans partition the declaration's text. perhaps they wanted the best soundbites from the text, or perhaps just as likely, they wanted to avoid having their readers finally revolt. whatever their motivations thank you. [applause] >> let me reiterate the things that other speakers have given to danielle for convening here and to the national are going -- archives for making this extraordinary symposium possible. let me add to this my thanks to danielle for the inspiration and provocation afforded by her remarkable book on the decoration and her successful article which ones the basis of many of our discussions. i would like to begin with a quotation from her book. she says close to the beginning of her work, i am trying to draw different circles of readers together. lovers of democracy, whether at home or abroad, but probably not all democrats. do we not all lead at some level to understand what it means to be part of a democratic? the answer that question i think is obviously yes. there are often interesting and productive tensions in that statement about lovers of democracy as she points out, i think pointedly and movingly throughout her book deliberation is the foundation of democracy. it demands different understandings with whom with those whom we celebrate. in the case of fundamental text like the decoration of independence, we have not just different understandings, but different understandings based on these convergent readings i think this is especially true when the fundamental text under discussion is insoluble we tied to a national tradition, even to a national identity as the u.s. decoration of independence obviously is. the time has come to bring back to life our national booklet -- committed to equality. it is time for the decoration to once more be hours. the implicit question in my remarks is who are we? might this not actually be intentioned with our national commitment? as you may have guessed already, i am not an american. i am going through naturalization process at the moment. i may not become an american as a result of provocation of my remarks. [laughter] i deliver this talk with some trepidation. since 1776, democratic readings, we may say, has taken place on a national scale and increased on a global one. by the 1850's, the declaration can be celebrated by ontarians. i have argued elsewhere that a declaration of independence in its various forms in 1776 was the product of a global moment in the late 18th century. and that it also served thomas jefferson, committee of five continental congress were all aware of the international audience. it was the audience of the powers of the earth that they most needed to persuade if they were in fact to achieve independence. we could run i can't of factual. in the continental army had been defeated at the battle of search over, would we even be reading the decoration of independence now? is its rhetorical power in some sense derived from the very fact of power? the fact of having one in the end? i have just slipped into an error which i tried to work against in my book there were no americans in 1776. the transition to create americans with a lengthy and drawn out process. only something which comes to any revolution after the civil war we have made italy, now we must make italians. i can imagine thomas jefferson and others saying exactly the same thing and 7076 after the decoration with the wreck -- recognition of independence, we have made america, now we must make americans. for this reason i agree both with eric and woody that the declaration was primarily intended as an ordinance to secession. for practical purposes, the opening and closing paragraphs of the decoration of independence operative part of the argument. the assertion that all men are created equal is of no practical use of affecting the separation from great written. it was placed in the decoration not for that but for future use. i think that future use is something that has been said convincingly. the battle over the second paragraph, it's recreation, the opprobrium of slaveholders and those who support the institution of slavery downplaying that i think is convincing for not only the meaning of that paragraph but it's salience. that, too, as long and drawn out and a much contested process. in this regard, if we think about the primary object of the decoration of independence there may be less at stake in historical terms between the two readings of the second paragraph. there are three or possibly five self-evident truths. when the document first circulated around the atlantic world, it was primarily -- we are up to five or six copies in the national archives. this itself is significant, i think. copies of the declaration are being picked up by military and political officials in the american colonies. they are being sent back to britain which is why they are still in the british national archives. i think it is notable -- i spent last week looking at everything printed by charles dunlap in 1776 just to get a sense of how he uses punctuation. i am not sure he distinguishes in his punctuation. you have a period and then a dash etc. i think he moves between these possibilities. if we are going to nail down the significance of his punctuation we need to cross check that against his own practices which are also available here in the second mysterious demo. we could say this is the first facsimile of the declaration of independence produced by dunlap himself at some unknown date. he had clearly broken of the type after july 4, 1776. we have two come along and a short we will need to go to philadelphia to look at that at some point. to put a little question are on the significance of his own practices. i want to turn to three other pieces of evidence or bodies of evidence to consider different understandings of the decoration in 1776. the first are the immediate responses to decoration and then to the translations, and then to other versions in 1776. how did the textual tradition of a broad beyond the united states shed light on the reading of the second paragraph as serial or syllogistic? the first year is from a first response by the exiled british governor of massachusetts, thomas hutchinson, writing in london in the summer of 1776. his version is somewhat hybrid. when he prints the second paragraph, he has a,, not a. or a --. he is one of the worst people, i think as it were falsely wrote the sentence as one single sentence without any an beauty whatsoever. when he comes to analyze the meaning of the sentence, he dissociates the claims of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from the rights of resistance of taxes. that is more clearly the case in the official british government response to the decoration. it is usually attributed to the large online. the first 120 pages are by him. the specific political philosophy which we know is by jerry met -- jeremy benson when he comes to deal with the second paragraph. he separates the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness from the government. he has a philosophical demolition of the logic of the second paragraph. he says these americans, people on the other side of the water who call them at first, they sent the don't understand. -- they simply don't understand. each one of those things has to be abridged for government to take part. he turns the syllogism on his head. they don't perceive that anything that could be called government in any instance exercises at the expense of one or another of those rights. its evidence about how this was read at the time. what about the evidence of the early translation? first translations german in philadelphia published on july 9, 1776 shortly after the dunlap and the other printing published both as a broadside and in the german language newspaper in philadelphia on that day as well as you will see. it separates the first clause from the rest with a period so possibly following the town but the first translation was widely circulated. it sees the second paragraph by dividing the first three rights. if we go then to the tradition of the french translations which begins in the summer of 1776 here are a couple of instances from slightly later -- the french tradition is bifurcated. we get the serial and the syllogistic readings here. it was published in paris in 1778 and sponsored by benjamin franklin. used public diplomacy on behalf of the united states. the last two clauses are dependent on the earlier one and separated only by a comma in the french version. however, a few years later, the equally widely distributed but also semiopen show french translation in 1783 gives them a fullstop. serial rather than syllogistic. this translation is the one that is published in 1790 in a two-volume history of the american revolution and its aftermath. this is a propaganda work published in the context of the result of the austrian-netherlands ruler. you can see their own declaration of independence in 1790 based on the american one which reproduced what they called act. they take the translation not from the french which has the syllogistic version but probably the later french version. that is the version printed in the first spanish translation. this does not appear until 1811. it appears in philadelphia. this is a kind of handbook of revolution which is produced in spanish in philadelphia to be circulated in the spanish-american colonies including a whole battery of documents including the federal constitution and the articles of confederation as well as the declaration of independence. here again, we get the serial rather than the syllogistic version. we can be pretty sure this is the version that would have circulated in spanish america during the breakup of the reorganization of the spanish monarchy in the early heart of the 19th century. than we come to one of the interesting problems, i will end with this. in the success of declarations of independence, after 1776 and especially after the early 19th century outside the u.s., almost no attention is paid to the second paragraph of the u.s. declaration particularly in the sense that almost no quotations are used whether in the form of the serial or syllogistic version. it dropped out of the later tradition of declarations of independence. if you look at formal declarations of independence which lead to the creation of what we might tank of has states in the contemporary form, there at least 120 declarations of independence that have been issued around the world since 1776. i will show you the two i've discovered which will make any reference to the second paragraph of the u.s. declaration. there are a great many other declarations of independence in 1790 issued by other substate communities in spanish america as well. my sense is that they pay no attention to the second paragraph when they use the declaration as the best test is the basis of their declaration. -- as the basis for their declaration. we know there was one version of the haitian declaration pattern after jefferson's declaration as it was called later. the version that was finally published and recently turned up in the british national archives for similar reasons, this makes no reference to the u.s. declaration. if we go into the 19th century we have referred to the audit -- ordinances of secession. the texas declaration of independence declared independence from mexico to join the united states and mays -- and makes references to the u.s. declaration but does not lay out a particular reading one way or the other of the second sentence. it reformulate the argument into an argument from a distance but not directly related to that iteration or enumeration of individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. the south carolina ordinance of secession is just like that and draws a veil over the second paragraph. something they wish to ignore or obvious reasons. the only 19th-century exception to the rule that the declaration do not refer to outside the u.s. is the library and declaration -- libra -- liberian declaration of independence of 1847. for obvious reasons, this is a community under the protection of the united states. their declaration like their constitution is closely modeled on the u.s. founding document. however, the liberian declaration of independence does speak about its recognition in all in alienable rights which is life in a liberty, and the right to acquire, possess, and defend property which is important. these men were formally owned as property. they don't talk about a right of resistance. abolitionists and formally unsaved, -- enslaved it was very , important to keep the individual liberty far apart from the specter of slave resistance for african-american resistance. the only other major declaration of independence invokes the second paragraph of the u.s. declaration is the ho chi minh vietnamese declaration of independence of 1945. i think it was in his first campaign for president that obama was asked about an important moment in his childhood and he remembered the time when his grandmother read him the opening lines of the declaration of independence, all men are created equal, etc. why was his grandmother reading him the chinese declaration? they were not the opening lines of the u.s. declaration. barely opening lines of the they are the opening lines of the vietnamese declaration. ho chi minh had an oss agent in hanoi to check the text. he says it means all the peoples on earth are equal from birth and all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and be free. the important expansion of those individual rights in the second paragraph are in the context of decolonization. the pattern of not referring to the second paragraph promises continued throughout the 20th century. the most extreme example is the unilateral declaration in 1965 by the white minority government of southern rhodesia against the british parliament. it was a remarkable declaration and end's with god save the queen. this is a revolt against the parliament and in favor of monarchy. as we now learn from eric nelson, the royalist revolution, we might think about the american revolution in those terms as well which were primarily against parliament and of the king. the evidence of the spread of the declaration of independence and its imitation and its translation is that the second paragraph was of relatively little and in some ways even marginal importance for the understanding of the declaration. the central meaning outside the united states was rather like the dog that did not bark in the night. sherlock holmes as an interchange with a boneheaded inspector, inspector gregory. does the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime? the dog did nothing. that was the curious incident. let us call this the case of the dogma that did not bark in the night. the absence of the second paragraph of the declaration whether it's serial or syllogistic is an important mystery. i think it's very significant in which thinking about the democratic promises of the declaration of independence -- is it the case that the declaration of independence is so closely tied to national identity of the united states that it cannot be turned into a universal document? or can its promises be somehow detached from its place within a national myth, or national archive in such a way that its promises can be revealed enacted, and opened up for all of the worlds people. i would turn to my opening question -- when we talk about our declaration, who exactly are we and how do we work against the place of the national mythology in order to turn it into an international, global, universal document of pregnant and ever-expanding promises? thank you very much. [applause] >> that was an incredible amount of information and very well stated by all of our panelists. we are a little behind schedule. i will take control and create some liberty for lunch for you all. if you have questions for our excellent panel, we will figure a way to work the men to the subsequent events. my apologies to our panelists for missing the opportunity here but we will break for lunch and convene back at 1:30 p.m. if our next panel could be here at 1:15 p.m. that would be helpful and we'll stay on track. that was a fantastic, wonderful series of presentations, thank you all very much. 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