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Abolitionists made the Declaration sacred
A wartime document
The Declaration of Independence is a wartime document, written by people improvising as best they could to read the winds. The famous phrases about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness had little purchase at the time. They served as a shared starting point: agree on these, then explain what is happening in this war and why the collapse of royal authority means something new has to be created.
Abolitionists step in
African-American abolitionists were the first to point to that part of the Declaration and call it the important part. They began to codify it into the sacred standard that Americans now almost take for granted.
Meanings added later
None of that was the starting point. People were trying to manage a very difficult situation, and the meanings were ascribed to the document later.
Why were Declaration phrases already familiar in Britain?
John Locke's Second Treatise of Government, published in 1689, argued that people hold natural rights to life, liberty, and property. English writers and colonial pamphleteers repeated those ideas for decades. Jefferson swapped property for the pursuit of happiness. Virginia's Declaration of Rights, drafted by George Mason in May 1776, had already listed pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety among people's inherent rights.
How did abolitionists use the Declaration against slavery?
In 1829, David Walker, a Black abolitionist in Boston, quoted the Declaration in his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World to charge white Americans with hypocrisy. Frederick Douglass spoke in Rochester's Corinthian Hall in July 1852 in a speech now known as What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July. Both men held the document's language up as a standard the nation had failed to meet. Douglass delivered his speech for the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society.
Why did the Declaration address foreign audiences?
Congress knew that Britain's army and navy outmatched its own, so foreign help mattered. The Declaration's opening speaks of a decent respect to the opinions of mankind, a signal that it was written for readers abroad as well as at home. Benjamin Franklin sailed to France in late 1776 to seek an alliance. France signed a treaty of alliance with the United States in February 1778.
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