Here's some fun news for the
Fourth of July: America might be reading an important passage of the
Declaration of Independence all wrong. A scholar's argument that an
authoritative transcription of the Declaration contains a period that
isn't actually in the original document has convinced the National
Archives to re-examine their presentation of the document. That's
according to a well-timed
New York Times story on the controversy, which could change how we read the passage beginning "
We hold these truths to be self-evident."
First, let's pinpoint what's in question here. The official transcription from the
National Archives reads (emphasis ours):
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.
See
that period? According to Princeton professor Danielle Allen, it's not
actually in the original document. If she's right, then the individual
rights of "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" would share a
sentence with what follows:
—
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is
the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
Safety and Happiness.
Allen, speaking to the Times,
argues that Thomas Jefferson intended to emphasize the second part of
this passage — the role of the government — equally with the individual
rights in the first part. Instead, with the period in place, there's an
implied hierarchy. So you can begin to see how one little punctuation
mark's presence or absence could become the subject of heated debate
among those who have strong opinions about the role of government as it
concerns individual liberty. Although the punctuation mark is still very
much up for debate among experts, Allen has convinced several scholars
that she might be on to something. The National Archives told the Times
that they "want to take advantage of this possible new discovery" and
find a way to re-examine the incredibly fragile original Declaration of
Independence.
And
that brings us to why it's so difficult to get to the bottom of this
question. The handful of facsimiles that are considered early,
authoritative copies of the original document differ on the presence of
the period, although Allen argues that the bulk of those early copies —
including the
"Rough Draft" of the document —
support her conclusions. So the original document could be the only
thing that could put this line of questioning to rest. But the 1776
original, stored in a complex preservation system along with the Bill of
Rights and the Constitution,
is in really, really bad shape.
It's more or less illegible. The National Archive will try to use new
imaging technology to get a clearer picture of the mark in question, but
it's not guaranteed to be conclusive.
If it does turn out that Allen is right, however, it would hardly be the
first time a founding document has contained an error or a revision.
The Constitution is basically full of small errors,
for instance. And in 2010, the
Library of Congress announced
that it had discovered evidence of a big correction Jefferson himself
made to the rough draft of the Declaration: Jefferson initially wrote
the word "subjects" at one point, but later smudged out the word and
wrote a different one in its place: "citizens."
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