Jun 06, · Notes. c by Stephen E. Lucas Stephen E. Lucas is professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. The present essay is derived from a more comprehensive study, "Justifying America: The Declaration of Independence as a Rhetorical Document," in Thomas W. Benson, ed., American Rhetoric: Context and Criticism () 1 day ago · Essay on mother in kannada for class 2. Example social work case study assessment How to start essay on math, long essay on importance of time, common app essays samples essay on media manipulation, starbucks case study with solutions Declaration help essay independence of: write an essay on mahatma gandhi in words while revising an argumentative essay a neighbourhood Most students are familiar with the Declaration of Independence. But have they ever critically examined the text or questioned the motives of its authors? In this lesson plan, students weigh contrasting interpretations by prominent historians to answer the question: Why did the Founders write the Declaration of Independence? [Lesson plan updated on 5/13/]
Analysis of the Declaration of Independence - Owlcation
The Declaration of Independence is perhaps the most masterfully written state paper of Western civilization. As Moses Coit Tyler noted almost a essay on the declaration of independence ago, no assessment of it can be complete without taking into account its extraordinary merits as a work of political prose style. Although many scholars have recognized those merits, there are surprisingly few sustained studies of the stylistic artistry of the Declaration.
By approaching the Declaration in this way, we can shed light both on its literary qualities and on its rhetorical power as a work designed to convince a "candid world" that the American colonies were justified in seeking to establish themselves as an independent nation. The text of the Declaration can be divided into five sections--the introduction, the preamble, the indictment of George III, the denunciation of the British people, and the conclusion.
Because space does not permit us to explicate each section in full detail, we shall select features from each that illustrate the stylistic artistry of the Declaration as a whole. When in the Course essay on the declaration of independence human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, essay on the declaration of independence, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Taken out of context, this sentence is so general it could be used as the introduction to a declaration by any "oppressed" people. Seen within its original context, however, it is a model of subtlety, nuance, and implication that works on several levels of meaning and allusion to orient readers toward a favorable view of America and to prepare them for the rest of the Declaration.
From its magisterial opening phrase, which sets the American Revolution within the whole "course of human events," to its assertion that "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" entitle America to a "separate and equal station among the powers of the earth," to its quest for sanction from "the opinions of mankind," the introduction elevates the quarrel with England from a petty political dispute to a major event in the grand sweep of history.
It dignifies the Revolution as a contest of principle and implies that the American cause has a special claim to moral legitimacy--all without mentioning England or America by name. Rather than defining the Declaration's task as one of persuasion, which would doubtless raise the defenses of readers as well as imply that there was more than one publicly credible view of the British-American conflict, the introduction identifies the purpose of the Declaration as simply to "declare"--to announce publicly in explicit terms--the "causes" impelling America to leave the British empire.
This gives the Declaration, at the outset, an aura of philosophical in the eighteenth-century sense of the term objectivity that it will seek to maintain throughout. Rather than presenting one side in a public controversy on which good and decent people could differ, the Declaration purports to do no more than a natural philosopher would do in reporting the causes of any physical event. The issue, it implies, is not one of interpretation but of observation.
The most important word in the introduction is "necessary," which in the eighteenth century carried strongly deterministic overtones.
To say an act was necessary implied that it was impelled by fate or determined by the operation of inextricable natural laws and was beyond the control of human agents. Thus Chambers's Cyclopedia defined "necessary" as "that which cannot but be, or cannot be otherwise. That is necessary in the original and proper sense of the word, which is, or will be, notwithstanding all supposable opposition. The Revolution was not merely preferable, defensible, or justifiable. It was as inescapable, as inevitable, as unavoidable within the course of human events as the motions of the tides or the changing of the seasons within the course of natural events.
Investing the Revolution with connotations of necessity was particularly important because, according to the law of nations, recourse to war was lawful only when it became "necessary"--only when amicable negotiation had failed essay on the declaration of independence all other alternatives for settling the differences between two states had been exhausted. Nor was the burden of necessity limited to monarchs and established nations. At the start of the English Civil War inParliament defended its recourse to military action against Charles I in a lengthy declaration demonstrating the "Necessity to take up Arms.
When, a year later, Congress decided the colonies could no longer retain their liberty within the British empire, it adhered to long-established rhetorical convention by describing independence as a matter of absolute and inescapable necessity. Labeling the Americans "one people" and the British "another" was also laden with implication and performed several important strategic functions within the Declaration. First, because two alien peoples cannot be made one, it reinforced the notion that breaking the "political bands" with England was a necessary step in the course of human events.
America and England were already separated by the more basic fact that they had become two different peoples. The gulf between them was much more than political; it was intellectual, social, moral, cultural and, essay on the declaration of independence, according to the principles of nature, could no more be repaired, as Thomas Paine said, than one could "restore to us the time that is past" or "give to prostitution its former innocence.
Second, once it is granted that Americans and Englishmen are two distinct peoples, the conflict between them is less likely to be seen as a civil war. The Continental Congress knew America could not withstand Britain's military might without foreign assistance. But they also knew America could not receive assistance as long as the colonies were fighting a civil war as part of the British empire. To help the colonies would constitute interference in Great Britain's internal affairs.
As Samuel Adams explained, "no foreign Power can consistently yield Comfort to Rebels, or enter into any kind of Treaty with these Colonies till they declare themselves free and independent. But by defining America and England as two separate peoples, the Declaration reinforced the perception that the conflict was not a civil war, thereby, as Congress noted in its debates on independence, making it more "consistent with European delicacy for European powers to treat with us, or even to receive an Ambassador.
Third, defining the Americans as a separate people in the introduction eased the task of invoking the right of revolution in the preamble. That right, according to eighteenth-century revolutionary principles, could be invoked only in the most dire of circumstances--when "resistance was absolutely necessary in order to preserve the nation from slavery, misery, and ruin"--and then only by "the Body of the People. For America to move against the government in such circumstances would not be a justifiable act of resistance but "a sort of Sedition, Tumult, and War.
aiming only at the satisfaction of private Lust, without regard to the public Good. Like the introduction, the next section of the Declaration--usually referred to as the preamble--is universal in tone and scope. It contains no explicit reference to the British- American conflict, but outlines a general philosophy of government that makes revolution justifiable, even meritorious:.
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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That essay on the declaration of independence 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.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when essay on the declaration of independence long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, essay on the declaration of independence, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Like the rest of the Declaration, the preamble is "brief, free of verbiage, essay on the declaration of independence, a model of clear, concise, simple statement. Each word is chosen and placed to achieve maximum impact. Each clause is indispensable to the progression of thought, essay on the declaration of independence.
Each sentence is carefully constructed internally and in relation to what precedes and follows. In its ability to compress complex ideas into a brief, clear statement, the preamble is a paradigm of eighteenth-century Enlightenment prose style, in which purity, simplicity, directness, precision, and, above all, perspicuity were the highest rhetorical and literary virtues. One word follows another with complete inevitability of sound and meaning.
Not one word can be moved or replaced without disrupting the balance and harmony of the entire preamble. The stately and essay on the declaration of independence tone of the preamble--like that of the introduction--comes partly from what the eighteenth century called Style Periodique, in which, as Hugh Blair explained in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, "the sentences are composed of several members linked together, and hanging upon one another, so that the sense of the whole is not brought out till the close.
Of the other four, one ends with a four-syllable word "security"while three end with three-syllable words.
Moreover, in each of the three-syllable words the closing syllable is at least a medium- length four-letter syllable, which helps bring the sentences to "a full and harmonious close. It is unlikely that any of this was accidental. Thoroughly versed in classical oratory and rhetorical theory as well as in the belletristic treatises of his own time, Thomas Jefferson, draftsman of the Declaration, essay on the declaration of independence, was a diligent student of rhythm, accent, timing, and cadence in discourse.
This can be seen most clearly in his "Thoughts on English Prosody," a remarkable twenty-eight-page unpublished essay written in Paris during the fall of Prompted by a discussion on language with the Marquis de Chastellux at Monticello four years earlier, it was a careful inquiry designed "to find out the real circumstance which gives harmony to English prose and laws to those who make it.
Although "Thoughts on English Prosody" deals with poetry, it displays Jefferson's keen sense of the interplay between sound and sense in language. There can be little doubt that, like many accomplished writers, he consciously composed for the ear as well as for the eye--a trait that is nowhere better illustrated than in the eloquent cadences of the preamble in the Declaration of Independence. The preamble also has a powerful sense of structural unity, essay on the declaration of independence.
This is achieved partly by the latent chronological progression of thought, in which the reader is moved from the creation of mankind, essay on the declaration of independence, to the institution of government, to the throwing off of government when it fails to protect the people's unalienable rights, to the creation of new government that will better secure the people's safety and happiness. This dramatic scenario, with its first act implicitly set in the Garden of Eden where man was "created equal"essay on the declaration of independence, may, for some readers, have contained mythic overtones of humanity's fall from divine grace.
At the very least, it gives an almost archetypal quality to the ideas of the preamble and continues the notion, broached in the introduction, that the American Revolution is a major development in "the course of human events. Because of their concern with the philosophy of the Declaration, many modern scholars have dealt with the opening sentence of the preamble out of context, as if Jefferson and the Continental Congress intended it to stand alone. Seen in context, however, it is part of a series of five propositions that build upon one another through the first three sentences of the preamble to establish the right of revolution against tyrannical authority:.
Proposition 2: They [all men, from proposition 1] are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Proposition 3: Among these [man's unalienable rights, from proposition 2] are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Proposition 4: To secure these rights [man's unalienable rights, from propositions 2 and 3] governments are instituted among men.
Proposition 5: Whenever essay on the declaration of independence form of government becomes destructive of these ends [securing man's unalienable rights, from propositions ], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. When we look at all five propositions, we see they are meant to be read together and have been meticulously written to achieve a specific rhetorical purpose, essay on the declaration of independence.
The first three lead into the fourth, which in turn leads into the fifth. And it is the fifth, proclaiming the right of revolution when a government becomes destructive of the people's unalienable rights, that is most crucial in the overall argument of the Declaration. The first four propositions are merely preliminary steps designed to give philosophical grounding to the fifth. At first glance, these propositions appear to comprise what was known in the eighteenth century as a essay on the declaration of independence Way of Argument in which a great Number of Propositions are so linked together, that the Predicate of one becomes continually the Subject of the next following, until at last a Conclusion is essay on the declaration of independence by bringing together the Subject of the First Proposition and the Predicate of the last.
God is omnipotent, essay on the declaration of independence. An omnipotent Being can do every thing possible. He that can do every thing possible, can do whatever involves not a Contradiction. Therefore God can do whatever involves not a Contradiction. Although the section of the preamble we have been considering is not a sorites because it does not bring together the subject of the first proposition and the predicate of the lastits propositions are written in such a way as to take on the appearance of a logical demonstration.
They are so tightly interwoven linguistically that they seem to make up a sequence in which the final proposition--asserting the right of revolution--is logically derived from the first four propositions. This essay on the declaration of independence accomplished partly by the mimicry of the form of a sorites and partly by the sheer number of propositions, the accumulation of which is reinforced by the slow, deliberate pace of the text and by the use of "that" to introduce each proposition.
There is also a steplike progression from proposition to proposition, a progression that is accentuated by the skillful use of demonstrative pronouns to make each succeeding proposition appear to be an inevitable consequence of the preceding proposition. Although the preamble is the best known part of the Declaration today, it attracted considerably less attention in its own time.
For most eighteenth-century readers, it was an unobjectionable statement of commonplace political principles. As Jefferson explained years later, the purpose of the Declaration was "not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of. but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.
Far from being a weakness of the preamble, the lack of new ideas was perhaps its greatest strength. If one overlooks essay on the declaration of independence introductory first paragraph, the Declaration as a whole is structured along the lines of a deductive argument that can easily be put in syllogistic form:, essay on the declaration of independence.
As the major premise in this argument, the preamble allowed Jefferson and the Congress to reason from self-evident principles of government accepted by almost all eighteenth-century readers of the Declaration, essay on the declaration of independence. The key premise, however, was the minor premise. Since virtually everyone agreed the people had a right to overthrow a tyrannical ruler when all other remedies had failed, the crucial question in July was whether the necessary conditions for revolution existed in the colonies.
Congress answered this question with a sustained attack on George III, an attack that makes up almost exactly two-thirds of the text.
The indictment of George III begins with a transitional sentence immediately following the preamble:. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. Now, words into the Declaration, appears the first explicit reference to the British-American conflict.
The parallel structure of the sentence reinforces the parallel movement of ideas from the preamble to the indictment of the king, while the next sentence states that indictment with the force of a legal accusation:, essay on the declaration of independence.
The Declaration of Independence for Kids
, time: 7:45Declaration of independence essay help
The Declaration of Independence was written to show a new theory of government, reasons why they were separating from England, and a formal declaration of war. It gave the 13 colonies freedom from England's laws. The man responsible for writing the Declaration was Thomas Jefferson. He wrote the Declaration between June 11, and June Jun 06, · Notes. c by Stephen E. Lucas Stephen E. Lucas is professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. The present essay is derived from a more comprehensive study, "Justifying America: The Declaration of Independence as a Rhetorical Document," in Thomas W. Benson, ed., American Rhetoric: Context and Criticism () Declaration of independence definition, the public act by which the Second Continental Congress, on July 4, , declared the Colonies to be free and independent of England. See more
No comments:
Post a Comment