Insights

The Fourth of July is a time for fireworks, parades, and gratitude to the collaborative voices at the Second Continental Congress. Centrism may not be the first thing you think of when you picture the American revolution, but it took an extraordinary commitment to compromise and common interests to unite that fractious gathering around a single document that still drives our enduring principles today.

The primary concerns that brought the First and Second Continental Congresses together were taxes, financial stability, and the common defense. These concerns still drive our Congressional debates today. And much like today, it was easier for the delegates of the 13 colonies to agree on the concerns than to unite around any one strategy to address them.

The Declaration of Independence did not completely bridge these divides. It was not a governing document, and from a structural standpoint, it spent much more time on grievances than solutions. However, the extraordinary achievement of that document is the united voice it gave to the delegates on the central concept that government is derived not from kings but from the consent of the governed.

The document itself was a product of multilateral cooperation. While Thomas Jefferson is rightly honored as the principal wordsmith for the document, he borrowed heavily from the writings of fellow Virginians with opposing views, like anti-federalist George Mason and federalist James Madison. His written product was then subjected to intense editing and scrutiny by the Committee of Five, drawing on leaders from across the nation, including Roger Sherman, who convinced small colonies like his native Connecticut to join forces with larger ones like Virginia, and Robert Livingston, who secured the support of his fellow New Yorkers despite the strong British ties of the nation’s most trade dependent colony.

Compared to New York’s reluctance, Massachusetts was all in on independence by 1776, having already been at war with the crown for nearly two years. But it was relative centrist John Adams, not his more outspoken cousin Sam, who brought the rest of the colonies into the revolutionary fold. As the lawyer who defended the British soldiers in the Boston Massacre, John Adams was no Son of Liberty. He did not take part in actions like the Boston Tea Party. But he understood the hard work of building consensus from the center.

Adams didn’t force a reluctant Congress to vote on independence outright – he merely secured approval to form a committee to draft a declaration.

Incremental procedural politics at its finest.

Then he recruited Thomas Jefferson to be the principal author.

When Jefferson asked why Adams didn’t just take the quill himself, Adams replied with three reasons: “Reason first — You are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second — I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third — you can write ten times better than I can.”

This deft combination of flattery and self-deprecation demonstrates the political skills that would help Adams exceed expectations as a workhorse legislator. But his first observation marks him as one of the first true nationalists in American history. He recognized the value that Jefferson held as a representative of the largest colony, particularly when another Virginian, George Washington, was commanding an, an army primarily based in Adams’ home colony of Massachusetts. Adams knew the importance of portraying the revolution as a national fight in order to secure national investment. And that required consensus at the center.

The final consensus-maker who powered the Declaration of Independence was the leader of the host delegation, in the literal center of the nation. Pennsylvania’s Ben Franklin was, by 1776, an elder statesman who was well regarded by the representatives of all 13 colonies. As the chief editor of Jefferson’s draft, he had the unenviable task of reconciling 84 frequently contradictory edits from the congressional delegates, most of which represented serious ideological and regional divides.

Some of these edits would foreshadow the internal contradictions that would haunt the young republic following independence – for example, cutting Jefferson’s clause condemning the African slave trade while keeping his lofty language that “all men are created equal.” But other edits found the words to forge consensus on the central purpose of declaration itself. Most significantly, Franklin rewrote the beginning of the “created equal” line from the original: “We hold these truths to be sacred” to the more familiar “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” This change rooted the independence effort on the bedrock of consensus.

In that same opening, Franklin worked with Jefferson to replace the John Locke-inspired “life, liberty, and property” with “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” While property was indeed a chief concern of all delegates at a time when British forces were seizing property and imposing onerous taxes, the word property also held many divisive implications – from planter aristocracies to human trafficking – which threatened to derail the independence effort. With a small edit, Franklin and Jefferson reframed this crucial sentence to a point of central agreement for all of the delegates, a vision of independence where the interests of individuals align with the vision of the government – citizens, not subjects.

The Declaration of Independence did not solve the regional and ideological differences of the 13 colonies, but it did provide the first central vision to join them into these United States. And nearly a quarter millennium later, that central vision continues to drive the efforts of public servants of every background and worldview when they reach out to work together.

So this Fourth of July, raise a cup, enjoy the fireworks, and remember to keep fighting for that vital center at the heart of the spirit of ‘76.