United States Declaration of Independence - Influences

Influences

Historians have often sought to identify the sources that most influenced the words and political philosophy of the Declaration of Independence. By Jefferson's own admission, the Declaration contained no original ideas, but was instead a statement of sentiments widely shared by supporters of the American Revolution. As he explained in 1825:

Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion.

Jefferson's most immediate sources were two documents written in June 1776: his own draft of the preamble of the Constitution of Virginia, and George Mason's draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Ideas and phrases from both of these documents appear in the Declaration of Independence. They were, in turn, directly influenced by the 1689 English Declaration of Rights, which formally ended the reign of King James II. During the American Revolution, Jefferson and other Americans looked to the English Declaration of Rights as a model of how to end the reign of an unjust king. The Scottish Declaration of Arbroath (1320) and the Dutch Act of Abjuration (1581) have also been offered as models for Jefferson's Declaration, but these arguments have been disputed.

Jefferson wrote that a number of authors exerted a general influence on the words of the Declaration. The English political theorist John Locke, whom Jefferson called one of "the three greatest men that have ever lived", is usually cited as one of the primary influences. In 1922, historian Carl L. Becker wrote that "Most Americans had absorbed Locke's works as a kind of political gospel; and the Declaration, in its form, in its phraseology, follows closely certain sentences in Locke's second treatise on government." The extent of Locke's influence on the American Revolution has been questioned by some subsequent scholars, however. Historian Ray Forrest Harvey declared in 1937, as he argued for the dominant influence of the Swiss jurist Jean Jacques Burlamaqui, that Jefferson and Locke were at "two opposite poles" in their political philosophy, as evidenced by Jefferson's use in the Declaration of Independence of the phrase "pursuit of happiness" instead of "property." Other scholars emphasized the influence of republicanism rather than Locke's classical liberalism. Historian Garry Wills argued that Jefferson was influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment, particularly Francis Hutcheson, rather than Locke, an interpretation that has been strongly criticized.

Legal historian John Phillip Reid has written that the emphasis on the political philosophy of the Declaration has been misplaced. The Declaration is not a philosophical tract about natural rights, argues Reid, but is instead a legal document—an indictment against King George for violating the constitutional rights of the colonists. In contrast, historian Dennis J. Mahoney argues that the Declaration is not a legal document at all, but a philosophical document influenced by Emerich de Vattel, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, and Samuel Pufendorf. Historian David Armitage has argued that the Declaration is a document of international law. According to Armitage, the Declaration was strongly influenced by de Vattel's The Law of Nations, a book that Benjamin Franklin said was "continually in the hands of the members of our Congress". Armitage writes that because "Vattel made independence fundamental to his definition of statehood", the primary purpose of the Declaration was "to express the international legal sovereignty of the United States". If the United States were to have any hope of being recognized by the European powers, the American revolutionaries had first to make it clear that they were no longer dependent on Great Britain.