The Course of Human Events

How reading the Declaration of Independence as a document of history explains its intended meaning

Thomas Jefferson chose his words carefully. Few could have been more deliberate than "When in the Course of human events," the phrase with which he opened the Declaration of Independence. As Steven Sarson shows, the original Declaration moved through the ages of human history from Creation to American independence, assessing it according to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."

The Declaration's history and historical consciousness therefore help answer one of American history's great questions: How did the founders reconcile their lofty views on equality and liberty with the inequities and iniquities that they maintained in their time? The contingencies of history and the complexities of natural law, Sarson demonstrates, meant that the Declaration's eloquent promises of equality and liberty only applied partially to women and poor men, and not at all to Loyalists, Indigenous Americans, and enslaved people.

The Declaration's assertion that "all men are created equal" has since become a promise of universal equality and liberty. As we reach its 250th anniversary, it is important to understand its original context as well as to continue the mission of making its promises a lived reality for all.

Steven Sarson is Professor of American Civilization at Jean Moulin University Lyon 3 and the author of British America, 1500-1800: Creating Colonies, Imagining an Empire.