essay about life liberty and the pursuit of happiness

Chapter 2 Introductory Essay: 1607-1763

Written by: W.E. White, Christopher Newport University

By the end of this section, you will:.

• Explain the context for the colonization of North America from 1607 to 1754

Introduction

The sixteenth-century brought changes in Europe that helped reshape the whole Atlantic world of Europe, Africa, and the Americas. These events were the rise of nation states, the splintering of the Christian church into Catholic and Protestant sects, and a fierce competition for global commerce. Spain aggressively protected its North American territorial claims against imperial rivals, for example. When French Protestant Huguenots established Fort Caroline (Jacksonville, Florida, today) in 1564, Spain attacked and killed the settlers the following year. France, Britain, and Holland wanted their own American colonies, and privateers from these countries used safe havens along the coast of North America to raid Spanish treasure ships. But North America did not hold the gold and silver found in Spanish possessions in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Peru. In the end, Spain concentrated on these more profitable portions of its empire, and other European nation states began to establish their own claims in North America.

Europe’s political, religious, and economic rivalries were fought in both European wars and in a struggle for colonies throughout the Atlantic. England’s Queen Elizabeth I supported Protestant revolts in Catholic France and the Spanish Netherlands, which put her at odds with Spain’s Catholic monarch, Philip II. So did her support for English privateers such as Sir Frances Drake, Sir George Summers, and Captain Christopher Newport, who preyed on Spanish treasure ships and commerce. In 1584, Elizabeth ignored the Spanish claim to all of North America and issued a royal charter to Sir Walter Raleigh, encouraging him and a group of investors to explore, colonize, and rule the continent.

Sixteenth-century Europe was defined by the rise of nation-states and the division of Christianity due to the Protestant Reformation. Increased competition for wealth fueled by both developments spilled over into the New World, and by the early seventeenth century, Spain, Portugal, England, France, and the Netherlands all had a presence in North America.

England, France, and the Netherlands

By 1600, the stage had been set for competition between the European nations colonizing the Americas, and several quickly established footholds. The Spanish founded St. Augustine (in what is now Florida) in 1565. In 1607, English adventurers arrived at Jamestown in the Virginia colony (see The English Come to America Narrative).

The French established Quebec in what today is Canada, in 1608. Spanish Santa Fe (in what is now New Mexico) was founded in 1610. The Dutch established Albany (now the capital of New York) as a trading center on the Hudson River in 1614, and New Amsterdam (called New York City today) in 1624. English Separatists, now known as Pilgrims, established Plymouth Colony in 1620. Ten years later, in 1630, Puritans established the Massachusetts Bay Colony. European settlement grew exponentially. Seventeenth-century North America became a place where diverse nations—European and Native American—came into close contact.

By the 1650s, the English, French, and Dutch were well established in North America. French traders used the waterways to move ever deeper into the interior of the continent from their toehold in Quebec, trading with American Indians. French Jesuit priests lived peacefully with American Indians, learned their languages, recorded their society norms and customs, and worked to convert them to Christianity. Europeans traded imported goods to American Indians for beaver and other furs that brought high profits in Europe (see The Fur Trade Narrative). The American Indians’ economy and culture, and relationships with other native tribes, were changed by their new focus on the fur trade and by the metal tools and firearms the Europeans offered. By the mid-1700s, the French had claimed the St. Lawrence River Valley, the Great Lakes region, and the whole of the Mississippi River Valley.

By about 1650, the Atlantic coast had all been claimed by rival European powers. American Indians resisted European encroachment in various ways and with varying degrees of success. Struggles between American Indians and European settlers continued throughout the colonial period and beyond. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)

The Dutch settled the Hudson River Valley and established New Amsterdam. They began with a fur-trading site established in 1614 near what is today Albany, New York. It grew steadily during the next several decades, and historians estimate that by the 1660s, about nine thousand people inhabited the Dutch colony.

Britain’s settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, which started as an entrepreneurial joint-stock company, struggled initially. Investors in the Virginia Company of London sent settlers with supplies and instructions to discover profitable commodities for trade. They were also to search for the legendary Northwest Passage to Asia and its lucrative trade. Gold, of course, was at the top of the Virginia Company’s list, but precious metals and jewels eluded the settlers. There were a number of schemes for making money, but it was not until 1617, when John Rolfe exported his first four barrels of Orinoco tobacco—a sweet-scented variety he obtained from the Caribbean and planted in Virginia—that the Virginia economy took off. By 1619, settlers were enjoying private property rights and had elected the House of Burgesses, the first representative assembly in the New World. Tobacco drove the Virginia economy until the twentieth century. A land- and labor-intensive crop, tobacco led the settlers to spread out and establish isolated plantations where indentured servants and later slaves toiled.

Watch this BRI Homework Help Video on The Colonization of America for a review of the differences among the European colonies in the New World.

Native nations in North America sought the advantages of trade and the help of European allies to counter their enemies. But they also strove to control and resist the growing European presence on their land, using both diplomacy and military strikes. During the winter of 1609–1610, for example, Powhatan, an Algonquin chief and the father of Pocahontas, stopped trading with and providing food to the Jamestown settlers. His warriors laid siege to Jamestown and killed all who left the fort. During that winter, described by Englishmen as the “starving time,” Powhatan came close to ending the colony’s existence. Indians again waged war in the Second Anglo-Powhatan War of 1622 and the Third Anglo-Powhatan War of 1644, but by that time, the English presence in Virginia was too strong to resist (see The Anglo-Powhatan War of 1622 Narrative).

In the New Amsterdam and New England regions, Dutch and English traders wanted to control the lucrative fur trade. So did American Indian groups. The Pequot began expanding their influence in the 1630s, pushing out the Wampanoag to their north, the Narragansett to the east, and the Algonquians and Mohegan to the west. But they also came into conflict with the English of the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut colonies. Tensions came to a head in the Pequot War of 1637, when the Pequots faced an alliance of European colonists and the Narragansett and Mohegan Indians. The conflict ended in disaster for the Pequot: The survivors of the defeated tribe were given to their Narragansett and Mohegan enemies or shipped to the Bahamas and West Indies as slaves.

In these and other conflicts, American Indian nations and European nations competed among themselves and with each other for land, trade, and dominance. In the end, however, Europeans kept arriving and growing in numbers. Even more devastating was that American Indians had no immunity to European diseases like measles and smallpox, which caused 90 percent mortality rates in some areas. Epidemics spread across North America while Europeans steadily pushed American Indians farther west.

This sixteenth-century Aztec drawing shows the suffering of a typical victim of smallpox. Smallpox and other contagious diseases brought by European explorers decimated native populations in the Americas.

Enslavement of Africans was introduced early in the settlement of the Americas. In the early 1500s, Spain imported enslaved Africans to the Caribbean to meet the high demand for labor. The Dutch played a key role in the Atlantic slave trade until the 1680s, when the English gained control and allowed colonial shippers to participate. The Atlantic slave trade consisted of transporting captives from the west coast of Africa to the Americas in what became known as the “Middle Passage.” The Middle Passage was one leg of a profitable  triangular trade  in the Atlantic. Ships transported raw materials from the Americas to Europe and then shipped manufactured goods and alcohol to Africa, where they were used to purchase human beings from the West Africans. Ships’ captains packed their human cargo of chained African men, women, and children into the holds of the ships, where roughly 10 to 15 percent died.

Slaves were literal cargo on board ships in the Middle Passage, as this cross-section of the British slave ship Brookes shows. Ships’ decks were designed to transport commodities, but during the Atlantic slave trade, human beings became the cargo. This illustration of a slave ship was made in the late eighteenth century, after the American Revolution.

Despite high mortality rates, merchant financiers and slave-ship captains made significant profits. More than ten million Africans were forcibly brought to the Americas during the three-century–long period of the slave trade. Most were destined for Brazil or the West Indies. About 5 percent of the African slave trade went to British North America.

The first Africans in British North America arrived at Jamestown aboard a Dutch ship in 1619. Historians are not certain about their initial status—whether they were indentured servants or slaves. What is clear, however, is that over time, a few gained freedom and owned property, including slaves. During the next several decades, laws governing and formalizing the racial and hereditary slave system gradually developed. By the end of the seventeenth century, every colony in North America had a slave code—a set of laws defining the status of enslaved persons.

In Maryland and Virginia, enslaved persons provided labor for the tobacco fields. Farther south, in the Carolinas, indigo and rice were the cash crops. A southern plantation system developed that allowed wealthy landowners to manage many slaves who cultivated vast land holdings. Most whites were not large landowners, however. Many small farmers, businessmen, and tradesmen held one or two slaves, while others had none. Some paid a master for a slave’s labor in a system known as hiring out. By 1750, almost 25% of the population in the British colonies was enslaved. In Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, the percentages were higher than in the North. In those southern colonies, slaves accounted for almost half the population. In South Carolina, almost two-thirds of the population were slaves.

In this 1670 painting by an unknown artist, slaves work in tobacco-drying sheds.

No one escaped the brutality of the slave system. Ownership of another human being as chattel property—like a horse or a cow—was often enforced by violence, and violence was always at hand, though masters also provided a variety of incentives such as time off or small gifts at Christmas. Masters and overseers used physical and mental coercion to maintain control. The whip was an ever-present threat and used with horrific results. A master was not faulted or legally punished for killing a rebellious slave. But perhaps one of the most powerful threats was the auction block, where fathers, sons, daughters, and mothers could be sold away from family. The children of enslaved mothers inherited the condition and were born into a life of servitude. Under the law, they were property a master could dispose of as he saw fit.

Enslaved people were treated like property and bought and sold on auction blocks. This ledger was used to track the sale of slaves sold in Charleston, South Carolina.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most runaway slaves had no place to go. Before the American Revolution, some southern slaves ran away to Spanish Florida, but every British colony enforced slavery and slave laws, even as a few individuals and groups denounced the brutality of slavery and the slave trade (see the Germantown Friends’ Antislavery Petition, 1688 Primary Source). People of African descent could be arrested without cause anywhere they were strangers or unknown by the community. Even the few free blacks (probably no more than 0.5 percent of the African American population in 1750) stayed close to communities where they were known, where influential whites vouched for their free status. Law, society, and custom all suppressed the fundamental rights of blacks. This system, enforced by fear and violence, spawned revolts. Some were small; individuals ran away, broke tools, or damaged crops. Other revolts were larger and more violent, like the1739 Stono Rebellion in South Carolina (see The Stono Rebellion Narrative).

Watch this BRI Homework Help Video on the Development of Slavery in North America for a review of the main ideas covered in this section.

In 1620, a group of English separatists known as the Pilgrims settled at what today is known as Cape Cod Bay. The Pilgrims were “separatists” because they believed the protestant Church of England remained too close to Catholic doctrine, and they saw no other solution but to leave or separate from the church. Because they dissented from the established state church, they were persecuted, and they decided to leave England (see the Pilgrims to the New World Decision Point). The Pilgrims applied to the Virginia Company of London in 1619 and received a patent to settle at the mouth of the Hudson River. When they reached North America, poor sailing conditions and treacherous waters forced them to settle at Cape Cod Bay instead, where they established the colony they called Plymouth.

This 1805 painting by Michele Felice Corne depicts the landing of the Pilgrims in the winter of 1620. Note how the painter assumes that American Indians were watching the landing party.

In 1628, another group of English religious dissenters arrived in nearby Massachusetts Bay and settled there on behalf of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Like the Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth, these new emigrants believed the Church of England was too Catholic in its practices, but instead of separating, these migrants, known as Puritans , sought to purify or reform the Church from within. They hoped to establish a “city upon a hill,” as one of their leaders, John Winthrop, described it—a shining example to their brethren in England of a good and Godly community (see the A City Upon a Hill: Winthrop’s “Modell of Christian Charity,” 1630 Primary Source).

Puritans came to America in part for the freedom to practice their religion as they saw fit. Therefore, they enforced a strict religious orthodoxy in Massachusetts and Connecticut. When Roger Williams advocated a separation between church and government and preached freedom of conscience, he was forced to flee Massachusetts. In 1636, he founded Providence, Rhode Island, which became a haven for Protestant religious dissenters. Anne Hutchinson challenged the established Massachusetts Bay clergy on doctrine, an act all the more presumptuous coming from a woman. Banished from the colony, she sought refuge in Rhode Island (see the Anne Hutchinson and Religious Dissent Narrative).

Puritan society was torn in other ways as well. In the 1690s, a group of teenage girls accused members of the community of Salem (today Danvers, Massachusetts) of consorting with the Devil, beginning a period of mass hysteria known as the Salem witch trials, during which several residents were executed. The factors that led to the flurry of accusations were complex and may have included a belief in supernatural forces, England’s control over New England, and economic tensions that made the accusations believable. The hysteria ended only when town leaders themselves were charged with witchcraft and turned against the accusers, leading the newly appointed royal governor to declare the trials over (see The Salem Witch Trials Narrative).

Guidebooks for identifying witches were common in Europe and the colonies during the 1600s. This book, entitled Cases of Conscience concerning evil SPIRITS Personating Men, Witchcrafts, infallible Proofs of Guilt in such as are accused with that Crime. All Considered according to the Scriptures, History, Experience, and the Judgment of many Learned men, was written by Increase Mather, president of Harvard College and Puritan minister, in 1693.

Religion was a defining feature of other North American settlements as well. Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, was an English noble and a Roman Catholic. He received a charter from King Charles I of England allowing him to establish the Maryland proprietary colony and giving him and his family full control of it. Lord Baltimore founded Maryland on religious toleration and provided a safe haven for English Catholics. The first colonists arrived in 1634 and settled at St. Mary’s City. Despite the colony’s 1649 Toleration Act, however, religious tolerance was short-lived. In the 1650s, in the wake of the English Civil Wars, a Protestant council ruled the colony and persecuted Roman Catholics (see The Founding of Maryland Narrative).

The American colonies offered a variety of religious experiences, including religious freedom, religious toleration, and established churches.

William Penn received a grant of North American land from King Charles II and founded the colony of Pennsylvania in 1681 as a haven for Quakers like himself (see the William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania Narrative). Quakers were another Protestant group that frequently clashed with the Church of England; Penn had been imprisoned for a time in the Tower of London for his religious views. He saw his proprietorship of Pennsylvania as an opportunity to provide a refuge for Quakers and others persecuted for their beliefs: a “holy experiment” (see the Penn’s Letter Recruiting Colonists 1683 Primary Source). The colony practiced religious toleration welcoming those of other faiths. Penn pledged to maintain just relations with American Indians and purchased land from the Lenape nation.

Penn also intended for the colony to be prosperous, with a diverse population specializing in a wide array of occupations. By the mid-1700s, Philadelphia was one of North America’s most prosperous and rapidly growing trading ports.

As colonies prospered and their populations grew, younger generations became increasingly secular, leading to tensions with traditional established churches. Between the 1730s and 1740s, a wave of religious revivalism known as the Great Awakening swept over the colonies and Europe (see The Great Awakening Narrative). Church services during this revival were characterized by passionate evangelicalism meant to evoke an emotional religious conversion. The Great Awakening was opposed to the rationalism of the Enlightenment and questioned traditional religious authority. Historians continue to debate the legacy of this period of religious and cultural upheaval (see the What Was the Great Awakening? Point-Counterpoint).

The British Take Control

In the late 1600s and early 1700s, the British consolidated their control over the eastern seaboard of North America. During the period 1675 to 1676 New England fought against the Wampanoag and their allies in what was called King Philip’s War. The conflict resulted in staggeringly high casualties on both sides and the physical expansion of colonies in New England. It helped convince the English government to revoke the Massachusetts charter and establish greater control over the colony (see the King Philip’s War Decision Point and the Maps Showing the Evolution of Settlement 1624–1755 Primary Source).

Some conflicts arose between the colonists and royal colonial administrations when officials prevented settlers from expanding into American Indians’ lands or failed to protect the settlers when they did. In 1676, western colonists were alarmed by a series of attacks by American Indians, and even more by the perception that Governor William Berkeley’s government in Jamestown was doing little to protect them. Nathaniel Bacon demanded a military commission to campaign against the Indians, but Berkeley refused. The refusal prompted Bacon and his followers—including small planters indentured servants and even slaves—to take up arms in defiance of the governor. Ultimately, the rebellion collapsed, and the English crown sent troops to Virginia to reestablish order. White farmers on smaller farms won tax relief and an expanded suffrage. With better economic conditions in England, fewer people migrated as indentured servants increasing the demand for enslaved people (see the Bacon’s Rebellion Narrative and the Bacon vs. Berkeley on Bacon’s Rebellion 1676 Primary Source).

European nations sought to control the flow of goods and materials between them and their colonies in a system called mercantilism. Mercantilism held that the amount of wealth in the world was fixed and best measured in gold and silver bullion. To gain power, nations had to amass wealth by mining these precious raw materials or maintaining a “favorable” balance of trade. Mercantilist countries established colonies as a source of raw materials and trade to enrich the mother country and as a consumer of manufactures from the mother country. The mercantilist countries established monopolies over that trade and regulated their colonies. For example, the British and colonial trade in raw materials and manufactured goods was expected to travel through British ports on British ships. The result was a closely held and extremely profitable trading network that fueled the British Empire. Parliament passed a series of laws called the Navigation Acts in the middle of the seventeenth century to prevent other nations from benefiting from English imperial trade with its North American colonies.

In the mid-1600s, the English went to war with the competing Dutch Empire for control in North America. The English seized New Amsterdam in 1664 during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. King Charles II gave it to his brother, the Duke of York, as a proprietorship, and the colony was renamed New York in the Duke’s honor, thus eliminating the Dutch toehold in North America. By the 1700s, therefore, there were only two major European powers in North America: Britain and France.

During the early eighteenth century, the French extended their influence from modern-day Canada down the St. Lawrence River Valley through the Great Lakes and into the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys. By 1750, French influence extended all the way down the Mississippi to Louisiana. Tensions were high as rivalry between France and Great Britain played out against the backdrop of the North American frontier (see the Albany Plan of Union Narrative).

European settlements in 1750 before the French and Indian War. (credit: “Map of North America in 1750” by Bill of Rights Institute/Flickr CC BY 4.0)

War with France

By 1750, both Britain and France claimed the Ohio River Valley. In 1753, the French began building a series of forts there on land claimed by British land companies such as the Ohio Company and the Loyal Company. Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Robert Dinwiddie, an investor in the Ohio Company sent a young Virginia militia major named George Washington to the Ohio country to warn the French to leave. They refused.

By the spring of 1754, the French were building another fort at the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers (the site of modern-day Pittsburgh). Governor Dinwiddie sent Major Washington back with a contingent of troops. This time, Washington attacked the French and their Indian allies, then moved his force to Fort Necessity. Surrounded there by French, Shawnee, and Delaware fighters, he surrendered after a brief battle on July 4, 1754. This incident sparked the Seven Years’ War—or the “French and Indian War,” as it was known in America (see the Washington’s Journal: Expeditions to Disputed Ohio Territory 1753–1754 Primary Source).

The Seven Years’ War was mainly fought in Europe and North America, but engagements also occurred around the world (see the A Clash of Empires: The French and Indian War Narrative). In North America, American Indians continued their complex foreign policy, allying themselves in ways they hoped would allow them to dominate trade in their region. Many tribes sided with the French, but the Iroquois Confederacy and Catawba fought with the British. While British and colonial troops under the command of General Edward Braddock failed to capture Fort Duquesne, other forces moved northward and westward from New York to try to capture key French fortifications.

The campaign was a disaster for Britain. But in 1759, the British captured Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain and then defeated the French at Quebec and Fort Niagara. The following year, in Montreal, Governor Vaudreuil negotiated terms with British General Jeffery Amherst and surrendered. In 1763, France and Britain signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the French and Indian War and giving Britain control of all of North America east of the Mississippi River and of Canada. France was expelled from North America, and British colonists celebrated their victory. Never did these colonists feel more patriotic toward king and country. One reason was that they expected an opportunity to push farther westward as a result of their success in battle (see the Wolfe at Quebec and the Peace of 1763 Narrative).

These two maps show land holdings before (left) and after (right) the Seven Years’ War. What changes and continuities do you see in the balance of power on the North American continent?

The Path to Revolution

That same year, 1763, a coalition of Great Lakes, Illinois region, and Ohio region American Indians went to war against the British. The British emerged victorious, but the Indian nations demonstrated they would not easily submit. Led by an Ottawa man named Pontiac, American Indians warred with British soldiers and colonists across the frontier from Detroit to the Ohio River Valley.

The British believed they no longer had to court and negotiate with the American Indians. However, they wanted to end the costly conflicts between the colonists and American Indians. Thus, King George III issued the Proclamation of 1763 and temporarily prohibited settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains. Colonists protested. They believed they had the right to settle those lands. In the meantime, the British had incurred massive debts during the Seven Years’ War and wanted American colonists to pay a share in their protection. Parliament soon passed a series of restrictions and taxes on the colonies without their consent that eventually drove a wedge between them and the mother country.

By the mid-eighteenth century, Great Britain had defeated its rivals and emerged as the dominant force in North America. The cost of this dominance however would prove precarious for the relationship between Great Britain and its thirteen mainland colonies.

Additional Chapter Resources

• Mercantilism Lesson
• Colonial Comparison: The Rights of Englishmen Lesson
• Benjamin Franklin Mini DBQ Lesson
• Civics Connection: The Colonial Origins of American Republicanism Lesson
• Benjamin Franklin and the American Enlightenment Narrative
• Colonial Identity: English or American? Point-Counterpoint

Review Questions

1. Which of the following was not a reason that colonization became a major focus of European exploration in the Americas during the period from 1607 to 1763?

• Wars of religion in Europe caused many to look for an escape from religious persecution.
• Profits from cash crops such as tobacco provided economic incentives to establish colonies in the New World.
• Colonial possessions strengthened the prestige of European nations at home.
• Cooperative native populations invited colonization to increase trade.

2. Why did Spain value its interests in the Caribbean Mexico and Peru more than it valued colonies along the Atlantic seaboard in North America during the period from 1607 to 1763?

• The English had established colonies in North America long before the Spanish made any serious attempts to explore the northern continent.
• French settlers successfully fended off Spanish attacks on Fort Caroline in Florida.
• Resistance by native populations in North America tended to be more organized and successful than in South America.
• Spain focused its efforts on the possessions that were most likely to directly enrich the empire with gold and silver.

3. During the sixteenth century all the following provided an incentive for continued European exploration and colonization of the New World except

• the Protestant Reformation
• the rise of centralized governments in nation-states
• an appreciation of the cultural accomplishments of American and African societies
• competition for global commerce and trade

4. England’s Queen Elizabeth I created military and political tension with Spain when she

• refused to recognize Spanish claims to all North American territory
• established English colonies in Mexico and South America
• supported the Catholic Church over the oppositions of the Protestant reformers
• sanctioned privateers such as Walter Raleigh to attack English ships on behalf of Spain

5. The establishment of colonies in Jamestown by the English in Quebec by the French and in Albany by the Dutch is best explained by which of the following statements?

• Many European nations acquiesced to Spanish dominance in North America.
• American Indian populations in North America were successful in driving off Spanish conquistadors.
• Spain’s focus on the Caribbean Mexico and South America opened the door for other nations to establish footholds in North America.
• Cooperative efforts by European monarchs led to the successful colonization of North America.

6. The French successfully established territorial claims in

• present-day Florida
• the St. Lawrence River Valley
• the Hudson River Valley
• the Chesapeake Bay area

7. The formation of the House of Burgesses in Virginia indicates the English

• were focused on Christian missionary work sponsored by the crown
• wanted cooperation between their settlers and American Indians on a diplomatic level
• established a representative government in their North American colonies
• followed an economic policy focused on agriculture especially cotton

8. All the following were accomplishments of English settlements in Virginia by the early 1600s except

• the discovery of gold and other precious metals in North America
• election of the first representative government in the Americas
• existence of private property rights
• development and growth of a tobacco industry

9. The most significant American Indian group in New England that came into conflict with English settlers in Massachusetts in the 1630s was

• the Narragansett
• the Powhatan
• the Mohegan

10. Which of the following best describes the outcome and consequence of the Pequot War of 1636-1639?

• The Pequot successfully rallied neighboring American Indian peoples to join their resistance to English settlers.
• After a long struggle, the Spanish defeated the Pequot and solidified their claims to territory in present-day Mexico.
• The Pequot were defeated by the combined forces of the English the Narragansett and the Mohegan.
• The Pequot were successful in gaining concessions from the English settlers in return for support against the Narragansett people.

11. All the following were factors that led to the eventual end of American Indian resistance to European explorers and colonists in North America except

• the relatively few Europeans who came to the Americas
• divisions and competition among different groups of Native Americans
• the technological superiority of European weapons
• the American Indians’ lack of immunity to European diseases such as smallpox

12. Which best describes the impact European diseases had on Native American populations?

• Native American people were able to develop immunities to these diseases after exposure.
• Native Americans and Europeans suffered from an exchange of diseases they were not used to.
• Native populations were decimated throughout the Americas.
• Europeans were able to develop treatment for these diseases thanks to assistance from Native American populations.

13. What was the Middle Passage?

• The long-sought waterway through North America that would provide access to Asia
• The second leg of the profitable triangular trade route that transported humans from West Africa to the Americas to be sold as slaves
• The exchange of goods and services between the Americas and Europe
• The trade routes established by the French that connected Quebec to the Mississippi River

14. Which of the following statements regarding the African slave trade is most accurate?

• Most African slaves were sold to plantation owners in British North America.
• Brazil and the West Indies were the most common destinations for African slaves.
• Because of high mortality rates, the profits to merchants and ship owners from the slave trade were relatively low.
• The French imported slaves into their territories via the Mississippi River Valley.

15. What was the purpose of slave codes in the North American colonies?

• To provide a list of rights and protections for slaves
• To set laws defining the legal status of enslaved individuals
• To establish agreement between European powers on the logistics of the slave trade
• To develop better living conditions during the Middle Passage

16. Which of the following statements best reflects the reasons for slavery in North America?

• Labor-intensive crop production required cheap labor.
• A surplus of European laborers depressed salaries.
• The absence of economic opportunities limited Europeans’ motivation to settle in North America.
• Warfare between colonial rivals meant most colonists served as soldiers rather than as laborers.

17. Pilgrims were referred to as “separatists” because

• they had been forcibly removed to North America in retaliation for their political beliefs
• they sought to establish an independent nation separate from England
• they thought the Church of England could not be reformed and they needed to separate themselves from it
• they successfully petitioned for the creation of Rhode Island as a separate colony

18. Roger Williams founded the colony of Rhode Island after he was forced to flee Massachusetts because of his

• support of the Church of England
• status as a royally appointed governor of the colony
• treatment of neighboring American Indians
• disagreement with the established religious authorities

19. How did the establishment of Maryland contrast with that of the New England colonies?

• Maryland was initially founded by Dutch settlers.
• Maryland was less tolerant of religious differences than the New England colonies.
• Maryland was founded as a safe haven for persecuted Catholics.
• Maryland prohibited slavery.

Free Response Questions

• Explain the different types of labor systems that emerged in the settlement of New England and Virginia.
• Explain the motivations for English immigration to New England and to the Chesapeake regions in North America.
• Compare the motivations of England and France in their settlement in North America.

AP Practice Questions

“There goes many a ship to sea with many hundred souls in one ship whose weal and woe is common and is a true picture of a commonwealth or a human combination or society. It hath fallen out sometimes that both papists [Catholics] and protestants Jews and Turks [Muslims] may be embarked in one ship; upon which supposal I affirm . . . these two hinges that none of the papists, protestants, Jews, or Turks be forced to come to the ship’s prayers of worship nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship if they practice any. I further add that I never denied that notwithstanding this liberty the commander of this ship ought to command the ship’s course yea and also command that justice peace and sobriety be kept and practiced both among the seamen and all the passengers . . . if any refuse to obey the common laws and orders of the ship . . . the commander or commanders may judge resist compel and punish such transgressors according to their deserts and merits.” Roger Williams Letter to the Town of Providence 1655

1. According to the excerpt from Roger Williams his Letter to Providence challenges what prevailing norm?

• Religious freedom
• Separation of church and state
• Religious orthodoxy
• Slave labor

2. Which of the following statements would a historian use to support the argument presented by Roger Williams in the excerpt provided?

• People have no obligation to follow law.
• Religious diversity is dangerous to a stable society.
• All government actions enforcing laws are illegitimate.
• People should be able to practice the religion of their choice.

“Wee must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekeness gentlenes patience and liberality. Wee must delight in eache other; make other’s conditions our oune; rejoice together mourne together labour and suffer together allwayes haueving before our eyes our commission and community in the worke as members of the same body. Soe shall wee keepe the unitie of the spirit in the bond of peace . The Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us as his oune people and will command a blessing upon us in all our wayes. Soe that wee shall see much more of his wisdome power goodness and truthe than formerly wee haue been acquainted with. Wee shall finde that the God of Israell is among us when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when hee shall make us a prayse and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations the Lord make it likely that of New England . For wee must consider that wee shall be as a citty upon a hill. The eies of all people are uppon us.”

John Winthrop A Modell of Christian Charity 1630

3. This excerpt from John Winthrop’s sermon given while en route to the Massachusetts Bay Colony might be used by a historian to support the development of which of the following ideas in U.S. history?

• Limited government
• American exceptionalism

4. Which of the following best expresses the main idea of the excerpt provided?

• We must serve as an example to others.
• We will triumph over our enemies
• Others will praise us for our piety.
• We must endure persecution for our beliefs.

Primary Sources

The First Charter of Virginia: https://lonang.com/library/organic/1606-fcv/

Suggested Resources

Anderson Fred. The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War . New York: Penguin 2006.

Baker Emerson W. A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience . Oxford: Oxford University Press 2016.

Berkin Carol. First Generations: Women in Colonial America . New York: Hill and Wang 1997.

Berlin Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2000.

Calloway Colin. New Worlds for All: Indians Europeans and the Remaking of Early America . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 2013.

Calloway Colin. The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007.

Horn James. 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy . New York: Basic Books 2018.

Kidd Thomas S. American Colonial History: Clashing Cultures and Faiths . New Haven: Yale University Press 2016.

Morgan Edmund S. American Slavery American Freedom . New York: W.W. Norton 2003.

Philbrick Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage Community and War . New York: Penguin 2007.

Taylor Alan. American Colonies: The Settling of North America . New York: Penguin 2001.

Taylor Alan. Colonial America: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012.

Williams Tony. The Pox and the Covenant: Mather Franklin and the Epidemic That Changed America’s Destiny. Naperville IL: Sourcebooks 2010.

Related Content

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

In our resource history is presented through a series of narratives, primary sources, and point-counterpoint debates that invites students to participate in the ongoing conversation about the American experiment.

July 3, 2018

"The pursuit of happiness" means more in the Declaration of Independence than simply chasing a fleeting feeling.

3 ways to pursue 'thick' happiness

First, the most important thing is to realize that the happy life is about more than just me: my health, my wealth, my safety and security.

A robust understanding of human flourishing means it is for all and that means that our “pursuit” of happiness must transcend narrow nationalisms and thin tribalisms.

We would not permit, say, one political party to flourish and deny the chance for another to do the same. Or, to shift the imagery, we would not want our daughters to flourish but not our sons. Why, then, are we satisfied to let some neighborhoods in a city languish, or some schools in a district fail? Why are we willing to let some countries deteriorate?

Not because we are committed to the “unalienable right” of happiness, but only because we are selfishly committed to a narrow, individualized understanding of localized hedonism. But, as the positive psychology literature shows (and the biblical book of Ecclesiastes knows this too), more pleasure or more “stuff” will never bring true happiness and flourishing.

So, first and foremost, we have to think more globally, more organically. In the republic, all citizens should flourish, and in the global village, all persons should flourish — including those that aren’t (yet) citizens!

Second, thinking about happiness as a “global village” issue shows that human flourishing will only be achieved if we take better care of our world.

This is a truly transnational issue. All humans share this planet and therefore all humans — and all governments — must take responsibility for its care, particularly in redressing the lack of care that we have exercised for far too long. Without doing so, there will simply be no place for humans to flourish. Could it be any more simple?

Third, despite the important role played by governments and law, it is increasingly clear that important things like food, medicine and safe living conditions cannot always wait for the slow movements of governments.

Positive psychology has highlighted the crucial role of positive institutions , including — when they function at their best — families, workplaces and communities of faith. These must be ready to do the hard work of helping others flourish when the government proves ineffectual (as it often does).

When the government is effective and rightly functioning as one such positive institution, I firmly believe we will see far less “enforcement,” whether via the police or military, and far more “empowerment.” I myself believe these are related: more empowerment of people — facilitating their flourishing — will mean enforcement just won’t be needed anymore. It will become passé !

In the Bible, the prophet Isaiah has a vision along these very lines: a time where everyone will turn in their weapon and melt them all down to make more farm equipment (Isa 2:4). That is not a bad vision of thick happiness: for both humanity and the world!

Editor's note: Since this interview was originally published on June 30, 2014, it has consistently ranked among the most-read articles in the Emory News Center. As the Fourth of July holiday again approaches, we spoke with Professor Brent Strawn about why a "thick" understanding of "the pursuit of happiness" may be even more important in our current political climate. His additional answers appear at the end of the interview.

More than just fireworks and cookouts, the Fourth of July offers an opportunity to reflect on how our founders envisioned our new nation — including the Declaration of Independence's oft-quoted "unalienable right" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

But our contemporary understanding of "pursuit of happiness" is a thinner, less meaningful shadow of what the Declaration's authors intended, according to Brent Strawn, who teaches religion and theology in Emory's Candler School of Theology and Graduate Division of Religion.

"It may be that the American Dream, if that is parsed as lots of money and the like, isn't a sufficient definition of the good life or true happiness. It may, in fact, be detrimental," notes Strawn, editor of "The Bible and the Pursuit of Happiness: What the Old and New Testaments Teach Us About the Good Life." (Oxford University Press, 2012)

As we celebrate Independence Day, Strawn discusses what "pursuit of happiness" is commonly thought to mean today, what our founders meant, and how a "thick" understanding of happiness can be a better guide for both individuals and nations.

What 'happiness' means

The Declaration of Independence guarantees the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." What do you think the phrase "pursuit of happiness" means to most people who hear it today?

I think most people think "pursuit" in that phrase means "chasing happiness" — as in the phrase "in hot pursuit." This would mean that "the pursuit of happiness" has to do with "seeking it" or "going after it" somehow.

How does this differ from what our nation's founders meant when the Declaration of Independence was written?

It differs a lot! Arthur Schlesinger should be credited with pointing out in a nice little essay in 1964 that at the time of the Declaration's composition, "the pursuit of happiness" did not mean chasing or seeking it, but actually practicing happiness, the experience of happiness — not just chasing it but actually catching it, you might say.

This is demonstrated by documents that are contemporary with the Declaration, but also by the Declaration itself, in the continuation of the same sentence that contains "the pursuit of happiness" phrase. The continuation speaks of effecting people's safety and happiness. But the clearest explanation might be the Virginia Convention's Declaration of Rights, which dates to June 12, 1776, just a few weeks before July 4. The Virginia Declaration actually speaks of the "pursuing and obtaining" of happiness.

Why does this difference matter?

Seeking happiness is one thing but actually obtaining it and experiencing it — practicing happiness! — is an entirely different matter. It's the difference between dreaming and reality. Remember that the pursuit of happiness, in the Declaration, is not a quest or a pastime , but "an unalienable right." Everyone has the right to actually be happy, not just try to be happy. To use a metaphor: You don't just get the chance to make the baseball team, you are guaranteed a spot. That's a very different understanding.

Unalienable rights and the role of government

The next part of the sentence in the Declaration of Independence states "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men." What does it mean to say, as you have written, that "the Declaration makes that obtaining and practicing of happiness a matter of government and public policy, not one of individual leisure or pleasure"?

I think it means, at least in part, that the happiness of which the Declaration speaks is not simple, light and momentary pleasure à la some hedonic understandings of happiness ("do what feels right"; "if it makes you happy…"). In the Declaration, "the pursuit of happiness" is listed with the other "unalienable rights" of "life" and "liberty." Those are qualities of existence, states of being. You are either alive or dead, free or enslaved.

Governments have something to say about those states by how they govern their citizens. If happiness is akin to life and liberty —as the Declaration and the original meaning of "the pursuit of happiness" say — then we are not dealing with momentary pleasurable sensations ("I'm happy the sun came out this afternoon") but with deep and extended qualities of life (the happiness one feels to be cancer-free, for instance).

According to the Declaration, the extended quality of happiness — what we might call the good or flourishing life — is or should be a primary concern of government. That means it isn't just about my happiness, especially idiosyncratically defined, but about all citizens' happiness.

If the founders' understanding of the "pursuit of happiness" does, indeed, have "profound public policy ramifications, and thus real connections to social justice," what are some specific examples of actions the government does or should take to secure that right today?

If we operate with a thick definition of happiness, then we have to think beyond simplistic understandings of happiness — as important as those are — and think about the good life more broadly. It may be that the American Dream, if that is parsed as lots of money and the like, isn't a sufficient definition of the good life or true happiness. It may, in fact, be detrimental.

Empirical research in happiness has shown that more money does not, in fact, make a significant difference in someone's happiness. The ultra-rich are not any happier than the average middle-class person (and sometimes to the contrary). So, moving beyond just the hedonic aspects of happiness, researchers have demonstrated the importance of positive emotions, positive individual traits (e.g., virtues), and positive institutions.

Governments could (and should, according to the Declaration) enable such things. To lift up just two examples that I think a lot about myself, the government needs to take action to guarantee all citizens' health and safety. A thick definition of happiness certainly includes many things — and sick people can in fact be very happy, can live flourishing lives — but positive institutions that keep us healthy and safe are, to my mind, specific and concrete ways the government can help a country's "gross national happiness" index (the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan actually measures its country's GNH!).

Food, medicine, safe living conditions — those are a few important building blocks of a happy life that governments can address.

Your book focuses on what the Bible teaches us about the pursuit of happiness, and you also note the current role of positive psychology as our society's primary arena for asking what "happiness" means. What is the most important lesson we can learn from both of those sources to help us understand and pursue happiness now?

Just this — that both the Bible and positive psychology give us a very thick understanding of the word "happiness." It is not about breakfast being yummy. It is about human flourishing, the good life, the obtaining and experiencing of all that can be glossed with the word "happiness," but only carefully and usually with a few sentences of explanation required to flesh it all out.

A thick understanding of "happiness" means that we have to think beyond only pleasurable sensations or think about redefining "happiness" altogether if "pleasure" is the only thing it means. If that's the only thing "happiness" means anymore, then we have a case of "word pollution" and we need to reclaim or redefine the word or perhaps use a different one altogether, at least for a while.

Redefining simplistic, thin definitions of "happiness" means that we come to terms that the happy life does not mean a life devoid of real problems and real pain. Those, too, are part of life and can even contribute to human growth and flourishing, which means they can and must be incorporated into a thick notion of happiness. As one positive psychologist has said: The only people who don't feel normal negative feelings are the pathologically psychotic, and the dead. Or, according to the biblical book of Psalms, the only people who live lives of constant comfort and pleasure are the wicked!

So, positive psychology speaks of post-traumatic growth — a kind of growth only experienced (and only able to be experienced) after grief. Or, to think about the New Testament, when Christians call the day Jesus was crucified "Good Friday," they certainly do not mean by that that it was a fun-filled day.

Instead, that is a very thick use of the word "good" and that is the kind of thick use that we must have when we speak of "happiness" — one that can encompass sorrow; that includes social concerns like food, health, and safety; and that is about experiencing the good, flourishing life, not just hoping for it.

Pursuing happiness in today's world

(Update) Does the current political climate in the United States impact the need for a “thick” understanding of the pursuit of happiness?

Since this article first appeared, I admit that I am even more struck now, in 2018, by the need for the government to help people attain — pursue and actually reach — key elements of human flourishing: food, safety, medicine and the like.

Politically, of course, people will differ on these issues and how they are best achieved, but it is clear that in recent years in this country we have had vicious political debates over things that are, at root, profoundly connected to these elements of happiness and who will gain access to them. Take, for example, the debate over universal health care. Or debates over gun violence and gun control. Or immigration. Each is complicated and multifaceted. 

People who are for stricter immigration laws are likely concerned about their own safety and well-being. This is fully understandable. And yet, if happiness is a universal right, which is what the Declaration of Independence states, then that means we must consider the safety and well-being of others, too — including the safety and well-being of immigrants and refugees who would otherwise be turned away at our borders.

In this regard, the biblical story of Ruth the Moabitess is rather remarkable. Had she been turned away at the border, then Israel would have never had its greatest king, David, since he was her great-grandson. Or, to continue the lineage a bit further, without Ruth there is not only no David, there is also no Jesus, since, according to the New Testament, he is a direct descendant from Ruth, the Moabite refugee. 

Or, to switch topics, one might like to stockpile weapons in order to feel safe, but one must ask about the effects of gun culture, the proliferation of guns, and if all that is, in fact, a truly safer way of life for the flourishing of all people. Statistics from other modern industrialized countries in the world that do not have the same gun obsession as America suggest, in fact, that it is not necessarily a safer way — or at least, such data indicate that the proliferation of weaponry is certainly not the only way to think about safety and well-being.

So, now, in 2018, I continue to think that the thickest and best definition of “the pursuit of happiness” means we must think about facilitating the achievement of others’ happiness, and not be inordinately or exclusively self-obsessed with our own.

Such a regard for others and their happiness would have certainly resonated with the early founders of our country, many of whom were themselves immigrants, and who were concerned not simply with their own well-being but with all those who would come after them in the United States.

The happiness of other, future generations was insured, as it were, in the Declaration and its claim regarding this “unalienable right.” Concern for other people’s happiness is also unquestionably true for the Bible where, among many examples, one might cite Jesus' instruction to his disciples: "No one has greater love than to give up one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13, Common English Bible).

I have to admit, however, that I am less sanguine now, in 2018, about the government’s interest in and ability to produce widespread happiness of the thickest variety for all people. The vast majority of what comes across the news scrawl these days seems remarkably parochial if not downright tribalistic. The “happiness” that is being sought is typically up for sale to the highest bidder with the most power (including firepower).

Such a vision of “happiness” is truly thin and can never lay appropriate claim to the Declaration’s grand vision of flourishing. But the Declaration’s grand vision is still there! And that gives me hope that good peoples throughout the world and throughout society and government may yet seek the greatest good for all humanity. May it be so!

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Text of the Declaration of Independence

Note: The source for this transcription is the first printing of the Declaration of Independence, the broadside produced by John Dunlap on the night of July 4, 1776. Nearly every printed or manuscript edition of the Declaration of Independence has slight differences in punctuation, capitalization, and even wording. To find out more about the diverse textual tradition of the Declaration, check out our Which Version is This, and Why Does it Matter? resource.

        WHEN in the Course of 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, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.           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 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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, 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 a 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, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. 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. The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.           He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.           He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.            He has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyrants only.           He has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures.           He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.           He has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and Convulsions within.            He has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.           He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.           He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.           He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.           He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures.           He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.           He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:           For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us:           For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:           For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:           For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:           For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:           For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:           For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule into these Colonies:           For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:           For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever.           He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.           He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.           He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.           He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.           He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.           In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.           Nor have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them from Time to Time of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our Connections and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of Consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends.           We, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great-Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Signed by Order and in Behalf of the Congress, JOHN HANCOCK, President.

Attest. CHARLES THOMSON, Secretary.

The Pursuit of Happiness

What most people don’t know, however, is that Locke’s concept of happiness was majorly influenced by the Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Epicurus in particular.  Far from simply equating “happiness” with “pleasure,” “property,” or the satisfaction of desire, Locke distinguishes between “imaginary” happiness and “true happiness.”  Thus, in the passage where he coins the phrase “pursuit of happiness,” Locke writes:

“ The necessity of pursuing happiness [is] the foundation of liberty .  As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness ; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty. The stronger ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness in general, which is our greatest good, and which, as such, our desires always follow, the more are we free from any necessary determination of our will to any particular action…” (1894, p. 348)

In this passage, Locke indicates that the pursuit of happiness is the foundation of liberty since it frees us from attachment to any particular desire we might have at a given moment.  So, for example, although my body might present me with a strong urge to indulge in that chocolate brownie, my reason knows that ultimately the brownie is not in my best interest.  Why not? Because it will not lead to my “true and solid” happiness which indicates the overall quality or satisfaction with life.   If we go back to Locke, then, we see that the “pursuit of happiness” as envisaged by him and by Jefferson was not merely the pursuit of pleasure, property, or self-interest (although it does include all of these).  It is also the freedom to be able to  make decisions that results in the best life possible for a human being, which includes intellectual and moral effort.  We would all do well to keep this in mind when we begin to discuss the “American” concept of happiness.

Read full passage from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

A little Background

John Locke (1632-1704) was one of the great English philosophers, making important contributions in both epistemology and political philosophy. His An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , published in 1681, laid the foundation for modern empiricism, which holds that all knowledge derives from sensory experience and that man is born a “blank slate” or tabula rasa . His two Treatises of Government helped to pave the way for the French and American revolutions. Indeed, Voltaire simply called him “le sage Locke” and key parts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America are lifted from his political writings. Thomas Jefferson once said that “Bacon, Locke and Newton are the greatest three people who ever lived, without exception.” Perhaps his greatest contribution consists in his argument for natural rights to life, liberty, and property which precede the existence of the state. Modern-day libertarians hail Locke as their intellectual hero.

Happiness as “True Pleasure”

In his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , Locke attempted to do for the mind what Newton had done for the physical world: give a completely mechanical explanation for its operations by discovering the laws that govern its behavior. Thus he explains the processes by which ideas are abstracted from the impressions received by the mind through sense-perception. As an empiricist, Locke claims that the mind begins with a completely blank slate, and is formed solely through experience and education. The doctrines of innate ideas and original sin are brushed aside as relics of a pre-Newtonian mythological worldview. There is no such thing as human nature being originally good or evil: these are concepts that get developed only on the basis of experiencing pain and pleasure.

When it comes to Locke’s concept of happiness, he is mainly influenced by the Greek philosopher Epicurus , as interpreted by the 17th Century mathematician Pierre Gassendi. As he writes:

If it be farther asked, what moves desire? I answer happiness and that alone. Happiness and Misery are the names of two extremes, the utmost bound where we know not…But of some degrees of both, we have very lively impressions, made by several instances of Delight and Joy on the one side and Torment and Sorrow on the other; which, for shortness sake, I shall comprehend under the names of Pleasure and Pain, there being pleasure and pain of the Mind as well as the Body…Happiness then in its full extent is the utmost Pleasure we are capable of, and Misery the utmost pain. (1894, p.258)

Like Epicurus, however, Locke goes on to qualify this assertion, since there is an important distinction between “true pleasures and “false pleasures.” False pleasures are those that promise immediate gratification but are typically followed by more pain. Locke gives the example of alcohol, which promises short term euphoria but is accompanied by unhealthy affects on the mind and body. Most people are simply irrational in their pursuit of short-term pleasures, and do not choose those activities which would really give them a more lasting satisfaction. Thus Locke is led to make a distinction between “imaginary” and “real” happiness:

“ The necessity of pursuing happiness [is] the foundation of liberty . As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness ; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty. The stronger ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness in general, which is our greatest good, and which, as such, our desires always follow, the more are we free from any necessary determination of our will to any particular action…” (1894, p. 348)

In this passage Locke makes a very interesting observation regarding the “pursuit of happiness” and human liberty. He points out that happiness is the foundation of liberty, insofar as it enables us to use our reason to make decisions that are in our long-term best-interest, as opposed to those that simply afford us immediate gratification. Thus we are able to abstain from that glass of wine, or decide to help a friend even when we would rather stay at home and watch television. Unlike the animals which are completely enslaved to their passions , our pursuit of happiness enables us to rise above the dictates of nature. As such, the pursuit of happiness is the foundation of morality and civilization. If we had no desire for happiness, Locke suggests, we would have remained in the state of nature just content with simple pleasures like eating and sleeping. But the desire for happiness pushes us onward, to greater and higher pleasures. All of this is driven by a fundamental sense of the “uneasiness of desire” which compels us to fulfill ourselves in ever new and more expansive ways.

Everlasting Happiness

If Locke had stopped here, he would be unique among the philosophers in claiming that there is no prescription for achieving happiness, given the diversity of views about what causes happiness. For some people, reading philosophy is pleasurable whereas for others, playing football or having sex is the most pleasurable activity. Since the only standard is pleasure, there would be no way to judge that one pleasure is better than another. The only judge of what happiness is would be oneself.

But Locke does not stop there. Indeed, he notes that there is one fear that we all have deep within, the fear of death. We have a sense that if death is the end, then everything that we do will have been in vain. But if death is not the end, if there is hope for an afterlife, then that changes everything. If we continue to exist after we die, then we should act in such ways so as to produce a continuing happiness for us in the afterlife. Just as we abstain from eating the chocolate brownie because we know its not ultimately in our self-interest, we should abstain from all acts of immorality, knowing that there will be a “payback” in the next life. Thus we should act virtuously in order to ensure everlasting happiness:

“When infinite Happiness is put in one scale, against infinite Misery in the other; if the worst that comes to a Pious Man if he mistakes, be the best that the wicked can attain to, if he be in the right, Who can without madness run the venture?”

Basically, then, Locke treats the question of human happiness as a kind of gambling proposition. We want to bet on the horse that has the best chance of creating happiness for us. But if we bet on hedonism, we run the risk of suffering everlasting misery . No rational person would wish that state for oneself. Thus, it is rational to bet on the Christian horse and live the life of virtue , clearly, outlining a connection between spirituality, or religion, and happiness, with the perspective conditional on Christianity instead of religion or any other specific religion. At worst, we will sacrifice some pleasures in this life. But at best, we will win that everlasting prize at happiness which the Bible assures us. “Happy are those who are righteous, for they shall see God,” as Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount tells us. 

In contrast to Thomas Aquinas , who made a pretty firm distinction between the “imperfect happiness” of life on earth and the “perfect happiness” of life in heaven, Locke maintains that there is continuity. The pleasures we experience now are “very lively impressions” and give us a sweet foretaste of the pleasures we will experience in heaven. Happiness, then, is not some vague chimera that we chasing after, nor can we really be deluded about whether we are happy or not. We know what it is to experience pleasure and pain, and thus we know what we will experience in the afterlife.

Happiness and Political Liberty

The relation between Locke’s political views and his view of happiness should be pretty clear from what has been said. Since God has given each person the desire to pursue happiness as a law of nature, the government should not try to interfere with an individual’s pursuit of happiness. Thus we have to give each person liberty: the freedom to live as he pleases, the freedom to experience his or her own kind of happiness so long as that freedom is compatible with the freedom of others to do likewise. Thus we derive the basic right of liberty from the right to pursue happiness. Even though Locke believed the path of virtue to be the “best bet” towards everlasting happiness, the government should not prescribe any particular path to happiness. First of all, it is impossible to compel virtue since it must be freely chosen by the individual. Furthermore, history has shown that attempts to impose happiness upon the people invariably result in profound unhappiness. Locke’s viewpoint here is prophetic when we look at the failure of 20 th  Century attempts to achieve utopia, whether through Fascism, Communism, or Nationalism.

Locke’s view of happiness includes the following elements:

• The desire for happiness is a natural law that is implanted into us by God and motivates everything we do.
• Happiness is synonymous with pleasure, Unhappiness with pain
• We must distinguish “false pleasures” which promise immediate gratification but produce long-term pain from “true pleasures” which are intense and long lasting
• The pursuit of happiness is the foundation of individual liberty, since it gives us the ability to make decisions that are in our long-term best interest
• Since there is a diversity of natures, what causes happiness completely depends on the individual and his or her own experience of pleasure and pain
• The best bet would be to live a life of virtue so one can win everlasting happiness. Betting on a life of hedonistic pleasure is “irrational” given the prospect of infinite misery
• The pursuit of happiness is also the foundation of political liberty. Since God has given everyone the desire to pursue happiness as a natural right, the government should not interfere with anyone’s pursuit of happiness so long as it doesn’t interfere with other’s right to pursue happiness.

Further Readings

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• Confucius on Happiness
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Thomas Jefferson’s Goals: Life, Liberty and Happiness Essay

The right to life, the right to liberty, the right to pursue happiness, works cited.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness is a popular phrase among the US citizens. This phrase introduces the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. As such, the phrase guarantees every American citizen the right to liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness (Malloch & Scott 2). According to Thomas Jefferson, one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence, every government should allow its citizens the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The right to life entitles all Americans the abilities to pursue all the actions essential for the protection and satisfaction of their lives.

Equally, the right to liberty allows all Americans the abilities to conduct themselves, work, and think in accordance with their judgments. This implies that the government is forbidden from interfering with an individual’s life and affairs. In the same way, the right to pursue happiness ensures that all individuals are given freedom to transform the nation’s physical resources, their energy, and their knowledge into good things in life for their satisfaction. Generally, the phrase Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness is the driving force behind our democratic systems of government. In this regard, this paper seeks to investigate whether the nation has achieved the goals envisioned by Jefferson.

After these words were written, American activists and citizens of that time adopted the phrase immediately. Prior to the writing of this phrase, the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness were not acknowledged by the political systems of the day. Instead, the goal of the monarchical government was to pursue happiness for those in power and to pursue unhappiness for the masses. For instance, the nation lacked economic systems that could guarantee the masses their basic needs. Similarly, during Jefferson’s time his goals as illustrated in the above phrases were only defined within the contexts of the whites. Over the last two centuries, the American societies have struggled through several wars and social upheavals with the aim of ensuring that all individuals regardless of their color, race, ethnicity, and social status enjoy these rights. Currently, these rights are not only enjoyed by all men, but also enjoyed by all women.

The first objective of the Declaration of independence was to champion the right to life for every individual. What this means is that no government or an individual is allowed to take the lives of its people. In the current American society, Jefferson’s vision of the right to life has been achieved. Currently, Americans respect their lives and the lives of other citizens. As compared to other countries, individuals in America are free to exercise their morals and beliefs thus enhancing the right to life. Equally, the current American societies have become more diverse than during the 17 th century. Currently, different individuals from different races and ethnicity live side by side without confrontation. This has been possible through the Americans’ value for life. If the right to life was not valued in the US as it is in other countries, different communities and religions living side by side could be in disputes.

Before the abolition of slavery in the US, during the 18 th century, slaves’ right to life was being violated. Masters often mistreated their slaves. Occasionally, the slaves’ lives were not given priority as compared to the settlers’ lives. This was illustrated from the disparities in their living conditions and healthcare services. However, through several struggles and movements slavery was later abolished. Over time, human rights were able to champion for the right to life for every individual in the US. Through these struggles, every individual is guaranteed the right not to be killed and to be rescued from impending danger. The fact that US government offers its citizens with favorable working conditions and the right to clothing, housing, and education, implies that it upholds the right to life.

Despite of the words emphasized in the Declaration of Independence, the right to liberty in the US was a distant dream during Jefferson’s era. During this time, a few individuals were allowed to exercise the right to liberty. As such, the framers of the US constitution allowed slavery to continue during the early years. Similarly, women were also excluded from exercising their right to liberty. However, towards the end of the 18 th century a new group of reformers emerged in the American societies. The groups were determined to enlarge the circle of liberty and freedom to include all Americans who had been discriminated. These reformists were determined in ensuring that all the slaves and the minorities regained their right to liberty. Out of these initiatives, the American society was divided into two groups.

During the early 19 th century, the US government had extended civil rights to white males who owned no land. However, the Native Americans and the minority groups were still restricted from exercising these rights. Prior the mid 20 th century, the struggle for equal treatment in the southern parts of the US had gained prominence. Even though slavery had been abolished, the minority groups were not allowed to exercise their full liberty rights. Civil rights and civil liberty activists of the mid 20 th century organized peaceful campaigns and protests with the aim of enhancing equal representations within the American societies. Generally, the struggle for the right to liberty of every American resulted in an enduring revolution to minority groups in America.

Currently, the right to liberty is entitled to every American regardless of his or her race, nationality, and social background. In this regard, the current American society has achieved the liberty rights as envisioned by Jefferson. Unlike other western countries, individuals in the US enjoy excess liberty rights. For instance, in the US freedoms of speech and worship have little restrictions that some individuals suggest that they should be restrained for security purposes. Equally, with the election of Barack Obama as the first African American in the year 2009 signifies a huge transformation in the American societies. During Jefferson’s era, no one could have ever imagined that African Americans would one day be entitled equal civil rights with the whites as it is today.

Currently, the right to pursue happiness has become an essential part of American culture. This declaration has a strong connection with economic liberty, religious liberty, and political liberty. Regarding this, the three rights envisioned by Jefferson are interlinked and need to be understood in terms of one another (Rus 110). In this regard, liberty is necessary for happiness, and happiness is necessary for liberty.

During Jefferson’s era, the right to pursue happiness was only enjoyed by the few individuals who were in leadership positions. As such, the political leaders were allowed to use the public resources, and workers’ energy and knowledge for their satisfaction at the expenses of the poor. Over time, human rights activists championed for equal rights and liberties in the American societies. With these struggles, the slave trade, racial discriminations, social discriminations, and other forms of discriminations were abolished. These initiatives have enhanced happiness in American societies.

At the present, the US politics, economics, and culture have undergone through enormous transformations to embrace the pursuit of happiness as its central drive and value. As envisioned by Jefferson, the present American government and institutions support each individual’s definitive rights to live freely and happily. From the mid 20 th century, American governments have redefined its economies, government structures, laws, and cultural expressions towards continuous improvements of human life. Currently, it is estimated that the America’s GNP per person ranges from $40000 to $50000. With these figures, America is considered one of the wealthiest nations on earth. Similarly, these figures illustrate that the pursuit of happiness among the Americans is a reality. Equally, in the US the society and the government are so favorable that all individuals are allowed to nurture their dreams or talents for their happiness.

Despite the fact that the current Americans have achieved the goals envisioned by Jefferson, we should be weary of the fact that these goals are now facing emerging ethical challenges. Notably, the right to life has raised several controversies among scholars, religious leaders, and the public. For instance, religious leaders argue that government is not supposed to take a life of a condemned criminal, as doing so implies that the criminal’s right to life would be violated. Similarly, by allowing a pregnant woman to terminate her pregnancy implies that the right of the unborn child to life would be violated. On the other hand, the right to pursue happiness is facing several ethical challenges. Currently, recession, disparities in wealth, war, and religious conflicts are compromising on the gains gained so far in the pursuit of happiness.

In conclusion, we should all acknowledge the fact that Jefferson’s goal has been achieved in the US. The US constitution emphasizes that every individual is entitled to indisputable rights to life, liberty, and the right to pursue happiness. As required by the constitution, all American citizens and immigrants across the US enjoy these rights. Similarly, several countries around the world that embrace human rights have adopted and implemented these rights in their constitutions. Despite the benefits of these rights, many citizens in the US do not exploit these rights to their full potential. Instead, the rights are taken for granted by most individuals. For instance, some Americans have not learned how to pursue happiness. More often, these individuals associate happiness with material wealth rather than attainment of self-actualization.

Equally, we should acknowledge the challenges facing these inalienable rights and start working on a framework that would reduce these challenges (Moyers & Betty 45). For instance, Americans should focus on new technologies that will increase their pursuit of happiness rather than reduce it. Through this, they should explore new projects that will increase job creation, job satisfaction and wealth creation. By doing so, we would ensure that our future generations also have a chance to pursue their happiness.

Malloch, Theodore R., and Scott T. Massey. Renewing American culture: the pursuit of happiness . Salem, MA: M & M Scrivener, 2006. Print.

Moyers, Bill D., and Betty S. Flowers. A world of ideas : conversations with thoughtful men and women about American life today and the ideas shaping our future. New York: Doubleday, 1989. Print.

Rus, M. “Architectural Digest.” The Pursuit of Happiness 09.01 (2011): 108-119. Shatford Library . Web.

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IvyPanda. (2020, May 19). Thomas Jefferson’s Goals: Life, Liberty and Happiness. https://ivypanda.com/essays/thomas-jeffersons-goals-life-liberty-and-happiness/

"Thomas Jefferson’s Goals: Life, Liberty and Happiness." IvyPanda , 19 May 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/thomas-jeffersons-goals-life-liberty-and-happiness/.

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IvyPanda . 2020. "Thomas Jefferson’s Goals: Life, Liberty and Happiness." May 19, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/thomas-jeffersons-goals-life-liberty-and-happiness/.

1. IvyPanda . "Thomas Jefferson’s Goals: Life, Liberty and Happiness." May 19, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/thomas-jeffersons-goals-life-liberty-and-happiness/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Thomas Jefferson’s Goals: Life, Liberty and Happiness." May 19, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/thomas-jeffersons-goals-life-liberty-and-happiness/.

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The first amendment, the declaration, the constitution, and the bill of rights.

by Jeffrey Rosen and David Rubenstein

At the National Constitution Center, you will find rare copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. These are the three most important documents in American history. But why are they important, and what are their similarities and differences? And how did each document, in turn, influence the next in America’s ongoing quest for liberty and equality?

There are some clear similarities among the three documents. All have preambles. All were drafted by people of similar backgrounds, generally educated white men of property. The Declaration and Constitution were drafted by a congress and a convention that met in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia (now known as Independence Hall) in 1776 and 1787 respectively. The Bill of Rights was proposed by the Congress that met in Federal Hall in New York City in 1789. Thomas Jefferson was the principal drafter of the Declaration and James Madison of the Bill of Rights; Madison, along with Gouverneur Morris and James Wilson, was also one of the principal architects of the Constitution.

Most importantly, the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are based on the idea that all people have certain fundamental rights that governments are created to protect. Those rights include common law rights, which come from British sources like the Magna Carta, or natural rights, which, the Founders believed, came from God. The Founders believed that natural rights are inherent in all people by virtue of their being human and that certain of these rights are unalienable, meaning they cannot be surrendered to government under any circumstances.

At the same time, the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are different kinds of documents with different purposes. The Declaration was designed to justify breaking away from a government; the Constitution and Bill of Rights were designed to establish a government. The Declaration stands on its own—it has never been amended—while the Constitution has been amended 27 times. (The first ten amendments are called the Bill of Rights.) The Declaration and Bill of Rights set limitations on government; the Constitution was designed both to create an energetic government and also to constrain it. The Declaration and Bill of Rights reflect a fear of an overly centralized government imposing its will on the people of the states; the Constitution was designed to empower the central government to preserve the blessings of liberty for “We the People of the United States.” In this sense, the Declaration and Bill of Rights, on the one hand, and the Constitution, on the other, are mirror images of each other.

Despite these similarities and differences, the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are, in many ways, fused together in the minds of Americans, because they represent what is best about America. They are symbols of the liberty that allows us to achieve success and of the equality that ensures that we are all equal in the eyes of the law. The Declaration of Independence made certain promises about which liberties were fundamental and inherent, but those liberties didn’t become legally enforceable until they were enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In other words, the fundamental freedoms of the American people were alluded to in the Declaration of Independence, implicit in the Constitution, and enumerated in the Bill of Rights. But it took the Civil War, which President Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address called “a new birth of freedom,” to vindicate the Declaration’s famous promise that “all men are created equal.” And it took the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, to vindicate James Madison’s initial hope that not only the federal government but also the states would be constitutionally required to respect fundamental liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights—a process that continues today.

Why did Jefferson draft the Declaration of Independence?

When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in 1775, it was far from clear that the delegates would pass a resolution to separate from Great Britain. To persuade them, someone needed to articulate why the Americans were breaking away. Congress formed a committee to do just that; members included John Adams from Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin from Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman from Connecticut, Robert R. Livingston from New York, and Thomas Jefferson from Virginia, who at age 33 was one of the youngest delegates.

Although Jefferson disputed his account, John Adams later recalled that he had persuaded Jefferson to write the draft because Jefferson had the fewest enemies in Congress and was the best writer. (Jefferson would have gotten the job anyway—he was elected chair of the committee.) Jefferson had 17 days to produce the document and reportedly wrote a draft in a day or two. In a rented room not far from the State House, he wrote the Declaration with few books and pamphlets beside him, except for a copy of George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights and the draft Virginia Constitution, which Jefferson had written himself.

The Declaration of Independence has three parts. It has a preamble, which later became the most famous part of the document but at the time was largely ignored. It has a second part that lists the sins of the King of Great Britain, and it has a third part that declares independence from Britain and that all political connections between the British Crown and the “Free and Independent States” of America should be totally dissolved.

The preamble to the Declaration of Independence contains the entire theory of American government in a single, inspiring passage:

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 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.

When Jefferson wrote the preamble, it was largely an afterthought. Why is it so important today? It captured perfectly the essence of the ideals that would eventually define the United States. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” Jefferson began, in one of the most famous sentences in the English language. How could Jefferson write this at a time that he and other Founders who signed the Declaration owned slaves? The document was an expression of an ideal. In his personal conduct, Jefferson violated it. But the ideal—“that all men are created equal”—came to take on a life of its own and is now considered the most perfect embodiment of the American creed.

When Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address during the Civil War in November 1863, several months after the Union Army defeated Confederate forces at the Battle of Gettysburg, he took Jefferson’s language and transformed it into constitutional poetry. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” Lincoln declared. “Four score and seven years ago” refers to the year 1776, making clear that Lincoln was referring not to the Constitution but to Jefferson’s Declaration. Lincoln believed that the “principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society,” as he wrote shortly before the anniversary of Jefferson’s birthday in 1859. Three years later, on the anniversary of George Washington’s birthday in 1861, Lincoln said in a speech at what by that time was being called “Independence Hall,” “I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender” the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

It took the Civil War, the bloodiest war in American history, for Lincoln to begin to make Jefferson’s vision of equality a constitutional reality. After the war, the Declaration’s vision was embodied in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, which formally ended slavery, guaranteed all persons the “equal protection of the laws,” and gave African-American men the right to vote. At the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, when supporters of gaining greater rights for women met, they, too, used the Declaration of Independence as a guide for drafting their Declaration of Sentiments. (Their efforts to achieve equal suffrage culminated in 1920 in the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.) And during the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his famous address at the Lincoln Memorial, “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men—yes, black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

In addition to its promise of equality, Jefferson’s preamble is also a promise of liberty. Like the other Founders, he was steeped in the political philosophy of the Enlightenment, in philosophers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, Francis Hutcheson, and Montesquieu. All of them believed that people have certain unalienable and inherent rights that come from God, not government, or come simply from being human. They also believed that when people form governments, they give those governments control over certain natural rights to ensure the safety and security of other rights. Jefferson, George Mason, and the other Founders frequently spoke of the same set of rights as being natural and unalienable. They included the right to worship God “according to the dictates of conscience,” the right of “enjoyment of life and liberty,” “the means of acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety,” and, most important of all, the right of a majority of the people to “alter and abolish” their government whenever it threatened to invade natural rights rather than protect them.

In other words, when Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and began to articulate some of the rights that were ultimately enumerated in the Bill of Rights, he wasn’t inventing these rights out of thin air. On the contrary, 10 American colonies between 1606 and 1701 were granted charters that included representative assemblies and promised the colonists the basic rights of Englishmen, including a version of the promise in the Magna Carta that no freeman could be imprisoned or destroyed “except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” This legacy kindled the colonists’ hatred of arbitrary authority, which allowed the King to seize their bodies or property on his own say-so. In the revolutionary period, the galvanizing examples of government overreaching were the “general warrants” and “writs of assistance” that authorized the King’s agents to break into the homes of scores of innocent citizens in an indiscriminate search for the anonymous authors of pamphlets criticizing the King. Writs of assistance, for example, authorized customs officers “to break open doors, Chests, Trunks, and other Packages” in a search for stolen goods, without specifying either the goods to be seized or the houses to be searched. In a famous attack on the constitutionality of writs of assistance in 1761, prominent lawyer James Otis said, “It is a power that places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.”

As members of the Continental Congress contemplated independence in May and June of 1776, many colonies were dissolving their charters with England. As the actual vote on independence approached, a few colonies were issuing their own declarations of independence and bills of rights. The Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, written by George Mason, began by declaring that “all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” 

When Jefferson wrote his famous preamble, he was restating, in more eloquent language, the philosophy of natural rights expressed in the Virginia Declaration that the Founders embraced. And when Jefferson said, in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, that “[w]hen in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,” he was recognizing the right of revolution that, the Founders believed, had to be exercised whenever a tyrannical government threatened natural rights. That’s what Jefferson meant when he said Americans had to assume “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.”

The Declaration of Independence was a propaganda document rather than a legal one. It didn’t give any rights to anyone. It was an advertisement about why the colonists were breaking away from England. Although there was no legal reason to sign the Declaration, Jefferson and the other Founders signed it because they wanted to “mutually pledge” to each other that they were bound to support it with “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” Their signatures were courageous because the signers realized they were committing treason: according to legend, after affixing his flamboyantly large signature John Hancock said that King George—or the British ministry—would be able to read his name without spectacles. But the courage of the signers shouldn’t be overstated: the names of the signers of the Declaration weren’t published until after General George Washington won crucial battles at Trenton and Princeton and it was clear that the war for independence was going well.

What is the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?

In the years between 1776 and 1787, most of the 13 states drafted constitutions that contained a declaration of rights within the body of the document or as a separate provision at the beginning, many of them listing the same natural rights that Jefferson had embraced in the Declaration. When it came time to form a central government in 1776, the Continental Congress began to create a weak union governed by the Articles of Confederation. (The Articles of Confederation was sent to the states for ratification in 1777; it was formally adopted in 1781.) The goal was to avoid a powerful federal government with the ability to invade rights and to threaten private property, as the King’s agents had done with the hated general warrants and writs of assistance. But the Articles of Confederation proved too weak for bringing together a fledgling nation that needed both to wage war and to manage the economy. Supporters of a stronger central government, like James Madison, lamented the inability of the government under the Articles to curb the excesses of economic populism that were afflicting the states, such as Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts, where farmers shut down the courts demanding debt relief. As a result, Madison and others gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 with the goal of creating a stronger, but still limited, federal government.

The Constitutional Convention was held in Philadelphia in the Pennsylvania State House, in the room where the Declaration of Independence was adopted. Jefferson, who was in France at the time, wasn’t among them. After four months of debate, the delegates produced a constitution.

During the final days of debate, delegates George Mason and Elbridge Gerry objected that the Constitution, too, should include a bill of rights to protect the fundamental liberties of the people against the newly empowered president and Congress. Their motion was swiftly—and unanimously—defeated; a debate over what rights to include could go on for weeks, and the delegates were tired and wanted to go home. The Constitution was approved by the Constitutional Convention and sent to the states for ratification without a bill of rights.

During the ratification process, which took around 10 months (the Constitution took effect when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify in late June 1788; the 13th state, Rhode Island, would not join the union until May 1790), many state ratifying conventions proposed amendments specifying the rights that Jefferson had recognized in the Declaration and that they protected in their own state constitutions. James Madison and other supporters of the Constitution initially resisted the need for a bill of rights as either unnecessary (because the federal government was granted no power to abridge individual liberty) or dangerous (since it implied that the federal government had the power to infringe liberty in the first place). In the face of a groundswell of popular demand for a bill of rights, Madison changed his mind and introduced a bill of rights in Congress on June 8, 1789.

Madison was least concerned by “abuse in the executive department,” which he predicted would be the weakest branch of government. He was more worried about abuse by Congress, because he viewed the legislative branch as “the most powerful, and most likely to be abused, because it is under the least control.” (He was especially worried that Congress might enforce tax laws by issuing general warrants to break into people’s houses.) But in his view “the great danger lies rather in the abuse of the community than in the legislative body”—in other words, local majorities who would take over state governments and threaten the fundamental rights of minorities, including creditors and property holders. For this reason, the proposed amendment that Madison considered “the most valuable amendment in the whole list” would have prohibited the state governments from abridging freedom of conscience, speech, and the press, as well as trial by jury in criminal cases. Madison’s favorite amendment was eliminated by the Senate and not resurrected until after the Civil War, when the 14th Amendment required state governments to respect basic civil and economic liberties.

In the end, by pulling from the amendments proposed by state ratifying conventions and Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, Madison proposed 19 amendments to the Constitution. Congress approved 12 amendments to be sent to the states for ratification. Only 10 of the amendments were ultimately ratified in 1791 and became the Bill of Rights. The first of the two amendments that failed was intended to guarantee small congressional districts to ensure that representatives remained close to the people. The other would have prohibited senators and representatives from giving themselves a pay raise unless it went into effect at the start of the next Congress. (This latter amendment was finally ratified in 1992 and became the 27th Amendment.)

To address the concern that the federal government might claim that rights not listed in the Bill of Rights were not protected, Madison included what became the Ninth Amendment, which says the “enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” To ensure that Congress would be viewed as a government of limited rather than unlimited powers, he included the 10th Amendment, which says the “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Because of the first Congress’s focus on protecting people from the kinds of threats to liberty they had experienced at the hands of King George, the rights listed in the first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights apply only to the federal government, not to the states or to private companies. (One of the amendments submitted by the North Carolina ratifying convention but not included by Madison in his proposal to Congress would have prohibited Congress from establishing monopolies or companies with “exclusive advantages of commerce.”)

But the protections in the Bill of Rights—forbidding Congress from abridging free speech, for example, or conducting unreasonable searches and seizures—were largely ignored by the courts for the first 100 years after the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. Like the preamble to the Declaration, the Bill of Rights was largely a promissory note. It wasn’t until the 20th century, when the Supreme Court began vigorously to apply the Bill of Rights against the states, that the document became the centerpiece of contemporary struggles over liberty and equality. The Bill of Rights became a document that defends not only majorities of the people against an overreaching federal government but also minorities against overreaching state governments. Today, there are debates over whether the federal government has become too powerful in threatening fundamental liberties. There are also debates about how to protect the least powerful in society against the tyranny of local majorities.

What do we know about the documentary history of the rare copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights on display at the National Constitution Center?

Generally, when people think about the original Declaration, they are referring to the official engrossed —or final—copy now in the National Archives. That is the one that John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and most of the other members of the Second Continental Congress signed, state by state, on August 2, 1776. John Dunlap, a Philadelphia printer, published the official printing of the Declaration ordered by Congress, known as the Dunlap Broadside, on the night of July 4th and the morning of July 5th. About 200 copies are believed to have been printed. At least 27 are known to survive.

The document on display at the National Constitution Center is known as a Stone Engraving, after the engraver William J. Stone, whom then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams commissioned in 1820 to create a precise facsimile of the original engrossed version of the Declaration. That manuscript had become faded and worn after nearly 45 years of travel with Congress between Philadelphia, New York City, and eventually Washington, D.C., among other places, including Leesburg, Virginia, where it was rolled up and hidden during the British invasion of the capital in 1814.

To ensure that future generations would have a clear image of the original Declaration, William Stone made copies of the document before it faded away entirely. Historians dispute how Stone rendered the facsimiles. He kept the original Declaration in his shop for up to three years and may have used a process that involved taking a wet cloth, putting it on the original document, and creating a perfect copy by taking off half the ink. He would have then put the ink on a copper plate to do the etching (though he might have, instead, traced the entire document by hand without making a press copy). Stone used the copper plate to print 200 first edition engravings as well as one copy for himself in 1823, selling the plate and the engravings to the State Department. John Quincy Adams sent copies to each of the living signers of the Declaration (there were three at the time), public officials like President James Monroe, Congress, other executive departments, governors and state legislatures, and official repositories such as universities. The Stone engravings give us the clearest idea of what the original engrossed Declaration looked like on the day it was signed.

The Constitution, too, has an original engrossed, handwritten version as well as a printing of the final document. John Dunlap, who also served as the official printer of the Declaration, and his partner David C. Claypoole, who worked with him to publish the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser , America’s first successful daily newspaper founded by Dunlap in 1771, secretly printed copies of the convention’s committee reports for the delegates to review, debate, and make changes. At the end of the day on September 15, 1787, after all of the delegations present had approved the Constitution, the convention ordered it engrossed on parchment. Jacob Shallus, assistant clerk to the Pennsylvania legislature, spent the rest of the weekend preparing the engrossed copy (now in the National Archives), while Dunlap and Claypoole were ordered to print 500 copies of the final text for distribution to the delegates, Congress, and the states. The engrossed copy was signed on Monday, September 17th, which is now celebrated as Constitution Day.

The copy of the Constitution on display at the National Constitution Center was published in Dunlap and Claypoole’s Pennsylvania Packet newspaper on September 19, 1787. Because it was the first public printing of the document—the first time Americans saw the Constitution—scholars consider its constitutional significance to be especially profound. The publication of the Constitution in the Pennsylvania Packet was the first opportunity for “We the People of the United States” to read the Constitution that had been drafted and would later be ratified in their name.

The handwritten Constitution inspires awe, but the first public printing reminds us that it was only the ratification of the document by “We the People” that made the Constitution the supreme law of the land. As James Madison emphasized in The Federalist No. 40 in 1788, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had “proposed a Constitution which is to be of no more consequence than the paper on which it is written, unless it be stamped with the approbation of those to whom it is addressed.” Only 25 copies of the Pennsylvania Packet Constitution are known to have survived.

Finally, there is the Bill of Rights. On October 2, 1789, Congress sent 12 proposed amendments to the Constitution to the states for ratification—including the 10 that would come to be known as the Bill of Rights. There were 14 original manuscript copies, including the one displayed at the National Constitution Center—one for the federal government and one for each of the 13 states.

Twelve of the 14 copies are known to have survived. Two copies —those of the federal government and Delaware — are in the National Archives. Eight states currently have their original documents; Georgia, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania do not. There are two existing unidentified copies, one held by the Library of Congress and one held by The New York Public Library. The copy on display at the National Constitution Center is from the collections of The New York Public Library and will be on display for several years through an agreement between the Library and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; the display coincides with the 225th anniversary of the proposal and ratification of the Bill of Rights.

The Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are the three most important documents in American history because they express the ideals that define “We the People of the United States” and inspire free people around the world.

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Pursuit of Happiness

Thomas Jefferson never explained his use of the phrase " pursuit of happiness " in the  Declaration of Independence . He was almost certainly influenced by George Mason's  Virginia Declaration of Rights  (adopted June 12, 1776), which referred to "the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." [1]

Jefferson's rough draft of the Declaration of Independence used the expression, "... life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness." [2] In the final version, Jefferson altered the wording slightly to read "... Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." [3]

Further Sources

• Ellis, Joseph J. "The Spring of '76: Texts and Contexts." In  What Did the Declaration Declare? , edited by Joseph J. Ellis, 79-94. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999. See especially pp. 88-90.
• Gerber, Scott Douglas, ed.  The Declaration of Independence: Origins and Impact .  Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2002.
• Maier, Pauline.  American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence .  New York: Knopf, 1997.
• Schlesinger, Arthur M.  "The Lost Meaning of the 'Pursuit of Happiness'."   William and Mary Quarterly  3rd ser. vol. 21, no. 3 (1964): 326-27.  Focuses mostly on the use of the word "pursuit."
• Look for further sources in the Thomas Jefferson Portal .
• ^ The full text of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, along with draft versions and other related documents, is available online at  "George Mason & Historic Human Rights Documents,"  provided by  "George Mason's Gunston Hall."
• ^ Jefferson’s "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence, June 11-July 4, 1776, in  PTJ , 1:423.  Transcription  available at Founders Online.
• ^ The Declaration of Independence as Adopted by Congress, June 11-July 4, 1776, in  PTJ , 1:429.  Transcription  available at Founders Online.

Politics Writings

ADDRESS: 931 Thomas Jefferson Parkway Charlottesville, VA 22902 GENERAL INFORMATION: (434) 984-9800

Who Really Wrote ‘the Pursuit of Happiness’?

The voice of Doctor Johnson, archcritic of the American Revolution, was constantly in mind for the Declaration of Independence’s drafter.

I n a playful moment a century ago, the historian Carl Becker pondered this counterfactual: What if Benjamin Franklin, not Thomas Jefferson, had drafted the Declaration of Independence? A scholar of the American Revolution, Becker knew that such a thing was plausible. Franklin was, after all, on the Committee of Five in Philadelphia, which was allotted the job of drawing up the text in June 1776. A gifted writer of great standing, he was just the sort of person who might compose a document of such paramount importance.

Yet Becker thought the idea absurd. Although he admired Franklin for his “intimate and confidential” style, Becker did not believe that the author of Poor Richard’s Almanack could have written such sentences as “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,” or “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” These lines were charged with a peculiar, arresting quality, mixing precision with poetry. This quality Becker associated with Jefferson’s “engaging felicities”—quite different from Franklin’s prose, which had an “air of the tavern or print shop.”

In fact, Franklin would have been very unlikely to produce the Declaration’s first draft. By 1776, he was too worn out by the strains of life to tackle the challenge. Also, as he later confided to Jefferson, he had made it a rule to “avoid becoming the draughtsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body,” because taking on a task of that nature was to invite trouble. Jefferson, then still 33, would learn the wisdom of this for himself when Congress debated his draft. First, on about June 12, he sat down at a traveling desk of his own design in the parlor of his lodgings on Seventh and Market Street and started work on the Declaration of Independence.

Tom Nichols: Reclaiming real American patriotism

Franklin was, however, among the first to read Jefferson’s efforts, a week or so later—as was John Adams, who found himself “delighted with its high tone, and the flights of oratory with which it abounded.” From Adams, this was high praise, but there was also a hint of something else in his compliment. The “flights of oratory” certainly had luster, but did the words have real substance? Becker himself, in a close rereading of the “original Rough draught,” confessed that Jefferson’s prose sometimes left him with a feeling of insecurity, “as of resting one’s weight on something fragile.”

N owhere is this sensation more present than in the Declaration’s most celebrated phrase, “the pursuit of Happiness.”

This appears in the second sentence of the document as Jefferson outlines his brief list of “unalienable rights”—“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The final four words have an instant aesthetic allure, but the longer one lingers over them, the more a riddle appears. Why has Jefferson denoted both life and liberty as rights, but not happiness , which is qualified by the word pursuit ? Was this use of pursuit purely rhetorical? As the 19th-century lawyer Rufus Choate believed, was it nothing more than one of those “glittering and sounding generalities” designed to ornament “that passionate and eloquent manifesto”?

Many commentators have interpreted pursuit in this way over time. It adds rhythm and flourish at a pivotal early moment in the text. Others, however, have not been so sure. To the Harvard historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., “the pursuit of Happiness” had real meaning, but not the meaning most readers recognize today. To illustrate his point, Schlesinger sifted through patriot literature by such writers as James Otis, Josiah Quincy II, James Wilson, and Adams himself. All of them wrote about happiness, though—unlike Jefferson—framed it not as something people should merely “strive for but as something that was theirs by natural right.”

The clearest expression of this strand of American thought came in George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was drafted in May 1776. In it, Mason spoke of “pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” Mason’s text, which was reprinted in Philadelphia newspapers in early June, has long been acknowledged as a key influence on Jefferson. The link between the two declarations is plain enough, yet the crucial shift from “obtaining happiness” to simply pursuing it is not so easily explained.

Arthur C. Brooks: Ben Franklin’s radical theory of happiness

In 1964, Schlesinger wrote a striking short essay titled “ The Lost Meaning of ‘The Pursuit of Happiness,’ ” in which he offered a new interpretation. For years, he argued, people had been reading that line incorrectly. Schlesinger believed that when Jefferson wrote pursuit , he was using it in the word’s “more emphatic” meaning—as lawyers used to talk about “the pursuit of the law” or doctors spoke of “the pursuit of medicine.” This did not mean questing after or chasing down. Instead, it implied a person’s engagement with a practice or vocation already in their possession. Jefferson was not at odds with the other Founders at all, according to Schlesinger, but in his reading of the line, the shift in meaning was significant: Some of the romantic sense of mission, some of the novelty of its idea of itself, was gone.

“The pursuit of Happiness” may be pure rhetoric, as Choate believed, or it may have a lost meaning, as Schlesinger argued, but there is a third interpretation we should consider. The age of Enlightenment out of which the United States arose was abuzz with discussions of happiness. What was it? How best to acquire it? Debating clubs churned over these issues. The philosopher Francis Hutcheson came up with complex formulas involving human qualities such as “benevolence” (B), “ability” (A), “self-love” (S), and “interest” (I) to create the conditions for what he termed the “moment of good” (M). (One part of his workings went M = B + S x A = BA.) Others relied on experience more than theory. Having encountered the Indigenous people of New Holland (modern-day Australia) for the first time, Captain Cook sailed away mulling, ungrammatically, whether they were “far more happier than we Europeans.”

But the author who wrote with the most intensity about happiness during the Revolutionary period was Samuel Johnson. Johnson was someone all of the Founders knew well. Ever since the reproduction of parts of his poem “The Vanity of Human Wishes” in Poor Richard’s Almanack for 1750, his work had found a ready audience in the colonies. As the historian James G. Basker has pointed out, “Johnson was a part of the consciousness of every literate American during the Founding Era.” And for Jefferson, he notes in particular, “the connection was unusually subtle and sustained.”

A s a young man , Jefferson sought out Johnson’s political tracts. He recommended Johnson’s Dictionary as a necessary addition to the library a friend was constructing, and he always made sure he had a copy to hand himself, whether he was in Monticello or Paris. Later, in a 1798 letter, he confessed to using it as “a Repertory, to find favorite passages which I wished to recollect,” although he added intriguingly, “but too rarely with success.”

This line captures something of the place Johnson occupied in Jefferson’s mind—often there, not always as a welcome guest. In 1775, Johnson had emerged as the sharpest British critic of what he called the “wild, indefinite and obscure” resolutions of the Continental Congress. Jefferson had felt the warmth of his prose more than most. Reading the copy of Johnson’s furious polemic Taxation No Tyranny that he’d acquired shortly after its publication that year, the slave-owning Jefferson would have been confronted with a distinctly personal taunt: “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

Read: Lessons from Thomas Jefferson’s failure on slavery

Johnson’s admonitions did not just haunt Jefferson at Monticello; they also followed him to Philadelphia in 1776. The week that Jefferson arrived to attend the Congress in May, The Pennsylvania Evening Post printed a long letter about “Doctor Johnson,” his Dictionary , and the use of words as weapons. Jefferson would not respond openly to any of this. In politics, he and Johnson were as divided as could be, but when it came to another matter, happiness, there was an odd convergence between the two. Five times before 1776, in all of his major works — The Rambler , Dictionary , The Idler , the novella Rasselas , and the political pamphlet The False Alarm —Johnson used the phrase the pursuit of happiness .

That construction was not itself exceptional: As Basker observes, “it also occurs in other writers of the period and the question of whether Jefferson took it directly from Johnson remains tantalizingly open.” More notable, and important, is the similarity in how these two great figures thought about happiness. Time and again, Johnson stressed his belief that pursuing happiness was a natural human instinct. This impulse, however, came with a warning. To pursue was natural; to obtain was a different proposition.

Johnson demonstrated this distinction most powerfully in Rasselas , which was published first in Britain in 1759 and then in Philadelphia in 1768. This moral fable recounted the adventures of an Abyssinian prince who, with his colorful entourage, was always seeking but never quite finding happiness. Sometimes, their journey would be lit up by moments of hope; more frequently came disappointment. At one point, in a quintessentially Johnsonian twist, one of the characters cries out in exasperation at the paradox that confronts them: “Yet what, said she, is to be expected from our persuit of happiness, when we find the state of life to be such, that happiness itself is the cause of misery?”

As the literary scholar Thomas Keymer has noted, Rasselas provides a clue to help us unpick one of the most engaging and ambiguous lines in the Declaration. By 1776, Jefferson was already known for his “happy talent for composition,” but this was only a part of his genius. He seems, too, to have had the gift of foresight. In that line, he frames, eloquently yet economically, the kind of country this new republic would be.

It was to be a place of promise, but it would not promise too much. It could not be both the land of opportunity and a place of greater safety. Pursue happiness, by all means, but do not expect a guarantee of obtaining it. Already in Jefferson’s rough draft, “The United States of America”—one of the very first uses of this name—we can glimpse the emerging nation’s essential character.

That character endures to this day. The United States would offer those who wished to come the chance of bettering themselves. But like Johnson, Jefferson seems to have appreciated the risks of the quest. Who knew, especially in the perilous summer of 1776, what lay ahead? The “pursuit of Happiness” was enough.

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This I Believe

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan was born in England and educated at Oxford and Harvard. At 27, he became editor of The New Republic , a position he held for five years. As a writer, commentator and blogger, Sullivan addresses political and social issues, and advocates for gay rights.

I believe in life. I believe in treasuring it as a mystery that will never be fully understood, as a sanctity that should never be destroyed, as an invitation to experience now what can only be remembered tomorrow. I believe in its indivisibility, in the intimate connection between the newest bud of spring and the flicker in the eye of a patient near death, between the athlete in his prime and the quadriplegic vet, between the fetus in the womb and the mother who bears another life in her own body.

I believe in liberty. I believe that within every soul lies the capacity to reach for its own good, that within every physical body there endures an unalienable right to be free from coercion. I believe in a system of government that places that liberty at the center of its concerns, that enforces the law solely to protect that freedom, that sides with the individual against the claims of family and tribe and church and nation, that sees innocence before guilt and dignity before stigma. I believe in the right to own property, to maintain it against the benign suffocation of a government that would tax more and more of it away. I believe in freedom of speech and of contract, the right to offend and blaspheme, as well as the right to convert and bear witness. I believe that these freedoms are connected -- the freedom of the fundamentalist and the atheist, the female and the male, the black and the Asian, the gay and the straight.

I believe in the pursuit of happiness. Not its attainment, nor its final definition, but its pursuit. I believe in the journey, not the arrival; in conversation, not monologues; in multiple questions rather than any single answer. I believe in the struggle to remake ourselves and challenge each other in the spirit of eternal forgiveness, in the awareness that none of us knows for sure what happiness truly is, but each of us knows the imperative to keep searching. I believe in the possibility of surprising joy, of serenity through pain, of homecoming through exile.

And I believe in a country that enshrines each of these three things, a country that promises nothing but the promise of being more fully human, and never guarantees its success. In that constant failure to arrive -- implied at the very beginning -- lies the possibility of a permanently fresh start, an old newness, a way of revitalizing ourselves and our civilization in ways few foresaw and one day many will forget. But the point is now. And the place is America.

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Talk of the nation, sullivan discusses the diminishing influence of britain, sullivan discusses gay marriage and gay rights, web resources.

Principle of Individual Rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of One’s Own Happiness

Essay Read By Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” As most Americans will recognize, these are words from the Declaration of Independence.

Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College, in his beautiful and insightful book: The Founders’ Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It ,” writes: “The Founders understood [the Declaration and Constitution] to be connected, to supply together the principles and the details of government, to be a persuasive and durable unity.” [i]

Most Americans have never encountered Thomas Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration [ii] and are not aware the Declaration went through significant “wordsmithing” on its path to approval on July 4, 1776. In his draft, I particularly prefer Jefferson’s more powerful: “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable ” to the final, “ self-evident .” On the other hand, other sentences in Jefferson’s draft clearly benefited from the collaboration of the Congress, even while Jefferson later complained his work had been “mangled.” The judgment of historian Carl Becker was that “Congress left the Declaration better than it found it.” [iii]

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Here Jefferson is of course referring to the “certain unalienable Rights” we have been “endowed by [our] Creator.” These natural, unalienable rights derive from natural law. In a 1775 newspaper essay entitled “The Farmer Refuted,” Alexander Hamilton explains the relationship between natural law and natural rights this way:

“To grant that there is a supreme intelligence who rules the world and has established laws to regulate the actions of his creatures; and still to assert that man, in a state of nature, may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, appears to a common understanding altogether irreconcilable. Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature … Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind … The Sacred Rights of Mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of the Divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.” (Emphasis added)

Indispensably obligatory? Sir William Blackstone explains why:

“Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being. A being independent of any other, has no rule to pursue, but such as he prescribes to himself; but a state of dependence will inevitably oblige the inferior to take the will of him, on whom he depends, as the rule of his conduct; not indeed in every particular, but in all those points wherein his dependence consists. This principle, therefore, has more or less extent and effect, in proportion as the superiority of the one and the dependence of the other is greater or less, absolute or limited. And consequently, as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his Maker’s will.” [iv]

If there was one political principle which was ubiquitous during the founding period, it was the natural, unalienable rights of the colonists. Early Americans almost never missed an opportunity to proclaim them. As Thomas West argues, “ the founders shared a ‘theoretically coherent understanding’ of politics rooted in natural rights philosophy .” [v]

While Jefferson directly lists only three unalienable rights, other rights, both individual and collective, are hidden in plain sight. These include:

• The right of a people “to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.”
• The right “to alter or to abolish [an old government], and institute new government.” (Note: this right can also be seen as a duty! )
• The right to secure their unalienable and civil rights through the institution of government.
• The right to delegate power to government, through the people’s consent.

We must also note that Jefferson’s use of “the pursuit of happiness” is unusual. The normal “trio” of essential rights was “Life, Liberty and Property .” We find property mentioned in most “rights” documents from the founding period: “pursuit of happiness” is an outlier. John Adams, in A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America ( 1787), reminds us:

“Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty.…The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.”

But as Thomas Paine warns us:

“[P]roperty will ever be unequal …. Industry, superiority of talents, dexterity of management, extreme frugality, fortunate opportunities, or the opposite, or the means of those things, will ever produce that effect, without having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of avarice and oppression; and besides this there are some men who, though they do not despise wealth, will not stoop to the drudgery or the means of acquiring it, nor will be troubled with it beyond their wants or their independence; while in others there is an avidity to obtain it by every means not punishable; it makes the sole business of their lives, and they follow it as a religion. All that is required with respect to property is to obtain it honestly, and not employ it criminally; but it is always criminally employed when it is made a criterion for exclusive rights.” [vi]

Is there a relationship between property and other rights? To James Madison there certainly was: “In its larger and juster meaning, it [property] embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to everyone else the like advantage… In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions, and in the free communication of them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the professions and practice dictated by them. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right in his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.” 9 Madison then explains that “conscience is the most sacred of all property … more sacred than his castle.” [vii]

With “property” aside, the unalienable rights of Life and Liberty are relatively easy to understand, but a right to “pursue happiness” begs further explanation.

In his First Inaugural Address, George Washington explained: “There exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.” Jefferson would agree. But perhaps we should first clarify what the pursuit of happiness did not mean. To America’s founders, it was not the pursuit of licentiousness, the pursuit of base pleasure or the pursuit of wealth for wealth’s sake. John Locke warns us: “mistake not imaginary for real happiness” [viii]

“[T]he “pursuit of happiness” as envisaged by [John Locke] and by Jefferson was not merely the pursuit of pleasure, property, or self-interest (although it includes all of these). It is also the freedom to be able to make decisions that result in the best life possible for a human being, which includes intellectual and moral effort. We would all do well to keep this in mind when we begin to discuss the “American” concept of happiness.” [ix]

[i] Larry Arnn, The Founders’ Key; The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It , Nashville, 2012, p.11.

[ii] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0176-0004.

[iii] Carl Becker, Declaration of Independence, New York, 1922, p. 209.

[iv] Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Section 2, Of the Nature of Laws in General, accessed at: https://www.laits.utexas.edu/poltheory/blackstone/cle.int.s02.html.

[v] Thomas West, The Political Theory of the American Founding: Natural Rights, Public Policy, and the Moral Conditions of Freedom, 2017.

[vi] Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1795.

[vii] Kurland, Philip B. The Founders’ Constitution . Vol. 1. Chicago , IL: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1987, p.598.

[viii] John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1689, accessed at https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/locke-the-works-vol-1-an-essay-concerning-human-understanding-part-1.

[ix] Anonymous, accessed at https://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/john-locke/.

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The Meaning of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”

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Brown: As college campus ‘protests’…

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Brown: as college campus ‘protests’ metastasize, hawk hill celebrates life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, campus sets example of peaceful debate.

Apparently, CUAD includes “Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace to protest what they describe as the university’s ‘continued financial investment in corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and military occupation of Palestine,’ according to its news release.”

“For Jewish students, protests stir fear, anger, hope, and questions,” based on an article by Laura Meckler and Michelle Boorstein for The Washington Post, updated on April 28.

“Every value that I hold in my heart is in tension with another principle which I hold deeply right now,” said Dahlia Soussan, a junior at Barnard College which is affiliated with Columbia.

“In the days that followed the protests, her anger and sadness would grow. So would her frustration, as she saw friends unwilling to take a stand against what she saw as anti-Semitism on campus.

“When she went home to Toronto for the Jewish holiday of Passover, part of her did not want to come back to New York. But she did.”

“For Jewish college students, this is a moment of intense and sometimes conflicting emotions as many college campuses erupt in loud protests against Israel’s conduct in the war and, in some cases, its existence — all while the deadly war in Gaza presses on and Israeli — and American— hostages remain in captivity.

“It adds up to profound questions over what it means to be a young Jew in America in 2024.

“For some, the overriding feeling is one of fear and pain.

“Others have joined with the protesters, seeing the opposition to the war in Gaza as an opportunity to live out Jewish values, taught while growing up, about justice and the value of human life.

“And many others are conflicted, seeing nuance when it feels like so many around them see black and white.”

As Rabbi Jill Jacobs, a human rights advocate who helps train rabbinical students and others, opined, “Jewish students are left pinballing between emotions – worry over Israel’s safety and the fate of the hostages, fear of rising anti-Semitism at home, empathy for Palestinians.

“They are horrified by what is happening in Gaza and also by what happened on Oct. 7 and by anti-Semitism,” Rabbi Jacobs said. The students do not see enough models for how to hold it all.”

According to The Washington Post, “Columbia President Shafik told members of the House Committee on Education ‘that balancing the free speech rights of those who want to protest with the rights of Jewish students to be free of harassment and discrimination at Columbia has been the central challenge on campus.’

“Her hearing followed one in December in which three other university presidents – from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT – were scrutinized over their testimony before Congress, during which they declined to say calls for the genocide of Jews would violate campus policies.

“The leaders of Harvard and Penn later resigned,” as reported by The Washington Post in an article titled, “How antiwar student protests are spreading across U.S. universities,” by Jonathan Edwards, Reshma Kirpalani, Hannah Natanson, and  Júlia Ledur , updated April 24.

A comment in The Washington Post by a reader who goes by “Aransasi” states, “I think we’re seeing an abject failure by the mainstream American press, in not telling the public that it appears the violent campus takeovers we are seeing have a foreign terrorist organization as a shot-caller and event planner.

“It looks like the FBI is warning campus police and their adjacent local police about the ‘campus take-over plans.”

“The attempted takeover at UT Austin mimics what is happening elsewhere in the USA.

“If you’ve got college-age children or grandchildren, or even teenagers who are driving or roaming around urban areas on their own, to keep those kids safe, you’ve got to warn them to stay away from these protests and encampments.

“Tell them to not even walk by them. You as an adult should stay away too. The cops are not messing around, because of the connection between the protest organizers and shot-callers and a terrorist organization.”

In other words, be safe and follow the lead of SJU students, that is, go to class, debate vigorously, respect the points of view of others, work well, and defend democracy and free speech peacefully.

And, celebrate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the face of the hatred and threatened violence of ill-intentioned and mean-spirited disruptors.

Mary Brown, a weekly columnist for Main Line Media News, teaches Latin at Saint Joseph’s University.

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