How the Declaration of Independence Made America”

I’m delighted to report that Michael Auslin, a Distinguished Research Fellow here at Hoover, will be guest-blogging this week about his new book. From the publisher’s description:

The inspiring story of the Declaration of Independence—the first to take us from its drafting by Thomas Jefferson to today—charting the many lives of a document that captures the soul of America and has united generations around its defiant ideals, published for the 250th anniversary of America‘s founding.

Quiet and politically untested, Thomas Jefferson was not the obvious choice to draft a statement of principles explaining why the American colonies were breaking ties with the King of England. His soaring rhetoric would inspire generations of Americans to live up to the founders’ dreams. National Treasure is the gripping story of our most revered founding relic, as a physical object and a set of ideals that have made America what it is today.

An award-winning historian, Michael Auslin take us from the boarding house in Philadelphia where Jefferson put quill to paper to the Declaration’s covert signing, dissemination in the doldrums of the revolutionary war, and long, harrowing, and ultimately hallowed afterlife. We follow the parchment as it is hauled out of a soon-to-be-burning Washington in 1814 and see it hidden in a dank cellar, posted in classrooms, recited on village greens, printed on handkerchiefs, and used to sell insurance and bundle coal. An inspiration to both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis in the Civil War, it has grown more important for each new generation. While FDR and Churchill celebrated its commitment to freedom from tyranny, the document itself was lowered into a bunker at Fort Knox. After the war, its precious ink fading, it was painstakingly preserved and enshrined.

Through it all, Jefferson’s words have inspired implausibly varied causes, from suffragists and civil rights leaders to groups waging war on the US government. As Jefferson had hoped, the principles enshrined in the Declaration became a beacon to the world. But what lessons should we take from it today? Can this statement of ideals in whose name the signers pledged their lives and sacred honor bring a disparate nation together? As we gather to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founders’ bold experiment in democracy, Auslin reminds us that this enduring document was not just a call for freedom and equality but an eloquent statement of the principles that bind us together.

Michael Auslin is the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Prior to that, he was an associate professor of history at Yale. He wrote National Treasure as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library of Congress’s John W. Kluge Center and an American Heritage Partners Fellow at the Society of the Cincinnati’s American Revolution Institute. He writes a Substack, The Patowmack Packet, on Washington, DC, past and present, and lives in Virginia.

And from the blurbs:

“Even 250 candles on the nation’s birthday cake cannot be as illuminating as Michael Auslin’s fascinating story of the making, and still undiminished resonance, of the world’s most consequential political document. His mind-opening book closes a question that is currently hotly contested. Is ours a creedal nation? Yes! Auslin supplies the exclamation mark.”
—George F. Will, author of American Happiness and Discontents

“The Declaration—both the parchment and its principles—have had an eventful history. Michael Auslin deftly walks us through each chapter, as we have forgotten the document, mangled it, mythologized it, hijacked it, and every once in a while even lived up to it. A nimble, captivating view of the defiant 1,320 words that have knit themselves into every chapter of the last 250 years, only gaining in importance along the way.”
—Stacy Schiff, author of The Revolutionary

“Deeply researched and propulsively written, National Treasure follows the Declaration of Independence from its birth in 1776 to today. Michael Auslin has given us much to debate and much to celebrate. Treating our shared American scripture as a set of ideas, a national covenant, and a material artifact that continues to evolve, he has uncovered a history that will inspire, provoke, and delight even readers deeply familiar with our founding vision.”
—Jane Kamensky, President & CEO of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello

“For the most powerful nation in the world to be founded on a piece of paper is remarkable enough, but for it to continue to inspire the spread of liberty and democracy a quarter of a millennium later—in ways the original signers could never have imagined—is truly extraordinary. Scrupulously researched and beautifully written, this book reads like an adventure story. Michael Auslin’s intimate history of the document that changed the world is scholarship at its best: witty, fascinating, and never more relevant.”
—Andrew Roberts, author of The Last King of America

“As we commemorate our nation’s 250th at a time of political division, we can strengthen our shared bonds by appreciating the profound story of our Declaration of Independence. In this fascinating and well-researched book, Michael Auslin weaves the glorious narrative of this document—as a piece of parchment, as a symbol of enduring principles, and as a cultural object—from its inception to our day. It’s a marvelous way to celebrate who we are, and who we should be.”
—Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin

“An engaging account of the fortunes of the document . . . Auslin does good historical footwork . . . Welcome reading in this bisesquicentennial year.”
—Kirkus Reviews