Michael Hattem

It's, it becomes a, you know, it, I mean, you mentioned earlier, like there were some earlier kind of examples of,

like the English Bill of Rights, but those early examples are not exactly the same as the Declaration.

Declaration becomes a sort of model

declaring independence.

It becomes a sort of how-to book for how do you declare independence in a way that is persuasive to the international community.

At the same time, that was also taking place in the United States in the 19th century by marginalized groups referring to the Declaration

In justifying their causes, like the abolitionists, like the women's rights movements, which was a precursor of the suffragist movement, like the first sort of nascent working class trade union groups in the 1930s were issuing the Working Man's Declaration of Independence.

It happens in the United States in the early 19th century, early to mid 19th century.

It happens all over the world, and that's a function of the nature of the document, the structure of the document, is that Jefferson's document in its form and structure and in its language was –

A lot of it, all of it besides the grievances, essentially, is universal.

Yep.

Right?

It's applicable to everybody, and everybody seems to have listened and used it for all it was worth.

Exactly.

I mean, I once heard the historian Annette Gordon-Reed talk about those contradictions or that paradox and say, all individuals, we all have ideals for ourselves that we don't always live up to, but we aspire to live up to them, right?

And in some ways, I think that really gets at the crux of the document.

Lincoln was one of the first to say this too.

I mean, the abolitionists and then later Lincoln built on it, but was the idea that the declaration, the preamble was not meant to be a statement of reality on July 2nd, 1776, that it was, that it was meant to be an aspirational statement.

And it was, these ideals were ideals that maybe were, are, are never fully achievable, but that the, the,

The American experiment is about trying to more fully realize those ideals over time.