From the Rights of Englishmen to the Laws of Nature: The Road to the Declaration

Podcast: Consequential Actions Podcast · Jeff Kellick

Opublikowano: 2026-10-25

From the Rights of Englishmen to the Laws of Nature: The Road to the Declaration In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration called its truths "sacred and undeniable." Those two words were struck through, and a new one was written above them: self-evident. A self-evident truth needs no charter, no statute, and no ancient constitution. In 1765 the colonists stood on their charters as Englishmen. By 1776 they claimed rights from the laws of nature. That appeal was there from the start, in James Otis's 1764 pamphlet, beside his pledge to...