The Declaration of Independence created a new nation, and has guided the United States ever since. Historian Steven Sarson argues in his new book,The Course of Human Events: The Declaration of Independence and the Historical Origins of the United States that the Declaration looks backward, to British history and Biblical and Classical history, as much as forward.
Sarson looks at the structure of the Declaration’s arguments, about “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” and the story of the colonists’ “Immigration and Settlement” in the New World to show how the Declaration’s authors rooted its argument in their understanding of the world drawn from their knowledge of history. The indictment of the British government’s attempts to constrain them is also rooted in historical understanding of governance, and from this Americans would frame new governments, organizing them to preserve their lives, liberties, and pursuits of happiness.
Steve Sarson, a Professor of American Civilization at Jean Mouline University in Lyon, France, looks at the Declaration with fresh eyes, as he has been teaching it to French students curious about its meaning both to our world, and the world of its writers. The ideas of the 18th-century, drawn from history, continue to inform our world, and Sarson shows how rooted they were in history as its authors understood it.
