American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence

From one of today's foremost authorities on the era of the American Revolution, the most important book on the Declaration of Independence since Carl Becker's classic study published seventy-five years ago.

Pauline Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity & the moral standard by which we live as a nation. It is truly 'American Scripture', and Maier tells how it came to be--from the Declaration's birth in the hard and tortuous struggle by which Americans arrived at Independence to the ways in which, in the 19th century, the document itself became sanctified.

She describes the transformation of the 2nd Continental Congress into a national government, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, and with more authority than the colonists would ever have conceded to the British Parliament; the great difficulty in making the decision for Independence; the influence of Paine's Common Sense, which shifted the terms of debate; and the political maneuvers that allowed Congress to make the momentous decision.

In Maier's hands, the Declaration of Independence is brought close to us. She lets us hear the voice of the people in the other 'declarations' of 1776: the local resolutions--most of which have gone unnoticed in the past two centuries--that explained, advocated, & justified Independence and undergirded Congress' work. She discloses the origins of key ideas and phrases in the Declaration and unravels the complex story of its drafting and of the group-editing job which angered Thomas Jefferson.

She also reveals what happened to the Declaration after the signing & celebration: how it was largely forgotten and then revived to buttress political arguments of the 19th century; and, most important, how Abraham Lincoln ensured its persistence as a living force in American society.

Finally, she shows how by the very act of venerating the Declaration as we do--by holding it as sacrosanct, akin to holy writ--we may actually be betraying its purpose & power.

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