"We hold these truths..."

From Gordon S. Wood's "The Five Greatest Words in the Declaration":

In the Declaration of Independence, the 250^th anniversary of which we are celebrating this year, the Founders put down five significant words that came to define America’s culture — “all men are created equal.” No phrase could have been more radical, more momentous. Even the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789, with its statement that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights,” does not have the same power and significance. ....

This radical idea, of course, had roots in Christianity that went back centuries, but by the 18^th century, for many of the enlightened, it had taken on a literal and secular significance that remains the foundation of America’s democratic faith. In other words, what separated individuals from one another, what explained the obvious inequalities of society, were the circumstances in which people were raised, the environments they experienced through their senses that shaped their lives. A child’s mind, according to a Quaker schoolmaster in Philadelphia in 1793, was “soft wax, which will take the least stamp you put on it, so let it be your care, who teach, to make the stamp good, that the wax be not hurt.” Education, which had been important only to New England Puritans, suddenly became an American obsession.

And not just the education of elites but of all the people. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 put it best, decreeing that “religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” ....

Once those who considered themselves enlightened realized that they could change people’s minds and character through education, they began to feel morally responsible for the weak and downtrodden. In the minds of society’s leaders, concern and compassion replaced the smugness and indifference of the ancien régime. If the culture — what people thought and believed — was man-made and could be changed, then the status of the lowly and deprived could be reformed and improved. ....

Slavery existed in a multitude of cultures for thousands of years without substantial criticism — until the late 18^th century and the American Revolution. Although many modern historians have called the Revolution’s inability to free all the slaves its greatest failure, they have committed the great sin of anachronism by assuming that everyone in the past must have known that slavery was an evil. These historians, therefore, have not fully appreciated that the Revolution defied a world that for millennia had taken slavery for granted. It was the Revolution that, for the first time in history, made slavery a problem, and it led to the first instance of states’ abolishing the practice. Not only did eight Northern states abolish slavery in the aftermath of the Declaration of Independence, but slaveholders in the Southern states were thrown on the defensive and, for the first time, had to justify an institution that they hitherto had taken for granted. ....

The meaning of these five words in the Declaration of Independence was expanded in the succeeding decades to the point where every white man felt he was equal to every other such American. Once invoked, the idea of equality could not be stopped, and it tore through American culture and society with awesome power. .... (more)

Gordon S. Wood, "The Five Greatest Words in the Declaration," National Review, March, 2026.