Misha Medvedchuk
Ph. D. Wood
Honors US History
14/09/2023
Maier, Pauline. Equality and Rights.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. PP. 189-208.
The declaration of Independence indeed was revolutionary manifesto that was focused on freedom
of the United States but even though it talked about men’s equality did it
ever happen? Maier argues that Thomas Jefferson and Adams were people who stood in the
beginnings of the United States. They stood at the beginning of the Declaration
of Independence. This manifesto was something that Jefferson wanted to gift to the land that raised
him, the land he loved. The main thing that Jefferson and Adams wanted
to achieve was to be free from Britain, but the main thing the community wanted to achieve was to
be equal and free by any means. Not only did its reference to men’s equal
creation concern people in a state of nature before government was established, be the document’s
original function was to end the previous regime, not to lay down
principles to guide and limit its successor. (192) Jefferson became a Christlike figure whose
“disembodied spirit was…upborne by the blessings of ten million Freemen” in
a fanciful Fourth of July ascension. People were happy. Not only happy, but they were finally free
of Britain’s tyranny. But were they free of themselves? Were they free
and were they equal? Maier talks about that even though this manifesto was talking about all men’s
equal rights there was nothing that could prove the rights of men. This is
what men wanted to achieve. The convention finally amended the Mason draft so it said that “all
men are by nature equally free and independent” and had “certain inherent
rights” that they could not yield for prosperity by any compact “when they enter into a state of
society.” (193) The movement of Civil Rights has begun. All men are created qual. This is what was
the main topic at the Virginia Convention in June 1776. All men have the
right to live, and the right to choose. More people started worrying about
inequality in their society. Over the years, free men and slaves fought for their freedoms and
equality and Lincoln was one of those. He was a great statesman and by the
mid-nineteenth century, he made the Declaration of Independence the document that established
society. He understood that it might cause the War, but freedoms were more
important. The Declaration of Independence Lincoln left posterity, the “character of our liberties,”
was not and could not have been his solitary creation. (208) Even though
Lincoln established the rights of men, people chose to Declaration of Independence to be something
that spoke for both groups.
1. What the question does the Author ask?
“How people reacted to the Declaration of Independence”
“Were people equal as it was stated in the Declaration of Independence”
c2. What is the Author’s thesis?
“It was the American people who chose to make of it. At once a legacy and a new conception, a
document that spoke both for the revolutionaries and for their descendants,
who confronted issues the country's fathers had never known or failed to resolve, binding one
generation after another in a continuing act of national self-definition.”
3. What is the Evidence that the Author uses?
The author uses quotes: “Time was,” a speaker in Newburyport, Massachusetts, noted when
Jefferson’s character.”
The author uses Conventional records.
4. Maier’s article American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence speaks to Brewer’s
article “Negro Property Owners in Seventeenth-Century Virginia” in
terms of human rights. People are equal and everyone shall have the right to choose and the right to
live where and how they want.
