Season 3, Episode 6 | The Declarations That Shaped the Declaration

What if the story of American independence didn’t actually begin with Jefferson at his writing desk? What if long before the Declaration of Independence, more than a hundred towns, counties, militias, and even grand juries had already taken matters into their own hands and declared themselves free of Britain?

In this episode of This Constitution, Savannah Eccles Johnston and Matthew Brogdon uncover the astonishing world of forgotten declarations that came before July 4, 1776.

Savannah and Matthew trace how these early statements emerged from every corner of American life: Massachusetts town meetings, South Carolina grand juries, militia battalions in Pennsylvania, and even groups like the New York Mechanics Union. These weren’t fringe ideas. They were the building blocks of a national identity forming from the bottom up. Long before Congress acted, Americans were already asserting natural rights, condemning monarchy, and proclaiming themselves a new people.

They also walk through the most famous example, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by George Mason, whose language helped inspire both Jefferson and the later Bill of Rights. Along the way, they explore why virtue, frugality, temperance, and justice were once considered essential political principles, and how Americans gradually shifted from moral to material thinking in the Progressive Era.

This episode reveals a powerful truth: America wasn’t created by one declaration. It was created by hundreds of voices speaking the same political language long before the nation was officially born.

In This Episode

• (00:00) Introduction
• (00:52) The Quill Project and early declarations
• (01:25) Season of declaring independence
• (02:31) Who issued declarations?
• (03:31) Examples of local declarations
• (04:43) Massachusetts town declarations
• (05:51) Elements of declarations
• (07:48) Declaration as national restatement
• (08:46) Virginia Declaration of Rights
• (10:41) Philosophical statements and rights
• (11:02) Virginia Declaration’s enduring language
• (12:44) Virtue and state constitutions
• (16:56) Virtue’s decline in the Progressive Era
• (19:23) Common elements in all declarations
• (20:09) What does declaration writing say about America
• (21:35) Federal character and consensus building
• (22:16) Distinctly American rights and traditions
• (23:03) Conclusion and further resources

Notable Quotes

• (00:44) “Politico estimated that there are over 100 such declarations, but now we have them all in one location.”— Savannah Eccles Johnston
• (03:37) “There's a grand jury indictment in Charleston, the 23rd of April in 1776, that declares that the local government is, in the opinion of the local government, the American colonies are independent.” — Matthew Brogdon
• (05:40) “Thomas Jefferson says, the Declaration is just a statement of the American mind. And quite literally, that's what it is.”— Savannah Eccles Johnston
• (07:25) “You should really think of these like a list of elements. Grievances. Independence. Form of government. Statement of political principles.” — Matthew Brogdon
• (08:25) “So who really is the spirit of America, Massachusetts? Is it you or is it North Carolina? I'm going for Massachusetts.” — Savannah Eccles Johnston
• (09:22) “That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights...That's just the philosophical statement of the Declaration of Independence in a little clunkier form.” — Savannah Eccles Johnston
• (23:03) “Let's end with that line that these declarations, both the National Declaration and the State Declarations, the local declaration, the Association declarations, are what constituted America.” — Matthew Brogdon

Transcript

This Constitution - Season 3 Episode 6

Intro:

[00:00]  - 00:10]

We the people do ordain and establish this Constitution. 

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[00:10 - 00:16]

Welcome to This Constitution. My name is Savannah Eccles Johnston.

Matthew Brogdon:

[00:16 - 00:17]

And I'm Matthew Brogdon.

Savannah Eccles Johnston:

[00:17 - 00:52]

Today we are going to talk about the declarations that precede the Declaration of Independence, because it's far from the first one. And in honor of the Declaration of Independence, today I'm wearing my 1776 Declaration hoodie from the center for Constitutional Studies. We have swag, you should check us out. So there are a lot of local and county or so town, county and state declarations that come before the Declaration of Independence. Politico estimated that There are over 100 such declarations, but now we have them all in one location. Can you tell us about that?

Matthew Brogdon:

[00:52 - 05:40]

So there are a lot of them. The Quill Project, that we do a lot of work with, put online a resource collection of all the ones that we can obtain. We know there were others. It was. Finding them was difficult. So people weren't great at record keeping the 18th century. So a lot of times we know that things existed or that they happened. They're reported in the newspaper, but you may not be able to track down the actual specimen. But there are at least 87 or so that are actually published prior to July 4th or up through July 4th in that same season as the Declaration of Independence. Now, there may be some even earlier than that. So even back in 1775, there were towns and entities and other folks who may have been making statements to the effect that we ought to be independent of the British Crown and we're Americans or we're the people of Mecklenburg or whatever, as North Carolinians want to point out. But just in the season of declaring independence, sort of, if you put the bookmarks between sort of the British retreat from Boston in March of 1776, which is big victory. I mean, first American victory, the first hint that maybe we could win a war against the British up through the publication of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th in 1776. That's a season of deciding. With that retreat from Boston, with the publication of Tom Paine's Common Sense, which is galvanizing the American desire for independence, galvanizing public opinion. We produce a huge quantity of these things, so a lot of states produce them. 

So we could think about the people who actually produce them. Who does this? Like, what body? Because you don't actually just do this spontaneous. You can't be a newspaper editor somewhere, right? So who's doing it? Well, you could have states. So these are states that now feel themselves not to be colonies but to be states in some kind of new American union. So we got quite a few of those, not from all the states, but from quite a few of them. We've identified at least 13 counties. Sometimes you had local governments would do this. Counties, especially in the south, counties mattered. So better than half a dozen of those. Two of the more interesting examples came from bodies that we don't think of as being sort of political bodies that would do this sort of work, and that is grand juries. Especially in the South, South Carolina grand juries did this and militia regiments and other sort of what we might call quasi public groups. These are associations of citizens. In fact, sometimes they would even take the name associators. That actually meant associators was a sort of revolutionary term more or less for local regiments of militia. Right. We're all associating together for the common defense. 

So it give you a couple of examples of those. There's a grand jury indictment in Charleston 23 April in 1776 that declares that the local government is. In the opinion of the local government, the American colonies are independent. Ought to be that the grand jury operates as a representative, not of royal authority, the court, but of local authority. Some other good examples of this, militia regiments. So this is fascinating to me because the idea that we have militia regiments doing this, some of them included the Associators 4th Battalion of the City and Liberties of Philadelphia on 10 June issued one. The Elk Battalion militia in Chester county did this also in Pennsylvania. So this was very common in Pennsylvania. Also the New York Mechanics Union on 29 May issued a. A Declaration of Independence. So very interesting that Americans in very different settings, I think one of the most interesting and prolific of these though that account for well over half of the ones that we've collected are actually towns, towns from mostly, especially Massachusetts. So we have at least 56 examples of these. And if you wanted a list, you can get Pauline Mayer's book on the Declaration, American Scripture, put an appendix, Appendix A in the back, has a list of all these that she managed to find. Doesn't mean that's all of them. There are certainly more. She managed to find them. So there's been a list floating around for quite some time now. Nobody had ever put all of those in one place, which we did in this resource collection. But the biggest group of them come from Massachusetts Town. 54 Massachusetts townships got together and of course this is the New England Town Meeting. 54 Massachusetts townships got together and the New England town meeting drafted and published Declarations of independence starting in May and going right up through the publication of the Declaration in July. So some of this, you'll even see people refer to this sometimes as a kind of ratification of the Declaration of Independence

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[05:40 - 05:51]

Or Thomas Jefferson says, the Declaration is just a statement of the American mind. And quite literally, that's what it is. In terms of other declarations, he hasn't said anything that the other declarations aren't saying as well.

Matthew Brogdon:

[05:51 - 07:48]

And worth noting what some of the elements of these are. Yes, statements of grievances, the statement of independence itself, that is the statement that either these united colonies or this colony, or whatever the entity is, is and of right, ought to be free of British authority. That's an important statement. You gotta make the statement that you're actually independent. And then, of course, statements of political principles, which vary from place to place, you don't always get these. You more often, interestingly, got statements of political principles and state constitutions. So at the federal level, we think of having the Declaration of Independence states our political principles along with these grievances against the Crown and the Declaration of Independence. And then the Constitution lays out a form of government, right? And while the preamble to our Constitution mentions some political principles, you know, this is weird. The people of the United States, in order to do all these things, more perfect union, all that good stuff. It's not quite in the philosophic style. It's not the Declaration of the Declaration of Independence. The interesting thing is, in American states, their declarations of independence tended to confine themselves to grievances in a formal statement. It's a much more legalistic document. And it was the state constitution that would have a preamble, or sometimes this would be at the beginning of a Bill of Rights. States would actually refer to a Bill of Rights which would state not just the specific rights people had, but the principled basis for them. And so all of these things, you should really think of these, like a list of elements, things that American deliberative bodies can do. Grievances, independence, form of government, statement of political principles, or all things they do. Things, they may be doing those in different documents in different configurations at different times, but those are the sort of four things that founding documents are doing in this revolutionary period.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[07:48 - 08:31]

And again, our main point here is that the Declaration is not doing something unique. It is doing what these other deliberative bodies are already doing. It is simply a restatement at the national level of the American mind. So we're seeing all these elements. First and by the way, you mentioned that Massachusetts has 55 or 54, 54 townships. Four townships is real Spirit of America stuff from Massachusetts. But they have a competitor, and that is North Carolina, who is the first colony to call for independence. And the Halifax, they say, resolved the delegates for this colony be empowered to concur with the delegates of the other colonies in declaring independency. So who really is the spirit of America? Massachusetts. Is it you or is it North Carolina? I'm going for Massachusetts.

Matthew Brogdon:

[08:31 - 08:35]

Yeah, well, I mean, Massachusetts fired first.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[08:35 - 08:40]

Massachusetts fired first. And they had 54 different ones. This is just saying you can concur with other.

Matthew Brogdon:

[08:40 - 08:46]

Are we talking about words or are we talking about actions here? Because I think in both, you know, the New Englanders started shooting first.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[08:46 - 09:46]

Yeah. The south did not start this. All right, now let's talk about the single most famous one. It's the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Everyone knows about the Virginia Declaration of rights. This is June 1776, and this is written by George Mason. You will be shocked by some of the language in this because it just sounds like the Declaration plus the Bill of Rights. And in fact, Thomas Jefferson was very impressed by George Mason's writing ability. Although I rarely, rarely will compliment Thomas Jefferson, but he's the better writer here. There's a reason why it's Thomas Jefferson's Declaration and not George Mason's. So here is the first section. This will really set the stage for it. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity, namely the enjoyment of life and liberty with the means of acquiring and possessing property and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. That's just the philosophical statement of the Declaration of Independence in a little clunkier form. That's what it is.

Matthew Brogdon:

[09:46 - 10:11]

Yeah. This is very common to find these at the heads of constitutions. And Mason leads the way. Jefferson, incidentally, has a draft of this. This doesn't get published quite in time, but Mason actually sends Jefferson a draft. So the folks who are engaged in drafting the Declaration are sort of laying eyes on this and seeing it, which means, obviously, Jefferson thought he could improve on it.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[10:11- 10:13]

And he did.

Matthew Brogdon:

[10:13 - 10:16]

He could have said, actually, I can't do any better, let's just copy this in.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[10:16 - 11:02]

Yeah, but he did improve on it. But you made the point earlier that in these state constitutions, they often had these bills of rights, and at the beginning they'd have these beautiful philosophical statements and that's exactly what the Virginia Declaration of rights is. It's the theory of the Declaration of Independence, George Mason's version plus a Bill of Rights, and it's every right other than 9 and 10 from the US Bill of Rights is found in the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Here's an example that in all capital and or criminal prosecutions, a man has a right to demand the cause and nature of his accusation, to be confronted with the accusers and witnesses, to call for evidence in his favor, and to a speedy trial by an impartial jury of 12 men of his vicinage. So we're not reinventing the wheel when we get to the US Bill of Rights. We first got it in the Virginia Declaration of Rights.

Matthew Brogdon:

[11:02 - 11:34]

It's interesting too that this language in the Virginia Declaration that all men are by nature equally free and independent, even though I guess for us it's less famous than the language of the declaration in the 19th century, it maintained much more familiarity with political discourse, with common folks. A good example of this I don't know if we've talked about before, John Calhoun's organ speech where he basically says the Declaration's a pack of self evident lies.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[11:34 - 11:35]

This is the language he uses.

Matthew Brogdon:

[11:35 - 12:13]

Yeah, he actually cites the Virginia Declaration, not the Declaration of Independence. Even though it's Jefferson he'll go after. He'll say Jefferson got into a fit of enthusiasm, revolutionary enthusiasm, and made the statement about free and independent. And it is this language of all men are by nature equally free and independent that Calhoun is going to go after. As he says, just obviously not true. No person is born free or independent. Every person's born in subjection to their parents. He says only two people were ever made not born, and one of them was in subjection to the other. So it's Adam and Eve.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[12:13 - 12:15]

Kellon is the worst, he said.

Matthew Brogdon:

[12:15 - 12:23]

And everyone since then has been born to parents or an authority over them and into a political order to which they didn't consent. Yeah, you should notice they have to obey.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[12:23 - 12:38]

You should notice here though that for Calhoun the root of all distinction, betters and lessers authority, and therefore the justifications for slavery for Calhoun go back to the original male over female, that if there is male over female, then slavery is also justified.

Matthew Brogdon:

[12:38 - 12:39]

That's a wild implication.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[12:39 - 12:42]

That is Calhoun's implication though is he ties it back.

Matthew Brogdon:

[12:42 - 12:48]

All right, so that is a wild reading of the theology of men and women, but I don't think it's wild.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[12:48 - 13:36]

Well, let's argue about this later. We'll argue about this off camera all right, so let's get back to the Virginia Declaration of Rights. There is another line to this that I'd love to get your thoughts on. It's the second to last section. So it's going to say that no free government or the blessings of liberty can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles. This feels maybe a little unfamiliar in the national sense. You don't get something like this, the Declaration, or in the US Constitution. But this is very familiar, this kind of a statement at the state level that you have rights and a certain form of government is due by nature, but it only works if a people have justice and are moderate and temperate. It feels shocking to the modern mind to hear that.

Matthew Brogdon:

[13:36 - 14:06]

But it's almost as common as the statements of natural rights. State constitutions, almost universally from the founding era up through the 19th century, would include these lists of virtues that were essential for the common good. That republican government won't work unless your people look like this. And so natural rights, this notion of freedom, was always brigaded with virtue in the founding era and for much of American history, I think.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[14:06 - 14:18]

So do you think that it's a missed opportunity that this is not in the Declaration? Something like this, if you're going to include a grand philosophical statement, maybe it doesn't fit. But we often get the first half of the natural rights claim. We don't often get the second half claim.

Matthew Brogdon:

[14:18 - 16:19]

Well, we've been doing a lot of training with school teachers, civics teachers, in preparation for America 250 and going through the text of the Declaration. And the interesting part is most of these things are somewhere in the Declaration. There are actually references to at least 12 virtues in the Declaration of Independence, but they come mainly in the grievances. There is a mention in our principles of prudence. Prudence dictates governments, long established, not be overturned for light and transient causes. But there are references to courage, to moderation, to virtues of various kinds, to justice constantly in the list of grievances against the Crown. And those usually either come in the form of ways that the British monarchy has undermined those virtues, or pointing out the way in which the colonists are exercising the virtues and their resistance to those things. So the Declaration leaves them, mentions them in application. So rather than in the abstract statement, the Declaration points to them in their application in the revolutionary struggle. But it is important that state constitutions take a much more direct course of putting these front and center. Also very interesting, I heard a presentation, and now there's a book chapter that'll be out soon from John Dinan, the federalism scholar, state constitution scholar. He gave a paper on the use of virtue in state constitutions. And he said the interesting thing was, and we've talked about this on the podcast before, as states change their constitutions, which states have done fairly frequently, they often amended these lists, certain virtues would be taken out or added back in. For example, frugality would sometimes be taken out of the list, sometimes go back into the list. So there tended to be a bit of a cycle in which virtues we wanted to emphasize and we thought were most important for the common good.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[16:19 - 16:25]

That's the virtue, by the way, that I found most delightful in this list. And we don't talk about that one very much anymore.

Matthew Brogdon:

[16:25 - 16:26]

But frugality's not in there.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[16:26 - 16:29]

I mean, feels very Puritan, very New England.

Matthew Brogdon:

[16:29 - 17:51]

Temperance goes in and out. Temperance changes in its meaning because the temperance movement in America in the 19th century becomes a teetotaling movement. Temperance was understood as a very broad sort of application of the virtue of temperance, that you exercised moderation in the way that you approach the consumption of all sorts of things and indulgence in things. It wasn't abstention completely from various kinds of pleasures and so forth. So the meaning of these things changes. But this remains part and parcel of American constitutional discourse and American constitutional law. If we think of what we write in our Constitutions as our constitutional law, Americans continue to write and amend these lists of virtues right up into the 20th century. And sometime in the Progressive era, we just quit doing it. Sometime in the early 20th century, we just stopped talking about virtue. That is very interesting institutions. Politics became about other things. I think you can see this in the late 19th century with the emergence of sort of contest between, I don't want to reduce everything to ideas, because that's not really helpful. But you did get the emergence of a focus on material goods as opposed to spiritual and moral goods. And I think a lot of our political debates became about what moves the bottom line, what secures more material comfort, more material equality, more safety, things we could quantify.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[17:51 - 17:56]

And the suspicion of kind of the moral in politics.

Matthew Brogdon:

[17:56 - 18:08]

I think as a nation, we sort of became social scientists at some point in the Progressive Era, where we just sort of started looking and going, well, we're not interested in goods. We can't quantify how safe am I, how comfortable am I, how equal am I?

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[18:08 - 18:09]

That might have been a mistake.

Matthew Brogdon:

[18:09 - 18:16]

Measure that stuff all in sort of material terms. I can measure how much stuff I have, how much income I have, how much safety I have.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[18:16 - 18:16]

Right.

Matthew Brogdon:

[18:16 - 19:23]

I can't really measure how much virtue my neighbors have, how much of these spiritual and moral goods I enjoy as a member of a community. And we started debating the material goods solely. And I do think an awful lot, an awful lot of our political struggles have been bringing these back in. Whenever we start talking about these again, it becomes very controversial because we're not acculturated to it, where we start talking about moral goods. You see this in things like debates over public morality, free speech, abortion, marriage equality. Whenever we start having these debates, as soon as somebody starts bringing in sort of moral arguments, you'll even see people point to it, go, ah, that's sort of theistic. You can't employ those kinds of arguments because that belongs in the realm of religion or something. And that idea that moral reasoning and reasoning about moral goods and moral virtue was relegated sort of a non political realm of religion and politics was concerned with material goods only. It's totally foreign to the founding generation. That's something we had to learn as Americans. We became much more materialistic in this sense.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[19:23 - 20:09]

And so all of these county, these state, these random associations of mechanics, all of their declarations will have some of this theme in them. They may be very legalistic. They might include these kind of philosophical and moral statements. They might have these lists of rights like you see in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, obviously. But these are the common elements that already exist. Everything's already been said. The Declaration is just kind of a restatement at the national level. What does it say about the American political tradition that declaration writing with these three common elements mixed in was so common? What does it say that there were almost a hundred or over a hundred of these declarations written before you get to the Declaration? What does that say about us as a people and about this era?

Matthew Brogdon:

[20:09 - 20:23]

Well, I think 1. It confirms the argument that Tom Paine was making that we talked about in a previous episode to the effect that there was an American people, there was an American polity. I'm gonna go use an Aristotelian term.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[20:23 - 20:23]

Okay.

Matthew Brogdon:

[20:23 - 21:34]

There is an American polity, a sort of capital A. Americans exist. There's a set of political practices and predispositions and ways of doing things that are distinctively American. And they are somehow wrapped up in our doing things like this. There are also a set of ideas that we hold in common. Our objections to the way that the crown is doing things, which are rooted Ironically, in British constitutionalism itself, in many cases, we're stating British constitutional principles over against British practice in the colonies, but adding something to it. Right. The rejection of hereditary title. While we keep all sorts of other forms of authority and tradition. The notion that authority is hereditary is anathema to Americans. We discard that idea. We opt for natural rights and natural equality. That's crucially important. And I think it also means that Americans are not prone to. To simply identify a central authority and follow it. That's not the American way. If you find yourself pursuing a sort of great political cause and you've staked everything on getting a few people in the national capital who wield power to do it for you and to bring everybody along, that doesn't work.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[21:34 - 21:35]

Right.

Matthew Brogdon:

[21:35 -21:40]

It is deeply rooted in the American character, this sort of federal character.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[21:40 - 21:40]

Yes.

Matthew Brogdon:

[21:40 - 22:02]

That we do things collaboratively and it's a dynamic. It's not just one direction. It's not just local authorities telling the national authority we should declare independence. Here's how to do it and here's what to say. It's actually a back and forth. I mean, Congress had issued a lot of statements previously that these local folks are in conversation. Yeah, it is. It's a conversation and it builds into a national decision.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[22:02 - 22:03]

Right.

Matthew Brogdon:

[22:03 - 22:16]

So if you want to carry America into a great national decision on something and you haven't had this kind of back and forth, this building of a consensus at the local level, I think you're swimming against the current.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[22:16 - 22:52]

Well, it's important to note here, our amendment processes this conversation between national and state as well. So this is deeply embedded in the American character. Also, the rights we claim are due to humans by nature are very common through the colonies. This kind of self defense and militias, Second Amendment, you've got cruel and unusual punishment, the free press, freedom of religion. All of this is found commonly through all of these local declarations. Virginia Declaration of Rights. So there is something, as you said, distinctly American about declaration writing. And also it kind of creates us as a people as well.

Matthew Brogdon:

[22:52 - 23:03]

It constitutes us. Ooh, we don't know if you use that word, but it constitutes us as a people. These things that we say and whenever we find common ground on them, find a way of constituting the American people.

Savannah Eccles Johnston: 

[23:03 - 23:15]

Ooh, let's end with that line that these declarations, both the national declaration and the state declarations, the local declaration, the association declarations, are what constituted America.

Matthew Brogdon:

[23:15 - 23:21]

They are. And if you want to learn more about them, be able to look at them for yourself. Go check out the Quill Project collection on the Declaration of Independence. 

Outro:

[23:21 - 24:08]

The Constitution is more than parchment under glass at the National Archives. It's a blueprint for American self government that shapes every part of our civic life, from the rights we cherish to the laws we live under. We explore the ongoing battle over the meaning and relevance of America's founding document. This Constitution will equip you to engage the most pressing political questions of our time. Join us every two weeks as we hash out constitutional questions together. This podcast is ordained and established by the Center for Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University, the home of Utah's Civic Thought and Leadership Initiative.