Foundations of a Nation
To understand the foundations of America, we need to dig into the key texts and thinkers who have helped define our nation. On the "Foundations of a Nation" podcast Alex Tuckness, Chair of the Political Science Department at Iowa State University, talks with his friend, Barrett Randall, about the ideas that have shaped America. Season 1 looks at the Declaration of Independence."
Foundations of a Nation
The Sources of the Declaration
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Barrett and Alex talk about how Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence and the the sources he used, and Jefferson's unique contributions.
To understand the foundations of America, we need to dig into the key texts and thinkers who've helped define our nation. I'm Barrett Randall, and I'm not an academic, but I'm also not afraid to talk to one. On the Foundations of a Nation podcast, I have conversations with my friend Alex Tuckness, Chair of the Political Science Department at Iowa State University, about the ideas that have shaped America. Welcome to Foundations of a Nation, a podcast that explores the ideas that shaped America. In season one, we're looking at ideas that shape the Declaration of Independence. I'm Barrett Randall. I run a golf course.
SPEAKER_00And I'm Alex Tugnis. I'm chair of the political science department at Iowa State. And we're going to be your hosts.
SPEAKER_01In this episode, we're going to be talking about John Locke and other influential people who deepen our understanding of the Declaration of Independence.
SPEAKER_00When Jefferson was working on the Declaration of Independence, he didn't have a ton of time to sit down and spend years writing this thing. They were in the middle of a war. There was a lot of business that the Continental Congress had to get to. So he's having to work quickly. And one of the things he had was a document written by another of the founders, George Mason. And this was a draft declaration of rights for the state of Virginia. So Mason and Jefferson are both Virginians. So now these are both key Americans from the founding period who are, you know, writing, you know, just before the Declaration of Independence. And when I read this, you're going to see Mason is even closer to the declaration than Locke was. But you're also going to see a lot of these same ideas that were in Locke in Mason as well. So here's what Mason wrote. He said that all men are born equally free and independent and have certain inherent natural rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, a compact would be like a contract or agreement, deprive or divest their posterity. So that's him talking about the idea of it being inalienable. Like these rights you have, you can't alienate them. You can't give them away. And so you're not allowed to like uh say, well, I've got liberty, but I give away the liberty of myself and my children, and I give it all to the king. Sure. You can't because it's an inalienable right. Uh so he doesn't use the word inalienable, but it's the same idea. Um, among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty with the means of acquiring and possessing property and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. So remember, Locke's version was life, liberty, and property. Jefferson's version was life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. George Mason has all four of them in there, right? He's got life, liberty, property, which he means the ability to acquire property, not necessarily having a certain amount of it, uh, and um the ability to obtain happiness, right? And so you can see, like Jefferson, he's kind of looking at this, and this is one of the sources he's using uh as he's figuring out how to write uh the declaration.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell So this is historically I I feel like I have family in Virginia. This is something they lean on. They have the first Bill of Rights or Declaration of Rights. So this passed in Virginia, correct?
SPEAKER_00Well, so this was a draft. This is a draft, right? And so um, you know, Virginia gets to this later. The the the point here would be Jefferson had access to it when it was just proposed but not accepted. Okay. And so he's got this on his desk, right, as he's working on the declaration and he's trying to think through how do I kind of sum up kind of the larger set of ideas that um kind of capture uh what this revolution is about. And and like one of the things Jefferson would say later on, so like imagine him now, like they had the revolution, he was president for a while, you know, he's now like a retired elder statesman. You know, people would ask him about the declaration. And one of the things Jefferson would say is, you know, my goal was not to be completely original. Uh there was a variety of sources I looked at. Locke was one of them, but he mentioned several others uh as well. Uh, but he says, what I was trying to do is kind of capture kind of the spirit of what we were all thinking when we did this. Right. So if his goal was to be completely original, you might say, well, I man, he's he's he's using a lot of George Mason's ideas here. Um, and George Mason is using a lot of John Locke's ideas here, right? Or maybe there's even more people in between, you know, in the in the chain of ideas. Um, but if you're if you're wanting to try to capture, you know, this is what kind of the prevailing wisdom was among the colonists who were in favor of independence, then it's actually a plus, not a minus, to be using uh, you know, other people's ideas because this is part of how you know you're not the only one thinking this. So was Mason a contemporary of Jefferson? Yeah. Yeah. These they yeah, they they they knew each other, they were contemporaries of each other. Um he's a peer.
SPEAKER_01This was a draft for Virginia specifically, not and so Jefferson's adaptation was look, we're gonna use this for our newfound, unified coalition of states.
SPEAKER_00Correct. I mean so he I mean, so he so part of what's going on here, right, is at one level, you know, each of the states at some level thinks of themselves as kind of being independent. Right. Right? Because they each have their own legislature. Correct. You know, being a Virginian is a big deal if you're from Virginia. Yep. Um and like the way the Continental Congress worked, they couldn't just like do a majority vote and say, okay, you know, 10 of us are in favor of independence, three are against, so we all have to, you know, go fight the English. Because at that point, each state saw itself as still having kind of, you know, sovereignty situated within its own legislature. And so there's all this back and forth going on where members of the legislature uh in the state would give instructions to their delegates who go off to the Continental Congress about what they were allowed to do and what they were not allowed to do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so it's partly a question of like convincing people in your state to be in favor of independence. Um, and then you've got to get all these people uh you know on board at the same time at the level of the Continental Congress to get them on board uh as well. So it it's it's some of both, right? So uh even as this process is going on, there's still questions about how much central authority there's gonna be, right? So after the war is over, they don't write the Constitution first, they write the Articles of Confederation. And the Articles of Confederation really are protecting the sovereignty of each of the states. Uh so there is still some of like each state saying, hey, we need to have our own declaration. So like some states have their own declarations. There's even like you can find particular towns that write their own like declarations of independence. Like so declarations of independence are being written at all these different levels and the and the ideas are kind of flowing around. Um what are they declaring independence from the U.S.
SPEAKER_01from from Britain and the the king. Okay. Yeah. So individuals, individual states are doing that at this point. Yeah. Yeah. So even before the unified Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So you you've got the basically think of it this way: there's there's just discussions going on at all levels. And part of what's interesting about America is it's created these different spaces where people can come together and do politics. Yeah. Right. So you can find examples of some of these like declarations in like the equivalent like of a town hall meeting, right? Where people in a particular locality, like a city or a county, get together, you know, and they, you know, it's like, you know, we're in Story County, right? Yeah. Story County hereby declares, you know, that we are, you know, independent. Like you could, you could do that. Um, states were doing it, but the key thing, right, is they needed a unified statement that all the different states could sign off on in order to have like a unified voice to speak to the rest of the world.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so what's what's really exciting about uh what Jefferson's able to do here is uh he was able to come up with some language that would be um uh resonating with the other members of the Continental Congress. The um and and and this is why, by the way, I think one of the things that's helpful to remember here is, you know, the Continental Congress it does some editing. Like I've been reading, you know, from like the final version of the Declaration of Independence after all the edits were made. Some of some of Jefferson's original draft was a little different than that. Um the reason, you know, the kinds of stuff that George Mason wrote and that Jefferson wrote, the reason it worked is because on July 4th, when the Continental Congress uh gets together and they start going through those opening paragraphs, as people are listening to them, they're thinking, yeah, no, that's what we think. That's what we think. Uh because they've heard something like that. They've heard ideas like ideas like this have been circulating. That's right. Um legislatures or yeah. People have been talking about um, you know, what is our standing, you know, what authority do our legislatures have independent of British Parliament? You know, all those discussions have been happening and and the why has been happening. So uh so so so part of the point there is just to say um there's these interesting similarities between Locke and Jefferson. But some of those similarities not may not be because Jefferson necessarily had his copy of Locke in front of him when he's writing the declaration. It may be more that Locke's political theory uh had become a kind of conventional wisdom among many of the founders, and it gave them a kind of language for talking to each other and explaining to each other why they thought they were justified in having a revolution.
SPEAKER_01So he wasn't plagiarizing, he was sort of paraphrasing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he's he's paraphrasing. He's also, I I think uh you know he's summarizing and he's also improving the rhetoric of it. Okay. You know, so like this is this is not a philosophical treatise. This was a political work that had a political purpose in mind. Right. And and so part of its goal is to persuade people. You want to try to help persuade France to help us during the war, not to help the English. Uh, you want to try to persuade people who are still unsure about whether revolution is the right uh call and whether it's justified or not in America to get on board, right? So one of the challenges is how do you write it in a way that's rhetorically powerful so that it helps win people uh to your cause? And I think what Jefferson produced uh and what uh with the help of uh the Continental Congress, I think got even better in many respects, um, is a document that was much better than Locke or some of these other sources uh for actually mobilizing uh support and and winning support for those ideas.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus So Locke's kind of the ethereal foundation. Jefferson has gotten down to the rubber meeting the road, the practical application of a lot of Locke's um ideals.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's right. That's right. And you know, and and another another element of this would be um there can be other people, like before, you know, historically speaking, a hundred years is a long time, right? You know, between Locke and Jefferson and Mason. Uh and so there there's people in between. So here's another thing people will talk about on this. There's um, you know, uh an influential book uh written by Gary Wills on the on the Declaration of Independence, where he's really focusing on Jefferson. Uh, because part of what he wants to do is really look at Jefferson's original draft before the rest of the committee kind of tore it up and you know started changing things. Uh apparently Jefferson was very sulky on July 4th, because you know, he you know, he thought he'd written it just right. And, you know, they start, you know, editing this and editing that. Red penning the whole thing. They're red penning it. And yeah, Jefferson was uh was a little down about it. Um but uh what what what Gary Will says is actually he thinks that maybe uh another philosopher uh from Britain, who's Scottish, uh named uh Francis Hutchison, was a bigger influence on Jefferson than Locke was. Uh and he and he starts showing here some parallels, you know, Jefferson and Hutchison, right? So there's there's other people who are important philosophers who may have been influencing Jefferson. Um but there's several things to keep in mind when when trying to work through these like tricky questions about influence. Uh so one of them is that uh there may be ways that Hutchison was also influenced by Locke. Right. So Hutchison may have thought of himself as someone borrowing from Locke. So so here's here's like my personal anecdote on this. So file this one away under uh, you know, professors thinking they knew stuff and then figuring out they got stuff wrong. Got it. Right? I'm ready. So uh when I was in graduate school and I was writing my dissertation, uh I I wrote my dissertation on um John Locke's theory of religious toleration. So the idea that the government shouldn't force people to all practice the same religion. So, so so why, if you and I were to disagree about religion, would it be right for you not to force me to go to your church, even if you you think you're right and I'm wrong? And and say you've got enough political power, you could do it if you wanted to. Why not? So I thought this is a really interesting question because I I just find the question of toleration interesting, right? Uh why is it when you disagree with someone about something important, it might be right to respect their liberty to make a different choice than the one you would have picked. So as I'm working through this, Locke has some different arguments from uh toleration. And the one he's most famous for, the more I thought about it and read about it, it's like, uh I'm not actually sure that's actually a very strong argument. But then, you know, because this is graduate school and you get to read obscure stuff when you're in graduate school. Yeah. Uh so I start reading some of Locke's obscure stuff on religious toleration. So he wrote this short, uh, you know, nice, it's just called a letter on toleration. You know, it's just a letter, not even a whole book. Yeah. It's a long letter, but it's a letter. Um and then somebody criticizes it. So he writes a second letter to defend the first letter. And the second letter is like way longer uh than the first letter. And then somebody criticizes the second letter. So then he writes a third letter. And the third letter, by the time we get to third letter, it's like, I don't know, like 400 pages long. All right. So he just gets more and more long-winded, right, as he uh defends himself. This was not one of his better qualities. You know, when he when he was uh when criticized, he became verbose and defensive, you know. Uh so I like him a lot, but I will I will admit that's that's one of his uh his failings.
SPEAKER_01Kind of sounds like me, honestly. A lot of us, actually.
SPEAKER_00A lot of us. So as I'm as I'm reading through um Locke's third letter on toleration, very few people ever read this. Like even, you know, academics, unless you're really specializing in Locke, you don't ever ever read this. And I'm going through and I come across this argument for toleration that's a little different than what he's known for. And I'm like, oh man, that's actually really interesting. You know, and and that this argument that I found, like hidden in Locke's later stuff on toleration, ends up becoming like the centerpiece of my dissertation. It becomes the centerpiece of my first book. That's part of how I end up, you know, getting my job here at Iowa State was this argument. And when I found it, I was like, ah, I found this like hidden gem, you know, this like Locke wrote this, nobody paid any attention to it. It's kind of, you know, been sitting here for 400 years. The glowing truth nugget. You know, and I found this like really interesting argument. Uh so that's kind of how I thought about it for a long time. So, fast forward a number of years, uh, I'm at Iowa State. I've been at Iowa State for a while, and an Iowa State student comes to me and says, I want to learn more about America's founding. And I've heard that I need to learn about the Scottish Enlightenment. People like Francis Hutchinson, there's David Hume and Hutchison, Ferguson, Adam Smith, there's these really smart Scottish guys that people like Jefferson were reading. And so she'd heard enough about them to think, oh, if I want to understand the founding, I need to understand these Scottish guys. Will you do an independent study with me on the Scottish Enlightenment and how it influenced the American founding? And it's like, sure, let's do it. Um, and so in the process of like helping put together a reading list for her, um, I picked this book of Francis Hutchinson's that I'd never read. Um, but it looked like it was more relevant to what she was interested in. So it's like, well, this would be good for me. I'll read it too. So I'm reading through it, and I get to the part of Francis Hutchinson where he's talking about religious toleration, and he uses exactly the same argument John Locke had used. So, so like, and and the the whole argument that I thought was like unique to Locke and lost to history. I'm reading Francis Hutchison. It's like, no, actually, he read all of Locke's stuff. He knew all of this stuff, and he was incorporating a lot of Locke's stuff into his political philosophy as well. So like, I thought I had discovered stuff. It's like, no, actually, people like, you know, you were just, you know, 50 years after Locke, they'd already read all the stuff. They already knew all this stuff. Right. So, uh, so sometimes like modern commentators, I think we underestimate how much the people back then read each other and were influenced by each other. So sometimes we try to make, you know, is it Locke or is it Hutchison? Where I think Jefferson was like, well, actually, from his perspective, they mostly agreed with each other. And what they agreed with each other on was probably a lot more significant to him than what they disagreed about.
SPEAKER_01Or perhaps even who influenced Hutchison. That's right. That's right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And and there's other people that influenced Hutcheson too. You know, you can talk about um uh I mean if you want one of the people who interestingly influenced Hutchison was the kid that John Locke tutored. Right. So remember, I I was describing um how he worked for this guy, the you know, the Earl of Shaftsbury. Shaftsbury, right? And one of his jobs is, you know, the guy's, you know, uh, you know, intellectual in residence was tutoring the guy's, you know, kids. So this is Shaftsbury Jr. Yeah. So I think it's actually taking maybe his grandson. Um Shaftsbury III. Yeah, yeah. So the third Earl of Shaftsbury, Locke is his tutor. Got it. Okay. And, you know, he's like uh, you know, showing him around, like, you know, working with him. Well, he actually ends up as an adult becoming a philosopher in his own right, uh, the third Earl of Shaftesbury. So he's like writing these interesting philosophical things, and Hutchinson is reading Shaftsbury as well as Locke, and he's influenced by both of them, right? So there's all these like like weird, interesting interconnections uh among uh among these people. Wow.
SPEAKER_01Um other sources that Jefferson might have used then.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so um one other I'll just mention briefly. Uh one of Jefferson's sources was actually from Jefferson himself. So uh one of the things that Jefferson had been working on was how does that work? Yeah. Well, so there's yeah, so I I guess it should be like it's not an external influence, but if you ask, how did he actually write the document? The third person. Yeah, how did he actually write the document? One of the things he was using is his own notes that he'd used for a different purpose. Okay. So so remember, a lot of people are thinking, hey, like if we become independent, like each state may need a new constitution. So Jefferson has been like thinking about what type of a constitution Virginia should have. So he's working on a draft constitution for Virginia. Uh, but in that draft constitution for Virginia, he'd come up with a list of grievances that Virginia had against uh Britain. And so one of the things that's interesting, like you can look at the list of grievances he had in that first draft um for Virginia, and then you look at what he includes in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, and there's tons of similarities. Right. So uh again, time is limited. He he can't do everything from scratch, and so um, as he sits down to write the Declaration of Independence. Independence, he's he's using texts like George Mason's, which had a Virginia context. Right. He's using some of his own stuff that had a Virginia context. He's he's taking them, he's editing them, he's revising them, but he's now broadening them so that they apply to all 13 colonies and not just Virginia specifically.
SPEAKER_01So John Locke, we we get this. John Locke is an oversized influence, but not the only. And what are then so understanding that then in this broader picture of John Locke's influence, but not exclusive influence, what then did Jefferson do that maybe Locke didn't?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I I think Locke was able to write something before the revolution uh that actually influenced how things went. Remember, I was talking like Locke wrote his stuff, but he didn't actually write it until after the revolution was already over. Right. When it was, you know, safe. Jefferson was putting his life on the line when he helps write uh the Declaration of Independence. Like all the all, you know, all the people who were there at the Continental Congress, their names are known. They're on a British hit list. Yeah. You know, like if the if the war goes badly, uh, they could end up executed, right? Um, so there's this risk that Jefferson and people like him were taking. Um, and he figures out how to write something that is much shorter, more rhetorically powerful, and helps mobilize sentiment for a nation. Um, and in the process, he's helping after the war is over, and people start looking back at the document. Uh, you know, during the war, the war became kind of like all-consuming. So he didn't have necessarily time to go back and like reread all the time. But you know, when the dust clears, you know, this is one of the things people look back at to say, like, what are our principles? Um, and Jefferson's document for many Americans made them think these are our principles in a way they wouldn't have if they had just been reading, you know, something that John Locke wrote.
SPEAKER_01So the declaration was, like you said, almost a almost uh a call to arms uh culturally.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a it's it's it's a justification. Justification. It's a justification, right? So uh they were already fighting at that point. But when you're fighting, like one of the questions that will come up is why?
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00Like what's what's what's the reason why we're doing this? People tend to fight more strongly if they believe they're fighting on the side of justice, right? And so helping to give an account of what the reasons are that justify the revolution is important for building support within the United States. Um, but and we'll we'll talk about this more in the next episode, it's also part of how the United States is gonna try to present itself to the rest of the world. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Got it. That's great. Alex, what are we going to be talking about uh next episode?
SPEAKER_00So, you know, we've we've been looking a lot about some of the background, and now it's time to like look more specifically at the text itself. So uh next episode, we're gonna be focusing on the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence and learning more about the intended audience of it and what they were hoping to accomplish with the declaration. Excellent. Thank you. The views expressed on this podcast are those of the speakers and not necessarily those of Iowa State University. Thank you for listening.