Making the Case for Independence

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“Founders in Philadelphia,” the in-person experience that historian Chris Young and I led last month, went splendidly, thanks in no small part to the splendid group of nearly two dozen curious, energetic travelers who joined us. If you missed this trip, we invite you to consider joining us in the fall, when we will revisit most of the same sites and take in one or two others. Send us an email at office@mindinclined.org to reserve a spot or just request more information.

We have other Mind Inclined experiences coming up, as well—“Literary New York” (July), “Indy’s Old North Side” (August), and “American Patriots in Paris” (September)—along with plans for a transatlantic cruise and possible experiences in Louisville, Baltimore, and Chicago in 2027. Keep an eye on Mind Travel for dates and other details.

We know it as the Declaration of Independence, but this monumental document is more than a declaration. A close look will discover bits of philosophy, poetry, and propaganda. Over time, it eventually became a kind of call to arms, or at least action, for people around the world.

Setting all of these aspects aside for other writers to explore (or maybe even myself to explore in a future column), I would like to focus on something else: the Declaration of Independence as an argument.

Argument without Name-calling

Many of us, because of our backgrounds or dispositions, pick up on different aspects of the world, often noticing things that escape others’ perceptions. My dad, who was a craftsman, could easily tell when something was not level or plumb (and it drove him crazy, I’ll bet). Painters and sculptors, I suppose, notice various aspects of color and form. Scientists surely notice details that prompt thoughts about laws of physics, chemistry, and the like.

I pick up on nuances of language, story, and, because of my many years teaching a certain brand of writing, argument.

As I used to explain during these teaching years, the word argument in an academic setting is not intended to evoke thoughts of yelling and name-calling; rather, it refers to a kind of writing or speech that consists of a claim and evidence. In one of my books, for example, I argued authors such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry David Thoreau were responding to the rise of popular journalism when they wrote their works of literature. I cited many details from their works to make my case. The result was an academic “argument.”

Because of this experience teaching argument to hundreds of students over the course of a decade or so, I am probably quite a bit more sensitive than most to the argumentative elements in written works, including the Declaration of Independence.

A survey of a few of these elements can provide us with some insight into the thinking of Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the document, as well as others involved in the revolutionary movement. As is often the case with literature and history, there are also takeaways for us in our own age and our own lives.

A Case to Be Made

The Declaration’s first sentence—the one that begins with those famous words, “When in the course of human events”—makes its intention known. That intention is right there in the independent clause following the long subordinate clause at the beginning: “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” If I were to put the point a bit more prosaically, I might say, “I guess you all are wondering why we did this.”

The very act of presenting these causes indicates there is something to argue. Clearly, Jefferson and his fellow Patriots felt they needed to make their case and not merely act, assuming that everyone agreed with their action or that no one really cared.

Making such a case—or any case—is not an easy thing to do. Unlike a narrative or a description, which requires the writer or speaker merely to amass details and package them in sentences and paragraphs (also not easy), making an argument requires reasoning, an ability to link causes and effects, identify analogous details, and/or identify and leverage commonly held beliefs—ideally while avoiding logical fallacies such as the false dilemma and the so-called post hoc fallacy. (A false dilemma suggests that one must choose between two options or possibilities when in fact there are others. The post hoc, or post hoc ergo propter hoc, fallacy suggests that an event caused another event just because one preceded the other.)

All of us have made countless arguments throughout our lives—to our parents, spouses, friends, and co-workers about any number of topics. Now, if you think it’s hard to explain why you didn’t take out the trash as you promised, imagine making the case for breaking a centuries-long allegiance to another country and starting a whole new country—without a monarch, no less!

How did they do it?

The Diction of Necessity

Before we dissect some of the argumentative elements of the Declaration of Independence, we should set the stage with a few basic details. The decision to break away from the Mother Country was a long time coming, the result of years of grave concerns with taxes and more. After Richard Henry Lee, representing the commonwealth of Virginia, introduced a motion calling for separation, the Continental Congress formed a committee to draft a statement to that effect. The committee included Thomas Jefferson, of course, along with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. Jefferson did most of the heavy lifting, but Adams and Franklin introduced some changes. I’m going to give Sherman and Livingston the benefit of the doubt, but I can’t help but think of the group projects I used to assign as a professor. Some members of the group, it seems, can never be found when it’s time to get down to work. There were no video game arcades in Philadelphia back in 1776, but there was the City Tavern . . .

A close look at the final draft of the Declaration turns up some interesting argumentative elements.

The diction, for example, helps to make the case for separation. The first sentence says that it was not merely preferable or advisable to “dissolve the political bands” with England, but “necessary.” It’s easy to argue that you did the right thing when you can convince your audience that you had no choice. Of course, the colonists did have a choice, but the diction here is a subtle way to suggest that the separation was the right thing to do, indeed that it was the only thing to do. Similarly, the word “impel” in the same sentence suggests that various factors did not merely persuade them to break away from England, but forced them to do it.

Franklin knew something about diction. He had been one of America’s most successful writers before Jefferson was born, and the younger genius went out of his way to seek his elder’s guidance. Before the Declaration went before the entire group of delegates, Jefferson wrote a brief note to Franklin, saying, “The inclosed paper has been read with some small alterations approved of by the committee. will Doctr. Franklyn be so good as to peruse it & suggest such alterations as his more enlarged view of the subject will dictate?” (On a recent Philadelphia tour I led with historian Chris Young, I had the chance to see the original letter at the American Philosophical Society, and I can confirm that Jefferson really did misspell Franklin’s name and fail to capitalize the first word of a sentence. Lucky for Jefferson, Franklin was easier on him than I would have been if he had been in my comp class.)

One of the key changes that Franklin suggested was the substitution of “self-evident” for “sacred and undeniable” in what would become the Declaration’s most famous sentence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” In his short book The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, Walter Isaacson explains that Franklin took this notion of a “self-evident” truth from the philosopher David Hume, whom he had visited in Scotland just a few years earlier. For Hume, Isaacson explains, “synthetic” truths require evidence, while “analytic” truths are different: “‘Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought,' Hume wrote.  Their truth is self-evident."

It’s a powerful piece of diction that helps to make the Declaration’s case. Actually, as Isaacson notes, the statement actually was and is up for debate, however firmly entrenched it might be in our American psyche today: it rests on an underpinning of both religion and a philosophical conception about human rights, neither of which is truly self-evident. Still, saying the concept was self-evident is convincing in its own right. It’s a little like saying something is “common sense”—another phrase that was deployed to make the case for separation.

Counterargument and Rebuttal

There are always at least two sides to an argument. (If there weren’t, there would be nothing to argue about; in many cases, in fact, there are more than two sides.) If you merely state your own claim and reasons without addressing the other side’s claims and reasons, as well as that side’s counterargument to your reasons, you make it easy for the other side, along with readers or listeners who can still be persuaded one way or the other, to dismiss your position. It’s much more effective to anticipate what the other side might say and address it head on.

This what Jefferson does when he says, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. . .” He clearly recognized that some people would object to separation on the grounds that changing government was an imprudent decision. In his rebuttal, he concedes that, yes, there should be very good reasons for taking the dramatic—indeed revolutionary—step of changing a form of government:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

In short, the “causes” in this case are decidedly not “light and transient.” Rather, they are so strong that the Americans had not only a “right,” but a “duty” to “throw off such Government.” Again, the choice of words is notable: duty is even stronger than right. The latter reflects a personal interest, whereas the former points to something one owes to another. (By the way, Franklin had a hand in crafting the diction of this sentence, as well. He came up with “absolute Despotism,” which is quite a bit stronger than “arbitrary power,” which appeared in an earlier draft.)

As you may remember if you read “The Pilgrims Before the First Thanksgiving” in a November 2025 issue of Mind Travel, William Bradford took a similar tack when he defended the Pilgrims’ decision to move to North America. That’s a huge step, one that should not be taken lightly. In Of Plimoth Plantation, he wrote that his group relocated “Not out of any newfangledness, or other such like giddy humor, by which men are oftentimes transported to their great hurt and danger, but for sundry weighty and solid reasons.” Like Bradford, Jefferson (with Franklin’s help) was anticipating and answering a charge of changing the government for less than truly weighty reasons.

Logos, Pathos, and Ethos

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote of three “modes of persuasion”: logos, pathos, and ethos, or, roughly, appeals to logical faculties, emotions, and sense of character. The Declaration makes all three kinds of appeals. The long list of “injuries and usurpations” appeals to our sense of reason, making a logical case that people should not continue allowing themselves to be subjected to such abuses.

There’s more logos than pathos or ethos here—and for good reason, as the latter are not likely to be as persuasive as logic in arguments of this kind (although they are likely to be effective in other realms, such as commercial advertising). Still, Jefferson does appeal to both our emotions and our sense of character when he refers to “the patient sufferance of these Colonies.” The American colonists, he argues, put up with a lot before making this break; thus, we should sympathize with them because of their endurance of the abuses and respect them as patient victims, not capricious hotheads or insouciant novelty seekers. He makes a similar case for the character of himself and his fellow colonists when he says, “In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms.”

“Can you blame us,” Jefferson seems to say, “for taking this extreme step? We tried to address these Oppressions in a less extreme fashion.”

Finding the Truth Before You Declare It

There’s much more to the Declaration of Independence than some clever rhetorical moves. I have not expounded upon the philosophical underpinnings of its assertions about natural rights or the specific “abuses” that, in the minds of Jefferson and others, justified the separation.

The rhetorical aspects of the document alone, however, are instructive. After all, how many times a week (or even a day) do you have to make a case for something you did or wanted to do? As the wording of the Declaration of Independence (and Of Plimoth Plantation and any number of other carefully crafted arguments) shows, reasons are not always enough. Packaging these reasons effectively can help you convince others that you are right. That’s the whole purpose of rhetoric.

There’s a more important point here, though, one that is crucial to remember in the age of AI.

Too often—far, far too often—we humans begin with an opinion and, unbeknownst even to ourselves, strive to preserve it at virtually any cost. Back when I was teaching writing, I had students who, I’m pretty sure, came to class with an opinion about a topic—gun control, capital punishment, you name it. When they had to write an argumentative paper for my class, they could set out to “find sources to support it” (to paraphrase a line that writing teachers and librarians often hear). Here’s the thing, though: the point of academic argument (and, as far as I’m concerned, any argument about ideas) ought to be to determine the truth, not to convince others you are right because, after all, you might not be, especially if you have not carefully considered all the evidence. That’s precisely the point I made to my students in class year after year.

Nowadays, it would be all too easy to give AI a claim and have it formulate an argument “proving” it. Anyone who takes this approach to argument, however, is skipping the most important parts: the consideration of evidence and the employment of reason to arrive at some authentic understanding of the truth.

By forcing themselves to articulate their position on separation in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson and others were doing the thinking necessary to arrive at the truth. This process is fraught with various cognitive biases—a subject for a future column—but, if done well, it at least requires us to make connections and employ logic. It helps test our assumptions in a way that AI (and our gut) may not.

What do you want to declare? Are you sure you’re right? Writing your argument can help you get to the truth of the matter.