The Declaration of Independence has been America’s North Star, acting as a guiding light throughout our nation’s history.
As I argued in my book, “We Hold These Truths,” leaders have appealed to its ideals to animate and fortify Americans through some of our most trying and defining moments.
Though the focus of my book is the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II, in this article, I wanted to expand it out a bit and focus on the words of five U.S. presidents.
Before that, first, I must acknowledge George Washington. There were no presidents during the Revolutionary War, but he, as commander in chief of the Continental Army, had the Declaration read to his troops on July 9, 1776, so they would know exactly what they were fighting for as they prepared to face down the might of the British army in New York.
OTD in 1776, Washington orders his army to gather, so the Declaration of Independence can be read aloud to them pic.twitter.com/m2yH82pTew
— Tom Berry (@Hooyah61) July 9, 2016
The Americans would go on to win the Revolutionary War in 1783. Washington later presided over the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and in 1789, he became the nation’s first president by a unanimous Electoral College vote. So he certainly guided Americans through one of their most defining times and helped establish a nation that began to put the ideals of the Declaration into practice.
Now, here are five presidents who drew from the Founders’ wellspring to advance the cause of liberty.
Abraham Lincoln
Following his election as the 16th president of the United States, President Abraham Lincoln traveled by train from his native Illinois to Washington, D.C., making a stop in Philadelphia, among other places.
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He arrived at Independence Hall for a flag-raising ceremony taking place on Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1861.
Lincoln had always been fascinated with the Founders, particularly Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
He had been 17 years old when Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day in 1826 — July 4, which was the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. So this was the not-so-distant past to him.
Speaking at the ceremony at Independence Hall, Lincoln said, “I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
“It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence,” he added, referring to the ongoing existence of slavery in the Southern States.
Weeks after Lincoln took office, the Civil War began with Confederates firing on the federal installation at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861.
Over two years later, Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to dedicate the battlefield’s cemetery following a decisive Union victory. In one of the most famous speeches of his presidency, he said, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
A score is 20 years, and four score and seven is 87 years, so Lincoln was referring back to the year 1776, when the Declaration was adopted, not 1787, when the Constitutional Convention occurred.
“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure,” Lincoln continued.
OTD in 1863 – Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address … Take a moment to read it over. pic.twitter.com/mjI8oRb6YB
— Janine Stange (@THEANTHEMGIRL) November 19, 2016
He concluded, “[T]hat from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt, the nation’s 32nd president, a week after America’s entry into World War II in December 1941, delivered a radio address as part of a program entitled “We Hold These Truths.” Over 60 million tuned in — almost half the country’s population at the time — making it the largest radio audience to that point in U.S. history.
The purpose of the program was to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the adoption of the Bill of Rights and the God-given rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence that underpin the document.
“[I]n the year 1933, there came to power in Germany a political clique which did not accept the declarations of the American Bill of human rights as valid,” Roosevelt said.
Turning to the Declaration, he continued, “The truths which were self-evident to Thomas Jefferson — which have been self-evident to the six generations of Americans who followed him — were to these men hateful. The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness which seem to the Founders of the Republic, and which seem to us, inalienable, were to [Adolf] Hitler and his fellows, empty words which they proposed to cancel forever. …”
On the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared December 15 to be known as “Bill of Rights Day.”
📸 https://t.co/zsr9MuZg2p pic.twitter.com/LKOijSayGl
— U.S. National Archives (@USNatArchives) December 15, 2020
Roosevelt concluded, saying, “This attempted revival of barbarism; this proposed return to tyranny … is an attempt which could succeed only if those who have inherited the gift of liberty had lost the manhood to preserve it.” The President promised that the United States, having taken up the sword in the cause of liberty, would not lay it down again until it was secure.
John F. Kennedy
President John F. Kennedy, the 35th president, began his legendary inaugural address in January 1961, saying, “We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom — symbolizing an end as well as a beginning — signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forbears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.”
“The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe — the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God,” he asserted, in the depths of the Cold War against Soviet Russia and communist China.
“We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution.”
Speaking at Independence Hall on July 4, 1962, Kennedy said, “To read it today is to hear a trumpet call. For that Declaration unleashed not merely a revolution against the British, but a revolution in human affairs.
“Its authors were highly conscious of its worldwide implications. And George Washington declared that liberty and self-government everywhere were, in his words, ‘finally staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people,’” JFK said.
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan, the 40th president, delivered a nationally televised speech from Moscow State University in the former Soviet Union in May 1988, as the Cold War was beginning to thaw.
“Go into any schoolroom, and there you will see children being taught the Declaration of Independence, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights — among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — that no government can justly deny; the guarantees in their Constitution for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion,” he told the university students.
That same year, Reagan issued a proclamation in support of life, saying, “America has given a great gift to the world, a gift that drew upon the accumulated wisdom derived from centuries of experiments in self-government. …” It is a “declaration, as a cardinal principle of all just law, of the God-given, unalienable rights possessed by every human being.”
“I, Ronald Reagan … do hereby proclaim and declare the unalienable personhood of every American, from the moment of conception until natural death,” he concluded.
Donald Trump
Donald Trump, the nation’s 45th and 47th president, on July 4, 2020, delivered one of his greatest speeches as chief executive. It was in the early months of the Coronavirus pandemic, in the shadow of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, with the sculpted faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt looking on behind him.
Just weeks before, anti-police, anti-government rioters in other parts of the country had torn down or otherwise defaced the statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln with shouts of racism.
Trump stood up for the nearly 250-year-old American experiment in liberty, saying, “Our Founders launched not only a revolution in government, but a revolution in the pursuit of justice, equality, liberty, and prosperity. No nation has done more to advance the human condition than the United States of America. And no people have done more to promote human progress than the citizens of our great nation.
“It was all made possible by the courage of 56 patriots who gathered in Philadelphia 244 years ago and signed the Declaration of Independence. They enshrined a divine truth that changed the world forever when they said: ‘… all men are created equal,’” he continued.
“These immortal words set in motion the unstoppable march of freedom. Our Founders boldly declared that we are all endowed with the same divine rights given us by our Creator in Heaven. And that which God has given us, we will allow no one, ever, to take away — ever,” the president pledged.
The truths contained in the Declaration of Independence have been America’s guiding light since the founding. Here’s to celebrating them and embracing them for as long as the nation endures.
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