In The Free Press’s “Things Worth Remembering” column, Walter Isaacson explains what he calls the “greatest sentence ever written.” He’s referring to the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence, which reads “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.”
He continues:
In this era of poisonous and sometimes violent political polarization, when even discussions of our history threaten to divide us, we must find a way to put differences aside and celebrate, with gratitude, who we are. One way to achieve this would be by appreciating anew that sentence, the second of our Declaration of Independence, which may be the greatest ever written by human hand.
But it was by no means guaranteed. In June 1776, the Continental Congress appointed a committee to draft the declaration. It may be the last time that Congress created a great committee. Its members included Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams.
The committee went through four drafts of the Declaration. The first, which is in Jefferson’s handwriting and filled with edits from others, is in the Library of Congress. The final version is in the National Archives rotunda. If only these two institutions, often competitive, could agree to have these two versions displayed side by side. Maybe President Donald Trump can broker a peace deal to make that happen.
“We hold these truths to be sacred. . . ” Jefferson wrote in the first of the drafts. Benjamin Franklin crossed out “sacred,” using the heavy backslash marks he had often used during his years working as a printer, and wrote in “self-evident.” The declaration they were writing was intended to herald a new type of nation, one in which our rights are based on reason, not the dictates or dogma of religion.
Watch Isaacson discuss “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written” with Rafaela Siewert of The Free Press, below:
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