American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence

Written by Pauline Maier

Narrated by Jonathan Yen

Maier describes the transformation of the Second Continental Congress into a national government, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, and with more authority than the colonists would ever have conceded to the British Parliament.

In Maier's hands, the Declaration of Independence is brought close to us. She lets us hear the voice of the people as revealed in the other "declarations" of 1776: the local resolutions-most of which have gone unnoticed over the past two centuries-that explained, advocated, and justified Independence and undergirded Congress's work. Detective-like, she discloses the origins of key ideas and phrases in the Declaration and unravels the complex story of its drafting and of the group-editing job which angered Thomas Jefferson.

Maier also reveals what happened to the Declaration after the signing and celebration: how it was largely forgotten and then revived to buttress political arguments of the nineteenth century; and, most important, how Abraham Lincoln ensured its persistence as a living force in American society. Finally, she shows how by the very act of venerating the Declaration as we do-by holding it as sacrosanct, akin to holy writ-we may actually be betraying its purpose and its power.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Sep 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781541401853

Reviews for American Scripture

[girlblossom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The subject was fascinating and the author makes clear arguments that are well supported - too well supported. The author exhaustively tries to prove every point with endless quotations from nearly identical sources. Minor points will be substantiated with 20 nearly identical quotes from counties in the same state, by the time a reader gets through them, the point being made is long forgotten. A much better use of footnotes could have made this book 1/3 the size. One wonders if it was for a university thesis with a word minimum? Or perhaps the author was paid by the word. Otherwise, the subject is interesting and presents the development of the document richly and paints more complicated portraits of the actors in the narrative than is normally found. I particularly appreciated the view of Jefferson which shows neither a 2D super hero or a villanous, terrible racist, but a human. Worth investigating, though if reading (instead of listening) you can skip 2/3 of the quotes.

[macdad-236140 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Every year on the Fourth of July, Americans gather together to eat grilled food and set off fireworks in celebration of the founding of their nation. The day is regarded as the nation’s birthday, yet the choice of date is in some respects an arbitrary one. Arguably as good of a case could be made for the nation’s birth taking place on the date of the battles of Lexington and Concord or the convening of the Second Continental Congress in 1775, or with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, or the establishment of the Constitution of the United States in 1788. Instead, the date of July 4, 1776 is regarded as the day the United States was born, because it was on that date that a particular document was signed.That document, of course, was the Declaration of Independence. As a statement of the reasons the colonies were seeking independence, it served as a bill of charges that justified the extraordinary actions the revolutionaries undertook. With the Revolution won the generations that followed came to revere the Declaration as a statement of the values on which the new republic was based. Yet as Pauline Maier shows, such veneration has had the effect of reshaping the role of the Declaration in ways unimagined by the people who signed it. Her book demonstrates this by deconstructing the process that created the Declaration and examining how it subsequently gained the iconic status it enjoys today.As Maier notes, the revolutionaries approached the act of declaring independence cautiously. Even after the outbreak of fighting against British troops, many of the members of the Continental Congress balked at the prospect of declaring independence. Some delegates balked at the idea of separation from the British empire and the risks such a move entailed, while others felt constrained by their instructions from their state’s legislatures, which did not authorize such a step. Moreover, the question of declaring independence was just one of the many war-related issues before a heavily burdened body, some of which were of greater urgency. Because of this, it wasn’t until April 1776 – a full year after the outbreak of fighting between colonial forces and British troops – that the Continental Congress committed to pursuing independence.The Congress assigned the task of drafting the declaration to a five-person committee. Though the committee left no minutes of its proceedings, Maier sifts through the participants’ (oftentimes contradictory) recollections and the surviving documentary record to detail the process. Thomas Jefferson is naturally at the center of her narrative, as breaks down his work to show the elements that reflected its inheritance from similar English and colonial declarations of rights. Yet while giving Jefferson due credit for his role, she also describes the contributions made, by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and others in the Continental Congress, who took Jefferson’s hastily-assembled draft and edited to down into the final document with which we are familiar. In the process she makes a convincing case for the Declaration as having improved on the product of Jefferson’s pen.Once it was signed the Declaration was disseminated quickly throughout the rebelling colonies. Though it was preceded by some of the declarations issued by individual states, localities, and other groups, Maier sees its influence in the ones issued from that point onward. By the end of the war, however, the Declaration virtually disappeared from the discourse as Americans focused on the challenges of building a new nation. This changed with the rise of party politics in the 1790s, as Jefferson’s supporters began celebrating the document as the product of his genius. The stature of the Declaration grew as a new generation of Americans began to revere the revolutionary generation and its achievements. Among their number was Abraham Lincoln, whom Maier credits with doing more than any other single person to empower the Declaration as a document defining the nation’s principles, giving it its continuing relevancy for Americans down to the present day.Meier recounts all of this in a deftly-written text is easily accessible for the general reader. It’s an outstanding work of scholarship, and all the more so for the modesty of her claims. While she acknowledges her debt to Carl Becker’s classicThe Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas and disclaims any intention of duplicating his work, she builds nicely upon it to offer a fuller understanding of the document and its legacy. It makes for a book that joins Becker’s work as essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Declaration and why it continues to matter today.

[stevesbookstuff · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had heard a lot about this book, all of it positive, and so had added it to my pile of books to read, which now I'm slowly working my way through.

The first three sections of the book focus on setting the textual context around which the wording of the Declaration came to be - it describes the many "other Declarations" from states and localities also being produced in the early Revolutionary timeframe, and the debt owed to the English tradition of Declarations, especially the Declaration of Rights of 1689, all of which I was unaware of before. There's also a section delving into the authorship (as opposed to drafting) of the document. This history focuses on the wording of the document, more so than the Revolutionary events around it. The author clearly knows her stuff (it's one of those books where you want to make sure you check out the footnotes as there's some good stuff in there), and she keeps it interesting, in plain and engaging language.

In the introduction the author sets the goal of telling two stories - one of the original making of the Declaration, and the other of the "remaking into the document most Americans know, remember and revere". She's very thorough in telling the first story, as mentioned above, but as to the second story things are not nearly as complete. This second story comes in the fourth and final part of the book and mostly revolves around the case she makes for Lincoln "remaking" the document into a statement of principals around equality. The epilogue includes a brief mention of Martin Luther King, and then the book is done. I felt there was much more of that second story to tell that she left untold.

[jarratt_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I desperately wanted to like this book. I'm a huge fan of our Founding Fathers, the American Revolution, and its associated documents. And even though "American Scripture" weighs in at only 200 pages, it's way too detailed and, quite frankly, redundant.The second chapter is about the "other" declarations—those documents developed by the colonies showing support for independence and how George III had wronged them. The basic information was fine; it's just that Ms. Maier would offer multiple, repetitive examples to the point of beating a dead horse.I got through that second chapter and into Jefferson's iterations about the Declaration's development, but at that point, lost interest with her very academic style.

[rsubber · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a very readable book that exposes the backstory of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson isn't the primary author. The Second Continental Congress substantially re-worked Jefferson's draft. The Declaration didn't "start" the American Revolution. It wasn't the "kickoff" event, it was more like a final formality to officially authorize the colonial rebellion which had been evolving for years and which had already been the subject of a shooting war for more than a year.Most interesting to me: much of the stirring prose in the Declaration had already been written in various forms by Jefferson and others in the multitude of documents approved locally throughout the colonies, expressing the colonials' increasing frustration with the failure of their efforts to negotiate a suitable accommodation with the King and his ministers and Parliament. There was persistent strong support throughout the colonies for remaining within the empire as long as American self-government could be sustained.Finally, there is Maier's take on the Declaration as a late blooming "American Scripture." This is her description of the 19th century politicians' cumulative (and heedlessly incorrect) re-interpretation of the Declaration as a statement of governing principles and a blueprint for American political values and American democracy. Maier has made a plain case that the Declaration was intended only to demonstrate why the actions and disdain of King George had made American rebellion necessary and unavoidable.My note for the serious reader: for my taste, Chapter 4 incongruously seems to stray into anecdotal commentary on various interpretations by Abraham Lincoln and others. I understand the imputed relevance, but this section of American Scripture seemed to be casually written and insufficiently edited.

[lahochstetler · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If you're looking for a great book on the writing of the Declaration of Independence, the clear choice is Pauline Maier's American Scripture. Maier begins with a travel narrative of sorts, explaining what an early American historian sees when she visits the National Archives, and observes hundreds of tourists waiting to view the document. No other significant document in the history of the United States, she notices, seems to create as much reverence, excitement, and patriotism as the Declaration. While the viewers don't necessarily have all of the history under exact command, they have great respect for the document. How the document came to be, and how it developed such popular acclaim become the subjects of the rest of Maier's book. This book truly is a history of the writing of the Declaration. Maier examines the documents that preceded that of July 4, 1776. She finds that in the months preceding July 1776 localities drafted their own declarations, mini-declarations, declaring the cessation of their allegiance to George III and Parliament. These mini-declarations formed the linguistic and stylistic basis for the national declaration. Producing the American Declaration of Independence was a task that fell to a committee of five, which included Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and John Adams. The lion's share of the credit for drafting the Declaration is usually accorded to Jefferson, but Maier finds that the committee of five, particularly Adams, was far more influential than previously thought. Ultimately Maier's book is carefully researched and well-crafted. It is beautifully written, and a joy to read. For those who teach American history, as I do, it is an excellent resource to use in an advanced undergraduate class to discuss how to do research and how to write history. I read this book my first year of graduate school and have relied on it heavily ever since.