I almost wound up underlining all of Walter Isaacson’s slim new book, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written. It’s that smart, challenging, personal, humane -- with only 41 pages of text and a few short appendices that also compel attention. Timed for the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of our country, it’s a celebration of the vision and style of the second paragraph and second sentence of “The Declaration of Independence,” and a heartfelt, persuasively argued plea to take in the founders’ cool passion to work harmoniously on behalf of the incredible political experiment they were undertaking, despite the intractable fact of slavery.
Here’s the 35-word 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.” “The Declaration” was heavily edited; however, large sections “eviscerated,” and as Franklin expressed, is full of “mutilations,” “most notably one that criticized the king for perpetuating the slave trade,” of particular abhorrence to Franklin and Jefferson. The inclusion of the draft is therefore enlightening.
For Isaacson, the book provides another chance to sing the praises of his favorite patriot, Benjamin Franklin, who emerges here, once again, as a wily, practical intelligence who crossed out Jefferson’s original phrase, “We hold these truths to be sacred,” and replaced “sacred” with “self-evident.” And thus emerges Isaacson’s theme: A word-by-word analysis of that “greatest sentence” to show that what the founders had in mind was a “new type of nation” based on “reason, not the dictates or dogma of religion,” and on the ideas of “social contract” and “common ground.” A country whose underpinning philosophy was Deism. The word “Christian” appears nowhere in “The Declaration” or in “The Constitution,” both of which begin with the word “We.” How sadly ironic, Isaacson suggests, that much of the polarization of our country today turns on promoting religious nationalism and the “enclosure” of goods and services that has just about destroyed the ideal of common ground and with it, the American Dream.
There is enough here to learn for even those who think they know about the American Revolution and much to praise in the five men who drafted “The Declaration,” even as they yielded up their personal antipathy to slavery in order to ensure the document’s political passage. There were half a million enslaved people in 1776, one-fifth of the population. Of the 56 signers, 41 owned slaves, and all 13 colonies permitted it, Isaacson notes.
Isaacson admirably inserts himself into the text every now and then, reinforcing the contemporaneity of certain phrases, taking issue with others, and emphasizing the importance of facts and sources in writing about history. His interpretation of “created equal,” for example, reminds readers that the phrase was intended for Americans to distance themselves from the British system of hereditary social classes.
The book is incredibly timely in its significance. What a wonderful opportunity for it to find its way onto school curricula. Its brevity will certainly attract adolescents and young adults no longer interested in reading. Its personal and conversational manner invites involvement. I was taken with a comment on the book online by a young man who said his grandfather made him read it, and lo! He absolutely loved it. As did I.
