Matthew Spalding: The Declaration of Independence Is the “Epic Poetry of America” | Video

Matthew Spalding joined the RCP Podcast on Friday to explain why the Declaration of Independence was not merely an Enlightenment document or Thomas Jefferson’s personal philosophy, but an expression of a distinct “American mind” that still shapes our civic life today.

Spalding is the dean of the Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College and the author of The Making of the American Mind.

“The phrase ‘the American mind’ actually comes from a letter that Jefferson wrote in the 1820s when he was asked about the Declaration,” Spalding said. “Jefferson, in 1776, thought there was an American mind, and that he was trying to express it.”

“What he meant by that were the debates over the decades leading into 1776, which came to be informed by a bunch of ideas: British constitutionalism, the Greek and Roman classical tradition, the Christian tradition. All of those things came together uniquely,” he explained. “The American mind is not the European mind–that’s important. It’s also not merely an Enlightenment mind, for that matter.”

“The principles in that declaration, the logic and the political argument, have been alive all these years and drive our political history,” he went on. “Lo and behold, even though we are greatly divided on a lot of fronts — there are massive, large debates in American history, left, right, and center — we go back to this declaration.”

“It is the epic poetry, if you will, of America.”

“It’s a political document. It is passed by a Congress. It’s edited. It’s probably the greatest example historically of a legislative editing process we know of. It’s not just an ‘Enlightenment’ document by Jefferson. It’s a legal document,” Spalding said. “Here’s the legal case. Here we are submitting it to God — but also the judge of history and posterity.”

“The problem, of course, is we just read the famous lines and don’t read the rest,” he said. “In my experience, students have never heard a positive argument about why it’s a good country and why there might be something there worth defending. They’re not patriotic because they’ve not been appealed to, to be patriotic.”

“This 250th anniversary is going to be a moment that high school kids and middle school kids and grade school kids are going to remember,” Spalding said. “There’s a great narrative, a great story here.”

“You’ve got to start somewhere, and that’s capturing that imagination.”