250 Years: A Guest Post by Walter Isaacson

Bringing to life the stirring, revolutionary words that helped shape American democracy, Isaacson offers a vital reminder of the values we continue to aspire to as a nation. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Walter Isaacson on writing The Greatest Sentence Ever Written.

Two years ago, I began to focus on the fact that we have a big birthday coming up next year. Our 250th. We have become so polarized and poisonous in our politics that we are not in the best mood for a party. Everything seems to divide us, including our views of our history. 

But I began to believe that perhaps we can use this opportunity, just like a fractious family might use an important birthday party, to celebrates what unites us, just like we did for our bicentennial after the fraught years of Vietnam and Watergate.

One way to do this, I realized, would be to encourage people to reflect on our fundamental principles, the ones proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence’s great sentence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

Many of us know that sentence almost by heart, but rarely do we stop to savor and appreciate what each word means to us. 

Thomas Paine helped spark our Revolution by publishing, in early 1776, a pamphlet, “Common Sense.” My publishers at Simon & Schuster suggested that I turn my idea into a short book.  They said that readers these days like short books about impactful ideas. So even though I am used to writing long biographies, I jumped at the chance to write a concise book about an idea I felt passionately about.  

When I was writing my Benjamin Franklin biography 25 years ago, I became fascinated by the way that he helped Thomas Jefferson edit his first draft of the Declaration’s second sentence.  As a writer and editor, I appreciate how the choice of words have power.   “We hold these truths to be sacred . . . ” Jefferson wrote in the first of the drafts. 

Franklin crossed out “sacred,” using the heavy backslash marks he had often used 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. 

But then the sentence invokes the “Creator.” In Jefferson’s first draft, he wrote that men are created equal and “from that equal creation they derive rights.” That phrase is crossed out, this time with a different pen, and replaced with “endowed by their Creator” with rights. That was probably the edit of John Adams, also on the committee, whose views on religion were a bit more conventional than those of Jefferson. 

Thus we see, in the editing of the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence, our Founders balancing the role of divine providence and that of reason in determining our rights.

Franklin and Jefferson understood balance. They were part of an Enlightenment era that embraced the scientific method of testing and revising beliefs based on evidence. Both of them studied Isaac Newton, whose mechanics explained how contending forces could be brought into equilibrium. Their goal on contentious issues was not to triumph but to find the right balance, an art that has been lost today. Compromisers may not make great heroes, Franklin liked to say, but they do make great democracies.

At the official signing of the parchment copy of the Declaration, John Hancock, the president of the Continental Congress, wrote his name with his famous flourish. “There must be no pulling different ways,” he insisted. “We must all hang together.” Franklin replied, alluding to what would happen to them if their revolution failed, “Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

My hope is that my short book, along with the many others coming out to celebrate our 250th, will contribute to the effort to get us to all hang together.