In Maier's hands, the Declaration of Independence is brought close to us.
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 the great difficulty in making the decision for Independence the influence of Paine's Common Sense, which shifted the terms of debate and the political maneuvers that allowed Congress to make the momentous decision. It is truly "American Scripture," and Maier tells us how it came to be - from the Declaration's birth in the hard and tortuous struggle by which Americans arrived at Independence to the ways in which, in the nineteenth century, the document itself became sanctified. 30,000 first printing.Pauline Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation.
As an argument and an introduction to a crucial artifact of American culture, this book will clearly take its place alongside works by Michael Kammen and Garry Wills. restating the point that leveling accusations at the king was the way Englishmen declared revolution). It's not a terribly long book and could probably have been shorter-there are superfluities and tautologies (e.g. Whereas Jefferson began to see it as his best chance at glory with the Republicans, who exploited it as an anti-British instrument, Lincoln used it to refute Stephen Douglas and, ultimately, slavery. Having set the stage, Maier then proceeds in the last quarter of her book to describe the evolving significance of the Declaration. Maier then looks carefully at the work's original (though now largely ignored) purpose-the airing of grievances against George III, some of which were localized insults generalized to the nation some, so vague as to be pointless some, blinkered versions of complex situations.
After a succinct and engaging account of the circumstances of the Second Continental Congress, she examines Jefferson's models, particularly the state and local declarations of independence framed in the spring of 1776. But Maier (The Old Revolutionaries) certainly has. life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"" etc.). How is it that a document that was at points derivative, specious, inflated and politically compromised came to take on almost sacred significance in American culture? In fact, few Americans have bothered to examine much beyond a few choice clauses from the preamble (""all men are created equal.
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