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Calvin Coolidge, Speech on the Occasion of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of
the Declaration of Independence, 5 July 1926
When we take all these circumstances into consideration, it is but natural that the first
paragraph of the Declaration of Independence should open with a reference to Nature’s God and
should close in the final paragraphs with an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world and an
assertion of a firm reliance on Divine Providence. ...
No one can examine this record and escape the conclusion that in the great outline of its
principles the Declaration was the result of the religious teachings of the preceding period.
They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image, all partakers of the divine spirit.
Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government. This was their theory of democracy. In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country...
Children of the Most High
(psalm 82)
Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 8 May 1825
This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c. ...
Thomas Jefferson to Roger C. Weightman, 24 June 1826
burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind
themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self government. That form which we
have substituted restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of
opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of
science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not
been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them
legitimately, by the grace of god. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the
annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished
devotion to them. ...
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