Most libertarians have a special place in their heart for the Declaration of Independence. With its ringing endorsement of natural, inalienable rights, its insistence of the right of the people to “alter or abolish” those governments that trample upon those rights, and the stirring commitment of its signatories to pledge their “Lives…Fortunes…and Sacred Honor” to defending those rights, the Declaration still stands as a masterfully inspirational document to lovers of liberty all around the world.

Nor is the genius of the Declaration merely skin deep. As George Smith has demonstrated, both in this series of blog posts and at greater length in his book, Thomas Jefferson produced in the Declaration a brilliant synthesis, summation, and application of 17th and 18th century natural law theory to the particular situation of the United States, drawing not merely (if most obviously) on the work of John Locke, but also on a variety of lesser-known figures such as Frances Hutcheson, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, and Algernon Sydney.

And yet, it is precisely because we have a special appreciation for the philosophical ideals on which the Declaration is based that libertarians must also feel a certain amount of frustration with the 4th of July. The Declaration, to us, represents a statement of hope and promise. But it is a promise, we recognize, that has gone largely unfulfilled. Our rights to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” have not been well-secured by the institutions our founders created. And we, like they, have suffered “a long train of abuses and usurpations” against our liberty: an expensive, destructive, and ineffective war on drugs; a surveillance state that operates without any hint of respect for privacy, due process, or the rule of law; and a government that continually privileges the interests of large corporations over the rights of ordinary citizens.

The Declaration of Independence is a promise of liberty. But libertarians recognize better than most that it is a frustrated promise.

It was frustrated, of course, right from the start. At the same time that Jefferson was declaring all men to have been endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, almost 20% of the American population was suffering the most egregious violation of those rights imaginable under the institution of slavery. And while the Declaration insisted upon the right of the colonists to revolt violence against the “absolute Despotism” of the British government, it was neither read nor intended to be read as endorsing the right of slaves to throw of the literal despotism of their masters. To draw that conclusion would require a far more consistent commitment to liberty than either Jefferson or most anyone else at the time was willing to swallow.

There have been numerous commentaries on the contradictions between the Declaration’s ideals of equal liberty and the monstrosity of American slavery. But none, I think, are so eloquent, or so appropriate to the day, as the words Frederick Douglass delivered on July 4th, 1852, in a speech that has come to be known as “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?”

Douglass’ speech begins with a ringing endorsement of the spirit of the Declaration and the men who dedicated their lives to it.

On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction. They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it. “Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.”

Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history—the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.

Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

But Douglass then notes that Americans have not stood by those principles. They have not succeeded – they have not even tried.

 say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. —The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

…

Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery—the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;” I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

Then, in one of the speech’s most memorable passages, Douglass makes the following impassioned plea:

Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a by word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!

Slavery, as Douglass experienced it, is gone. But the promise of the Declaration remains unfulfilled. Our government daily tramples upon our liberty and the liberty of those abroad. The reptile is still coiled. Let us lend our weight to Douglass’ effort and continue to work until it is destroyed forever.