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America’s First Constitutions and Declarations of Rights
population enjoyed political liberty when the Declaration of Independence was written, and it would be inaccurate to interpret the document
as a call for an expanded suffrage. The Americans demanded the same
rights as Englishmen, not the right to vote. Between 1800 and 1860, virtually every State constitution adopted in 1776 was amended or revised
to allow for an expanded electorate. The only exception to this general
trend toward democratization was the abolition of voting privileges for
free Negroes in Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia as a result of increasing unrest over the slavery issue. This push for more democracy in
the American political process, however, was largely independent of the
anti-slavery movement that sprang from the Declaration of Independence. To the extent the Declaration affirmed the principle of political
equality, it was a demand by the American people that they be given the
same political rights collectively as other British citizens, not that each
American be granted political liberty individually.
Social and economic equality, on the other hand, finds no support in the
Constitution or in the political tradition that grew out of the Declaration of
Independence. In 1776, as is true today, American society was very much
diversified, and inequalities respecting wealth, property ownership, education, social status, and the like were part of the natural order. To reduce
the entire American population to a single class of people, devoid of all
social and economic distinctions, would have required massive and interminable coercion, resulting in a loss of individual liberty. Such drastic
measures were never contemplated by those who wrote and approved
the founding documents, and succeeding generations of Americans have
traditionally rejected egalitarianism of this sort as basically inconsistent
with personal freedom. By asserting that ‘‘all men are created equal,’’ the
Americans did not have in mind the French idea of making them equal
by restructuring society, and the many differences and distinctions that
existed in colonial society were essentially left intact after independence
was achieved.
What, then, was the legacy of the Declaration of Independence, and in
what ways did it contribute to the development of liberty, order, and justice under the Constitution? At the risk of oversimplification, we may
conclude that the Declaration of Independence achieved two immediate
goals. The first, as represented by the preamble, was a philosophical ap-