The Endurance of Our Declaration of Independence

By Caleb Franz

Saturday, July 04, 2026

 

Large-scale republics don’t have the best track record of longevity. Governments have historically been run by kings, emperors, or other systems of absolute authority. Rome itself lasted less than 500 years before giving way to an empire. As America celebrates our 250th year of independence as the most successful and powerful modern republic, a worrisome question lingers in many of our minds — How long can America last as a liberal republic?

 

U.S. citizens and international observers alike have pondered this question time and again since the American Revolution ended. The American experiment has persevered against the fragility of the early republic, the threat of disunion through the Civil War, and the rise of 20th century totalitarianism and two world wars. Yet with each passing generation, the core principles of republican liberty have been maintained and even expanded — albeit imperfectly, and not without periods of regression. Despite the clouds of illiberalism forming in the early 21st century, we have good reason to keep our faith in the strength of the American republic, more so than any other that came before it. The uniqueness of our endurance stems not from a shared ethnicity, language, or ancestry, but rather from a shared creed first articulated in the Declaration of Independence.

 

Following the War of 1812, the founding generation gave way to new, ambitious young leaders who had visions of national greatness. But those visions carried a fatal contradiction. The westward expansion that Thomas Jefferson optimistically thought would create an “empire of liberty” was becoming a vehicle for the spread of slavery instead. When the last surviving signer of the Declaration, Charles Carroll, died in 1832, the living link to those founding ideals was severed. American victory in the Mexican War of 1846–1848 brought the issue to a head, providing the United States with vast new territory, forcing Congress to contend with slavery’s territorial expansion and growing political influence.

 

As Congress debated the fate of the new territory, some newer members looked back to the founding era for inspiration. In 1850, the newly elected senator from Ohio, Salmon P. Chase, considered slavery to be at odds with the Founders’ original vision for America. He pointed to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 — which expanded republican government in the territory acquired following the 1783 Treaty of Paris and prohibited slavery within its borders — as evidence “that the declaration of 1776 was not an empty profession, but a true faith.” Thus, in being consistent with that vision, Congress had a right and responsibility to prohibit slavery within federal territory and the District of Columbia, and prohibit the interstate slave trade.

 

Chase’s colleague from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner, made this argument in even more vivid terms. “According to the true spirit of the Constitution, and the sentiments of the [Founding] Fathers, Slavery and not Freedom is sectional, which Freedom and not Slavery is national.” The presupposition of freedom in the United States, Sumner argued, predated the Constitution. “Earlier than the Constitution was the Declaration of Independence, embodying, in immortal words, those primal truths to which our country pledged itself with its baptismal vows as a Nation.” Sumner understood the Declaration to be the nation’s founding promise, one that Congress was obligated to honor in its legislative decisions.

 

As slavery took center stage as the driving wedge issue throughout the 1850s, Abraham Lincoln looked to the Declaration as the key to our national survival. During one of his famous debates with Senator Stephen Douglas from Illinois, Lincoln affirmed that “all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” were meant to be extended to black Americans, enslaved or otherwise.

 

After being elected president, Lincoln stopped at Independence Hall to speak on the occasion of Washington’s birthday. “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence,” he told his audience in 1861. The Declaration, he asserted, held “that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.” Lincoln’s appeal to the Declaration here was more than political strategy. He understood it as the spiritual foundation of the republic, the creed that was needed to preserve the integrity of the Union. As the Civil War ravaged the country from the outset of his administration, it was the Declaration that continued to be his guiding light. Citing it in his Gettysburg Address, he described America as a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

 

The United States officially divorced itself from the institution of slavery in 1865 with the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Americans had new and challenging issues to confront — from Reconstruction, to rapid industrialization, to world war. In the midst of all the dramatic change associated with the turn of the century, many of the most prominent voices of the age urged bold progressive ideas to lead the United States throughout the 20th century. In contrast, President Calvin Coolidge believed that the ideas that were already articulated in the Declaration would be a sufficient anchor against the prevailing and chaotic social and political winds of the day.

 

Serving as president during the 150th anniversary of American independence, Coolidge had a unique opportunity to reflect on the Declaration and its enduring relevance. In a speech given to mark the occasion in Philadelphia on July 5, 1926, he asserted that it was not “to proclaim new theories and principles that this annual celebration is maintained, but rather to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound.”

 

“We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things,” he said in closing. “These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp.”

 

A hundred years later, on the 250th anniversary, we run that same risk. As in Coolidge’s day, political factions on the left and the right are happy to suggest new, bold ideas that reject the liberal tradition of the United States and its republican system of government. But also as it was in Coolidge’s day, and in Lincoln’s before him, the Declaration will help us navigate new challenges while preserving the ideas that brought us here. We look to the Declaration not just to honor the past, but to understand how to navigate our future. Its endurance is no accident — it’s the defining feature of our republic. All we need to do is cling to it.