National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America

Summary

The first book ever to tell the complete story of the Declaration of Independence—from its drafting by Thomas Jefferson to its enshrinement in the National Archives—charting the many lives of a document that was neglected, mistreated, and only gradually became a national relic, uniting vastly different generations through war and crisis around its defiant ideals.

“A nimble, captivating view of the defiant 1,320 words that have knit themselves into every chapter of the last 250 years.” —Stacy Schiff * “Fascinating…weaves the glorious narrative of the Declaration from its inception to our day.” —Walter Isaacson * Scrupulously researched and beautifully written, this book reads like an adventure story…witty, fascinating, and never more relevant.”—Andrew Roberts

Quiet and politically untested, Thomas Jefferson was not the obvious choice to draft a statement of principles explaining why the American colonies were breaking ties with the King of England. Yet his soaring rhetoric, refined in small but indelible ways by Benjamin Franklin, would unite even the most bitter rivals around a common ideal. National Treasure is the inspiring story of our most revered founding document, as a physical object and a set of ideals that have made America what it is today.

We follow the Declaration as it is hauled out of a soon-to-be-burning Washington in 1814 (sadly not by Dolley Madison), hidden in a dank cellar, and brought back to a jubilant Washington after the war. By the time it turned 50, the Declaration, long neglected, had become a national treasure. In 1841 it would be mounted in the Patent Office alongside George Washington's commission as commander in chief. Auslin offers a bold new theory of what happened to the Declaration when the Patent Office was transformed into barracks and a makeshift hospital served by Walt Whitman in the Civil War. An inspiration to both Abraham Lincoln, who insisted he had "never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration," and Jefferson Davis, who saw in its insistence on the consent of the governed a justification for secession, the Declaration has grown more important for each new generation. After the war, the Declaration became a hot commodity: printed on handkerchiefs, reproduced with elaborate illustrations, hung on classroom walls to teach civic values to the growing numbers of new citizens, and even used to flog insurance and hawk coal. In 1924, Herbert Putnam created the first "shrine" for the Declaration at the Library of Congress. Two years later, on its 150th birthday, Calvin Coolidge urged Americans to recommit to its foundational truths. In the 1940s, as FDR reminded Americans that their country was founded on a promise of freedom from tyranny, military officers lowered the precious parchment into a bunker at Fort Knox. After the war, its ink fading, the document was painstakingly preserved and protected.

Through it all, as the country has grown from 4 million to 40 million to 400 million, Jefferson’s words have inspired immigrants to become American and fueled implausibly varied causes, from abolitionists, suffragists, socialists and civil rights leaders to groups waging war on the US Government. Over time, as Jefferson hoped, the principles set forth in the Declaration became a beacon to the world. But what lessons should we take from them today? Can this statement of ideals in whose name the signers pledged their lives and sacred honor bring a fractured nation together? As we gather to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our bold experiment in democracy, Auslin reminds us that this enduring document was an eloquent statement of the principles that, for all our differences, still bind us together.