No work is more fitting for the 250th anniversary of America than Matthew Spalding’s The Making of the American Mind: The Story and Meaning of the Declaration of Independence. As Spalding notes, the 250th anniversary offers an opportunity to relearn American history and rediscover self-evident truths.
I should note upfront that I worked for Dr. Spalding as a research assistant, and I expected this book to be good. It far exceeded my expectations. And nothing could have prepared me for the emotional climax of the epilogue, “Iron Men.” After turning the last page, I sat stunned, grateful, and full of wonder at what our Founders accomplished and sacrificed.
Ultimately, the book serves as a guide to American first principles as laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the duties required to maintain them in a constitutional republic.
This is not Spalding’s first book on the Declaration. His We Still Hold These Truths is its own great work on America’s core Founding Principles. Spalding was also Executive Editor of the second edition of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution; built a graduate program at Hillsdale College’s D.C. campus focused on American citizenship and republican self-government; and served as Executive Director of the 1776 Commission under the first Trump administration.
There are few more qualified to write a book worthy of America’s 250th anniversary. Spalding’s new work builds on his previous publications, bringing together his years of scholarship, experience as an educator, and work as a public intellectual in an easy-to-read, engaging, and deeply researched account of America’s Founding document.
The book offers a thorough historical account of the events that set the stage for the fight for independence. It also traces the intellectual history that shaped the Founding and the Declaration in particular. But it’s much more than that. Spalding’s Making of the American Mind is a love letter to the Declaration of Independence. Every page increases the reader’s appreciation of our Founders, their actions, the words of the Declaration, and divine providence.
First, Spalding sets the scene for 1776, explaining how the American mind developed over decades and how those sentiments found expression in the Declaration. He compares the document to a symphony with distinct movements, sounds, and rhythms combined into a harmonious whole.
Spalding emphasizes the natural rights of the Founding, noting its philosophical influences, including Greek and Roman philosophers, the Founders’ English heritage and jurisprudence, Enlightenment thinkers, and Christianity. He further makes it clear that these traditions are built upon one another and are connected.
The most impressive aspect of Spalding’s book is that, in the tradition of Biblical exegesis, he goes through most of the Declaration section by section. Beginning with the Declaration’s opening paragraph, he focuses on the phrase “The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” noting that its emphasis on judgment and reflection foreshadows Hamilton’s famous question in Federalist One: Are “societies of men really capable… of establishing good government from reflection and choice,” or are they “destined to depend… on accident and force?”
Spalding’s next chapter focuses on the most famous section of the Declaration, exploring the meaning of phrases like “We hold these truths,” “all men are created equal,” “endowed by their creator,” “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and more.
Inspired by Abraham Lincoln, Spalding notes that the Declaration’s statement of principles transformed an immediate struggle for independence into a “universal statement of human freedom.”
When parsing the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Spalding explains that life, or human existence, is the prerequisite for exercising other rights, and liberty means the freedom to exercise choice. The Founders’ understanding of liberty requires self-control and respect for law and others’ rights. This distinction separates liberty from license.
Lastly, Spalding explains that the pursuit of happiness means something deeper than modern readers of the Declaration might think. The classical understanding of happiness doesn’t revolve around satisfying desires or appetites. The Founders knew you can’t always get what you want. They believed true happiness meant human flourishing, which can occur only by cultivating the virtues necessary for a free government.
Spalding also explains that “created equal” doesn’t mean everyone has equal abilities, but that everyone has equal human dignity and thus no man is the natural ruler over another without consent. He also addresses the contradiction of slavery, explaining that many of the Founders, even its author, Thomas Jefferson, recognized that the principles in the Declaration repudiated the justice of slavery and expected the eventual end of the evil institution.
Spalding fleshes out the historical context, including Great Britain’s transition from “salutary neglect” of the colonies to gradual repression at Parliament’s behest, whose authority the colonists rejected. This section introduces the “long train of abuses,” which, as Spalding points out, is not listed chronologically but is designed to establish an accumulating pattern of tyranny, concluding that the king has lost the moral authority to govern the American people.
Spalding argues that the Declaration’s ingenious structure leads the reader to inevitably conclude that separation from Great Britain and the establishment of a new government are necessary.
Taking their cue from the list of grievances and the Declaration as a whole, the founders established a Republic of defined and separated powers. The Founders hoped this government could secure the Declaration’s ends.
Before concluding the book, Spalding discusses one more important phrase: “…we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” Spalding observes the final triad parallels the more quoted triumvirate of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” While the first statement names universal rights that the government should secure, the closing names the duties and sacrifices necessary to uphold them.
Spalding’s epilogue, “Iron Men,” explains that the signers knew the reality of what their fates could be. For example, Washington wrote in a May 1776 letter to his brother that he understood defeat could mean confiscation, execution, and, as he put it, “etc., etc.” The “etc.” in Washington’s letter entailed the brutal penalties associated with treason, including disembowelment while still alive, beheading, and quartering.
And for many of the signers, this pledge was not theoretical. Loyalists turned signer Richard Stockton over to the British in 1776. He was tortured for having signed the Declaration. When he was released, he found his home and his property in ruins. He never recovered from his torture and imprisonment and died in 1781. Another signer described in a letter being “hunted like a fox by the enemy…” British ire wasn’t directed only at the signers, but at their families, too. Both of Abraham Clark’s sons served in the army. When the British captured them, they were beaten and starved because their father refused to recant his signing of the Declaration.
The Signers also meant it when they pledged their fortunes. Signer Carter Braxton loaned what would be the equivalent of $2 million to the cause, and Robert Morris largely financed the Revolutionary War but ended up in debtors’ prison because of bad speculations.
Spalding ends this section with the lives of public service the 56 signers lived after the Revolution: 15 participated in state Constitutional Conventions, 13 became governors, 16 became state or federal judges, 13 served in the U.S. Congress, and two became Justices of the Supreme Court.
Spalding points out that unlike pledging one’s life and fortune, pledging one’s honor does not give it away or diminish it. Of these men, Spalding concludes, “The signers all risked their lives, and many gave up their fortunes to support the Declaration. None forfeited his sacred honor. They were iron men.”
It would not be surprising if years down the road scholars deemed this book the definitive work on the Declaration of our generation. This book captures the significance of not only the Declaration itself, but the American Experiment. Having devoted his life’s work to educating the next generation of prudent statesmen, Spalding has created a commendable guide to America’s founding principles. In today’s tumultuous political environment, few other works have inspired me so deeply to continue fighting to keep our republic.
