Used, Abused, and Sidelined

Since it was published in 1776, the Declaration of Independence has been used to advocate for social justice and to maintain inequitable social hierarchies; it has served as a model for justifying revolutions in other nations and for the Confederacy’s secession from the US federal government. But as we approach its 250th anniversary, this book asks: Does the Declaration still matter?

In this volume, leading scholars explore how this remarkably pliable document has been used for progressive and regressive politics alike and track its impact on independence movements across the globe. The essays begin with the Declaration’s immediate reception and masculine style of prose and then move on to its central role in interpreting civic action between state and federal governments, most notably secession in the Antebellum era, questions of sovereignty between Indigenous nations in the United States, and the United States’ relationship with Latin America. The next section focuses on the ways the Declaration was called upon to urge imperative moral action, especially in terms of human rights, in the US Civil Rights Movement and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and, in contrast, how it was cast aside in the Syrian Revolution. The final section teases out the tension between the needs reflected in the original document and the needs of the contemporary political world.

Used, Abused, and Sidelined demonstrates how this foundational document prepares us to tolerate and to resist—and it points to how we might leverage the Declaration to create a different kind of political future.

“These essays do more than valorize the US Declaration of Independence, they unfold its rhetorical character, probing its rhetorical and political affordances, as well as its gaps, blindnesses, and omissions. Peeling back layers of well-meaning mythology, the essays provide a balanced reckoning with a document that has shaped discourse, inside and outside the United States, for the last 250 years.”—William M. Keith, coauthor of Beyond Civility: The Competing Obligations of Citizenship

“The Declaration of Independence is a document that everyone knows and few understand. This book goes wide and deep to give readers the chance to see the text for its rhetorical majesty alongside its flawed premises and failed hopes. Stuckey’s volume should be read by anyone who not only hopes to critique this essential founding document but also wonders about how it might apply to preserving democracy in the future.”—Sam Martin, author of Decoding the Digital Church: Evangelical Storytelling and the Election of Donald J. Trump

Mary E. Stuckey is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University. Her most recent books are For the Enjoyment of the People: The Creation of National Identity in American Public Lands and Deplorable: The Worst Presidential Campaigns from Jefferson to Trump, the latter published by Penn State University Press.

Acknowledgments

The Declaration of Independence

Introduction | 1

Part 1 The Declaration in Its Time

1. An Appeal to the Tribunal of the World: The Reception of the Timely and Timeless Messages of the Declaration in 1776 and Beyond

Jelte Olthof

2. “An Impudent, False, and Atrocious Proclamation”: Loyalist Critique and

the Limits of Dissent in Colonial America

Stephen Howard Browne

3. A Declaration of Style: Masculinity’s Enduring Resonance

Anna M. Young

Part 2 The Sovereign Declaration

4. The Antebellum Declaration: Abolition, Secession, and Revolution

Mary E. Stuckey

5. From Declaration to Self- Determination: Decolonial Shifts in Indigenous Rhetorical Authority

Jason Edward Black

6. Declaring Economic Independence: Argentina, Juan Domingo Per.n, and Political Time

Stephen J. Heidt

7. Sovereignty Reimagined: Tropes, Sovereign Citizen Discourses, and the Declaration of Independence

Scott J. Varda

Part 3 Claims to Equality

8. We Are the True Americans: The Declaration of Independence and Radical, Anti- capitalist, Working- Class Movements

Mary Anne Trasciatti

9. The Declaration of Independence and Civil Rights: The Long Movement and Countermovement

Davis W. Houck

10. From Black Lives Matter to the Syrian Revolution: How Do

“We the People” Render Our Struggles Visible?

Noor Ghazal Aswad

11. A Morally Grounded Ideograph: V.clav Havel’s Constitutive Rhetoric in the Velvet Revolution

Rebecca Oliver

Part 4 The Semi- sacred Declaration

12. “That Was the First Time in History That Anyone Bothered to Write That Down”: Mythologizing the Declaration of Independence in The West Wing

Christopher J. Wernecke and Ann E. Burnette

13. Proximate Deliberation and the 1776 Moment: The Proud Boys’ and

Oath Keepers’ Use of the Declaration of Independence

Leslie A. Hahner

14. From Cultural Artifact to Culture War: The Declaration of Independence and the Fight for Control of the US Civics Classroom

Mark Hlavacik

15. Borrowing Trouble? The Declaration’s Threshold of Suffering and Care

Brandon Inabinet

List of Contributors

Index

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction

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Rhetoric