When it comes to the Declaration of Independence, the preamble gets all the love. But historian Robert Parkinson argues the 27 grievances that follow are the real heart of the document. These grievances not only laid out the reasons for a revolution, but galvanized the American people to take up arms against the crown.
Parkinson has spent 25 years studying the Revolutionary period. His new book, Tyrants and Rogues: Understanding the Declaration of Independence, arrives just in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration—and it argues that we’ve been reading that document wrong for most of those 250 years.
In this episode of Breaking History, Parkinson explains what the Continental Congress actually debated and deleted from Thomas Jefferson’s draft, why one delegate made sure race would be the last and most explosive grievance on the list, and why those grievances—written in panic and desperation in the summer of 1776—feel urgent today.
Listen to their conversation below, or scroll down for an edited transcript.
This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Eli Lake: Let’s get started. We make a big deal about the preamble and its connection to the Scottish and English Enlightenment and John Locke and the history of the idea of freedom. I gather that your book says the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War is about far more mundane issues. What do you mean by that?
Robert Parkinson: For a lot of Americans—probably not the majority of your listeners, but a lot of Americans across the country—the opening paragraphs of the Declaration are all there is to it. The bit about self-evident rights and pursuit of happiness and unalienable rights, that’s about it. They don’t know that there is a list of 27 grievances in the Declaration. The opening paragraphs are almost entirely Jefferson—other than a few snippets done by [Benjamin] Franklin and [John] Adams in their first round of editing.
But there’s a lot that’s actually edited out; about 470 words are taken out from the rough draft Jefferson turns into Congress. Congress spent a lot of time thinking about how to get this statement, this mission statement, exactly right. And where they did most of their work was in the grievances themselves. So if they thought that was the part that needed the most attention, I think we should think about that as well.
