The Declaration of Independence—as a bold act of secession—can be understood as one of the earliest major challenges to modern centralized sovereign authority within the emerging nation-state system. Understanding the Hobbesian nation-state is crucial to fully appreciating the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution.
Thomas Hobbes is often regarded as one of the intellectual founders of the modern secular nation-state, which he articulated in his 1651 book Leviathan. In The Rise and Decline of the State, Martin van Creveld argues that “Hobbes deserves the credit for inventing the ‘state’ . . . as an abstract entity separate both from the sovereign (who is said to ‘carry’ it) and the ruled, who, by means of a contract among themselves, transferred their rights to him. . . . Hobbes’s sovereign was much more powerful than . . . any Western ruler since late antiquity.”
While Hobbes arguably shares this infamy with Machiavelli, Bodin, and others, he was the first major Western thinker to systematically articulate and defend the concept of a single sovereign governmental authority with absolute power over a defined territory. Hobbes uniquely argued that the state ought to have a monopoly of coercion and security provision over a specific geographic territory. Further, rather than appealing to divine right or tradition, Hobbes attempted to justify his state by appealing to reason and a social contract. Hobbes shifted the focus of the philosophical debate from the person of the ruler (the king) to the structure of the state—the “Leviathan” as a corporate body representing all citizens.
Like it or not, Hobbes’s nation-state concept has been the default paradigm and context for modern people whenever they think about government. Without having ever read Hobbes, people will unknowingly repeat his assumptions, presuppositions, concerns, and arguments for the state.
Summarizing Hobbes’s main argumentation for the state, (1) in the state of nature, everyone has a right to everything, even to others’ bodies (absolute freedom and autonomy); (2) because everyone may do whatever they think necessary to survive, no one is safe; (3) therefore, peace and security require individuals to relinquish that liberty to an absolute sovereign who enforces order.
By appealing to a social contract, Hobbes vests all the sovereign’s authority in the original agreement by which people allegedly created the state and authorized a sovereign to act on their behalf. In Hobbes’s theory, the social contract not only legitimizes the actions of the state, but also makes all those acts consensual. Since the sovereign state is said to have received ultimate power and authority from “the consent of the People,” it is understood that the individuals under such a government have agreed to obey the government under any and all circumstances.
And because the state claims that each person living under it is the original creator and authorizer of the state, neither can the state be said to do any injury or injustice.
But Hobbes’s argument goes further than this: Since the state was brought about by the consent of the subjects and represents them, the state’s actions are not merely consensual. They are the subjects’ actions.
Of course, John Locke employed social contract theory too, but largely as a critique or limitation of state power. Locke based his theory of government on the legitimate protection of natural rights— life, liberty, and property—and the requirement of consent for state actions to be legitimate. Clearly Jefferson borrowed Locke’s theories in the Declaration. But unfortunately, Locke’s social contract theory also had a Hobbesian core because it still allowed the state to claim the tacit consent of the people.
As Rothbard explains in Economic Controversies, “a ‘social contract’ theory of government . . . can be used in two different ways, and this difference is extremely important: it can be used to set up an ideal toward which the government should be transformed (essentially the view of John Locke), or it can be used to place a stamp of approval on all, or most, of the actions of the existing government.” Under such a totalizing view, what could possibly limit the government’s power?
The Significance of the Declaration of Independence
Political communities had long been separating from kingdoms, empires, and other political structures. However, secession in the modern sense could only emerge once the nation-state came to be regarded as the exclusive and indivisible locus of sovereignty over a defined territory. Secession is therefore not merely political separation; it is the withdrawal of a people or territory from a state that claims supreme authority over them.
Viewed in this light, the Declaration of Independence—building upon liberal principles developed during the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution—stands as one of history’s most important decentralizing assertions of political self-determination. Rather than seeking control of the British state, the American colonies asserted the right to dissolve their political connection to it and to constitute themselves as free and independent states.
While the Declaration of Independence did not necessarily invent or introduce entirely new political ideas, it is important to recognize that it was not merely a theoretical political treatise. Rather, it was a formal declaration of secession from the most powerful empire in the world.
By affixing their names to the document, the signers openly challenged British authority, knowing that the failure of the revolution would likely result in charges of treason, the loss of their property, imprisonment, or death.
The Right of Secession
The American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence were not merely a colonial rebellion against British policies, but were also a claim that a political community possesses the right to withdraw its consent from an existing political union and establish itself as an independent state without the permission of the original state. Thus, instead of altering or overthrowing a nation-state, the Declaration announced a limit and exclusion to a state’s territorial monopoly.
Jefferson argued in the Declaration of Independence “that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [i.e., securing natural rights], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”
Did the Americans alter or abolish the British government?
In one sense, both; in another sense, neither. The Americans altered the extent of the power and authority of the British government by declaring their rule invalid over the American colonies. The British government over the Americans was abolished. Yet the Declaration of Independence did not primarily seek to reform, capture, or overthrow the British government. Instead, it took the alternative path of political separation: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
And then, toward the end, the Declaration announced, “That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved.”
American “Revolution”
In political terminology, a civil war is generally understood as a violent conflict over political authority or control of the government within a state. Likewise, a revolution ordinarily involves a fundamental alteration of a state’s governing institutions, political order, or ruling regime.
The American colonists did not seek to seize control of Parliament, depose the British government, or rule the British Empire from London. Rather, they sought to withdraw from British political authority altogether. Their objective was not to alter the government of Great Britain but to dissolve their connection to it and establish independent states.
For this reason, the American Revolution can be understood not merely as a revolution but as an act of secession and self-determination. Whatever other dimensions the conflict possessed, the central claim of the Declaration was that a people may withdraw their allegiance to an existing political union. While the realities of geography doubtless played a role in this, the Declaration of Independence nevertheless became a powerful precedent for the right of self-determination.
In The Anatomy of Revolution, Crane Brinton argues that revolutions tend to proceed through successive stages in which power passes from the defenders of the old regime to moderates and finally to increasingly radical factions. As each stage unfolds, political power tends to become more centralized and concentrated in fewer hands. Yet Brinton regards the American Revolution as unusual because it never advanced as far down this path as the French or Russian Revolutions: “In America rather earlier in the revolutionary process a struggle between moderates and radicals had been fought out, and had ended with victory for the radicals. The fruit of that victory was the Declaration of Independence.”
Jefferson Never Abandoned the Right of State Secession
Even after the constitutional union was formed, Thomas Jefferson still held that secession was a valid legal right of the states. In fact, he affirmed this view in writing as late as 1816, and there is no evidence that he ever abandoned the principle. In an August 23, 1799, letter to James Madison, he wrote, “We are willing to view with indulgence to wait with patience till those passions & delusions shall have passed over which the federal government have artfully & successfully excited to cover it’s own abuses & to conceal it’s designs; fully confident that the good sense of the American people and their attachment to those very rights which we are now vindicating will, before it shall be too late, rally with us round the true principles of our federal compact; but [we are] determined, were we to be disappointed in this, to sever ourselves from that union we so much value, rather than give up the rights of self government which we have reserved, & in which alone we see liberty, safety & happiness” (emphasis added).
And in his First Inaugural Address on March 4, 1801, Jefferson affirmed, “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
The Meaning of “States”: Did the Declaration of Independence Create a Nation?
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation.”
—Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863
“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
—Francis Bellamy, Pledge of Allegiance, September 8, 1892
In the context of the United States, the word state can be confusing. This is due, in part, to the unique history and constitutional development of the American union. In modern American usage, states are often understood as administrative subdivisions of a larger nation governed by a supreme central authority in Washington, DC.
In international relations, however, a state is a sovereign political entity. This was the meaning employed in the era of the American founding. Thus, in the founding era, the United States were not commonly understood as a single consolidated nation-state. Rather, they were a collection of distinct political societies that had united for common purposes while retaining their separate identities and, in many respects, their sovereignty.
The language of the Declaration itself reflects this usage: “We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good people of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” (emphasis added).
The 13 original American colonies declared themselves to be free and independent states— just like the state of Great Britain.
This is evident in the powers claimed by the states: to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.
These are powers of sovereign states, as The Encyclopaedia Britannica confirms. Often the “united States” capitalized the S in States and did not capitalize the U in united because united was just an adjective describing the alliance or confederation between the sovereign American states. In fact, the United States used to be plural instead of singular (e.g., “the United States are,” not “the United States is”). All this demonstrates the decentralized nature of the American states from the beginning.
While it became popular, even prior to the Constitution, to claim that America was a nation or that the Declaration of Independence created a nation, this is incorrect. Neither the Second Continental Congress nor the Declaration of Independence had the authority to create a nation.
This point is crucial in understanding the later history and political development of the United States. The United States is a modern nation-state today, but not because of the Declaration of Independence. The story of how the US went from British colonies to a decentralized confederacy of sovereign states to a modern nation-state is key to understanding American politics and history. The Declaration of Independence was not an attempt to create a consolidated nation-state, but a joint act of secession by distinct colonies who declared themselves to be free and independent states.
Ironically, over time this secessionist political document championing natural rights and the consent of the governed would be transmogrified into a legitimating political document for a centralized American nation-state with almost unlimited power.
Conclusion
The British American colonies were the fortunate recipients of libertarian strains of thought from English political tradition, which was enlarged and amplified in the distant, decentralized colonies. Rothbard writes in “The American Revolution and Classical Liberalism,” “Thus, while classical liberal thought began in England, it was to reach its most consistent and radical development—and its greatest living embodiment—in America.” The Declaration of Independence was the crown jewel of classical liberalism in America.
To close, Bernard Bailyn, in “The Central Themes of the American Revolution: An Interpretation,” Essays on the American Revolution, writes, “[American revolutionary leaders] infused into American political culture . . . the major themes of eighteenthcentury radical libertarianism. . . . The first is the belief that power is evil, a necessity perhaps but an evil necessity; that it is infinitely corrupting; and that it must be controlled, limited, restricted in every way compatible with a minimum of civil order. Written constitutions; the separation of powers; bills of rights; limitations on executives, on legislatures, and courts; restrictions on the right to coerce and wage war all express the profound distrust of power that lies at the ideological heart of the American Revolution and that has remained with us as a permanent legacy ever after.”
The Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution it launched were unique because they were focused on decentralization, liberty, and limitations on state power. This movement did not “create a nation.” Rather, it seriously challenged and limited the Hobbesian state.
