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Introduction
America was an idea before it was a nation. The Declaration of Independence states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” These ideas, once the domain of a few political philosophers, had already taken root in the new land before the revolution ever occurred, drawing men and women across the seas to escape oppressive systems of government. Samuel Adams wrote, “Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum,” in 1776. His cousin John Adams wrote years after the revolution, in 1818, that “The revolution was effected before the war commenced. The revolution was in the hearts and minds of the people.”
“We have it in our power to begin the world all over,” wrote Thomas Paine. America became the first new nation, “the only country deliberately founded upon a good idea,” as historian John Gunther put it. Jefferson, in Paris, wrote that it was “unquestionably the wisest [political document] ever yet presented to men.”