IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience. IN WITNESS whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape-Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini; 1620.

 Anonymous, Mayflower Compact

The united States may be said to have had three beginnings. The first, the Roanoke Colony, ended under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind only a cryptic message: CROATOAN. So that one is free to accord the first beginning the meaning of Death. The second, Jamestown, found a measure of success in farming tobacco, but soon receded in significance, and is remembered, rightly or wrongly, as the site where Slavery first took root in the colonial States. So that one may oblige the second beginning the meaning of Bondage. The third, Plymouth Rock, began as a wayward settlement, whose trials and tribulations continue to reverberate into the present day. So long and patient has this struggle carried—whence “they might have liberty and live comfortably,” that one must give the third beginning the meaning of Suffering. That it cannot be a passing coincidence the Declaration of Independence recites in exactly the negative the universal experience of mankind, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” An unlikely happenstance only sharpened by John Locke’s earlier meditation on “Life, Liberty and Property.” The turn to the pursuit of Happiness sufficiently altering Locke’s original intent to merit a critical reexamination or the phrase.

To start with, the controlling word in the Title, Independence, invokes first most “a sacred No”—a negation of the present state of affairs, which in as far as the Colonists were concerned, was an encroachment on “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Declaration does not, and this is important, attempt to deprecate Death, Bondage, and Suffering—but restore “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” If Life and Liberty borrow from Locke’s earlier exposition, everything turns on the pursuit of Happiness—which overtakes Property in breadth and scope, suggesting something immaterial whiles at the same time commensurate with Life and Liberty. The phrase pursuit of Happiness constituting a verb followed by an adjective in contrast to the preceding nouns, further suggesting the phrase constitutes a noun circumscribed by the verb-adjective beyond the purview of Life and Liberty. The verb pursuit—from the french porsivre, carrying at least since the fourteenth century two distinct connotation: 1) one’s profession, recreation, etc., 2) a chase with hostile intent. The adjective Happiness—with an uppercase H, implying a semblance of joy greater than the plain and ordinary happiness. The phrase suggesting Happiness as an aim of life in the vein of eudaimonia in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle’s Happiness—which too concerns a Happiness greater than passing happiness, constituting an exercise of complete virtue, rendered in Nicomachean Ethics as the golden mean between excesses. Happiness, or the good, constituting the contemplative life (Happiness), distinguished from the political life (Liberty) and economic life (Life). Aristotle elaborating, “since happiness is an activity of soul in accordance with perfect virtue, we must consider the nature of virtue.” If one were to further bring in the Plymouth Rock connection, one may further accord the phrase a Christian exposition. And here one may see Christianity likewise concerns a negation of an existing state of affairs: the Fall of Man. That one may read in LORD God’s threefold curse on Adam exactly Death (Genesis 3:19), Bondage (Genesis 3: 18), and Suffering (Genesis 3:17). Genesis 3: 17 reciting “cursed is the ground for thy sake: in sorow shalt thou eate of it all the dayes of thy life.” The negation of which may translate ‘un-cursed is the ground for thy sake: in un-sorow shalt thou eate of it all the dayes of thy life.’ The pursuit of Happiness rendering as the joy one may find in the action implied by eate of ground—that is work. (Ecclesiastes 5:19: “Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God.”).

The pursuit of Happiness being commensurate with Life and Liberty by being itself intertwined with and wholly dependent on Life and Liberty. So that the pursuit of Happiness without Liberty ceases to be a pursuit, and without Life looses the semblance of happiness. Rather what strikes is the range of interpretation the words lend. To return to Genesis, if Adam was given a meaning in his toil —‘in sorow shalt thou eate of it all the dayes of thy life,’ the negation of the Fall recognizing in man the power to create meanings as he sees fit: in happiness shalt thou eat of it all the dayes of thy life. That it cannot go unnoticed, we are talking about two causal orders, an outer reality, in which one sees Death, Bondage, and Suffering, and an inner reality, in which one experiences Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness. That our Suffering is as well inexorably linked with and wholly dependent on Death and Bondage. That without Death there is never any catharsis to our trying, and without Bondage there is no weight to our Suffering.

That in everything, there is an antagonism, a unity of opposites. Life exists against Death—Life exists because of Death. The order of Life is connected to the order of Death, deprecate one and the other ceases to carry meaning. The Declaration of Independence speaks in the explicit to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. But the Declaration also speaks in the implicit to Death, Bondage, and Suffering. Because the Declaration of Independence was a suicide pact, binding the signatories to the cause célèbre, the War for which constituting Suffering. And maybe this is overthinking things—but that is the point. The Declaration of Independence could have said nothing beyond the Title and still it would have conveyed everything, though it may have lost some of the luster—its hold over the popular imagination. That it is worth mentioning, the list of movements that have appealed to, or otherwise drawn from, the Declaration of Independence is long and winding. The fascination is itself fascinating. And fully meriting overthinking things a little even at the risk of sounding slightly obsessed and completely wrong.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. Halsall, William. The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor. 1882. oil on canvas. Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth. 
2. Haxtun, Annie Arnoux. Signers Of the Mayflower Compact. New York: 1. Haxtun, Annie Arnoux. Signers Of the Mayflower Compact. New York: Reprinted from the Mail and express, 189699.
3. Bradford, William. "Sundry Reasons for the Removal from Leyden." A Library of American Literature from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, vol. 1, C. L. Webster, 1889, pp. 95-98. Edmund Clarence Stedman.
4. The Holy Bible, 1611 Edition: King James Version. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2011. Print.
5. Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825. Transcription available at Founders Online.

	not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject; [. . .] terms so plain and firm, as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independant stand we [. . .] compelled to take. neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the american mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion.