If you’re teaching university-level US history next semester or any after in courses that include the Declaration of Independence, American Revolution, and early republic, this thread is so you can see if my new book is, or if certain chapters in it are, useful to you and your students.

Argues that the DoI is defined by its 1st paragraph more than by its 2nd one—by “the Course of human events” & “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” more than by its self-evident truths. And looking at history and natural as its framing concepts changes our interpretation of the rest of the DoI.

The natural law basis of political/historical thought from Cicero to Locke, the DoI’s preamble as a general history of humankind from Creation & state of nature to origins of govt & occasional revolutions, & not abstract theory. Explores meanings of “equality” in state of nature & civil society.

How colonists argued from 1660s on that emigration/settlement (“the pursuit of Happiness”) established rights to property and self-govt by colonial assemblies under the crown, not parliament, & how emigration/settlement helped create the DoI’s “one people”—excluding Indigenous & enslaved people.

Explores how rights established by DoI’s emigration/settlement continued to apply, despite certain disruptions, how the Glorious Revolution differed in England from the colonies & set the scene for American Revolution, & why colonists appealed to but then blamed the king in the grievances.

How the grievances related to colonists’ inherent rights as “men,” inherited rights as Englishmen, & acquired rights as Americans, how they mapped onto the preamble’s justification of historical revolutions, & how petitions proved a “design” to impose tyranny--essential to justifying independence.

How those outside the DoI’s “one people” could be deprived of their rights—how the DoI’s “Course of human events” & “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” esp the historic “circumstances of emigration and settlement” and natural right of self-preservation, rationalized slavery & westward expansion.

How the original DoI envisioned an exclusivist “natural law republic” in which certain people could be treated unequally & even deprived entirely of their rights, but how reformers, esp black abolitionists, revised & created the universalist, creedal Declaration we celebrate today.

If you're interested, the book is available from @uvapress.bsky.social : www.upress.virginia.edu/title/10151/ & Amazon (please leave a review if you have a moment).