The Pursuit of Happiness

The United States Declaration of Independence has one of the most famous and influential phrases in the English language which is:  "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

I must remind my readers what our founding fathers where attempting to accomplish in the creation of the democratic government that was to exist in our future country, the United States of America.

For nearly 300 years the colonies had been under the domination of England and the many Kings that ascended the English throne from the 1600's, Virginia, Jamestown Colony, until the late 18th century.  The contemporary King during Revolutionary times was George III (The Mad King).

Many great men risked their lives by signing the Declaration of Independence, if the American Revolution had failed, their own signature would have condemned them to death.  Mind you, I can not list all these great men, my deciphering skills have failed me.  Yet, among the signatures I was able to read were; John Hancock, Jim Hooper, Joseph Herves, John Penn, John Adams, Sam Adams, Robert Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

The Declaration of Independence, drafted primarily by Jefferson, was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776.  The text of the second section of the Declaration of Independence reads:

"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."

I have often wondered why Jefferson would include the very specific, yet very broadly interpreted phrase "pursuit of Happiness" in his draft of the Declaration of Independence.  Happiness is such a personal subject matter.  Can it ever be generalize, interjected and applied to the masses?  Perhaps not.  Maybe that was the point, after all.  Perhaps, we are all suppose to figure out for ourselves what our own individualized happiness is suppose to be.  Perhaps, the enlighten men of that era considered this country's future citizenry and envisioned us spending our lives pursuing and achieving that happiness without government interference.  And in that pursuit, become a self-reliant, self-defining creature; the self-made individual.  A person not dependent on an authoritative figure head nor body of government to establish who they are, but a person that is fully capable of thinking and acting on his own beliefs and merits.

We may never know, Jefferson did not leave any clear evidence of why he used such a phrase.  We have some evidence that other writers at the time were expressing thoughts in that general direction, such as, some great thinkers like; John Locke, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, William Wollaston, Jean Jacques Burlamaqui and George Mason.  But with all their brilliant writings, nothing specific was written to declare the "pursuit of Happiness" as an "unalienable", "sovereign", or "natural" right of man.

I tend to believe that Jefferson's reasoning might come from his public struggles in a society where he had to live as a slave holding plantation owner; while living a private life as a common-law husband to his slave woman Sally Hemings, with whom he had six children.  Jefferson's pursuit of happiness forced him to live two very different, separate lives.  And there is ample evidence of his attempts to emancipate the slave population within the constrains of his society.   This might have been the life source which drove him to insert such a life altering, influential phrase into perhaps the most popularly recognized document in early revolutionary period Americana.