Civics In A Year
What do you really know about American government, the Constitution, and your rights as a citizen?
Civics in a Year is a fast-paced podcast series that delivers essential civic knowledge in just 10 minutes per episode. Over the course of a year, we’ll explore 250 key questions—from the founding documents and branches of government to civil liberties, elections, and public participation.
Rooted in the Civic Literacy Curriculum from the Center for American Civics at Arizona State University, this series is a collaborative project supported by the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. Each episode is designed to spark curiosity, strengthen constitutional understanding, and encourage active citizenship.
Whether you're a student, educator, or lifelong learner, Civics in a Year will guide you through the building blocks of American democracy—one question at a time.
Civics In A Year
Equality in America: Unpacking "All Men Are Created Equal"
The Declaration of Independence's most famous phrase, "All men are created equal," represents a revolutionary claim in human political history that asserts the fundamental equality of all humans regarding certain unalienable rights granted by a divine creator.
• The phrase appears in the first part of the Declaration's second paragraph as the first of several "self-evident truths."
• The claim draws from the natural law tradition dating back to ancient Greek philosophers
• "All men" likely means all human beings regardless of gender, based on textual evidence within the Declaration
• Abraham Lincoln emphasized in his 1857 Dred Scott address that this equality applies to fundamental rights despite human differences
• Jefferson included an anti-slavery paragraph in his original draft that the Continental Congress later removed
• The Declaration established both a philosophical principle of universal human equality and a standard for ongoing progress
• The document balances aspirational universal principles with practical political compromise
If you want to learn more about Lincoln's interpretation of the Declaration, look for his Dred Scott address of 1857; you can find it here.
Jefferson's initial draft of the Declaration.
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Hi, my name is Emma, I'm from Arizona and I'm in ninth grade and I want to know what the phrase all men are created equal means. Thank you for that question, emma. We're have Dr Carrese back. We are kind of again diving more into this Declaration of Independence, so, dr Carrese, welcome back, and Emma asked a really great question what does the phrase all men are created equal mean?
Speaker 2:Great. Thank you, liz, and it is a great question. So, as I mentioned in the last episode, I did with us the declaration. Have your text of the Declaration of Independence handy with you. I'm going to be focusing on the Declaration. Have your text of the Declaration of Independence handy with you. I'm going to be focusing on particular phrases and Liz is going to help me do that. So I think to understand this claim that all men are created equal, this self-evident truth, we do need to look at the phrase right before it. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
Speaker 1:And what does self-evident? That all men are created equal. And what does self-evident?
Speaker 2:mean Good. So let's step back a bit. This is the first clause of four clauses in the very long second paragraph. So in an earlier episode we talked about the preamble, so to speak, the first paragraph. Now we get to a second long paragraph and then, after that second paragraph, we get to really the third section, so to speak, of the Declaration, which is the list of charges. Let facts be submitted to a candid world. This is the list of charges.
Speaker 2:Sean Byenberg has talked with you about the specific complaints against King George III and against the Parliament. But here we are in the second paragraph, big long second paragraph. This is the first section of it and if you have your text in front of you, you notice there are a whole bunch of words leading up to pursuit of happiness. Then there's a period, then there's a double dash. Period's a problem, I'll get to that later but the double dashes separate this big long paragraph into four sections. So here we're in the first subsection of the second paragraph.
Speaker 2:What does all men are created equal mean? Well, the opening claim is there are truths. Now, in the earlier session we talked about the laws of nature and nature's God, of nature and nature's God. That would seem to be the foundation for the truths that are now held by these signers to be self-evident. They are declaring we hold these truths to be self-evident. Self-evident is a phrase used throughout Western philosophical discourse, but the classical Greek and Roman philosophers at least had the ingredients of it. And in the medieval period Thomas Aquinas talks about self-evident propositions, including applying to not just logic but to political and moral questions something being obvious to a reasoning person who works through and thinks through and argues their way through some reality. And again, applying to human beings, about moral and ethical and political questions, self-evident is used. So this is a logical, rational argument that any reasonable, fair-minded person would be able to hold. As we hold the following statements and it turns out there are a lot of them here. It goes into the second subsection as well, but the first of them self-evident truths is that all men are created equal, and we're going to talk about what men means and what all means and what equal means. But in general here we have what's called the natural law tradition of reasoning and thinking, which again starts with ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. It continued in the medieval European Christian tradition of philosophy into the Enlightenment period. That's most directly influencing the Americans.
Speaker 2:And this is a view that human beings can discern in the frame of reality, regular patterns which have got to be put there by a divine mind. That's the laws of nature and nature's God. In the first paragraph. This is not random. And then applied to human beings and human nature, it's not random that we are the way we are and we're inclined to think and to act in certain ways. We have challenges. So, unlike the laws of physics where if you drop a bowling ball out a second story window, it's going to act exactly the same way, given that we're on this earth with these other physical laws involved, right, human beings are more complicated than that, uh, so the the laws of nature as applied, uh, the end of nature's God is applied to human beings. A little more complicated, a little messier, uh, but yeah, human beings are called to live up to certain principles of justice that are embedded in our nature when you're born as a human being and then as communities of people, small to medium to large, the communities, then political communities, are supposed to live up to these natural laws within us. Natural laws within us. That's the tradition of philosophy that Jefferson for the committee, jefferson for the second covenant of Congress and then the whole Congress is endorsing in the declaration. So human equality is now inserted as the first of these self-evident truths and I read all men are created equal, as all human beings are created equal. And this is a momentous statement and occasion and moment in all of human history to make this claim. The creator we learn in the next clause has endowed all human beings with certain unalienable rights. We'll get to that in the next episode what it means. But here we're getting the view that one of the highest principles of natural law thinking applied to politics, embedded in our nature, is that all human beings are equal in certain ways.
Speaker 2:Now let's follow the guidance of Abraham Lincoln, who's been invoked in earlier episodes. In 1857, in response to a very controversial Supreme Court opinion, the Dred Scott opinion about slavery and whether the federal government could restrict the spread of slavery in states and territories, etc. In Illinois in 1857, invoking the Declaration of Independence and saying this is the truth about America. And the Supreme Court has got it wrong about the meaning of the Constitution and the amendments to the Constitution because they've gotten the Declaration of Independence wrong. What the Declaration of Independence means, says Lincoln, is that all human beings are created equal, not equal in every sense, he says. You know, for example, we're different in size, we're different in intellect, we might be different in abilities he uses the phrase social capacity but we're equal as to certain fundamental rights. And that is an astounding claim Lincoln says. And we should think it's still today in human history, in human politics, to make that claim.
Speaker 2:So now let's get into a little detail about just what the all men means. Does it mean only males of the human species? Is that what the natural law, the laws of nature, nature's God means? Human species? Is that what the natural law, the laws of nature, nature's God means? Lincoln gets us thinking. It certainly does not mean all men of a certain race or breed, all Anglo-Americans or all Europeans, right. But then we have from the 1840s the argument. We even have Abigail Adams writing to her husband John during the Second Continental Congress in the spring of 1776, Abigail Adams saying to her husband John don't forget the ladies, right. So we have it already in the air that all men might really mean all human beings. It's a shorthand, right.
Speaker 2:And I'll say for myself the text of the Declaration does not use any other phrasing which says we're only talking about the men, as in males, of the species. Right there are references to people and peoples. And then actually, if you look forward to the 1787 Constitution, I think the 1787 Constitution framers get it right by using the word person and persons. They don't use men anymore. Ok, I think that captures the spirit of the Declaration. Certainly Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Seneca Falls Declaration in 1848, and Frederick Douglass is there as a big supporter of that they think it means all men and women. That's what this phrasing means and I don't see anything in the text of the Declaration that speaks against that and everything else about the Declaration.
Speaker 2:This argument is universal. I will point to one phrase we don't tend to like today. In the charges against the king and the parliament there is a phrase that's a clause that's very controversial now. It refers to warfare that the king and parliament have excited the Native American peoples, the Indian savages that's the part that's very bothersome to us and their rule of warfare is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions, and we might find that phrasing uncomfortable, but it does have a clue there. Warfare is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions, and we might find that phrasing uncomfortable, but it does have a clue there. They're aware of the difference of the sexes and they're not making a big deal out of it. They're using all men, I think, in this universal way. All sexes and conditions have this unalienable right, these unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as we'll talk about, and they're all equal in this way.
Speaker 2:So you know, to close up this claim, if I'm right, that all human beings are created equal by a God, a divinity, whoever this is, that is a lawmaker and a creator, the laws of nature and nature's God, and a lawmaker of justice. This is an astounding claim in the history of human affairs. Philosophers had talked about the possibilities of this and the ingredients of this for thousands of years, starting with Socrates and Plato in ancient Athens. But here it is as a political claim. And Lincoln says this isn't the amazing thing about the Declaration of Independence. This could have been a merely political document and I'm paraphrasing it right. This is a claim of independence. It's revolution. Fighting has already been going on. They could have just kept it as a political document, he says. But they insert into it a philosophical argument and claim of justice which is imperfectly achieved.
Speaker 2:Lincoln says at the beginning from July 1776 onward. But it lays down a marker. It lays down a principle and a standard for amelioration, reform, progress toward fully implementing this astounding claim that, regarding these particular rights, that regarding these particular rights and we're going to talk about it in the next episode all human beings are created equal in this way. So this sets forth the age of revolutions. It's called by historians and scholars the French Revolution. Then we call it Haiti. It will happen, french Revolution will happen, et cetera. Going on.
Speaker 2:There is something different about the American Revolution. We'll talk about this as well. It's the declaration. The bulk of it is arguments and claims about English common law. So this is the moderate revolution, the not completely radical revolution. We'll talk about that some more, but not to lose the headline. Right, lincoln points us to an important reality we have to grapple with. Beginning of the arguments made about why the Americans are a separate people, must be, by right and justice, a separate people, and why we're fighting as a matter of sacred honor, to live up to these principles of justice.
Speaker 1:Senator Crease, can I ask really quick what is the speech by Lincoln called?
Speaker 2:in case listeners want to look that up it's usually referred to as the Dred Scott address, lincoln's speech or address of the Dred Scott decision. It's before the Lincoln-Douglas debates. He refers to Senator Douglas having spoken just a week before about this and he now wants to respond. And then Lincoln will decide to run for the Senate race in Illinois in 1858, and will call out Douglass to debate him publicly and Douglass agrees. So this is 1857. This is before that, but you can easily find it and it's an extraordinary address.
Speaker 1:And listeners. I will make sure that that is in the show notes for you, dr Currys, thank you. I really appreciate, as a former teacher, that when you're looking at this, one of the things that really stuck out to me is you don't find evidence within the documents that all men means anything but mankind, and I think that as readers and as people who are, you know, critically looking at these documents especially our high school listeners maybe some of our college listeners is understanding that finding support in the text is really really important while reading these documents, or while reading documents, you know, like you said, by Lincoln or anyone else that's going to kind of invoke the Declaration.
Speaker 2:So thank you very much, sure and I just Liz, just one quick footnote, just briefly. We should give credit to Thomas Jefferson on this question of equality. In the draft he did have a paragraph condemning slavery and condemning the slave trade as imposed upon the American colonists by the British King and British Parliament. That was struck out by the Second Continental Congress. Right, the Southern colonies, now Southern states, said wait a minute, we can't go there.
Speaker 2:And in the compromise process, just like there are compromises in the 1787 Constitution, that Constitutional Convention, there's a big compromise swallow hard about slavery, but as a more philosophical document of justice. His first draft he thought as a slave owner himself and coming from a Southern colony, now Southern state, he's going to put that in there. So I think it just speaks to the quality character of the declaration as grounded in reality, current political circumstances, but also reaching to point out highest principles of justice. And Jefferson thought that meant we should put down at least the moral marker that we think slavery is morally wrong. It was a bridge too far in July of 1776, but he tried it.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Thank you so much, thank you.
