The Declaration of Independence is not just America’s founding document. A call for both liberty and equality, the Declaration above all is the great expression of national unity. Over 250 years, the Declaration has been the inspiration for every political and social movement in U.S. history.
In the years since its publication in 1776, the Declaration of Independence was celebrated by settlers clearing the wilderness, used to turn masses of immigrants into citizens, appealed to by abolitionists and suffragettes, and invoked in the struggle against fascism and totalitarianism as well as by separatists at home. It was made into a powerful cultural image by skilled artists and commercial advertisers, tale tellers and producers of mass entertainment alike.
However, this singular document has developed three major characters in the American mind: a revered relic, a supreme symbol of the American ideal, and a uniquely popular element in American popular culture. In looking at these three manifestations of the Declaration, the seminar explored why the Declaration remains the single most influential statement of the American values.
--
Formerly a professor of history at Yale,
Michael Auslin is the inaugural Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
He is the author of the forthcoming
National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America. Timed for the 250th anniversary of American Independence and to be published by Simon & Schuster in May 2026,
National Treasure is the first complete history of the Declaration of Independence, 1776 to the present. In 2025, he was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library of Congress’ Kluge Center, and he is the American Heritage Partners Fellow at the Society of the Cincinnati’s American Revolution Institute. The Royal Historical Society elected him a full fellow in 2018, and he serves as a director of the American Ditchley Foundation. Among his honors is being named a Fulbright Scholar, a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, and a German Marshall Fund Marshall Memorial Fellow.
Before turning to American domestic history, he was long known for his work on the history of America’s relations with Asia. Author of five previous books, his
The End of the Asian Century (Yale) forecast many of the crises now roiling the Indo-Pacific region, while his academic books include the prize-winning
Negotiating with Imperialism and
Pacific Cosmopolitans, both published by Harvard University Press. He also writes
The Patowmack Packet, a Substack on Washington, D.C., past and present. He is a long-time contributor to
The Wall Street Journal, writes regularly in leading media outlets, including
Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and
The Spectator, and hosted the popular
Pacific Century podcast.
