By Tom Mullen
The Libertarian Institute
July 2, 2026
In a few days, Americans will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. There will be fireworks, concerts, speeches, and millions of backyard barbecues.
But what precisely are we celebrating?
Most Americans know that on July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, explaining why the colonies were "dissolving the political bands" connecting them to Great Britain. Far fewer know that the actual act of separation took place two days earlier, when Congress approved Richard Henry Lee's resolution declaring the colonies "free and independent States."
More importantly, few Americans understand what those words meant.
Today, when we hear the phrase "the United States," we naturally think of a single nation. But in 1776, the word "state" meant what we would today call a country. The Declaration itself says that the former colonies possessed "full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do."
In other words, Congress did not create one new nation on July 2. It declared thirteen separate states-Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the others-to be sovereign political communities possessing the same powers as Great Britain, France, or Spain.
Seven years later, Great Britain itself recognized this reality in the Treaty of Paris:
"His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States."
This is quite different from the story most Americans have in mind when they celebrate Independence Day.
Most Americans believe that a new nation (not thirteen new nations) was created that day. Politicians will likely confuse the matter even further with sophisms like "the birth of our democracy." Democracy is not mentioned in any of the founding documents.
Now, it would be dishonest not to recognize that the Founders intended more than thirteen separate states. According to Thomas Jefferson's autobiography, they moved directly on to the Articles of Confederation, defining something more than an alliance but far less than a monolithic nation state. According to the Articles, it was "a confederation." The Articles describe the relationship as "a firm league of friendship" that agreed to delegate certain powers to a federal government, leaving all others to the individual states.
This is not just an academic point. It was the kind of relationship the colonists argued was their proper one to the British Empire before leaving it. In his A Summary View of the Rights of British America, Jefferson argued that the colonies were subject to the king but not to Parliament. As far as internal matters, including taxation, were concerned, only the local colonial governments had any legitimate authority. The king's authority was limited to foreign policy and regulating trade.
We still call the government in Washington DC "the federal government," but have lost the meaning of the word. A federal government governs a federation, not a nation. But the government in Washington DC acts as a national government in all but name.
Again, this is no mere pedantry. We are still arguing today over who makes rules over issues like abortion, gun regulation, and drugs. The Constitution leaves all these issues to the states, but since the early twentieth century progressives, both liberal and conservative, have used the Supreme Court to "discover" those powers in the Constitution, mostly through spurious readings of the Bill of Rights.
But the spirit of '76 was to leave all such matters to local governance, not decided by supposed elites in a distant capital. And Washington DC is literally as distant to many U.S. states as London was in 1776 and culturally much more so to almost all of them.
Then, there is "our democracy." The reason you don't find the word democracy in the Declaration or the Constitution is that the Founders did not envision a government that did any mythical "will of the people" or "will of the majority." Rather, the purpose of government according to the Declaration was to secure the inalienable rights of the individual.
Modern Americans often speak of "our democracy" as though elections determine what government ought to do. The Founders viewed matters differently. Elections were not intended to determine the purpose of government. That purpose was already fixed. The role of government was to secure the rights of individuals. Elections merely determined who would exercise the limited powers delegated for that end.
Today, Americans also have strange ideas about what those rights are, as well as what "created equal" means. But what was meant by those words isn't debatable. Thomas Jefferson told us explicitly where the ideas came from:
"Resolved that it is the opinion of this board that as to the general principles of liberty and the rights of man in nature and in society, the doctrines of Locke, in his 'Essay concerning the true original extent and end of civil government,' and of Sidney in his 'Discourses on government,' may be considered as those generally approved by our fellow-citizens of this, and of the US."
The Sidney essay cited set out to accomplish the same purpose as Locke's First Treatise of Government: to refute Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, which argued for the divine right of kings as derived from the biblical patriarchs, ultimately back to Adam.
The Locke essay Jefferson refers to is generally known as Locke's Second Treatise of Government. Having disposed of the divine right of kings in the First, the Second Treatise set out to "understand political power right, and derive it from its original."
As for "all men are created equal," Jefferson was undoubtedly drawing (perhaps indirectly through the Virginia Declaration of Rights) on this passage from Locke:
"A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty."
In other words, men are created equal in one way and one way only: no one person is born with an inherent right to rule over another. Therefore, no one can be ruled without his consent.
That's it. That's all it means. It doesn't mean one is entitled to any other equality, including "income equality" or "wealth equality." It is purely political equality-the state into which we are born, not one government is tasked with engineering.
Then, there is "rights." As I've said before, the Founders did us no favors by describing myriad, mostly unenumerated rights, leaving the door open to all sorts of ideas about what people may have a right to. Is healthcare a right ? Education?
No, not as rights were understood in 1776. To Jefferson and the other Founders who edited and approved his Declaration, all legitimate rights were property rights. Locke expressed the idea much more elegantly than Jefferson when he wrote that people form societies and constitute governments "for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property."
"Property" according to Locke was not a distinct right from life and liberty, as the Founders often misstated it. Property was an expansive concept that included life and liberty. Locke often doesn't even use the word "rights" in his treatise. In its place he merely writes "property."
In other words, you have a right to what you own. Nothing more, nothing less. This is how the Founders understood "rights."