Irish people will have more than a passing interest in the forthcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America, with whom no other country, bar its original colonial master, Britain, has had such a deep and long-standing relationship. It is estimated that nearly seven million Irish emigrated there from colonial times to the present. Twenty-three of the USA’s 45 presidents have had an Irish background, the most recent being Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Moreover, the American Revolution gave us a republic, followed a few years later by a second republic in France, putting republics firmly on the agenda as an alternative model of government. Radical reform movements like the United Irishmen were the result, with their emphasis on rights and citizenship as the basis of nationality—the unity of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter.
What is being commemorated precisely is ‘The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America’ on 4 July 1776. Of the 56 who signed the document, eight or nine were of Irish heritage, and three of those were Irish-born—George Taylor, Matthew Thornton and James Smith. The first printed broadside version was the work of John Dunlap, born in Strabane, Co. Tyrone, 30 years before.
Most readers will be familiar with the document’s opening (actually the start of the second paragraph):
‘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.’
Readers may be less familiar with the 27 specific grievances against King George III listed thereunder. At a time when President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to use the 1807 Insurrection Act (basically martial law) to quell unrest in US cities such as Minneapolis, some of them resonate uncomfortably today:
‘He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.’
Seven years later, as he left the final session of the Constitutional Convention tasked with drafting a constitution, Benjamin Franklin was asked by Elizabeth Willing Powel: ‘Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?’, to which Franklin replied: ‘A republic—if you can keep it’.
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