It is not simply a historical watermark to be consigned to the past. Consequently, she decries the memorialized display of the Declaration in the National Archives. For Maier the ``making'' of the Declaration, then, has been an ongoing project rather than a historical episode. When text supposedly quoting the Declaration was inscribed on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial, all traces of a challenge to governmental authority had disappeared.
Lincoln's version of the Declaration, however, emphasized human rights as a justification for Union action against rebels, while downplaying its status as an instrument of revolution. It resurfaced in the partisan politics of the Jeffersonian party, and Lincoln subsequently shaped it into a central symbol of the mature United States.
Indeed, having served its purpose, the Declaration was basically forgotten for a couple of decades after its adoption. Most importantly, we are reminded that in the midst of prosecuting a war the Declaration was only one item on a crowded agenda, and not a prolonged effort to create a document for the ages. Jefferson's role as draftsman, and especially the contributions made by other members of the drafting committee and the Continental Congress as a whole, are traced in meticulous detail. By examining the ``other declarations'' adopted by individual colonies and towns, she identifies common components later incorporated into the Declaration-including lists of grievances and appeals to norms limiting the exercise of authority-that indicate it was an embodiment of familiar sentiments rather than a radical break with established opinion. History/MIT) employs superior historiography and political sensitivity to place the Declaration in its original context, and considers what it has become in the context of American political history. Maier (The Old Revolutionaries, 1980, etc.
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