ABSTRACT
The Declaration of Independence actually expressed the American people as a whole, the nation, even more than it did the American elite. The American Revolution was not made by an elite or a minority; it was not an indoor revolution, sprung full-blown from one man’s brain, like the philosophical revolution created by Descartes as he sat by his stove or the social revolution planned by Marx as he sat in his London attic. It was an outdoor revolution, a hardy plant springing up from a seed that God had sown. Since the political sovereignty of the people derives from God, and revolution is the ultimate expression of that sovereignty, all authentic revolution, though it too derives from God, originates in the people and can be carried out only by them.
