Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property
I. The Substitution
Few phrases are as deeply ingrained in the American imagination as Thomas Jefferson’s declaration that all men are endowed with the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Recited in classrooms, echoed in political speeches, invoked in struggles for equality—it is a phrase that transcends time. Yet it was not Jefferson’s first choice.
In his draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson originally echoed John Locke’s natural rights triad: “life, liberty, and property.” Locke had defined property broadly—land, possessions, the fruits of one’s labor, even the domain of self-ownership. In colonial America, this philosophy carried enormous weight. Property was not merely material; it was the cornerstone of independence. Without the ability to enjoy the fruits of one’s labor, liberty itself was fragile.
But in eighteenth-century America, “property” also meant people. Enslaved Africans and their descendants were legally defined as chattel, their bondage underwriting the wealth of the very men drafting declarations of liberty. To enshrine property as an inalienable right risked endorsing slavery at the founding moment. Jefferson himself—who owned more than 100 enslaved people—could not escape this contradiction.
The substitution of “pursuit of happiness” created rhetorical distance. It did not resolve the tension between slavery and freedom, but it allowed the Declaration to stand as a universal statement of aspiration rather than a narrow defense of ownership. Jefferson also drew from Enlightenment thinkers like Francis Hutcheson, Rousseau, and Montesquieu, who had framed happiness not as indulgence but as flourishing—social harmony, moral sense, the destiny of humankind. With a stroke of the pen, Jefferson shifted the nation’s founding creed from property to possibility, grounding American independence in aspiration rather than possession.
II. Legacy
The power of Jefferson’s phrase lay in its adaptability. “Property” was precise but flat, evoking legal disputes and material security. “Pursuit of happiness,” by contrast, was poetic, universal, and open-ended. It was a phrase designed to inspire, one that carried the rhythms of classical philosophy while speaking to the deepest of human desires.
That adaptability proved decisive. Abraham Lincoln invoked the Declaration as a moral compass during the Civil War, insisting that the nation was “conceived in liberty” and dedicated to equality. By appealing to the Declaration rather than the Constitution, Lincoln elevated emancipation as a fulfillment of America’s founding promise. Nearly a century later, Martin Luther King Jr. did the same from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, calling the Declaration a “promissory note” long unpaid to Black Americans. The capaciousness of “pursuit of happiness” allowed both men to reinterpret Jefferson’s words for their own struggles—and ensured that the phrase would resonate across centuries.
Even today, the phrase threads through debates over healthcare, inequality, climate change, and civil rights. Its power lies in strategic ambiguity: it invites each generation to claim it anew, while never quite resolving the question of what happiness requires.
III. Property and Power
Yet beneath the poetry, property has remained the architect of power. The American Revolution dismantled monarchy and aristocracy (debatable), but it left intact the economic structures that privileged landowners, merchants, and financiers. Property ownership remained the gatekeeper of political participation: one could pursue happiness in theory, often required possession in practice.
Modern capitalism has only deepened the paradox. Property now takes the form of capital, corporate shares, real estate, intellectual property, and data. Concentrated in relatively few hands, these forms of ownership confer disproportionate influence over law, culture, and opportunity. The promise of universal freedom exists, but the conditions for pursuing happiness are still dictated by those who own.
Slavery revealed the violence of property logic in its starkest form: human beings reduced to commodities. After emancipation, sharecropping, convict leasing, and wage dependency perpetuated systems of control rooted in ownership. Today, most citizens still sell their labor to survive, tethered to structures shaped by property holders. Freedom is promised universally, yet dependency endures.
In this sense, feudalism never fully ended—it evolved. The lords of land have become the lords of capital; the barons of Europe replaced by corporate titans who extract labor, attention, and data. Jefferson’s substitution universalized rights, but it also obscured the fact that property remains the true arbiter of power.
Jefferson’s stroke of revision gave America a founding text that transcended its time. It offered a vocabulary of aspiration, a universal promise of flourishing. But beneath that soaring language, property has remained the hidden architecture of political life.
That is why the pursuit of happiness still depends, in practice, on one’s relation to property. The Declaration’s words inspire, but they also conceal: without economic independence, dependence is repackaged and sold as freedom.
The genius and the tragedy of Jefferson’s substitution is that it gave America both its most universal creed—and its most enduring illusion.
References
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