July 4 1776 - The Second Continental Congress of the thirteen United States of America, a collegiate body of the representatives of the colonies, adopts the declaration of independence.
To deal with the drafting of the statement was the so-called Commission of Five composed of Thomas Jefferson (future third president of the United States), John Adams (future second president of the United States), Benjamin Franklin (future American ambassador in France), Robert Livingston (future first Chancellor of the State of New York) and Roger Sherman (future senator). Here the beginning of the declaration:
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
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.
In the original intentions, America should not be a democracy - the word never appears in the articles of the constitution - but a republic. Not just for the irresistible charm of Ancient Rome. The Greek word demokratía called "the direct and dangerous" incarnation of government by the people.
The United States, on the other hand, would be led by a group of enlightened elitists who, if only temporarily given to politics, would administer public affairs without being led astray by passions. And they would lose their freedom only if the population had imposed their will on the ruling class, altering the institutional architecture. Politics had to be the prerogative of a few literary men, selected for wealth as an active and passive electorate.
The fetish of representativeness was the diaphragm to be inserted between the lucid pursuit of public interest and the blind humor of the masses. The president would have been chosen indirectly, from an electoral college that met in semi-heterogeneity. The very idea of holding elections exclusively on Tuesday, the day before the market, was to discourage citizens from taking an interest in public affairs.
A gap that would have made the nation immune from the violence that upset Europe.
July 4 1826 - On the same day the constituent fathers die, respectively the second and third president of the United States of America (1797-1801; 1801-1809), John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
We are firmly convinced that, as a nation and as individuals, our interests, though scrupulously balanced, are in no way separable from our moral obligations; and it is on the basis of this belief that we act.
Thomas Jefferson, Second settlement speech, 4/3/1805.
When, in 1800, France took possession of Louisiana - which at the time stretched for most of the current central United States - subtracting it from Spain, an alarmed President Jefferson found himself forced to reconsider the relationship between trade and foreign policy, between the freedoms policies of US citizens and their economic freedoms. The city of New Orleans, falling into French hands with all its population, in fact represented an absolutely strategic commercial terminal.
Firmly resolved to prevent the dispute from escalating into a war of uncertain outcome, Jefferson sent James Monroe to Paris to negotiate the sale of New Orleans with the French; the negotiations were successful, and on April 30, 1803, an international treaty sanctioned the US purchase not only of the city, but of the immense Louisiana, for the modest sum of 15 million dollars.
