Articles-of-Confederation

The movement claim that the absence of 'sovereign' and 'sovereignty' from the Declaration of Independence proves the Founders rejected sovereignty as a foreign concept is partially supported as textual observation and foreclosed as constitutional inference

Byron Beers and adjacent literature read the Declaration of Independence's silence on the words 'sovereign' and 'sovereignty' as evidence of a deliberate political-philosophy commitment by the Founders — that they were rejecting sovereignty as a foreign feudal concept incompatible with the natural-rights political theory of 1776. The textual observation is straightforwardly correct: the National Archives transcript contains neither word. The inference from textual silence to founding-era rejection of the concept is foreclosed by the surrounding documentary record. The Articles of Confederation (1781), drafted by many of the same political figures four to five years later, used 'sovereignty' expressly — 'Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence.' The Founders did not reject the concept; they were working out its allocation between states and union across a contested period.