Peter Moore, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Britain and the American Dream (1740–1776)" ( FSG, 2023)

New Books in American Studies · Aug 20, 2023 · 1h 10m

The most famous phrase in American history once looked quite different. "The preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness" was how Thomas Jefferson put it in the first draft of the Declaration, before the first ampersand was scratched out, along with "the preservation of." In a statement as pithy--and contested--as this, a small deletion matters. And indeed, that final, iconizing revision was the last in a long chain of revisions stretching across the Atlantic and back. The precise contours of these three rights have never been pinned down--and yet in making these words into…