"It is Constitution Day 2025, and I am freshly inspired by a lecture from my Colleague Dr. Carli Conklin on the "pursuit of happiness" as used in the Declaration of Independence. Her scholarship reveals the phrase is not a hedonistic right that might be implied when used today, but rather part a collective project of human flourishing rooted in virtue, knowledge, and useful improvements."
"Although the Declaration is not directly part of the Constitution document, Professor Akhil Reed Amar's new book, BORN EQUAL: Remaking America's Constitution, 1840-1920, argues that the Declaration's ideals and commitments continued to reshape American constitutional development long after the founding era. In this book, he particularly focuses on how it worked through President Abraham Lincoln during and immediately after the Civil War."
Reflection on Constitution Day 2025 connects the 'pursuit of happiness' to a collective project of human flourishing grounded in virtue, knowledge, and useful improvements. The Declaration's ideals continued to influence American constitutional development through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including their expression in Lincoln's Civil War leadership. The 'pursuit of happiness' sometimes implies liberty from government interference, but historical practice also treated it as a call for government action to remove barriers and promote progress. George Washington's 1790 message linked knowledge to public happiness and urged encouragement for new and useful inventions. Congress enacted the Patent Act of 1790 shortly thereafter, creating an early federal program to realize that promise.
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