What Jefferson Wrought; The author of the Declaration laid the philosophical bedrock of the American republic.

National Review Online  "It expressed our mind, though not our practice, most obviously when it came to the disgrace of slavery. Yet the Declaration has served over time as an acid test of freedom; it has exposed our failures to live up to truths we pronounced “self-evident.” In the 19th century, apologists for slavery felt compelled to dismiss the Declaration as a “glittering generality.” It was Abraham Lincoln, the great vindicator of freedom, who boasted, “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”
"Those sentiments, so vividly expressed, should always inform debates over the role and purposes of government in America."  Rich Lowry is editor of National Review.