Knapsack: 'Unalienable' is a peculiar word with some specific import

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27-03-2025

With a little over a year to the big celebration of our 250th anniversary of American independence (see America250-Ohio.org for more info!), I asked you to think with me about the specific wording and intentions of that founding document for our lives in the United States today.
Officially speaking, the final version of our Declaration of Independence says: '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.'
There's a funny, and even mildly controversial word in there: unalienable. It's not one we use much in everyday speech. You could say, 'Hey, that hot dog is unalienable from my plate!' but it might not stop someone from swiping it.
As for unalienable, the early drafts of the Declaration as Thomas Jefferson wrote it, called our rights 'inalienable.' If you visit the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, the letters on the wall inside say 'inalienable.' In fact, Carl Becker, a legal scholar and historian pointed out in 1922: 'The Rough Draft reads '[inherent &] inalienable.'
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Jefferson's draft earlier didn't say 'self-evident,' either: he said 'We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable,' and went on to assert 'that all men are created equal & independant.' In other words, the Continental Congress had a say in the final version.
We don't know when or how that Congress changed 'inalienable' to 'unalienable'; but it appears in the official Congressional Journal and in the parchment copy. That's how John Adams wrote it in his notes: 'unalienable.' It might well have been his idea.
Either way, so what? Most dictionaries make it clear it's a question of style; either word means the same thing. Something that's inalienable or unalienable is that which cannot be taken away.
Obviously, there's a tension here in that life or liberty, let alone pursuing happiness, can be taken away. It's been known to happen. Jefferson's argument, and the final form adopted by the Second Continental Congress, is that government cannot casually or justly take away life, restrict liberty or restrain the pursuit of happiness. These rights pre-exist the government, and do not derive from the state or civic order itself: they are always 'deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.'
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Which is where I find 'unalienable' interesting, and a source of our understanding of civil rights which comes to fuller flower in the Bill of Rights, some 15 years later.
Because when a 'Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.' That's the unalienable-ness of our rights as Americans. Sure, government can take or try to take certain rights: people do get pulled over in traffic, stopped for cause, arrested under warrant. Various forms of speech and communication can be limited under a variety of tests and with the strict scrutiny of a court's review.
But the rights come first, not the government, and if the government is abusive or neglectful of protecting our self-evident (even sacred and undeniable) rights, the consent of the governed comes into play. Ideally, through elections, and the electoral activity that takes place in between, up to and including recall, or even impeachment.
Meanwhile, our rights still exist, and are in an existential sense, unalienable.
Or inalienable, if you prefer.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller and preacher in central Ohio; he likes to stop and ask questions about obvious things. That's his right, isn't it? Interrogate his questions at [e-mail], or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Knapsack: Our rights are 'unalienable,' but what does that mean?