“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

The quote “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” is often mistakenly attributed to the Irish lawyer and politician John Philpot Curran and frequently to Thomas Jefferson.

In fact, Curran’s line was somewhat different. What he actually said, in a speech in Dublin on July 10, 1790, was:

       “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.”

And, according to Jefferson scholars there is “no evidence to confirm that Thomas Jefferson ever said or wrote, ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty’ or any of its variants.”

Traditionally, the most famous use of “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” that’s included in books of quotations is from a speech made by the American Abolitionist and liberal activist Wendell Phillips on January 28, 1852.

Speaking to members of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society that day, Phillips said:

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.”

However, Anna Berkes, a research librarian at The Jefferson Library, has discovered uses that predate Phillips’ speech.

In a post on the Jefferson Library blog, Berkes wrote:

“Not to be mean to Mr. Wendell Phillips, but he’s about to get slightly less famous. After two days of ridiculously feverish searching, I’ve traced the purported Phillips version of this quote all the way back to 1809.  (For the record, Mr. Phillips was -2 years old at that time.)”

Berkes noted that, in a biography of Major General James Jackson published in 1809, author Thomas Charlton used the same words, just in a different order.

Charlton wrote that that one of the obligations of biographers of famous people is “fastening upon the minds of the American people the belief, that ‘the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.’”

Berkes also found several news articles that include the more familiar version of the line as later used by Phillips.

For example, an article in the May 2, 1833 edition of The Virginia Free Press and Farmers' Repository says:

“Some one has justly remarked, that ‘eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.’ Let the sentinels on the watch-tower sleep not, and slumber not.”

One of the news articles she found, in the January 4, 1838 edition of the Pennsylvania Inquirer and Daily Courier, uses the same quote and attributes it to Thomas Jefferson — one of the earliest sources to do so.

Berkes reiterated that the consensus of Jefferson scholars is that he never spoke or wrote the words “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

She also concluded that, although Wendell Phillips still gets credit for the most famous use of that phrase, it was already a well-known saying prior to his speech in 1852.

Many witty variations on this old saying have been created since then.

My personal favorite is by the novelist Aldous Huxley.

In his spoken introduction to the 1956 CBS Radio Workshop adaptation of his novel Brave New World, Huxley said: “The price of liberty, and even of common humanity, is eternal vigilance.”

Editor’s Note: Special thanks to reader Chris Cox for emailing me a correction on my original citation of the Huxley quote and for giving me the link to listen to the CBS Radio adaptation on the Internet Archive.

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The MLK speech that almost wasn’t the “I Have a Dream” Speech – and the one that might have been…

 

The observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, on the third Monday of January each year, always makes me think of his most quoted words: “I have a dream…”

After doing some research on the story behind those famous words, I find them even more memorable.

August 28th is generally cited as the anniversary of King’s use of “I have a dream…” because he spoke them in the moving, high-profile address he gave at the historic “March on Washington” on August 28, 1963.  

What he said that day is rightly considered to be one of the greatest speeches in history.

It is generally referred to as the “I Have a Dream” Speech, due to King’s repeated use of the phrase during the last third of his remarks. 

But if King had stuck to the written version of the speech he’d prepared it would be known by a different name.

The typed copy that his aides gave to the press that morning and that King carried to the podium was titled “Normalcy – Never Again.”

The words “I have a dream” were not in it.

In fact, King had consciously decided not to include that phrase because he’d used it before in several other speeches.

He and his aides thought it might seem stale.

He had used the phrase recently in another high-profile speech at a major civil rights rally in Detroit on June 23, 1963.

In that speech he repeated “I have a dream” numerous times in a series of sentences that are very similar to those he later used in the most famous part of his August 28 speech in Washington.

As noted by many newspaper and magazine articles and the book, The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Dream, by Gary Younge, King was inspired to add “I have a dream” to his Washington speech by the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.

Jackson had sung two rousing gospel songs shortly before King started speaking and was standing behind him.

During the first eleven minutes of his speech, King basically delivered his prepared remarks.

To people who had heard him speak at other events, and to King himself, it seemed like a good speech, but not quite a great one.

Then, as recounted in Younge’s book, something remarkable happened:

King was winding up what would have been a well-received but, by his standards, fairly unremarkable oration. “Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana,” he said. Then, behind him, Mahalia Jackson cried out: “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin.”…Jackson had seen him deliver the dream refrain in Detroit in June and clearly it had moved her.

“Go back to the slums and ghettoes of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed,” King said [continuing his prepared remarks]. Jackson shouted again: “Tell ‘em about the dream.” 

King knew what she meant.

He stopped giving his written speech, set the written text aside on the podium, and began talking extemporaneously. Or, more accurately, almost extemporaneously.

When you compare the text of the last part of King’s August 28 speech with the text of his June 23 speech, you can see that some of the most famous parts of what came to be called the “I Have a Dream” Speech were based on lines from the earlier address.

Of course, this does nothing to diminish the amazing eloquence and impact of what King said on the 28th.

But it is interesting to compare some of the parallel language in the two speeches side by side.

If King had not recycled parts of the Detroit speech at the March on Washington, his speech on August 28 might now be called his “Normalcy – Never Again” Speech. And, his Detroit speech might be called his “I Have a Dream” Speech.

Here are some of the parallel lines from both speeches…

From Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech in Washington, D.C. August 28, 1963  (Click here to read the entire speech)	From Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech in Detroit June 23, 1963 (Click here to read the entire speech)
I say to you today…I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.	And so this afternoon, I have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.”	I have a dream this evening that one day we will recognize the words of Jefferson that “all men are created equal”…I have a dream this afternoon.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi…will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.	I have a dream that one day, right down in Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to live together as brothers.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.	I have a dream this afternoon that my four little children…will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
I have a dream that one day…little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.	I have a dream this afternoon that one day, one day little white children and little Negro children will be able to join hands as brothers and sisters.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.	I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted…and every hill shall be made low; the crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough places plain; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
And when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”	With this faith, I will go out with you and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. With this faith, we will be able to achieve this new day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing with the Negroes in the spiritual of old: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!”

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