An obscure suicide from antiquity played a big role in our nation’s independence. The American Revolution’s success depended, of course, on the steely determination of George Washington’s men, freezing in Valley Forge during the winter of 1777–78. But their endurance took at least part of its inspiration from the iron will of Cato, a Roman who ripped open his belly and bled to death in North Africa in 46 BC rather than beg Julius Caesar’s pardon. Indeed, Cato was a hero to Washington, who had Joseph Addison’s famous 1713 play, Cato, performed for his men at Valley Forge. By then, centuries of mythmaking had transformed Cato from a suicidal martyr into a hero of liberty.
Addison’s play argued for death in defense of liberty. A decade later, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon’s Cato’s Letters went even further and offered a general theory: Liberty was a natural right, embodied in limited government, protected by opposition to tyranny, and characterized by freedom of speech and religion and private-property rights. Originally published in a London newspaper in the 1720s, Cato’s Letters—actually a series of essays that the authors wrote under a “Cato” pseudonym— eventually appeared in book form. The essays had enormous influence on the American Founders and on the writing of the Declaration of Independence.
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