Jefferson and Hamilton

by John Ferling

  Around fifty members of Congress were in Philadelphia at all times in 1775–1776, and some were never asked by their colleagues to take on an important assignment. Jefferson barely had time to unpack his bags before he was assigned to a committee charged with preparing a statement explaining why America was fighting this war. Above all, Congress wanted a declaration that would gin up the citizenry’s willingness to serve and sacrifice. The committee turned to the newcomer with the reputation as a wordsmith to write the first draft.

  Jefferson, who took up this task six months before Hamilton commenced his “Monitor” series, prepared a hardy statement, which Congress titled Declaration on the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. Jefferson’s draft went too far for John Dickinson, his cautious colleague on the committee. The leader of the congressional faction that sought reconciliation with the mother country, Dickinson responded with a draft of his own. He retained much that Jefferson had included and even took a harsher tone in his denunciation of many of Parliament’s acts, but he excised Jefferson’s implicit repudiation of all Parliamentary authority and added a statement denying categorically that America was fighting for its independence.36 Jefferson did not make a fight of it, probably because his fellow Virginia delegates had coached him on their strategy of dealing with the more conservative delegates. The hard-line congressmen, which included most in Virginia’s delegation, were biding their time. They believed that the war would radicalize American opinion, and when it did, the hard-liners would control Congress. In the meantime, as their leader John Adams put it: “Progress must be slow. It is like a large Fleet sailing under Convoy. The fleetest Sailors must wait for the dullest and slowest. Like a Coach and six, the swiftest Horses must be slackened, and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even Pace.”37

  Many of the hard-liners, including Jefferson, John Adams, and Samuel Adams, covertly favored independence by June 1775. For them, the cautious progress that John Adams had alluded to was the march toward the final break with the mother country, and it was not merely slow; it was snail-like. Over a span of eleven months after Jefferson came to Philadelphia, Congress made at least three substantive moves. It resolved that Parliament had no jurisdiction over the colonies and that the colonists’ fealty to the king was their sole link to the British Empire; it threw open America’s ports to foreign trade; and it conducted secret talks with France leading to the receipt of military aid.

  Jefferson was not on hand when all of these steps were taken. In fact, he was seldom in Philadelphia. Forty days after Jefferson’s arrival, Congress adjourned and, like all of his colleagues, he went home. He was back in Philadelphia when Congress reconvened and remained there for three months, from September 30 until December 28, when he returned to Monticello to be with his family. A second daughter, eighteenth-month-old Jane Randolph, had died late in the summer and he doubtless wanted to be with Martha during this time of grief. It was not unusual for congressmen to take a hiatus of four to six weeks from their daily grind, and that was what Jefferson must have envisaged when he made the trek back to Virginia. As it turned out, his absence stretched for some seventeen weeks. In March, just as he was preparing to return north, his mother died unexpectedly. Soon thereafter, Jefferson fell ill with another migraine or stress-induced headache. He did not return to Philadelphia until mid-May, arriving just as Congress voted to ask each province to establish a government free of all ties to the Crown.38 On the day that Congress acted, Virginia legislators in Williamsburg instructed their delegates in Philadelphia to ask Congress to declare American independence.

  Williamsburg, not Philadelphia, was where Jefferson wished to be. On his second full day back in Congress he wrote the provincial legislature asking to be recalled so that he could participate in the writing of the constitution that would be needed if Virginia became an independent state. Jefferson also said that he wished to be nearer to his wife, as he was in an “uneasy anxious state” over her health.39 However, his request to be permitted to return to Virginia was denied, and Jefferson remained in the Continental Congress. This turn of events soon enabled him to engage in a grander undertaking in Philadelphia than could ever have been the case in Williamsburg, and one that would win him lasting fame. It may seem strange that Jefferson preferred to serve a state rather than play on a national stage, but Virginia was 150 years old and Jefferson’s roots in the province ran deep. The United States, on the other hand, did not yet exist—and once it was created in 1776, it would face a most uncertain future. Furthermore, while Jefferson probably knew that a Declaration of Independence was imminent, he could not have known that he would be its principal author. If Virginia had a member on the committee that wrote such a document, the odds were better that it would be Richard Henry Lee, the leader of the delegation. Even if Jefferson was selected to be among those who prepared the Declaration of Independence, the finished document would be the product of a committee and the Congress as a whole. Little glory was to be derived from having participated in its drafting. In fact, no document that Congress had produced in its first two years had been memorable, and there was no guarantee—or much reason to think—that anyone would long remember what was said in a statement proclaiming American independence.

  Life and history are filled with surprises. On June 7, Lee moved that Congress declare independence. The delegates debated his motion for two days. Jefferson did not join the discussion. He sat quietly, taking extensive notes on what was said. By then, three weeks after returning from Monticello, he must have guessed that he would be appointed to the drafting committee, for Lee—who was eager to look after his economic interests—had asked to be recalled and was, at least figuratively, packing his bags for his journey to Williamsburg. At the conclusion of the debate, Congress postponed its decision until July 1, but it created a committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. Lee departed for Virginia on the day the committee was created. As Virginia had introduced the motion for independence, it was nearly a foregone conclusion that one member of its delegation would sit on the drafting committee. Jefferson, the most renowned for his writing abilities, was selected, the lone Southerner appointed to what the congressmen would call the Committee of Five. Two of his colleagues were New Englanders, John Adams and Roger Sherman of Connecticut; the two others were representatives of the mid-Atlantic colonies, Franklin and New York’s Robert R. Livingston.

  The committee met for the first time on June 11 or 12 and discussed the shape and content of the document, then selected Jefferson to be its draftsman. As Adams had been the leader in Congress of the push for independence, it might seem odd that he was passed over. He subsequently said that he declined the appointment because of his multiple responsibilities. He also recollected that he nominated Jefferson to draft the document. The evidence, though sketchy, suggests that Adams’s memory was faulty on both counts. The committee turned to Jefferson from the outset, probably because of his well-known talent as a writer.40

  Jefferson was a rapid writer. Adams subsequently recalled that Jefferson wrote the draft in one or two days. His memory might have been faulty on that score too, but at most it took Jefferson five days.41 He worked in his apartment on the second floor of the three-story, red brick home of Jacob Graff, a successful Philadelphia mason. Jefferson wrote while seated in a revolving Windsor chair with a small, folding writing desk placed across his lap, both of which had been custom-made for him by a Philadelphia cabinetmaker. He may have worked in the early morning, when it was coolest, and he may have skipped a couple of sessions of Congress in order to have longer blocks of time for completing his task.42

  Jefferson appears to have shown the draft to Adams and Franklin before he submitted it to the full committee. His colleagues suggested only a few alterations, all modest and stylistic, such as changing “his present majesty” to “the present king of Great Britain.” It is abundantly clear that the document seen by Congress was almost exclusively the work of Jefferson.43

  After the Declaration of I
ndependence became an acclaimed national document, Adams jealously carped that what Jefferson had drafted was unoriginal, “a juvenile declamation” that merely rehashed what others had said. To that, he added that there was “not an idea in it, but what had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before.” Though accurate, Adams missed the point. Congress did not want Jefferson to write something novel. To have done so would have been foolish. Jefferson correctly understood that he was to avoid “aiming at originality of principle or sentiment.” Instead, he was to capture the “tone and spirit” of “the American mind” toward the mother country’s imperial policies and the king’s decision to make war on them.44

  Scholars have written countless tomes on the sources of Jefferson’s ideas. They are not that complicated. He and all well-educated colonists were familiar with Enlightenment thought, especially John Locke’s concept of the social contract and the outpourings of edgy English Whig polemicists since the Glorious Revolution. Myriad statements adopted by several colonial assemblies since 1765 had drawn on these sources, and so too had Congress, local committees of public safety, extralegal provincial legislatures, and scores of pamphleteers and newspaper essayists. But nothing influenced Jefferson more than the draft of the Declaration of Rights that had been recently produced by Virginia’s revolutionary provincial congress, which obviously served as the template for what Jefferson wrote with regard to human rights, the philosophy of government, and the justification of revolution in the opening paragraphs of his composition.45

  Nonetheless, Jefferson improved on his models. He succinctly explained what Great Britain had done, or was trying to do, and why those actions violated the rights of the American people. He not only demonstrated that the colonists possessed the right to rebel but also showed that they had acted with restraint through a “long train of abuses and usurpations” until it was readily apparent that the “design” of Parliament and the Crown was “to reduce them under absolute despotism.” Jefferson might have simply justified America’s revolution, but he went beyond that. While the Declaration severed the colonists’ ties with Great Britain, it was also the first step in the creation of a new American nation. With peerless eloquence, Jefferson launched the nation that was coming into being with a ringing commitment to the most enlightened and progressive ideas: “all men are created equal,” possessed God-given “inalienable rights,” including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and the people had the right to create, alter, and abolish governments of their choosing. No nation dedicated to such munificent ideals had ever been brought into creation.

  None of these concepts were new, as Adams complained, but Jefferson crisply brought them together in a mere 375 words in the two opening paragraphs. Others could have done that, but it is unlikely that any could have done so with the grace and melodic resplendence achieved by Jefferson. He seemed to move seamlessly from idea to idea, gliding like a vessel on smooth water. Effortlessly, he shifted from the rights of humankind to the right of revolution to a pithy decoding of America’s reasons for dissolving its “political bands” with the mother country.

  From there, Jefferson enumerated step by step the “injuries” that Americans had suffered as Great Britain’s leaders conspired to establish “an absolute tyranny.” It was a comprehensive, and damning, chronicle of London’s despotism despite the “tyes of our common kindred.” Above all, it was a stark indictment of the monarch, the sole imperial authority recognized by Congress since late 1775. It captured the deep feelings of betrayal that had taken hold of Americans during the past decade, sentiments bred by the belief that the mother country had repaid the colonists for their loyalty and assistance in the Seven Years’ War with taxes and arbitrary legislation. Once hostilities erupted, that sense of betrayal was coupled with widespread rage, yet Congress in its repeated declarations and petitions had never adequately voiced the unbridled fury that gripped the land. Jefferson articulated those supercharged feelings. Britain’s leaders had long been “unfeeling” toward their colonists. Now they had “become the executioners of their friends & brethren.” A monarch who was part of such outrages was “unfit to be the ruler” of a free people. That sad truth had “given the last stab to agonizing affection” on the part of the colonists…. We must endeavor to forget our former love for them.”

  The Declaration of Independence was widely disseminated as a print document, but many listened as it was read aloud. General Washington had it read to his troops, Abigail Adams heard it read from the balcony of the Massachusetts State House, a member of Pennsylvania’s Committee of Safety read it to a large throng gathered on the lawn of Independence Hall, and around the country on village commons and the steps of county courthouses, leather-lunged local officials read the document to raptly attentive audiences.46 Those who listened discovered a magical quality to Jefferson’s handiwork, for he was a penman with a genius for the cadence of the written word, a writer conversant with music who had a feel for what one scholar has called the “rhythmical pauses … comparable to musical bars.”47 Nor was that all. Historians Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg have demonstrated that the Declaration lent itself to being “read theatrically.” Listeners were made to feel the pain, disappointment, reproach, and anger that lay at the heart of Jefferson’s “seductive” creation.48

  Jefferson may have written a document to give birth to the new nation, but first the war had to be won if the United States was to survive. With that in mind, Jefferson consciously produced a war document. This may have been one reason that he substituted “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for the more conventional trilogy of “life, liberty, and property.” By the summer of 1776 it was apparent that America faced a long struggle to secure independence, and it was equally evident that, in a protracted war, many propertyless Americans would be asked to bear arms. They, too, had to be given a reason for serving. Furthermore, most in Congress understood that victory in a prolonged war would likely hinge on foreign help. Jefferson announced American independence to a “candid world,” carefully adding that the new American nation possessed “the full power to … contract alliances, establish commerce, & do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.”

  Jefferson submitted the document to Congress on Friday, June 28. On Monday, Congress took up the question of independence. John Adams anticipated the “greatest debate of all,” and he was not disappointed.49 John Dickinson was on his feet first to speak against independence, and despite the oppressive heat in Congress’s closed chamber on a ninety-degree afternoon, his address lasted for nearly two hours. He warned that if the war was lost, the colonists would face the fury of British retribution. To prevent losing the war, he added, the colonists would need French help. But independence procured in that fashion would be a sham, for the autocratic, Roman Catholic French would become America’s new masters following the victory. In all likelihood, he continued, the war could not be won even with French assistance. In fact, it was likely that no one could win the war. In that event, Europe’s superpowers might break the stalemate by imposing peace, and by partitioning America among themselves. Dickinson wanted to continue waging war for reconciliation—not independence—and promised Congress that in a year or two Great Britain would have to make the concessions that the First Congress had sought. Americans would be left secure and prosperous, and free, within the Britain Empire. He closed by remarking that the “Book of Fate” portended a “dreadful” future for an independent America.50

  John Adams was the first to respond to Dickinson. At some point in Adams’s lengthy rejoinder, distant thunder could be heard. It came steadily closer, resounding through every nook and cranny of the State House, and soon boomed as if field artillery was being fired in the nearby street. The fleecy white clouds of morning had long since darkened, then turned a deep black. In the midst of Adams’s address, the sky opened. Large drops splattered on the tall windows in Congress’s chamber, and in only a moment a lashing rain slanted against
the glass. The room darkened. The temperature plummeted. Candles were lit. Through it all, Adams continued to speak, arguing that the war could not be won—could not even be carried on much longer—without foreign assistance, and that no European nation would aid America so long as its objective was reconciliation within the mother country. Independence must be declared.51

  It was late afternoon when Adams sat down. But other speakers followed. It appeared that every congressman wanted to say something. Each recognized that this was a historic day, and each wanted to be a part of history, to possibly say something that would be remembered by posterity. None succeeded in saying anything memorable. In fact, only Dickinson’s speech—and merely the notes for his talk—has survived from that long day of speech making. It is not known whether Jefferson spoke, though it is probable that he did. The speeches continued until night gathered over Philadelphia. At that point, the delegates, who had not eaten since breakfast, adjourned.