by Ray Raphael
Joseph Ellis presents a more complex version of the same argument. In American Sphinx, winner of the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1997, Ellis notes that Jefferson was in a position to draw on the works of many others, including George Mason, who had just drafted a very similar document, the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Ellis then lists other possible influences on Jefferson: the social contract theory of John Locke, the moral philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, and contemporary books on rhetoric and the art of the spoken word. At this juncture, Ellis offers an apt observation:
The central problem with all these explanations, however, is that they make Jefferson’s thinking an exclusive function of books. . . . There is a long-standing scholarly tradition—one might call it the scholarly version of poetic license—that depends on the unspoken assumption that what one thinks is largely or entirely a product of what one reads.
This point is well taken. Certainly we are more than the sum of what we read. But if not from books, where did Jefferson’s ideas come from? “From deep inside himself,†Ellis posits. The Declaration of Independence represented “the vision of a young man projecting his personal cravings†for a better world.2
Ellis’s view of the creative process sets individual imagination above all else. The internal vision of the creator—a “wise manâ€â€”is not tarnished by external influences. This romantic notion ignores the political setting in which Jefferson lived. There was a revolution going on, and it had been brewing for more than a decade. People talked and wrote to each other incessantly. They engaged in hearty and contentious debate. They designed and circulated petitions and declarations. In those critical years patriots throughout the British colonies worked themselves up to the fever pitch that revolution requires. Revolutionary phrases were stated and repeated so often that they entered the very language. They became the common currency of what might very rightly be called “the American mind.â€
Most plain folk in America had not studied John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, but in any country tavern, ordinary farmers could recite the principle of the “social contractâ€: government is rooted in the people, and rulers who forget this are ripe for a fall.3 From firsthand experience and incessant repetition, they knew all they needed to know about popular sovereignty. For the antecedents and precedents that influenced the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson had only to look to the nearest tavern or meetinghouse, wherever patriots gathered. The most significant “source†for his forceful statement of popular sovereignty was, appropriately, the people themselves—the “American mind†that he himself rightfully credited.
THE “OTHER†DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE
On October 4, 1774, twenty-one months before the Continental Congress approved its public explanation of why it had broken from Britain, the people of Worcester, Massachusetts, declared that they were ready for independence. (See chapter 4.) Worcester was certainly in the vanguard, but patriots in other towns and other colonies also declared their willingness to break from Britain several months before a committee of the Second Continental Congress asked Thomas Jefferson to draft a formal declaration. In Jefferson’s Virginia, the issue of independence preempted all others during the spring of 1776. Common folk, not just the famous patricians-turned-statesmen, came to embrace independence for political, economic, and ideological reasons.4 Beyond noble principles, fear of slaves and Indians contributed to the desire for independence. (See chapter 9.) In the April elections voters turned out in great numbers—and they stunned the more cautious politicians. Representatives who opposed independence or a republican form of government were turned out.5
Before sending off their new delegates to the Virginia Convention, constituents of several counties gave them specific, written instructions to vote for a declaration of independence. Charles Lee wrote to Patrick Henry: the “spirit of the people . . . cr[ies] out for this Declaration.â€6 Jefferson himself was in Virginia during that time. “I took great pains to enquire into the sentiments of the people,†he wrote on May 16, 1776, just a few weeks before he would pen his famous draft. “I think I may safely say nine out of ten are for it [independence].â€7 The people had spoken, the stage was set. On May 15, 1776, the Virginia Convention instructed its delegates to the Continental Congress to initiate a declaration of independence.
Acting more swiftly than the Continental Congress, Virginia proceeded to declare independence on its own. George Mason then prepared a draft for Virginia’s “Declaration of Rights,†which circulated widely in June 1776. It appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette on June 12, the day after Jefferson was appointed to the five-man committee that would draft a national declaration. In Philadelphia, Jefferson and the other members of the committee no doubt examined these words closely. Two weeks later, Jefferson presented his own refinement of Mason’s draft:8
Although Jefferson’s prose flows more smoothly from point to point than Mason’s, he certainly introduced no new concepts. Many key phrases were merely rearranged. Jefferson in no sense “copied†the Virginia Declaration, but he was evidently influenced by it. That should come as no surprise. This was a time of frenzied but collective agitation, and the Revolution’s participants continually referred to each other’s words and propositions. In all likelihood Mason himself was familiar with Jefferson’s Summary View of the Rights of British America, written two years earlier. Undoubtedly, both men had read classic English and Scottish works that espoused revolutionary principles, and both were privy to expressions that were common parlance among their peers. Mason and Jefferson were tapping into the same rich source.
Virginia’s Declaration was only one of many. Historian Pauline Maier has discovered ninety “declarations†issued by state and local communities in the months immediately preceding the congressional declaration.9 (She does not include the Worcester instructions, written back in 1774.) Taken together, these reveal a groundswell of political thinking in support of independence. Jefferson and Mason drafted their declarations with full knowledge that others were doing the same, even if they did not consult every state and local document.
Most of these declarations took the form of instructions by towns, counties, or local associations to their representatives in state conventions, telling them to instruct their representatives in Congress to vote for independence. The chain of command was clear: representatives at every level were to do the bidding of their constituents. The custom of issuing instructions to representatives did not originate with the American Revolution, but never before had local instructions expressed views of such monumental importance. Now more than ever, patriots insisted that the business of government remain under their immediate control. Witness the “Committee for the Lower District of Frederick County [Maryland]â€:
Resolved, unanimously, That as a knowledge of the conduct of the Representative is the constituent’s only principle and permanent security, we claim the right of being fully informed therein, unless in the secret operations of war; and that we shall ever hold the Representative amenable to that body from whom he derives his authority.10
Many of the instructions, while granting new powers to Congress, asserted that the states must retain “the sole and exclusive right†to govern their own internal affairs.11 People were not about to relinquish any of their political “independence,†even to other Americans.
Several of the local declarations offer succinct expressions of the social contract theory. Again from Frederick County:
Resolved, unanimously, That all just and legal Government was instituted for the ease and convenience of the People, and that the People have the indubitable right to reform or abolish a Government which may appear to them insufficient for the exigency of their affairs.12
Patriots from Buckingham County, Virginia, issued a sim
ilar declaration, then followed with an optimistic vision that would have made the visionary Mr. Jefferson proud: they prayed that “a Government may be established in America, the most free, happy, and permanent, that human wisdom can contrive, and the perfection of man maintain.â€13
Like the later Declaration, many of these earlier documents listed specific grievances—often more concisely and pointedly than Jefferson would do.14 Delegates at more than twenty conventions or town meetings signed off by pledging to support independence with their “lives and fortunes,†foretelling the famous conclusion to the congressional declaration: “We mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.†Some of these added creative touches to this standard oath: Boston delegates pledged “their lives and the remnants of their fortunes,†while patriots from Malden, Massachusetts, concluded: “Your constituents will support and defend the measure to the last drop of their blood, and the last farthing of their treasure.â€15
Thomas Jefferson was one of many scribes, not the sole muse, of the American independence movement.
A SLOW START
Because the proceedings of the Continental Congress were kept secret, Americans at the time had no way of ascertaining who was on the committee to prepare the Declaration of Independence, who among the committee penned the draft, or who edited the final version. This information, even if available, would have been deemed irrelevant. People didn’t care to quibble about authorship or craft. All that really counted was the document’s conclusion: the United States was declaring its independence.
During the war, even at Fourth of July celebrations, the Declaration itself was rarely quoted. On the first anniversary of independence in 1777, when William Gordon delivered the oration for the festivities in Boston, he used as his text the Old Testament. When David Ramsay delivered the oration in Charleston on the second anniversary, he used a phrase more common to the times: “life, liberty, and property,†not “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,†the phrase used in the Declaration of Independence. In 1783, after the war had ended, Ezra Stiles mentioned Jefferson by name—but he did not celebrate the author’s unique genius. Stiles said only that Jefferson had “poured the soul of the continent into the monumental act of independence.â€16
In fact, during the Revolutionary Era, George Mason’s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights was copied or imitated far more often than the Declaration of Independence. None of the seven other states that drafted their own declarations of rights borrowed phrasing from the congressional Declaration, but Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire (in addition to Vermont, which was not yet a state) lifted exact portions of Mason’s text, including “all men are born equally free and independent.â€17 In part this is because the state declarations of rights borrowed from each other, but Mason’s wording is also more precise. What does “created equal†really mean? Years later, Stephen A. Douglas, when debating Abraham Lincoln, protested that Negroes were not the “equal†of whites, leading Lincoln to retreat by admitting they were “not my equal in many respects—certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment.â€18 Had Jefferson stayed with Mason’s phraseology, Lincoln could have cited the Declaration of Independence with greater authority and less apology. “Born equally free and independent†establishes clearly the nature of equality among men: it lies in their rights, not in their attributes, abilities, or achievements.
Surprisingly, the Declaration of Independence was not often cited during the drafting of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 or in the subsequent debates over ratification. Notes from the Constitutional Convention make only two references to the Declaration, while the eighty-five essays in The Federalist contain but one. When Patrick Henry addressed the Virginia Convention during the ratification debate, he asked rhetorically, “What, sir, is the genius of democracy?†He then proceeded to read from the Virginia Declaration of Rights, drafted by Mason, not from Jefferson’s adaptation in the Declaration of Independence:
That Government is or ought to be instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community: Of all the various modes and forms of Government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of mal-administration, and that whenever any Government shall be found inadequate, or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an undubitable, unalienable and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.
“This, sir, is the language of democracy,†Henry concluded.19
Both David Ramsay and William Gordon, in their eighteenth-century histories, focused on the political impact of the Declaration of Independence, not the philosophy contained in its preamble. Ramsay failed to mention Jefferson as the author, while Gordon referred to him only as a member of the five-man committee that prepared the draft.20
During the 1790s, Jefferson’s standing was determined by partisan politics. Since Federalists vilified Jefferson, they ignored his authorship and regarded the Declaration itself as suspect. Republicans, meanwhile, celebrated Jefferson’s authorship in order to promote the leading figure of their own political party. Not until Republicans staged separate Fourth of July festivities in the late 1790s was Jefferson’s name linked to the Declaration of Independence in public discourse.21
Two turn-of-the-century historians reflected these divergent stances. John Marshall, a staunch Federalist, mentioned Jefferson only in a footnote: a committee of five was appointed to prepare the document, he wrote flatly, “and the draft, reported by the committee, has been generally attributed to Mr. Jefferson.â€22 Rather than focus on Jefferson, Marshall mentioned several of the other declarations of independence, and he quoted extensively from two of them.23 Mercy Otis Warren, on the other side of the political spectrum, waxed effusive:
[T]he instrument which announced the final separation of the American Colonies from Great Britain was drawn by the elegant and energetic pen of Jefferson, with that correct judgment, precision, and dignity, which have ever marked his character. The declaration of independence, which has done so much honor to the then existing congress, to the inhabitants of the United States, and to the genius and heart of the gentleman who drew it . . . ought to be frequently read by the rising youth of the American states, as a palladium of which they should never lose sight, so long as they wish to continue a free and independent people.24
Warren and other supporters of Jefferson enshrined the Declaration’s author in the early nineteenth century, when memories of the Revolution were revived and put in the service of a growing nationalism. Jefferson’s party, the Republicans (referred to later as the Democrat-Republicans), would remain in power for a quarter century, during which the document and its principal author were increasingly celebrated and indelibly linked.
In 1817 Congress commissioned John Trumbull to paint a large canvas commemorating the approval of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Trumbull’s masterpiece was displayed to large crowds in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington.25 With the mood set, two engraved copies of the Declaration competed for public attention in 1818 and 1819. In 1823 Congress distributed an official facsimile far and wide.26
Jefferson fed this frenzy. As far back as 1786, he had talked of an artistic commemoration of the Declaration with John Trumbull and had provided a rough sketch.27 He approved the distribution of the facsimile edition, hoping it would inspire greater “reverence†for the principles it espoused.28 He even applauded the gathering of artifacts he had used while drafting the document: “Small things may, perhaps, like the relics of saints, help to nourish our devotion to this holy bond of Union, and keep it longer alive and warm in our
affections,†he wrote to a promoter—and he then indicated where some of these “relics†might be found.29
All this rankled John Adams, the only other member of the drafting committee still alive during the Declaration’s revival. According to Adams, writing thirty-five years after independence, the hard-earned achievement of independence should be the object of celebration, not the simple act of writing about it, and he was the one who had successfully pushed the motion for independence through Congress. “The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that,†he wrote—and, he added grudgingly, “all the glory of it†as well.30 Adams also noted that Jefferson’s draft was discussed, revised, and approved by a five-member committee, then discussed, revised, and approved by the body of Congress.31 Jefferson countered: “Mr. Adams’ memory has led him to unquestionable error.†In particular, Jefferson objected to Adams’s claim that the two men had constituted a “sub-committee†charged with writing the document.32
Despite a paucity of direct sources and the differences in memory, we do know that a five-member committee was appointed to produce a draft for Congress to consider, and we can safely conjecture that the committee discussed the issues and provided some direction before sending Jefferson on his way with quill and ink. Then, when the draft reached the floor of Congress, others certainly had their say. According to Jeffersonian scholar Julian Boyd, “In all there were eighty-six alterations, made at various stages by Jefferson, by Adams and Franklin, by the Committee of Five, and by Congress.33
