After Paine had been in America for some time, Benjamin Franklin, now back in Philadelphia, suggested that he write a history of the current upheaval against England. Paine took up the idea and wrote quickly in order to surprise Franklin with the result by New Year’s Day 1776. When the manuscript was finished, Paine began looking for a printer. His forceful language frightened away several, but Benjamin Rush, a delegate to the Congress, put Paine in touch with a printer named Bell, who was also a patriot.
Paine felt little nostalgia for England and none for its king. He brought a passion to his pamphlet that had been missing from the writing of even the more fervent Americans. Paine was outraged over Lexington and Concord and claimed that his own rebellion had begun on that day. “I rejected the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England forever,” Paine wrote, adding that he felt disdain for “the wretch, with that pretended title of Father of His People, who can unfeelingly hear of their slaughter, and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul.” Few of the leading patriots—possibly Thomas Jefferson was one—felt that strongly about George III. And yet they found something heady, liberating, in hearing him called “the Royal Brute of Britain.”
Paine’s invective was stirring, but he had loftier aims for his essay. He wanted the Congress to draw up a charter for the united colonies that would guarantee the freedom and the property of all men, along with their right to worship according to their own conscience. He urged America to build a navy for its defense and calculated how it could be financed. “No country on the globe is so happily situated, or so internally capable of raising a fleet as America. Tar, timber, iron and cordage are her natural produce. We need go abroad for nothing.” That spirit of optimism and pride coursed through Paine’s essay. He longed to see the Americans declare themselves independent for one practical reason. He knew that America needed the support of France and Spain but that neither country would send aid so long as the struggle seemed to be a family matter between England and her colonies. Without a declaration of independence, the patriots were merely rebels. What European power would jeopardize its own empire by encouraging rebellion?
Thomas Paine
HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENN SYLVANIA
Common Sense, published in 1768
BETTMANN ARCHIVE
Paine’s document would have excited its readers under any title, but Common Sense was rousing. Benjamin Rush, who had taken his medical degree in Edinburgh, had suggested the plainspoken Scots title. After more than a decade of lawyerly appeals to the English constitution, here was someone urging the Americans to cut through history and tradition and rely on their intuition. Since every government’s policies were based on economics, he reduced the question to whether America would prosper better with England or without her. Once Americans saw the answer as clearly as Paine did, why should old mythologies stop them from acting in their self-interest?
But the document was winning hearts across the continent less from pragmatic argument than from its pulsing excess: “O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her—Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.”
When John Adams met this brash recruit to the patriot ranks, he told Paine that his sketchy ideas for a new government lacked restraints and safeguards; Adams had never been as willing as his cousin to trust to the judgments of the masses. Adams also lectured Paine for claiming that the Jews had adopted the idea of monarchy from their heathen enemies. Those remarks about the Old Testament were so foolish, Adams added, that he had to question Paine’s sincerity.
At that, Paine laughed and admitted that he had stolen his religious ideas from Milton. Paine clearly had contempt for the entire Bible, both the Old Testament and the New. Here in Philadelphia he had even lost his respect for the Quakers, because he thought their pacifism was a disguise for Tory sentiments. But when he saw that his free thinking irritated Adams, Paine backtracked and said blandly that he had decided not to publish his thoughts on religion until the latter part of his life.
The encounter ended amiably. Adams concluded that Paine was conceited but capable and a good writer. Adams was frank in a letter to his wife about his own more guarded approach to writing—“I could not have written anything in so manly and striking a style.” Because John Adams was known to favor independence and because the pamphlet had been printed anonymously, men sometimes complimented him on Common Sense. But Adams knew that his own blueprint for the future was more clear-sighted. He told Abigail Adams that Paine was “a better hand in pulling down than building.”
Paine’s daring provoked an unprecedented response. By April, letters from Virginia convinced George Washington that a tide had turned. “I find Common Sense is working a powerful change in the minds of many men,” he wrote. Thomas Jefferson, who had left Philadelphia and returned to his estate, Monticello, received a copy from a delegate, Thomas Nelson, who said he was offering a present of two shillings’ worth of Common Sense. Conservative members of the Congress were still arguing against severing ties with England, but Thomas Paine’s call resounded above all of them: “The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ‘Tis time to part.”
Paine had taken one other step to bring independence nearer, one that he did not announce. He had signed over the copyright of Common Sense to the Congress. At two shillings each, it went through edition after edition, until half a million copies had been sold. Penniless when he arrived from England, Thomas Paine had donated a fortune to the American cause.
—
For nearly a decade, North Carolina had been more contentious in the patriot cause than its neighbors, and its colonists had paid the price. At Alamance Creek in 1771, Governor William Tryon’s troops had routed a group of farmers called the Regulators, who were protesting corruption among King George’s appointees. Tryon ordered seven of the leaders executed. But a later British force was defeated by Carolina patriots in a battle at Moore’s Creek, and, while the Continental Congress was still debating, the people of Mecklenburg, North Carolina, passed a resolution in May 1775 that severed their ties with England. On April 12, 1776, all of North Carolina declared itself completely independent.
Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina left Philadelphia to prod his colony’s provincial congress at Charleston and arrived brandishing the first copy of Common Sense that the members had seen. They were thunderstruck at first by Gadsden’s demand for independence, but when news reached them that Parliament had voted late in December 1775 to seize any American ships on the high seas, popular sentiment began to turn.
Before Thomas Jefferson returned to Philadelphia, he canvassed his neighbors and concluded that nine tenths of the people favored independence. On May 15, 1776, Virginians in Williamsburg instructed their delegates to present to the Continental Congress a resolution that the thirteen colonies be declared free and independent states. At the same time, John Adams had persuaded the Congress to recommend that each state form its own new government. Adams considered the action almost as good as a formal statement of independence. John Dickinson and his allies still thought that final step was hasty, and six colonies instructed their delegates to vote against separation. The same gallows humor that had once swept across Massachusetts had reached Pennsylvania, and as they debated separation the delegates joked morbidly about the consequences. Benjamin Harrison, who was six feet four inches and obese, boasted to slender Elbridge Gerry that when they were hanged his weight would guarantee him a shorter agony.
The debate seemed to be reaching its climax when a new disappointment arose for the delegates committed to independence. They had hoped that the Canadians would agree to become their fourteenth state, but word came in April that Benedict Arnold had given up his attempt to blockade Quebec and that American tr
oops were retreating. Congress hadn’t been able to supply its Canadian expedition with provisions, money or medicine, and smallpox had ravaged its ranks. “Defeated most ignominiously,” John Adams wrote to James Warren in Massachusetts. “Where shall we lay the blame?” Benjamin Franklin had been a member of a commission to inspect the Canadian effort, and his group returned with a report of alarming mismanagement. John Hancock complained to George Washington that America’s Northern troops had been ruined by a lack of discipline, and the colonies were desperately unprepared for any new British offensive.
But the Congress wasn’t daunted. It authorized Washington to try to raise more militia—six thousand to send as reinforcements to Canada, thirteen thousand to station in New York, another ten thousand to keep in reserve. And on June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee took the floor to offer the resolution many delegates had been dreading. Lee was one of Samuel Adams’ closest allies and had been criticized for representing Massachusetts more diligently than Virginia. That was why Adams could tell friends the evening before the speech that Lee’s resolution would decide the most important question America had ever faced.
At forty-four, Richard Henry Lee was tall and lean, red-haired like Thomas Jefferson but with an aquiline nose and a profile described as Roman. He came from one of Virginia’s most prominent families and in 1764 had applied for the job of stamp master but had quickly felt ashamed of that moment of greed and entered the ranks of the patriots. Lee felt a dislike for Virginia’s slave economy, and long before independence became an issue he had reminded the House of Burgesses that Africans were their fellow creatures. They were “created as ourselves,” Lee said, “and equally entitled to liberty and freedom by the great law of nature.”
Richard Lee had blown off the fingers of one hand in a hunting accident, and whenever he rose to speak he would wrap the mutilated hand in a handkerchief. Before Patrick Henry arrived in the Burgesses, Lee had been its leading speaker, the sort of orator who moved himself deeply as he spoke. Now in Philadelphia he launched his three-part resolution with what he considered its least important point:
“That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”
Lee went on to more vital matters: America should form foreign alliances, and the Congress should prepare a plan of confederation for the colonies. The Congress delayed debate on Lee’s resolution until the following morning. Then, acting as a committee of the whole, the members began to debate whether or not America should declare herself free.
Even the conservatives did not complain about Lee’s other two suggestions. Sending official delegates to France and drawing up a confederacy seemed sensible. But why declare independence before the colonies were sure they could achieve it? Why warn Britain of America’s intentions? Wouldn’t the colonies look ridiculous asking Europe’s heads of state to support a union that didn’t exist? Edward Rutledge of South Carolina—at twenty-seven, one of the youngest delegates—joined with John Dickinson to press those points. He hoped to postpone the discussion for three weeks, or for months if he could manage it.
By the following Monday, June 10, Rutledge seemed to have prevailed. The Congress voted to postpone any decision until the first day of July. But Richard Lee’s faction had a trick left to play. They won approval for appointing committees that would spend the next three weeks preparing drafts on each point of Lee’s resolution. That way no more time would be lost if the Congress agreed to his recommendations. The next day, June 11, the Congress named those committees, drawing on the different talents of its members and balancing each committee politically.
Samuel Adams was appointed to the committee to prepare the draft of confederation, but he was not one of the five chosen to draw up a declaration of independence to be held in reserve. Two of the choices, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, were almost inevitable. John Adams regretted that he had been talking too much these days; true respect, he concluded, went to men who were more aloof. But that was only Adams scourging himself. His passionate logic had, in fact, made him influential and widely trusted, and his fellow delegates named him both to the committee on the declaration and to the committee to draw up treaty plans for France. Nor would Congress pass over the talents of Franklin, its most celebrated author. Robert Livingston of New York had enough votes to join the committee, even though he had argued against Lee’s resolutions. Roger Sherman of Connecticut was also chosen.
The fifth member won his place through compromise: some Northern delegates continued to believe that naming a Virginian to America’s most visible positions was good strategy. Richard Henry Lee was not electable because he was considered too radical even within his own delegation. And Benjamin Harrison was too conservative for Lee’s supporters, however much he might joke about being hanged. Both factions could agree, however, on Virginia’s newest delegate. When Thomas Jefferson arrived at the Congress the year before, he had been preceded by a reputation in both literature and science. Many members had read his pamphlet A Summary View of the Rights of British America. Even those who thought his account of the Boston Tea Party sounded as though Samuel Adams had dictated it agreed that Jefferson wrote well. He seemed to shrink from public speaking, but in private his sentiments were everything the Adamses could hope for. John Adams lobbied for him to join the committee and was so persuasive that when the votes were counted Jefferson had received more than anyone else.
Jefferson was a modest man of thirty-two; John Adams was past forty. When the time came for one person to draw up a preliminary draft, Jefferson was ready to defer to his elders. He had just rejoined the Congress after an extended absence, but he remembered John Adams’ need for respect. Seeking him out, Jefferson suggested that Adams be the one to draw up the declaration.
Adams was in a playful and self-deprecating mood when Jefferson offered him the assignment. “I will not,” he said. Adams agreed with Richard Henry Lee that the declaration was only a formality and less important than the drafts to consolidate the colonies and enlist allies.
“You should do it,” Jefferson said.
“Oh, no!”
“Why will you not?” Jefferson persisted. “You ought to do it.”
“I will not.”
“Why?”
“Reasons enough.”
Jefferson indulged this antic mood. “What can be your reasons?”
John Adams began to tick them off: “Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can.”
“Well,” Jefferson said, “if you are decided, I will do as well as I can.”
—
Thomas Jefferson’s father had married well, possibly too well. Peter Jefferson became deeply enmeshed with his wife’s family, the prosperous and prominent Randolphs of Virginia, and one cousin, William Randolph, was closer to him than a brother. William could afford to be generous to the rising young planter and once deeded Jefferson two hundred acres of undeveloped land. As payment, he asked for one bowl of arrack punch. William Randolph’s wife died young, and when Randolph began to suspect that he was also dying he added a codicil to his will requesting that his loving friend move down to the Randolph plantation and remain there until Randolph’s son was grown. Peter Jefferson–large, strong, scrupulous—mourned his friend by honoring his wish. Taking no pay, he moved his family from their modest home, Shadwell, to Tuckahoe, the imposing Randolph estate, where one story of the main house was set aside for visitors. That was why Thomas Jefferson’s earliest memory, at two years old, was of being carried on a pillow by a slave as the Jeffersons moved downriver to Tuckahoe.
What his mother had thought of the move Thomas Jefferson never recorded. Her family may have felt tha
t marrying Peter Jefferson had brought Jane Randolph down in the world; she may have agreed with them. As he grew up, the boy came to appreciate his father and admire him. Thomas himself would be tall, but never so burly or strong as Peter Jefferson. But whatever his parents told him about the move, Thomas was surrounded by reminders that he was being raised on the Randolph estate.
In 1752, when Thomas was nine years old, his parents returned to the plainer life of Shadwell, and five years later Peter Jefferson died. He left behind eight children, Thomas the oldest son. Jane Randolph Jefferson inherited the Shadwell house and its farmland, most of the slaves and all of the horses. When Thomas reached twenty-one he was to have his choice of lands on the Rivanna or Fluvanna River, along with a share of livestock and half the slaves. In the meantime, each child was left a personal servant. Peter Jefferson’s own mulatto, Sawney, was considered the most valuable slave of the household staff, and he went to Thomas, along with books, mathematical instruments and a cherry-wood desk.
In later life, Thomas congratulated himself for having turned out as well as he had. He was only fourteen when he lost his father, and his mother had never been a source of guidance. His younger brother Randolph was slow-witted, and there was no strong bond between Thomas and his older sisters. Life in Virginia abounded with temptations for drinking and gambling, and if the colony’s clergy couldn’t resist them, why should a lusty young man? With his father gone, Thomas escaped the gentility at home by seeking out the neighborhood’s rougher men and boys although he knew they were cardsharpers and wastrels for whom a fox hunt was life’s highest aspiration. Even while they fed his rebellious side, he was being carried through adolescence by an inherent fastidiousness and an ardent love of books. He said later that if forced to choose between his father’s estate and his classical education, he would always pick the education.
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