Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence
Influences and Impacts Associated with America's Greatest Document
At the time Thomas Jefferson was selected to draft the Declaration of Independence, dozens of similar declarations had already been issued, including George’s Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, which offers arguments identical to those found in Jefferson’s declaration, albeit not as well written. Indeed, Jefferson’s writing talent was one reason men like John Adams felt he was the best qualified to draft the document. Approved July 4, 1776, the Declaration was formally signed August 22nd.
Thomas Paine lays the Foundation
Common Sense, Thomas Paine’s most successful pamphlet on the logic of American independence, was published January 10, 1776 and sold over 150,000 copies. The copyright was held by the Continental Congress. Common Sense expanded and intensified the debate within the colonies that King George III, the “royal brute,” had forfeited his right to rule.
It made no sense, according to Paine, for the millions in America to be ruled by a tyrannical king in far-away England. Common Sense advocated a self-governing republic. Utilizing the notions of popular sovereignty, just as Jefferson would do in the Declaration of Independence, Paine’s argument rested on the notion that sovereignty resided in the people or the nation, part of the Social Contract ideal that can be traced to John Locke and even further back to John Milton.
Writing the Declaration of Independence
Well-read and highly educated, Jefferson, the “genius of the Revolution,” began the monumental task of drafting the Declaration. Beginning with the principles of Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers, Jefferson penned the words that “all men are created equal” and stressed the natural rights of man.
In enumerating the reasons why George III fit the role of a tyrant, the original draft included the following clause: “The King has waged cruel war against human nature itself violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.”
This clause was taken out by Adams, Franklin, and other members of a committee that amended Jefferson’s draft. After all, Jefferson himself owned slaves as did many Southern delegates in the Congress. George Washington would be the only Founding Father to emancipate his slaves. In England, once the Declaration was publicized, Samuel Johnson would famously reply, “…we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes.”
The phrase “all men are created equal” would cause decades of debate. When Washington’s friend and fellow Virginia planter Landon Carter first read the Declaration, he took the words literally and believed that all slaves were to be emancipated. Not until the Civil War would the words take on new meaning as Abraham Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation.
Legacy of the Declaration of Independence
Although the 1789 French Revolution was a very different kind of revolution, the August 1789 Declaration of Rights highlighted the sovereignty of the people (Article III). The document itself had been crafted with the help of the Marquis de Lafayette, who had served in the American Revolution under George Washington with distinction.
The Declaration of Independence was not accorded the notoriety it has achieved in the modern era in the years after the Revolution. Part of this was due to Jefferson’s authorship. As the new nation began in the 1790s under the Constitution, political parties arose. Federalists, who despised Jefferson, minimized his contributions.
Nonetheless, the Declaration was a singular document cementing the goals of the new nation to the ideological principles of liberty and popular sovereignty. These have been copied by freedom loving people all over the world for over two centuries.
Sources:
- Joseph Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Alfred A, Knopf, 1997)
- Robert Harvey, A Few Bloody Noses: The Realities and Mythologies of the American Revolution (Woodstock: The Overlook Press, 2002)
- Christopher Hibbert, Redcoats and Rebels: The American Revolution Through British Eyes (New York: Avon Books, 1990)
- Ray Raphael, Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past (New York: The New Press, 2004)
July 4th, 1776
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