Independence (55 page)

Years later Adams, consumed with jealousy at the laurels Jefferson had reaped as the author of the Declaration of Independence, carped that the document was “a juvenile declamation” that merely rehashed what others had said. There was “not an idea in it, but what had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before.” But Adams had forgotten that neither he nor his colleagues on the committee or in Congress wanted Jefferson to write something novel. It would have been ludicrous to have done so. Jefferson correctly understood, as he put it years later, that his task was to avoid “aiming at originality of principle or sentiment.” He was to prepare a draft that captured 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. Along these same lines the document had to make clear why Congress, which had repeatedly insisted that it was not bent on independence, was indeed declaring independence. Within these parameters, Jefferson subsequently said, he merely sought to avoid copying “from any particular and previous writing.”
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As the draft sprang from Jefferson's pen, it became clear that the Declaration of Independence was to be more than simply a justification of revolution. It need not have been. The English Declaration of Rights, with which Jefferson and every educated colonist was familiar, began with “Whereas” and proceeded to list the charges against the king, James II. When Adams, a month earlier, had written the resolution directing the colonies to abandon their charters and create new, independent governments, he had begun: “Whereas his Britannic Majesty, in conjunction with the Lords and Commons of Great-Britain, has …,” followed by a compilation of the wrongdoings by Britain's leaders during the past decade. That Jefferson's draft did not follow those models may have been his unique contribution to the eventual Declaration of Independence. Or, it may have been the result of the instructions provided by the Committee of Five. For instance, in his private correspondence near the time the committee first met, Adams had fervently declared that an independent America must embrace “a more equal Liberty, than has prevail'd in other Parts of the Earth” and must repudiate hereditary rule by the “Dons, the Bashaws, the Grandees, the Patricians, the Sachems, the Nabobs, call them by what Name you please,” but in short, the “insolent Domination, in a few, a very few opulent, monopolizing Families.”
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He and others on the committee may have instructed Jefferson to go beyond merely amassing charges of British despotism and to delineate the meaning of the American Revolution.

Jefferson's draft included two segments that consciously sought to do more than merely justify the break with Great Britain. Jefferson penned a draft that enunciated in the broadest terms the principles upon which the new nation would stand and around which its citizenry could rally. After all, until recently, the colonists had considered themselves to be British, but those feelings had evaporated. Furthermore, the colonists identified first and foremost with their province and hardly, if at all, with the Continental Congress or the concept of an American Union. But the “united colonies” were about to become the “United States.” Jefferson's draft, therefore, was meant not only to bring to a close America's days as colonies of another nation, but to also announce the creation of the American nation.

This was also meant to be a war document. The meaning it gave to the American Revolution should foster a willingness to fight for the new nation and the resplendent ideals for which it stood, while at the same time sustain morale on the home front throughout a lengthy war. However, this document was not to be directed solely at the American citizenry. Its audience included “mankind” in a “candid world,” and none more so than America's friends in Great Britain who might someday play a useful role in the termination of hostilities and recognition of the United States. The draft referred to “our British brethren” who had long been remarkable for their “native justice & magnanimity,” and especially those among them who had been “our common kindred” in opposing the measures of Lord North's ministry. As declaring independence at this juncture was due in large measure to the need for foreign assistance, the document was of course directed toward those nations in Europe that might trade or ally with America. (The minute that the Declaration was adopted and printed, the Committee of Secret Correspondence sent a copy to Silas Deane in Paris with instructions that he not only see to its publication in French newspapers but also “communicate the piece to the Court of France, and send copies of it to the other Courts of Europe.” Congress additionally ordered that the Declaration “be proclaimed … at the head of the army.”)
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Very little in Jefferson's draft was changed before the document was submitted to Congress. Adams appears to have made two alterations and Franklin five, all dealing with phraseology. For example, “his present majesty” was changed to “the present king of Great Britain.” Jefferson subsequently remarked that no changes were made by the Committee of Five, but it seems unlikely that Sherman and Livingston would not have suggested at least one or two alterations. Altogether, sixteen slight modifications were made to the original draft during the roughly ten days between Jefferson's completion of his task and the document's presentation to Congress.
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Some of the changes may have been made by Jefferson himself. Like any good author who is never satisfied with what he has written, Jefferson may have been unable to resist the temptation to tinker with his handiwork. Or, he may have been responding to oral suggestions that were made at the one or more committee meetings that were held, and some of these recommendations may have been made by Livingston or Sherman. But what is abundantly clear is that the document submitted to Congress was almost exclusively the work of Jefferson.

Jefferson had drawn on several sources, including the English Whig polemicists he had read in his youth. He was familiar with the sentiments of his fellow congressmen, even having taken copious notes on what they said in the debates on independence on June 8 and 10. He was familiar with the Declaration of Rights enacted by the First Congress, a statement that both enumerated the rights enjoyed by all freeborn Englishmen and laid out America's prewar complaints. Since the commencement of hostilities, Congress had adopted two statements that explained in detail the colonists' grievances. Jefferson had been one of the authors of the Declaration on the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, and he was intimately familiar with Adams's May 10 resolution on jettisoning charter governments.
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Jefferson was additionally conversant with some of the pamphlet literature produced by American protestors since the Stamp Act, and he was acquainted with at least some of the declarations on independence promulgated since March by several provincial congresses and local committees of safety.

However, nothing influenced Jefferson more than the draft of Virginia's Declaration of Rights. It had been submitted to the Virginia Convention in May and was published in a Philadelphia newspaper on the day after the Committee of Five was created. The language of a portion of the Virginia document foreshadowed what Jefferson wrote. It stated, among other things, that “all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural rights … among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” It additionally stated that “all power is vested in, and … derived from the people,” and that the purpose of government was to secure the people's “greatest degree of happiness and safety.” But if the government “shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes … a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it.”
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Jefferson's draft included four sections. The preface consisted of a seldom-remembered though important introductory paragraph. It hinted that America's dependent status had been temporary. The time had arrived “to dissolve the political bands” that had tied the colonists to Great Britain and “to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's god entitle them.”
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Beginning with a melodic encapsulation of the natural rights of humankind, Jefferson proceeded with a lyrical but forceful affirmation of the right of revolution:

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying it's foundation on such principles, and organising it's powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light & transient causes, and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. but when a long train of abuses and usurpations, begun at a distinguished period, & pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, & to provide new guards for their future security.

Jefferson was clearly using the draft of Virginia's Declaration of Rights as a template, though he improved it stylistically. With one exception, he adhered to it faithfully. Virginia's statement enumerated the natural rights of humankind as including life, liberty, and property. Jefferson did not mention property. It has been conjectured that Jefferson may have sought to simplify the long and cumbersome phraseology of his Virginia friends.
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But as this was a war document, Jefferson must have understood that in a protracted conflict—which by June 1776 looked increasingly likely—the military service of nonproperty owners would be an unavoidable necessity. Jefferson probably deliberately sought to say that this was a revolution in which all free Americans, not just those who owned property, had a stake.
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Jefferson's lengthiest section was a bill of indictment cataloging the despotic design of Britain's rulers. He levied twenty-one accusations of illegal and tyrannical behavior against George III, shameful actions that unmasked the “character” of this man and revealed him as “unfit to be the ruler of a people.” Although Parliament was never mentioned by name—Jefferson alluded to it as “their legislature,” differentiating it from America's legislatures—he charged it with nine additional despotic acts. Somewhat vaguely, Jefferson grouped the charges: He commenced with allegations that the king had refused to govern or to permit the colonists to govern themselves properly; next, he stressed how the rulers in London had violated the rights of the colonists; and finally, he charged the Crown with violence and cruelty toward the colonists.
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He began with a vague accusation. The monarch, he wrote, had “refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” That was probably a reference to the Privy Council's disallowance of some 5 percent of laws passed by colonial assemblies during the 150 years of colonial subservience, but Jefferson must also have had in mind the Crown's rejection of the three Virginia laws passed since the 1760s that would have forbidden the further importation of African slaves. So that no one misunderstood, he later specifically arraigned the king for having waged “cruel war against human nature itself” by having refused to stop the Atlantic slave trade. Jefferson did not mention the most famous complaint of the colonists—“imposing taxes on us without our consent”—until he had arraigned king or Parliament on sixteen other charges. Parliament's claim to have the authority to “legislate for us in all cases whatsoever” was twenty-second on his list.

Despite all the heated debates in Congress over Parliament's power to regulate American commerce, Jefferson was silent on that score. However, he wrote that London had “sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people,” an illusion in part to the increase in customs officials after 1765. The Coercive Acts were condemned in several separate items in the list, as was the Quartering Act, American Prohibitory Act, Quebec Act, and the Crown's efforts during the past several years to eliminate an independent judiciary in the colonies. The king was also charged with keeping a standing army in America in peacetime, making war on the colonists, burning its towns, inciting Indians to go on the warpath, and hiring foreign mercenaries. For having fomented slave insurrections, Jefferson in effect branded George III a war criminal, writing that he had enticed “those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering” their masters and other colonists.
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Jefferson additionally took aim at the monarch for having “endeavored to prevent the population of these states,” a reference to parliamentary legislation in 1773, which restricted emigration to the colonies.
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No charge brought by Jefferson was composed in a more impassioned manner than his arraignment of the king for his complicity in the African slave trade and for his allegedly having imposed slavery on the colonists. Jefferson wrote that the king had enslaved “a distant people, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.” By engaging in “this piratical warfare,” Britain's monarch had acted as an “
infidel
” ruler, not as “the
Christian
king of Great Britain.” Furthermore, he had disallowed “every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.” If this “assemblage of horrors” was not sufficient, the king was “now … exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering” the American colonists.