Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor

by Richard R. Beeman

  There has been considerable speculation—and disagreement—about the extent to which Jefferson’s drafts influenced the final version of Virginia’s frame of government, which has generally been attributed to George Mason. It seems likely that Jefferson’s drafts arrived in Williamsburg too late to receive a thorough appraisal, and the preponderance of evidence suggests that Mason’s drafts of the Virginia Constitution and the declaration of rights that preceded it were much more influential in shaping the final product than Jefferson’s. But one thing is clear: Jefferson’s own work on his drafts of the Virginia Constitution, occurring immediately before and during his work on another assignment given to him by the Continental Congress, would have a profound effect not only on some of the language of the Virginia Constitution but also on the other document that would become America’s official justification for its separation from Great Britain.6

  As we have seen, when Richard Henry Lee introduced Virginia’s proposed resolution for independence into the Continental Congress on June 7, the Congress ended up deferring further discussion of the resolution until July 1. But it set up a committee to draft a justification for such an action in order that no time would be lost should Congress eventually endorse the resolution. The delegates elected Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston to serve on that committee. Among that group of five, only Livingston still harbored any reservations about the wisdom of independence. There is no formal statement from the Congress affirming that Jefferson was selected as chair of the committee, although John Adams, writing forty-six years later about the events of that day, recalled that “I think [Jefferson] had one more vote than any other, and that placed him at the head of the committee.” Whatever the precise tabulation of the vote, since the normal procedure of the Congress was to appoint the individual receiving the largest number of votes in the election of a committee as its chair, Jefferson probably did receive the highest number of votes.7

  Adams’s other, more famous recollection of the circumstances surrounding the decision to allow Jefferson to write the first draft occurred around 1805, when he was composing his Autobiography. His recollections at that time were self-deprecating with respect to his own talents, but rather mean-spirited as they related to Jefferson’s prior contributions to the Congress. Jefferson, he recalled, “had been now about a Year a member of Congress, but had attended his Duty in the House but a very small part of the time and when there had never spoken in public.” Indeed, Adams claimed, “during the whole Time I satt with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three Sentences together.” The only speech of consequence that Adams could remember was one in which Jefferson uttered “a gross insult on religion . . . for which I gave him immediately the Reprehension, which he richly merited.”8

  So how was it that Jefferson was included on the committee, particularly when men like Richard Henry Lee, who had introduced the resolution for independence, had served in the Congress longer and whose reputation at that time was probably more distinguished than Jefferson’s? Again according to Adams, because of Virginia’s role in shaping events up to that point, it was important that someone from that colony be on the committee. And besides, Adams admitted, “Mr. Jefferson had the Reputation of a masterly Pen.” Equally important, Adams claimed, was that Lee “was not beloved by most of his Colleagues from Virginia, and Mr. Jefferson was sett up to rival and supplant him.” There is little evidence to support that assertion. In fact, it is likely that Lee purposely deferred to Jefferson because, after introducing the resolution for independence, he was anxious to return home to work on Virginia’s new constitution. Indeed, Lee did leave Philadelphia to go to Virginia on June 13 and did not return until after the Declaration of Independence had been adopted, although he later signed the document. The strong support for Jefferson almost certainly owed less either to animosity toward Lee or lack of desire to serve on Lee’s part than it did on Jefferson’s well-deserved reputation as a masterful writer.9

  Unfortunately, we have no other account about the rationale for the selection of committee members other than Adams’s belated recollections. The Congress’s secretary, Charles Thomson, true to his casual note-taking practices, provided no details of the selection process, and none of the other delegates left behind any written comments on the matter. It seems likely, however, that among the factors that led to the selection of the other four delegates—Adams, Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston—was a desire for some approximation of geographic balance, with Adams and Sherman the two New Englanders, Franklin and Livingston representing two important and populous mid-Atlantic colonies and Jefferson the southerner.

  The selections of Adams and Franklin were probably foregone conclusions. Adams, however annoying his obsessive and self-aggrandizing manner may have been to some, had demonstrated a combination of intellect and persistence that earned him a place on the committee. And Franklin’s selection owed to the fact that, well, he was Franklin—along with General Washington the most distinguished and respected man in America. The fact that he was also widely known and, in at least some circles, respected in Britain provided even more of a rationale for his selection.

  The fourth member of the committee, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, is relatively unknown to most Americans today, but on the eve of independence he had a reputation as a man of admirable diligence and uncommon good sense. Fifty-five years old in 1776, Sherman was one of just a few of America’s revolutionary political leaders—Benjamin Franklin notably being among that small group—who began life in genuinely modest circumstances. Sherman’s father, a shoemaker who died when Roger was nineteen, left his family little more than a modest farm and his cobbler’s tools. Sherman may also have been the only one of America’s Founding Fathers to rise to prominence by serving in public, salary-paying offices. During the forty-eight-year period between 1745 and his death in 1793, Sherman served as a jury man, tax collector, inspector of pennies, town clerk, deacon of his Congregational church, town agent to the Connecticut Assembly, justice of the peace, justice of the county court, representative in the lower house of the Connecticut Assembly, member of the upper house of the Assembly, commissary for the Connecticut militia and, finally, judge of the Connecticut superior court. His service to the continental government was just beginning. He was a delegate from Connecticut in both the First and Second Continental Congresses. In addition to being on the drafting committee for the Declaration of Independence, he would also be on the committee charged with drafting the Articles of Confederation, and, most notably, would go on to become the foremost proponent of the compromise between large states and small states on the subject of representation in the Constitutional Convention of 1787.10

  John Adams considered Sherman to be “one of the soundest and strongest pillars of the Revolution,” and counted him “one of the most cordial friends which I ever had in my life.” Like most others who first encountered Sherman, however, Adams was struck by his awkward and ungainly public persona. He described Sherman’s appearance as “the reverse of grace.” Some years later a Georgia delegate to the Constitutional Convention would comment similarly, calling Sherman “the oddest shaped character I have ever met with” and assessing his manner of private and public speaking as “grotesque and laughable.” But whatever his physical awkwardness, Sherman was not a man to be messed with. One political rival in Connecticut wrote a friend warning him that Sherman was as “cunning as the devil, . . . and if you are trying to take him in, you may as well catch an eel by the tail.” But neither Adams nor Jefferson had any reason to worry about Sherman being a disruptive force on their committee, for he had been a forceful advocate for independence since at least Lexington and Concord.11

  The one member of the committee who must have caused the others some concern was Robert Livingston. At the time the committee was chosen he was under orders from New York’s legislature not to vote in favor of independence. And Livingston didn’t need any such admonishment, for he h
ad gone on record opposing a precipitous move toward independence. But in spite of his personal opposition to independence, he had also made it clear that he was willing to support that move should a majority of the Congress endorse it. Moreover, Livingston had proven himself a competent, conscientious member of the Congress who had been elected by his colleagues to serve on a wide range of important committees. His presence would not change the balance of power on the committee, and, just perhaps, his involvement might cause him to re-evaluate his position advocating further efforts at reconciliation.12

  We know that on June 11 the committee chose Jefferson to compose the first draft of the Declaration, a seemingly logical choice since Jefferson had been selected as chair of the committee. But the recollections of John Adams have made the decision a matter of some speculation. Adams provided the only extended description of that process, first in his autobiography in 1805 and later in a long letter to Timothy Pickering in 1822. According to Adams, when the committee first met, “Mr Jefferson desired me to take [the minutes of the Congress] to my Lodgings and make the Draught.” But, according to Adams, he declined to write the first draft, insisting instead that Jefferson take on the task. In writing his 1805 autobiography, he listed the reasons as follows:

  1. That he was a Virginian and I a Massachusettsensian. 2. That he was a southern Man and I a northern one. 3. That I had been so obnoxious from my early and constant Zeal in promoting the Measure, that any draught of mine, would undergo a more severe Scrutiny and Criticism in Congress, than one of his composition. 4thly and lastly and that would be reason enough if there were no other, I had a great Opinion of the Elegance of his pen and none at all of my own.

  Adams gave a similar version of events in his letter to Pickering in 1822, although in it Adams described Jefferson as modestly acquiescing, saying “Well, if you are decided I will do as well as I can.”13

  The first three of the four reasons that Adams cited have a ring of truth to them. It was certainly preferable, from a purely political point of view, to have someone from Virginia—America’s oldest and most populous colony—rather than one of the “radical New England fanatics” as they were sometimes viewed, do the drafting. The New England colonies were all within the independence camp. At the time the committee was selected, however, Delaware’s, Maryland’s and South Carolina’s support of independence was in doubt. And so the selection of Jefferson, a southerner, it was perhaps felt, might help sway these more southerly delegates. And Adams was certainly correct in recognizing that his zealousness in promoting the cause of independence might well have rendered him “obnoxious” to at least some of the delegates in the Congress. If it’s unlikely that Adams had admitted to Jefferson that the “elegance” of the Virginian’s pen was greater than his own (in his letter to Pickering he went even further, recalling that he had told Jefferson that “You can write ten times better than I can”), it is at least true that Adams, and the other members of the committee, held Jefferson’s writing ability in high regard.

  The other three delegates on the committee—Franklin, Sherman and Livingston—never recounted the discussion held among themselves that day. And it took Jefferson until 1823, after seeing a published version of a Fourth of July oration by Timothy Pickering based on Adams’s letter to him, before he gave his own version of events. Writing to James Madison, Jefferson insisted that “Mr Adams memory has led him into unquestionable error. . . . At the age of eighty-eight and forty-seven years after the transactions of Independence, [his memory] is not wonderful.” Jefferson was eighty at the time he wrote to Madison, so he was no spring chicken himself. He was well aware of this, telling Madison, “Nor should I . . . venture to oppose my memory to his, were it not supported by written notes, taken by myself at the moment and on the spot.” According to Jefferson, there was no exchange between him and Adams about who might be better qualified to produce a first draft. Quite simply, Jefferson recalled, the members of the committee “unanimously pressed upon myself alone to undertake the draught. I consented, I drew it.”14

  John Adams, in his autobiography, said that the drafting committee had several meetings before the actual drafting of the Declaration got under way, and during those meetings it is likely that all of the members of the committee voiced their opinions about the shape of the document. But at some point, probably on either Wednesday or Thursday, June 12 or 13, Jefferson repaired to the second-floor parlor of his lodgings at the home of Jacob Graff, and seating himself in a swiveling Windsor chair and with a wooden writing box specially made for him by his former Philadelphia landlord, the master cabinet maker, Benjamin Randolph, he began to put pen to paper. John Adams later claimed that Jefferson wrote that first draft in just “a day or two,” after which he “produced to me his draught.” Jefferson was in fact an exceptionally efficient writer, so Adams may not have been too far off the mark. Indeed, Jefferson had other responsibilities at the time he was writing the Declaration. During the weeks before the final debate on independence he served on three other committees: one to “digest and arrange” all of the resolutions regarding the disastrous Canadian campaign, another to “enquire into the causes of the miscarriages in Canada” and a third to draw up rules and regulations for congressional debates. Although subsequent generations of Americans came to see the writing of the Declaration of Independence as the single most important literary task ever undertaken in all of America’s history, Jefferson and Adams probably did not consider it as such at the time. As we have seen, Jefferson was so emotionally and intellectually involved with the task of constitution making in Virginia that he wanted to leave the Congress before being appointed to the committee to draft the Declaration. Meanwhile, many in the Congress believed that the work of the committee to draft a “plan of confederation” for the “united colonies”—a committee chaired by none other than the reluctant revolutionist John Dickinson—was more important than that of the committee to draft the declaration.15

  While over the course of more than two centuries Jefferson has come to be known as the principal author of the Declaration, the details of the editing of various drafts of the document are less clear. According to Jefferson, before giving his initial draft to the entire committee of five, he “communicated it separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams requesting their corrections.” Those corrections, Jefferson claimed, “were two or three only, and merely verbal. I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the committee, and from them, unaltered to the Congress.”16

  In all likelihood, the process of drafting and editing the Declaration was far more complicated than that. Jefferson probably composed several “fragments” of the Declaration and then combined them into what he later called “the original rough draft,” which he shared with Adams and Franklin. Moreover, after Adams and Franklin offered their comments on that rough draft, Jefferson asked Franklin to look at his revised draft one more time. On a “Friday morn” in June, possibly June 21, he attached a note to that revised draft telling Franklin that “the inclosed paper has been read and with some small alterations approved of by the committee. Will Doctr. Franklyn be so good as to peruse it and suggest such alterations as his more enlarged view of the subject will dictate?”17

  When one compares the draft of the Declaration that was delivered to Congress on June 28 with Jefferson’s “original rough draft,” one can discern a total of twenty-six alterations—two in Adams’s handwriting, five in Franklin’s and sixteen in Jefferson’s. The draft submitted to Congress also contained three additional paragraphs in Jefferson’s hand. In analyzing Jefferson’s original rough draft, it is sometimes difficult to tell whether the changes were made by Jefferson or by others and merely recorded in Jefferson’s handwriting. But though Jefferson would later complain of the “mutilations” to which his original draft was subjected, most of the changes suggested by his colleagues made the finished document more elegant and forceful.

  The Preamble

  Of all the parts of the Declaration of Independence, the Pream
ble has become most firmly embedded in American culture. It is, moreover, the quintessential expression of American values and ideals. The words and ideas in Jefferson’s preamble, whether in their initial or revised form, did not, however, spring unaided from Jefferson’s brain. Jefferson later claimed that he “turned toward neither book nor pamphlet” while writing the Declaration. But he carried in his head a rich intellectual heritage, including the writings of John Locke, and especially The Second Treatise of Civil Government, which explored in detail the idea of mankind’s “natural rights,” and also the works of a group of eighteenth-century Scottish philosophers including Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith.18

  The first paragraph of that preamble was essentially a restatement of the May 15 resolution of the Virginia Convention, which began, “Forasmuch as all of the endeavours of the United Colonies by the most decent representations to the King and parliament of Great Britain, to restore peace and security to America . . . have produced, from an imperious and vindictive administration, increased insult, oppression, and a vigorous attempt to affect our total destruction.” The version of the preamble that Jefferson and his fellow committee members submitted to Congress avoided legalistic words such as “forasmuch” and “whereas,” and began far more elegantly:

  When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature & of nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.19

  This single sentence announced the Americans’ intention of declaring their independence, of breaking the ties that had bound them to England. The justification for this unprecedented act was to be found in “the laws of nature and of nature’s god.” Jefferson, a deist who did not believe that God played an active role in the daily affairs of mankind, nevertheless did believe, with John Locke, that certain natural rights were God-given. This first sentence also conveyed Jefferson’s awareness that a compelling public statement of the reasons for the decision to seek independence from England was necessary if America’s political leaders were to earn the support not only of their constituents in the colonies but, equally important, of foreign nations like France. Much of the opposition to independence from men like John Dickinson was based on the uncertainty of gaining either commercial or military aid from France, and a firmly stated commitment to independence from Great Britain, France’s bitter enemy, might be a way of winning that nation over to the American cause.