Independence

by John Ferling

  31. Jensen, Founding of a Nation, 696–97.

  32. Quoted in Countryman, A People in Revolution, 165. I have drawn on Countryman’s excellent analysis of New York politics in writing this section. See Countryman, pages 161–66.

  33. Hancock to GW, May 16, 1776, LDC 4:8, 9n.

  34. Robert R. Livingston to Jay, June 4, 1776, LDC 4:140.

  35. GW to John A. Washington, July 22, 1776, PGWR 5:428–29; GW to Hancock, June 17, July 17, 1776, ibid., 5:21, 356; GW to John Trumbull, June 10, 1776, ibid., 4:496. Lee to Thomas L. Lee, May 28, 1776, LDC 4:90–91. See also John Ferling, Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence (New York, 2007), 120–24; John Ferling, The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon (New York, 2009), 104–9.

  36. Hancock to GW, June 7, 1776, LDC 4:156. See also Commissioners to Canada to Hancock, May 27, 28, 1776, ibid., 4:84–85, 87–88.

  37. EHD 9:867–68.

  38. JCC 5:424–27; TJ, “Notes of Proceedings,” [June 7–28, 1776], PTJ 1:309; Rhode Island Delegates to Nicholas Cooke, June 21, 1776, LDC 4:286; Edward Rutledge to Jay, [June 8, 1776], ibid., 4:174.

  39. Rutledge to Jay, [June 8, 1776], LDC 4:175; JD to Willing, [June 8?, 1776], ibid., 4:169.

  40. JD, Notes for a Speech in Congress, [June 8–10?, 1776], LDC 4:165–69.

  41. TJ, “Notes of Proceedings,” [June 7–28, 1776], PTJ 1:309–11; Rutledge to Jay, [June 8, 1776], LDC 4:175.

  42. Rutledge to Jay, [June 8, 1776], LDC 4:174; Gerry to Warren, June 11, 1776, ibid., 4:187.

  43. TJ, “Notes of Proceedings,” [June 7–28, 1776], PTJ 1:311–13.

  44. TJ, “Notes of Proceedings,” [June 7–28, 1776], PTJ 1:313.

  45. TJ, “Notes of Proceedings,” [June 7–28, 1776], PTJ 1:313; JCC 5:428–29, 431, 433; PJA 342n.

  46. Rhode Island Delegates to Nicholas Cooke, June 21, 1776, LDC 4:286; Wolcott to Laura Wolcott, June 15, 1776, ibid., 4:226; JA to William Cushing, June 9, 1776, PJA 4:245.

  CHAPTER 12: “THE CHARACTER OF A FINE WRITER”: THOMAS JEFFERSON AND THE DRAFTING OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

  1. Ward to Henry Ward, June 22, 1775, LDC 1:535; “Historical and Bibliographical Notes on ‘A Summary View of the Rights of British America,’ ” PTJ 1:676.

  2. TJ to Thomas Nelson, May 16, 1776, PTJ 1:292.

  3. J. Kent McGaughy, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia: A Portrait of an American Revolutionary (Lanham, Md., 2004), 121–24; Lee to GW, June 13, 1776, PGWR 4:514.

  4. David Freeman Hawke, Honorable Treason: The Declaration of Independence and the Men Who Signed It (New York, 1976), 46–48, 54–57.

  5. Christopher Collier, Roger Sherman’s Connecticut: Yankee Politicians and the American Revolution (Middletown, Conn., 1971), 74, 97, 119–20; JA, Diary, August 17, 1774, DAJA 2:100; Roger Sherman to Joseph Trumbull, July 6, 1775, LDC 1:600. The sketch of Roger Sherman’s activities prior to his service in the Continental Congress draws on Collier’s work, pages 3–84. The quotation on his “slender” education is from Collier, page 11.

  6. Collier, Roger Sherman’s Connecticut, 10.

  7. JA, Diary, October 10, 1774, September 15, 1775, DAJA 2:150, 173; Collier, Roger Sherman’s Connecticut, 94, 235; Hawke, Honorable Treason, 57–58.

  8. JA, Diary, September 15, 1775, DAJA 2:173; Collier, Roger Sherman’s Connecticut, 235–36; Hawke, Honorable Treason, 59.

  9. Roger Sherman to Jonathan Trumbull Sr., June 28, 1775, LDC 1:556; ibid., 2:292n; 3:413n.

  10. JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:336.

  11. JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:336–37; JA to Timothy Pickering, August 6, 1822, WJA 2:512–14n; TJ to James Madison, August 30, 1823, in Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1892–99), 10:267–69.

  12. JA, Diary, June 23, 1779, DAJA 2:391–92.

  13. PBF 22:442n; BF to GW, June 21, 1776, ibid., 22:484–85; BF to Benjamin Rush, June 26, 1776, ibid., 22:491.

  14. Besides, as John Adams remarked, Jefferson had been a congressman for a year, during which time he had spent “a very small part of the time” in Philadelphia. See JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:335.

  15. The preceding draws on TJ, Autobiography, in Saul K. Padover, ed., The Complete Jefferson (New York, 1943), 1119–20; Sarah N. Randolph, The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1871), 23; Fawn Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York, 1974), 23, 51; Noble E. Cunningham Jr., In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1997), 1–4; Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Times (Boston, 1948–81), 1:21–48; R. B. Bernstein, Thomas Jefferson (New York, 2003), 1–3.

  16. Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: A Biography (New York, 1970), 7–8; Willard Sterne Randall, Thomas Jefferson: A Life (New York, 1992), 22–24, 37, 41–42; Malone, Thomas Jefferson, 1:53–57; Bernstein, Thomas Jefferson, 4–5; TJ to Vine Utley, March 21, 1819, in Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1892–99), 9:126; TJ to William Duane, October 1, 1812, in A. A. Lipscomb and A. E. Bergh, eds., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, D.C., 1900–1904), 2:420–31; TJ to John Page, October 7, 1763, PTJ 1:11; Jefferson, Autobiography, in Padover, Complete Thomas Jefferson, 1120.

  17. Randall, Thomas Jefferson, 47, 51, 55–58, 66–68, 98, 109; Malone, Thomas Jefferson, 1:122–23; TJ to Ralph Izard, July 17, 1788, PTJ 13:372; TJ to Page, December 25, 1762, ibid., 1:5; TJ to William Fleming, [October 1763], ibid., 1:15; TJ to Thomas Jefferson Randolph, June 14, 1806, in Lipscomb and Bergh, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 12:97–98; TJ, Autobiography, in Padover, Complete Thomas Jefferson, 1120; Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, 61; Frank J. Dewey, Thomas Jefferson, Lawyer (Charlottesville, Va., 1986), 83–93.

  18. TJ to Page, October 7, 1763, January 19, 1764, PTJ 1:11, 13–14; TJ to Fleming, March 20, October [?], 1763, ibid., 1:13, 16. For the best treatment of TJ’s tortured relationship with Rebecca Burwell, see Jon Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s Women (New York, 2007), 16–40. See also Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, 64–67.

  19. TJ to Fleming, PTJ 1:13; Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s Women, 35–37. The most complete elaboration on TJ’s possible misogyny can be found in Kenneth A. Lockridge, On the Sources of Patriarchal Rage: The Commonplace Books of William Byrd and Thomas Jefferson and the Gendering of Power in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1992).

  20. TJ to Page, February 21, 1770, PTJ 1:36.

  21. Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s Women, 67–70. As for the appeal of Martha’s wealth, historian Annette Gordon-Read observed in The Hemingses of Monticello (New York, 2008), 98–99, that despite all of her other admirable qualities, it was not likely that TJ would have married her had she been the daughter of a blacksmith.

  22. Henry S. Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1858), 1:34–35, 3:364; Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1997), 120; Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, 10; Malone, Thomas Jefferson, 1:48; Cunningham, In Pursuit of Reason, 22; Randall, Thomas Jefferson, 100; Jack McLoughlin, Jefferson and Monticello (New York, 1988), 438–39; Edmund Randolph, “Essay on the History of Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 43 (1953): 115; Noble Cunningham, ed., “The Diary of Frances Few, 1808–1809,” Journal of Southern History 29 (1963): 350–51; DAJA 3:335–36; Gaillard Hunt, ed., The First Forty Years of Washington Society Portrayed by the Family Letters of Mrs. Samuel Harrison Smith (New York, 1906), 26; Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams (Philadelphia, 1874–77), 1:373; Arthur H. Shaffer, ed., Edmund Randolph, History of Virginia (Charlottesville, Va., 1979), 182–83, 213. The quote about TJ’s “femininely soft” voice is in David Hawke, A Transaction of Free Men: The Birth and Course of the Declaration of Independence (New York, 1964), 21.

  23. Charles S. Sydnor, Gentlemen Freeholders: Political Practices in Washington’s Virginia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1952), 98–101.

  24. TJ, Autobiography, Padover, Complete Thomas Jefferson, 1121.

  25. TJ to Thomas Adams, February 20,
1771, PTJ 1:61; [Thomas Jefferson], A Summary View of the Rights of British America (Williamsburg, Va., 1774), ibid., 1:123–24, 133, 135.

  26. Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1999), 3–73. The Lee and TJ quotations are from this source, page 72.

  27. Ellis, American Sphinx, 32–34; Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, 45–65; Malone, Thomas Jefferson, 1:173–79; H. Trevor Colbourn, The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1965), 3–56, 158–60; Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 55–143; Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1969), 10–45; Gordon S. Wood, “Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century, William and Mary Quarterly 39 (1982): 401–2. The quotation is from the Virginia non-importation agreement of 1769, written in part by GW and signed by TJ. See PGWC 8:187–89n.

  28. TJ, Autobiography, in Padover, Complete Thomas Jefferson, 1122; Jefferson, A Summary View, PTJ 1:135.

  29. Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s Women, 35, 39–40. For bibliography on TJ’s malady, see the detailed endnotes in Kukla, pages 226–28.

  30. JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:335–36. A Summary View can be found in PTJ 1:121–35. See also the editorial note in ibid., 1:669–76.

  31. Malone, Thomas Jefferson, 1:202.

  32. JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:335; JA to Pickering, August 6, 1822, WJA 2:514n.

  33. Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello, 125.

  34. Malone, Thomas Jefferson, 1:203–17.

  35. TJ to Nelson, May 16, 1776, PTJ 1:292, 293n; Nathan Schachner, Thomas Jefferson: A Biography (New York, 1951), 118.

  36. David McCullough, John Adams (New York, 2001), 120.

  37. JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:336.

  38. JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:336; TJ to BF, [June 21, 1776], PTJ 1:404. See also PBF 22:485. JA said that TJ asked for his suggestions before he showed the draft to Livingston and Sherman.

  39. JA to Pickering, August 6, 1822, WJA 2:514n; John Ferling, John Adams: A Life (reprint, New York, 2010), 148; TJ to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825, in Lipscomb and Bergh, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 7:407.

  40. JA to Henry, June 3, 1776, PJA 4:235.

  41. Committee of Secret Correspondence to Deane, July 8, 1776, LDC 4:405; Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York, 1997), 130.

  42. Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (reprint, New York, 1960), 151–52; TJ to Madison, August 30, 1823, in Ford, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 10:267–69; “Jefferson’s ‘original Rough draught’ of the Declaration of Independence,” PTJ 1:423–28, and the editorial note on the evolution of the text, ibid., 1:413–17; “John Adams’ Copy of the Declaration of Independence, [ante June 28, 1776], PJA 4:341–51; Julian Boyd, The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text as Shown in Facsimiles of Various Drafts by Its Author (Washington, D.C., 1943).

  43. Becker, Declaration of Independence, 105–14. Becker also thought that TJ’s inclusion of “the pursuit of happiness” as a natural right had been derived from a essay published by James Wilson, though subsequent scholarship has shown that was not the case.

  44. Maier, American Scripture, 124–28; Am Archives 4th series, 6:1537. Ironically, the Virginia Convention finally adopted the Declaration of Rights in a slightly modified form on June 12, the very day that the committee’s draft—which TJ utilized—appeared in the Philadelphia newspaper. See John E. Selby, The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783 (Williamsburg, Va., 1988), 100–110.

  45. Jay Fliegelman, Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution Against Patriarchal Authority (New York, 1982), 4; Eric Slauter, “The Declaration of Independence and the New Nation,” in Frank Shuffelton, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Jefferson (Cambridge, 2009), 18; Peter S. Onuf, “A Declaration of Independence for Diplomatic Historians,” in Peter S. Onuf, ed., The Mind of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville, Va., 2007), 66.

  46. Maier, American Scripture, 134.

  47. See also Herbert Lawrence Ganter, “Jefferson’s ‘Pursuit of Happiness’ and Some Forgotten Men,” William and Mary Quarterly, 2d series, 16 (1936): 422–34.

  48. George Anastaplo, “The Declaration of Independence,” Saint Louis University Law Journal 9 (1964–65): 401.

  49. The term “war criminal” is appropriated from Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (Garden City, N.Y., 1978), 310. Wills wrote that TJ accused the king of “a war crime for his complicity in enslaving Africans.”

  50. On British attempts to restrict emigration, see Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (New York, 1986), 29–66.

  51. For TJ’s draft, see “Jefferson’s ‘original Rough draught’ of the Declaration of Independence,” PTJ 1:423–28.

  52. TJ, Notes of Proceedings in the Continental Congress, June 7–August 1, 1776, PTJ 1:313–14.

  53. Joseph Hawley to Gerry, June 13, 1776, Am Archives 4th series, 6:845; Warren to Gerry, June 12, 1776, ibid., 6:829. Warren thought “ninety-nine in a hundred would engage, with their lives and fortunes, to support Congress” should it declare independence. Pauline Maier, American Scripture, should be consulted on the foot dragging in Massachusetts, where the upper chamber of the assembly sought to delay or inhibit the break with Great Britain and the lower house did not finally vote for independence until July 3. However, as Maier points out, since January 1776 the Massachusetts congressional delegation had as much authority to concur with the other delegations on a decision for independence as the North Carolina and Delaware congressmen received many months later. See her section on Massachusetts on pages 59–61.

  54. Am Archives 4th series, 6:867–68, 1029–30, 1628–29, 1491; Maier, American Scripture, 59–68; Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant to JA, June 15, 1776, PJA 4:316. The “all independent souls” quotation can be found in Larry R. Gerlach, Prologue to Independence: New Jersey in the Coming of the American Revolution (New Brunswick, N.J., 1976), 337.

  55. Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (New York, 1968), 685–87; Maier, American Scripture, 65–66; William Hogeland, Declaration: The Nine Tumultuous Weeks When America Became Independent, May 1–July 4, 1776 (New York, 2010), 143–62; Richard Alan Ryerson, The Revolution Is Now Begun: The Radical Committees of Philadelphia, 1765–1776 (Philadelphia, 1978), 208–37; Am Archives 4th series, 6:755, 962–63; Joseph E. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: A History (New York, 1976), 301; JA to Warren, May 20, 1776, PJA 4:195.

  56. Richard Lightfoot Lee to Richard H. Lee, June 30, 1776, LDC 4:342–43; Bruce Bliven, Under the Guns: New York, 1775–1776 (New York, 1972), 318; Barnet Schecter, The Battle for New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution (New York, 2002), 100; John J. Gallagher, The Battle of Brooklyn, 1776 (Edison, N.J., 2002), 67.

  57. JA to John Sullivan, June 23, 1776, PJA 4:330; JA to Nathanael Greene, June 22, 1776, ibid., 4:324.

  58. JA to John Winthrop, June 23, 1776, PJA 4:331–32; Hewes to James Iredell, June 28, 1776, LDC 4:332; Rutledge to Jay, June 29, 1776, ibid., 4:337.

  CHAPTER 13: “MAY HEAVEN PROSPER THE NEW BORN REPUBLIC”: SETTING AMERICA FREE

  1. JA to Archibald Bulloch, July 1, 1776, PJA 4:352.

  2. JA to AA, April 15, 23, 28, 1776, AFC 1:383, 391–92, 401.

  3. JA to AA, April 28, May 17, 1776, AFC 1:401, 410.

  4. TJ to William Fleming, July 1, 1776, PTJ 1:411–13.

  5. David Hawke, A Transaction of Free Men: The Birth and Course of the Declaration of Free Men (New York, 1964), 177.

  6. Josiah Bartlett to Nathaniel Folsom, July 1, 1776, LDC 4:348; John Penn to Samuel Johnson, June 28, 1776, ibid., 4:333; Penn to [?], June 28, 1776, ibid., 4:334.

  7
. DAJA 2:115n; John Ferling, Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and the American Revolution (New York, 2000), xviii–xix.

  8. JCC 5:503; Am Archives 4th series, 6:1726–27; GW to Hancock, June 29, 1776, PGWR 5:147–49.

  9. JCC 5:503; Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (Garden City, N.Y., 1978), 4.

  10. Milton E. Flower, John Dickinson: Conservative Revolutionary (Charlottesville, Va., 1983), 153–57.

  11. JA to Zabdiel Adams, June 21, 1776, AFC 2:20; JA to Chase, July 1, 1776, PJA 4:353; Gerry to Warren, July 2, 1776, LDC 4:370.

  12. For Dickinson’s speech, see John Dickinson’s Notes for a Speech in Congress, [July 1, 1776], LDC 4:351–56, 356n.

  13. JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:395–97; TJ to Samuel Wells, May 12, 1819, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1892–99), 10:131; Thomas Jefferson, To the Editor of the Journal de Paris, August 29, 1787, PTJ 12:63.

  14. JA to Chase, July 1, 1776, PJA 4:354.

  15. The quotations can be found in John Hazleton, The Declaration of Independence: Its History (New York, 1906), 161–62; John Ferling, John Adams: A Life (reprint, New York, 2010), 169.

  16. Jefferson, To the Editor of the Journal de Paris, August 29, 1787, PTJ 12:63.

  17. David Freeman Hawke, Honorable Treason: The Declaration of Independence and the Men Who Signed It (New York, 1976), 163.

  18. JA, Autobiography, DAJA 3:379.

  19. Jefferson, Notes of Proceedings in the Continental Congress, [June 7–August 1, 1776], PTJ 1:314.

  20. JA to Chase, July 1, 1776, PJA 4:353.

  21. JCC 5:506–7; Am Archives 4th series, 6:1727–28.

  22. Peter Stone and Sherman Edwards, 1776: A Musical Play (New York, 1964), 47.

  23. JA, Diary, September 3, 1774, DAJA 2:121; Caesar Rodney to John Haslet[?], May 17, 1776, in George Herbert Ryden, ed., Letters to and from Caesar Rodney, (reprint, New York, 1970), 80; Rodney to Thomas Rodney, May 8, 1776, ibid., 75; Rodney to Rodney, July 10, 1776, LDC 4:433; Hawke, Honorable Treason, 155–57. See also William Baskerville Hamilton, Anglo-American Law on the Frontier: Thomas Rodney and His Territorial Cases (Durham, N.C., 1953), which discusses the several accounts of Rodney’s activities on pages 21–22.