Thomas Jefferson’s efforts owed much to other writings of the colonial period, yet his precise and beautiful prose resulted in a strong argument for American independence.
At the time Thomas Jefferson was selected to draft the Declaration of Independence, dozens of similar declarations had already been issued, including George 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 on July 4, 1776, the Declaration was formally signed on August 22.
Thomas Paine lays the Foundation.
Common Sense, Thomas Paine‘s most successful pamphlet on the logic of American independence, was published on 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 faraway 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 was the only Founding Father who could 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 did the words take on new meanings as Abraham Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation.
Thomas Jefferson’s 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 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.
