Prof: But now I will
actually talk about the
Declaration of Independence.
 
Obviously, at the core of
today's lecture we have a piece
of paper.
 
Of course, it's an iconic piece
of paper to us,
but it's a piece of paper just
the same.
And part of what we're going to
be looking at today in this
lecture is that obviously this
Declaration was more than just a
piece of paper produced by a
bunch of guys in one room--
that actually,
declaring independence was an
event,
and it was an event that
reached far beyond the Second
Continental Congress,
and actually was hashed out in
towns and cities throughout the
colonies,
and I'll be talking some about
that today.
 
So as you'll see today,
and it'll be logically
following through other things
that I've said in the course,
what we're talking about here
is a wrenching progress,
a major decision that was an
act of treason,
an action that the colonists
knew would set them on a
dangerous path.
 
Now given lots of the stuff
I've said so far in this course,
hopefully you're
expecting--you're understanding
why this would be a wrenching
process,
why it would seem radical or as
radical as it did.
It represented a break from the
mother country that American
colonists obviously had long
embraced as their own,
as well as a dangerous act that
set a collection of colonies in
warfare against the most
powerful nation on earth.
So, big step.
 
So it's an important act,
but we need to be careful in
assuming that the piece of paper
that explained its rationale had
some kind of magical,
iconic value at the time that
it was created,
because it didn't.
And as you'll see,
it was not seen as the main
focus of the process of
declaring independence,
and in a way it was almost seen
as a formality to the actual act
of declaring independence.
 
And it wasn't intended to say
something dramatically new.
It's come to mean a lot of
things over the centuries,
but at the time it was not
supposed to be something
radically new.
 
As Jefferson put it--And all of
these founder types,
those who live who into old
age, are asked eternally through
their old age to:
'tell us about.'
Right?
 
Jefferson got all these
tell-us-about-the-Declaration
letters from people.
 
Adams got the same kind of
letters.
I'm going to be quoting later
on from one or two of their
explanations of what happened
surrounding the Declaration of
Independence.
 
But in one of these letters
when someone asked Jefferson,
'So how did you decide what was
going to be in the Declaration?
Where did the ideas come
from?'--and Jefferson said that
the Declaration was,
quote, "neither aiming at
originality of principle or
sentiment,
nor yet copied from any
particular and previous writing.
It was intended to be an
expression of the American
mind."
 
Okay.
 
That was what it was--not only
Jefferson intended it to be,
but what he understood the
document was supposed to be
doing.
 
So as we'll see in today's
lecture, the Declaration isn't
filled with original thoughts
beaming out of the brain of
Thomas Jefferson.
 
Rather, it reflected American
assumptions about government and
the rights of the body politic.
 
So in essence,
it transcribed a mass of ideas
that had been brought into the
open and defined by what the
colonists took to be British
transgressions against their
rights as colonists and as
British subjects.
Now as I suggested in last
Thursday's lecture,
the Declaration of Independence
came roughly six months after
the publication of Common
Sense in 1776,
but it was by no means the only
or even the most important thing
that the Congress had to do at
that time,
sort of not what we would
expect given that it's this
iconic document.
 
And I'll be talking more about
the other things that Congress
had to do in Thursday's lecture,
but for now I'll say that by
the time the Second Continental
Congress met,
and it first met in May of
1775, shots had already been
fired at Lexington and Concord.
 
So, as Thomas Paine put it,
and I quoted him last week,
the colonies had been set on
fire, and the Congress now faced
the monumental task of
organizing some kind of either
defensive effort or war effort,
but whatever it was,
they had to organize it.
 
That was going to be a big
problem.
It was going to be a huge
challenge.
That's happening at the same
time that everything that I'm
talking about today is
happening.
So even as we're debating
independence,
the Congress also has to deal
with a whole range of other
issues that really are immediate
and pressing and are about
basically organizing a war.
 
So not surprisingly,
given that British soldiers had
killed some colonists in
Massachusetts in April of 1775,
when the Second Continental
Congress came into session in
May there was already a strong
feeling of colonial unity and
what at the time they called
rage militaire,
right?--this sort of fervent
support of the colonial cause.
And you can see the mood of the
colonists generally in the
treatment that they gave the
congressional delegates as they
traveled down to Philadelphia
for the meeting.
So as Samuel Adams and John
Hancock traveled down from
Massachusetts and they met up
with delegates from Connecticut
and New York as they went south,
all along their way local
militia units came out to
accompany them and seemingly to
protect them from the British.
 
It's not like actually the
British were going to jump out
from Connecticut and shoot down
the delegates to the Continental
Congress,
but still the impulse was there.
These militia came out to guard
the delegates heading down to
Congress.
 
And all along the route people
came out to watch these
delegates as they passed by and
greeted them with shouts of
"huzzah."
 
Okay, huzzah.
 
Huzzah is the
eighteenth-century equivalent of
hooray--huzzah,
which is very somehow
eighteenth-century sounding.
 
I don't know.
 
Hooray with a Z in it just
doesn't sound very modern,
and I have to--what pops into
my head is,
a million years ago actually I
had a huzzah moment,
I had a personal huzzah moment,
in which I was invited to some
big black-tie celebration of a
founder who shall go nameless.
And at the founder sort of
celebration,
all--we're all in our long
dresses and tuxedos,
a black-tie event--the
organizer actually got us all to
stand and yelled three huzzahs
for the founder.
So there's a group of all these
very formal people going
"Huzzah."
 
[laughs]
So even now it feels ridiculous
to me,
but even at the time,
I thought--yeah,
you just--you haven't lived as
an eighteenth-century historian
until you've had the chance to
scream "huzzah"
in honor of a Founding Father
so I had my huzzah moment.
 
There is my huzzah moment.
 
There's an explanation of
huzzah.
We have a lot of huzzahing
going for the delegations as
they're heading down to
Philadelphia.
So in all of that huzzahing you
can see that the colonial cause
is not an isolated effort being
managed by a few dozen men in a
room.
 
To all of these people at the
time,
just after Lexington and
Concord, the mere existence of
the Congress,
which was a body formed by all
of the colonies together,
was proof of colonial unity,
so it had great significance
even just on that most basic
level.
 
And actually,
although people didn't know it
at the time,
the Continental Congress would
end up being the sole government
for the colonies until 1781 when
the Articles of Confederation
end up being ratified,
and obviously I'll talk more
about that in a lecture to come.
Now in Thursday's lecture on
Common Sense I mentioned
some of the efforts of the
Second Continental Congress to
reach reconciliation with
Britain and,
as I've already said,
the delegates did not arrive in
Philadelphia assuming that they
were supposed to be working for
independence.
 
They were working at
reconciliation.
Now of course,
as I've just explained,
they were also worrying about
organizing armed forces for
defensive purposes and they were
pursuing these two sort of
conflicting motives at the same
time.
So they are thinking about
reconciliation and worrying
about defense as--well,
as--In case that doesn't work,
we really better worry about
that.
So we can't take independence
for granted.
We also shouldn't take colonial
unity for granted because yes,
there is this rage
militaire,
people are united because of
Lexington and Concord,
but if you look up close at the
Continental Congress you can see
some of the ways in which it
really wasn't one united body,
but it really did represent
independent bodies,
independent colonies joining
together for the moment.
So one example:
There was actually no single
method set to determine how many
delegates should attend from
each colony.
 
So basically each colony
decided on its own how many
people it felt like sending to
the Second Continental Congress.
So Virginia sent seven men and
they seemed to have some kind of
rotation system so that guys
always seemed to be coming and
going.
 
Well, we've got these guys
there.
Let's take them home and bring
these new guys there.
No one else really knew the
system of what was happening in
Virginia, but they always had
people there.
They just changed a lot.
 
New York ultimately appointed
twelve men but they didn't come
really reliably,
and so ultimately New York
decided that you only needed to
have three of them present to
vote.
 
Okay.
 
So first of all,
obviously attendance is a
little quirky,
but beyond that every colony is
deciding on its own how many
people it wants to send.
So you can really see how the
Continental Congress is a body
encapsulating delegations from
separate and distinct colonies.
And before anything really
major could be done,
delegations either needed to
confer on their own or,
more often, I suppose,
confer with people back home in
their colony to determine what
it was that their colony wanted
them to do.
 
And obviously the different
ideas and biases and interests
in the various colonies were
different enough to make some
decisions extremely difficult.
 
So you've got a pretty
distinctive kind of legislative
body.
 
And, as I mentioned on
Thursday, one of the notable
things that this congress
produced was the Olive Branch
Petition,
which was this one final stab
at reconciliation.
 
The Olive Branch Petition was
approved on July 5,1775,
in the hope of ending
bloodshed.
The Petition walked a delicate
line,
declaring loyalty to the
King--not talking about rights
or making demands--
and asking for the King's
assistance in reaching some kind
of reconciliation.
So it's appealing to the
loyal--There's people saying
they're loyal to the King,
they're not raging about rights
and demands,
but they are asking for
assistance in helping somehow to
smooth things over.
Unfortunately,
the petition reached the King
at the same time as news of
Bunker Hill, okay,
one of those unfortunate
strikes of fate.
So not surprisingly,
the Petition did not have a
wonderfully convincing impact on
the Crown,
and in August of 1775 the King
declared the colonies to be in
rebellion.
 
And basically he ignored--as I
mentioned also in the last
lecture--
he ignored the Olive Branch
Petition and by doing so,
basically played into the hands
of more radical colonists by
making reconciliation seem
pretty unlikely and really
almost demanding some more
dramatic action from the
colonies.
So August of 1775,
George III declares the
colonies in rebellion.
 
He also did two other things at
roughly that time,
neither one of which helped the
situation or certainly helped to
smooth it over at all.
 
So number one,
two months later in October of
1775,
he stated in Parliament that
the American rebellion was,
quote, "carried on for the
purpose of establishing an
independent empire,"
and this is October 1775;
you're not in 1776 yet.
The King explained that
"the authors and promoters
of this desperate conspiracy...
 
meant only to amuse,
by vague expressions of
attachment to the parent state,
and the strongest protestations
of loyalty to me,
whilst they are preparing for a
general revolt."
 
Okay.
 
First of all,
it sounds like he actually saw
that Petition.
 
Right? Yeah, yeah.
 
They're claiming we're so loyal
to you and then at the same time
there is a "desperate
conspiracy"
lurking.
 
So the King is arguing that
actually,
already they're planning
revolt, and he says you could
see this because the colonists
are raising troops,
because they'd seized the
public revenue,
because they were trying to
seize governmental powers.
Not all members of Parliament
agreed with this sort of
conspiracy theory on the part of
the King.
Those who supported the
American cause argued that the
American colonies had not yet
declared themselves in revolt.
They had not said that they
were rebelling;
they had not said that they
wanted independence yet;
and by speaking as he was,
the King could very well push
the colonies into more radical
action than they had yet
declared in 1775.
 
But the majority of Members of
Parliament at the time supported
the King's statement,
supported his actions.
So first he declares the
colonies in rebellion,
second he makes this bold
statement in Parliament,
and then finally third,
in December of 1775 he proposed
and Parliament passed a
Prohibitory Act.
And the Prohibitory Act
prohibited commerce with the
colonies, period,
and said that colonial ships
were no longer under British
protection.
So basically,
colonial American ships are
fair game on the open seas.
 
Okay.
 
That's--Clearly,
there is another bold sort of
slap on the part of the Crown.
 
When news of these actions
arrived in the colonies in
January and February of 1776,
many colonists were pushed
towards really serious
consideration of independence
for the first time.
 
They're at least considering
it, aided of course,
as I explained last week,
by Common Sense.
The Prohibitory Act was
particularly upsetting to many
because it made it lawful to
attack and raid American ships.
As John Hancock put it in a
pretty obvious statement,
"The making all our
Vessels lawful Prize don't look
like a reconciliation."
 
[laughs]
Thank you, John Hancock.
[laughs] And you're right.
 
John Adams went further,
stating that the Prohibitory
Act should be called,
quote, "the act of
independency,"
because it "makes us
independent in spite of our
supplications and
entreaties."
 
Despite that kind of statement,
it is important to remember,
regardless of how logical even
at this moment independence
seems to us,
we still need to go through a
process here.
 
We're still--It's still not an
obvious choice,
and there were lots of
questions hovering with the mere
thought of independence.
 
What kind of a future does
declaring independence hold?
Many well realized that that
kind of a declaration would
bring with it a devastating war
with Great Britain,
death and destruction of
various kinds,
and then quite possibly,
even probably,
defeat.
 
And on top of these pretty
logical fears,
even as independence seemed--at
least it's part of debate if not
absolutely looming on the
horizon--
most colonists still assumed
they're fighting for British
rights despite the fact that
clearly their understanding of
the British constitution and
colonial rights is differing by
this point from the
understanding of those same
things in England.
 
Most colonists still had so
deep a connection with the
mother country that independence
almost felt like a physical
condition.
 
And John Dickinson,
who was a moderate at this
period,
basically put that into words
and said that by declaring
independence the colonies were
being "torn from the body,
to which we are united by
religion,
liberty, laws,
affections, relation,
language and commerce,"
so it's almost a physical
ripping away.
So this is the atmosphere in
which Common Sense comes
out,
and by swaying large portions
of the people towards
independence obviously that
pamphlet is extremely important.
 
One of the most important
things about it is that because
it swayed large groups of
people--
it wasn't just a highfalutin'
political pamphlet written for
the elite,
but it really,
as I mentioned already,
was for the masses--that it
enabled the Continental Congress
to consider independence and
ultimately to move toward
independence as representatives
of the popular will.
 
Right?
 
So Common Sense is
swaying the people,
and so the Continental Congress
now is basically acting on the
popular will.
 
Some who favored independence
actually wanted to distribute
Common Sense at the
Congress's expense,
since it was so useful in
arousing public sentiment to
move towards independence.
 
Now I want to turn at this
point to something that often
gets left behind or left out
when we talk about declaring
independence,
but it's actually really
crucial and in a way I think
it's really at the center of the
story.
 
And what I want to talk about
is what people generally in the
colonies thought about
independence,
because obviously it's not only
guys in the Continental Congress
who are debating,
discussing and considering
independence.
 
And even there,
there was great recognition
that they're acting on behalf of
the larger populace.
Many colonial delegations felt
compelled to have direct orders
from the people of their colony
before taking this kind of an
enormous step.
 
And there's a book by Pauline
Maier which is titled
American Scripture:
Making the Declaration of
Independence and it makes
this point really well,
and this sort of larger point
that I'm going to make here is
partly drawn from her book.
 
And she emphasizes that the
Continental Congress wasn't the
sole focal point for discussion
of independence,
and she explains in her book
that while she was studying what
was going on in the colonies
during the months of April,
May, June, and July of 1776 she
actually discovered over ninety
other declarations of
independence,
all of them written by local
communities or towns or at
conventions representing
individual colonies.
And as she states in her book,
these local declarations of
independence get us as close as
we can to the voice of the
colonial public on the eve of
independence.
And actually just looking at
the process of creating these
local declarations reveals a
vast amount of information about
how the people at large were
mobilized;
how seriously many colonies
took the idea that the people at
large had to request
independence,
that the delegates in the
Continental Congress were
representing them in just the
way I suppose that the colonists
felt Parliament was not.
 
So for example,
in Massachusetts the assembly
asked individual towns
throughout the colony to have
meetings to discuss--
and this is a quote from the
document that the assembly sent
to all of these towns,
"if the honorable
Continental Congress should
decide that,
for the safety of the United
Colonies,
it was necessary to declare
them independent of Great
Britain,
would they 'solemnly engage
with their Lives and Fortunes to
Support the Congress in the
Measure?"
Okay.
 
So the assembly is sending this
and saying, 'Towns,
you need to consider this
resolution.
If the Continental Congress
decides that it makes sense to
declare independence,
will you actually support that
with your lives and your
fortunes?
Is that something you're in
favor of?'
Obviously, it's being treated
like, really in a sense,
a personal decision,
a highly significant decision.
Colonists are asked--are being
asked by this statement to join
in groups and discuss
independence and decide what it
is they think should happen
next.
And clearly,
that kind of statement also
reveals that they're aware of
the seriousness and they're
aware--
I mean, ultimately,
this is an act of treason
that's being debated here.
Now the Massachusetts assembly
thought that--
they're asking towns to
vote--that this might not be
necessarily a really lengthy
process,
since already there's a lot of
circulating talk about maybe
what should come next,
but actually it wasn't until
July that all of the towns
reported themselves in favor of
independence.
 
The process took that long,
it took months,
because people actually were
seriously debating the issue.
As a man from one town
observed, independence was,
quote, "the greatest and
most important question that
ever came before this
town."
Now of course by the time that
every town had reported what it
thought in Massachusetts to the
Continental Congress,
the Congress had already
decided in favor of
independence,
but the people were a part of
this decision-making process.
 
And if the first towns from
Massachusetts had not supported
independence,
the Massachusetts delegates
might have had a hard time
promoting it in Philadelphia,
so it mattered.
 
In Maryland as well,
there was widespread
participation in this decision
about whether independence ought
to be declared,
and individual popular
declarations supporting
independence there were possibly
even more important than in
Massachusetts,
because the Maryland
congressional delegation was
undecided in what it thought
about independence.
And it wasn't until the
Maryland government received
these declarations of
independence from towns in
Maryland that they decided to
instruct the delegates in the
Congress to support
independence.
Some colonies like--At this
point I should just wait for the
response.
 
Which colony might have a
quirky response?
Right? Rhode Island.
 
Somewhere out there in the
filming land--
They're filming this--There's
going to be a lot of Rhode
Island people who are going to
be really mad [laughs]
at me for saying negative
things about Rhode Island,
and yet here we have Rhode
Island again.
Rhode Island did not have such
widespread participation.
There was a logic to what went
on in Rhode Island.
Apparently, in Rhode Island the
legislature did consider asking
towns what they thought about
independence,
but they did a little
investigation first and they
discovered that it was possible
that a few towns in Rhode Island
might vote against independence.
 
Okay.
 
Rhode Island wisely thought:
if we ask people what they
think and they say,
'We don't want independence,'
this could be a bad thing,
and so they decided that wasn't
necessarily the best plan;
it certainly wouldn't help the
common cause.
 
Now when I discuss colonial
legislatures at this point,
it's important to realize that
most of the royal colonial
governments had pretty much
collapsed by this point.
The Continental Congress in May
of 1776 thus instructed the
colonies to form new
governments,
and so roughly throughout this
period--
some of the colonies had
already started doing this
before May,
some of them waited until
May--but throughout this period,
in a lot of the colonies there
was some kind of a convention
debating what basically the new
government,
and really in a way,
the new constitution of these
colonies should be in the
absence of having a royal
presence.
So they're like little mini
colonial constitutional
conventions,
and it was these conventions
often that were receiving these
local declarations of
independence.
 
And to some people in the
colonies it was actually this
resolution asking the colonies
to create their own governments
that constituted the real
declaration of independence,
and you can even hear echoes of
the later official Declaration
in the resolution itself asking
the colonies to make their own
governments.
 
It has a preamble,
a very radical preamble,
that's certainly more radical
than anything that the Congress
had said thus far:
"Whereas His Britannic
Majesty,
in conjunction with the lords
and commons of Great Britain,
has, by a late act of
parliament, excluded the
inhabitants of these United
Colonies from the protection of
his crown;
And whereas no answer whatever,
to the humble petitions of the
colonies for redress of
grievances and reconciliation
with Great Brittain has been,
or is likely to be given,
but the whole force of that
kingdom,
aided by foreign mercenaries,
is to be exerted for the
destruction of the good people
of these colonies ...
it is necessary,
that the exercise of every kind
of authority under the said
crown should be totally
suppressed,
and all the powers of
government exerted,
under the authority of the
people of the colonies for the
preservation of internal peace,
virtue and good order,
as well as for the defense of
their lives,
liberties, and properties."
So that's a radical statement.
 
To Adams--To John Adams as well
as many others,
this pretty much constituted a
declaration of independence even
though it didn't declare
independence officially,
and it's significant that in
that preface Congress isn't
attacking the King's ministers;
they're not attacking
Parliament.
 
They're attacking the King
himself, which is almost as good
as a formal declaration of
revolt.
Meanwhile, in the colonies the
individual towns are debating
what they want to do about
independence.
They're expressing their
opinions in written statements
that, as Pauline Maier points
out, were remarkably alike in
tone and content.
 
A lot of them listed the same
grievances and had the same kind
of sense of betrayal at how the
King had betrayed them.
Most of them mentioned the
contempt with which the King had
received their attempts at
reconciliation.
They mentioned recent violence
and destruction of American
property by British troops.
 
They of course mentioned the
Prohibitory Act,
which declared the colonists
out of British protection.
They mentioned German
mercenaries hired by George III
to fight the colonists.
 
And most of them had sort of a
personal tone that they adopted
towards the King,
blaming him personally for the
present state of affairs and
expressing great sadness at
their realization that their
monarch basically had fallen to
this level and allowed this to
happen.
Some petitions went even
further, suggesting the type of
government that they prefer to
be there in place of the
monarchy,
and in one way or another some
of these declarations specified
they wanted to establish a
republican government in the
colonies;
they wanted governments
grounded on popular will and
actual representation.
 
So what we're seeing here is
average people in towns
throughout the colonies immersed
in the current state of affairs,
committing themselves
personally to a course of
action,
expressing their ideas about
what government should be,
and personally taking part in
the political process in a
radical kind of a way.
So obviously we're not talking
about a couple of dozen men in a
room in Philadelphia.
 
Now, news of these declarations
written in May,
June and even as late as July
helped push the Continental
Congress towards independence,
so let's move back to Congress.
On June 7,1776,
Virginia took a major step
forward by making a resolution
that it sent to its delegates in
Philadelphia via Richard Henry
Lee--
he was one of the
delegates--and the resolution
from Virginia said that the
delegates should promote
independence because the
colonies,
quote, "are, and of right,
ought to be,
free and independent
States."
Bang. So there you have it.
 
But the response--Okay.
 
There it is,
we should be independent,
the resolution that's going to
push them to debate
independence.
 
The response to that resolution
is a reminder that there were a
lot of other things that were
more pressing at the time.
So Richard Henry Lee presents
this to Congress and Congress
says,
'We got to put it off until
tomorrow because we actually
have more important things that
we need to debate today first,
so we'll talk about
independence tomorrow.'
 
Thank you, Richard Henry Lee.
 
On to these other matters.
 
So the next day,
June 8, debate on independence
got under way,
and those who were less
enthusiastic about independence,
men like John Dickinson,
who is moderate in his
politics,
or James Wilson,
also of Pennsylvania,
Edward Rutledge of South
Carolina, they said that they
were friends to the idea but
that the time wasn't yet right.
Some colonial delegations
weren't yet ready to declare
independence.
 
They didn't have permission to
declare it from their home
governments,
and forcing the issue might
force these colonies to secede
from what was already a
relatively weak colonial union
or so they argued.
So--and disunion--if that were
to happen,
if they were to push
independence and a colony should
pull out,
disunion would be disastrous to
their cause,
not only because it would hurt
the cause,
but it would certainly not
encourage foreign nations to
potentially help these little
colonies in fighting against
Great Britain.
So this is what
Rutledge--Edward Rutledge of
South Carolina wrote on June 10.
 
"The congress sat till 7
o'clock this evening in
consequence of a motion of
Richard Henry Lee's rendering
ourselves free and independent
States.
The sensible part of the House
opposed the Motion....
they saw no Wisdom in a
Declaration of independence,
nor any other Purpose to be
enforced by it,
but placing ourselves in the
Power of those with whom we mean
to treat,
giving our Enemy Notice of our
Intentions before we have taken
any steps to execute them and
thereby enabling them to
counteract us in our Intentions
and rendering ourselves
ridiculous in the Eyes of
foreign powers by attempting to
bring them into a Union with us
before we had united with each
other."
Okay.
 
There's a lot of strong
arguments Rutledge is
presenting,
but of course on the other side
of the spectrum,
those who supported
independence argued that without
a formal declaration of
independence no nation would be
willing to aid the colonies;
the colonies were basically
independent already;
the matter needs to be
discussed, needs to be pushed
forward.
 
Lack of agreement and the
importance of the decision led
Congress to postpone the
decision until the first week of
July so that individual colonies
could decide on a course of
action.
 
And in the meantime,
so no time would be lost,
they appointed a committee to
compose a written statement
formally declaring colonial
independence,
and the committee included John
Adams,
Thomas Jefferson,
Benjamin Franklin,
the greatest hits--Roger
Sherman of Connecticut,
and Robert R. Livingston,
one of the many Livingstons of
New York.
 
And ultimately the committee
appointed Jefferson to draft the
document and he worked during
the last two weeks of June in
1776.
 
Now as I mentioned at the start
of the lecture,
in later years,
when Adams and Jefferson were
retired presidential types,
lots of people wrote to them
asking,
'So tell us what really
happened with the Declaration of
Independence.
What was it like?
 
Why did you do X?
 
Did you really do X?
 
What was he like?'--sort of all
the things that you would want
to ask if you could ask these
people, 'What really happened?'
And both men offered accounts
of the writing of the
Declaration and their accounts
do not necessarily agree--
and they're also pretty in
character for each one of these
men,
particularly John Adams'
account of what happened with
the decision about who was going
to write the Declaration of
Independence.
And actually in 1822,
Adams wrote a pretty lengthy
explanation of how Jefferson was
chosen to write the Declaration.
I just want to offer you a
little piece of it,
because it's actually a pretty
amazing little re-creation.
So Adams writes in his letter,
"You inquire why so young
a man as Mr. Jefferson was
placed at the head of the
Committee for preparing a
Declaration of
Independence."
 
Okay.
 
So there is what the person
wrote.
So Adams, why did you pick that
young new guy to write this
document?
 
Adams says, "I answer ...
 
Mr. Jefferson came into
Congress,
in June, 1775,
and brought with him a
reputation for literature,
science, and a happy talent of
composition.
 
Writings of his were handed
about, remarkable for the
peculiar felicity of expression.
 
Though a silent member in
Congress,
he was so prompt,
frank, explicit,
and decisive upon committees
and in conversation,
not even Samuel Adams was more
so, that he soon seized upon my
heart;
and upon this occasion I gave
him my vote, and did all in my
power to procure the votes of
others."
 
Okay.
 
So in the end the committee's
voting who should write it,
and Adams and Jefferson get the
most votes to write the
declaration,
so they're made,
according to Adams,
like a little subcommittee of
Adams and Jefferson,
and now this subcommittee
supposedly is going to draft the
Declaration.
So Adams continues,
"The sub-committee met.
Jefferson proposed to me to
make the draught.
I said 'I will not.'"
And what I'm going to be
reading from here now--
it's my favorite part of the
story--
he wrote a little script with
what Jefferson says and what he
responds.
He's no longer even himself in
the letter.
He's just recording:
he said and then I said,
and that he said and then I
said.
So Jefferson says,
'Adams, you should write it,'
and Adams says,
"I will not."
"You should do it,"
Jefferson insists.
"Oh! no," says Adams.
 
"Why will you not?,"
asks Jefferson.
"You ought to do it."
 
Its like he's writing a film.
 
[laughs]
He's already imagining:
the movie of my life.
 
[laughs]
If movies existed,
I would be imagining the movie
of my life.
"You ought to do it,"
says Jefferson.
"I will not."
 
"Why?"
 
"Reasons enough."
 
"What can be your
reasons?"
Okay. This is Adams' response.
 
"Reason first--You are a
Virginian, and a Virginian ought
to appear at the head of this
business.
Reason second--I am obnoxious,
[laughs/laughter]
suspected, and unpopular."
 
Oh, [laughs] poor John Adams.
 
I am obnoxious,
suspected and unpopular.
Don't make me write the
document.
"You are very much
otherwise."
"Reason third--You can
write ten times better than I
can."
 
"Well,"
Adams has Jefferson respond,
"if you are decided,
I will do it as well as I
can."
 
Okay.
 
That's part of a really
lengthy, great letter by Adams.
Jefferson's account is much
less humorous and actually
briefer,
and he writes in 1823 to James
Madison and he says,
"No such thing as a
subcommittee was proposed"
[laughs]--
it's like--oops,
a basic disagreement--
"but they unanimously
pressed on myself alone to
undertake the draught."
 
Okay, a little disagreement
between the two guys which they
never really agreed upon.
 
And then he goes on to discuss
in this letter whether the ideas
in the Declaration were new or
not, and he says,
'No, no.
 
American minds,' blah blah blah.
 
Okay.
 
Regardless of the precise
details as to whether there was
or wasn't a subcommittee,
Jefferson did draft the
Declaration.
 
He submitted it to the others
for comment.
They commented on it.
 
They sort of discussed it
amongst themselves.
You'll get some chance in
section to actually talk about
some of the real specifics of
the document,
the Declaration of
Independence.
For the moment,
I'll just mention briefly what
were some of Jefferson's
sources.
Right?
 
He's sitting in Philadelphia.
 
He has basically two
weeks--talk about a paper
deadline--to write the
Declaration of Independence.
What is going to use?
 
He's pretty pressed for time,
so logically he turned to
whatever he could for fodder,
and two notable sources were
both Virginia documents
logically enough.
He drafted a constitution for
Virginia,
since the colony is in the
middle of doing that and along
with everything else,
and that ended up being a
source for him of some of the
grievances,
the long list of grievances in
the Declaration.
He pulled some of them from
that.
And then the Virginia
Declaration of Rights,
which was also part of this
constitution-making process,
helped contribute to the
preamble of the Declaration.
Now of course,
Jefferson was careful not just
to focus on Virginia words,
Virginia charges,
Virginia things,
because obviously the document
is supposed to represent all of
the colonies.
So for example,
when you read the Declaration,
you could see some of the
things he's citing happened in
Massachusetts--
and some of them actually
happened in other colonies as
well.
It needs to be something that
is coming from some united
expression of the colonial will.
 
One of the passages that
ultimately did not end up
displaying colonial unity not
surprisingly concerned slavery--
so in Jefferson's draft he
actually has a passage that
charges the King--
that the King,
quote, had "waged cruel
war against human nature itself,
violating it's most sacred
rights of life &
liberty in the persons of a
distant people who never
offended him,
captivating &
carrying them into slavery in
another hemisphere,
or to incur miserable death in
their transportation
thither."
 
Okay.
 
So that's a notable attempt to
blame the King for slavery,
but the passage ultimately gets
stricken out by the Congress,
in part for obvious reasons.
 
Right?
 
The South is not going to
support this.
But also, ultimately
Jefferson's declaration as far
as slavery is concerned had some
tortured logic in it,
because it first attacks the
King for creating slavery,
for transporting slaves to
America,
and then attacks him for
offering them freedom if they
fight for the British.
 
You inflicted slavery upon us
and you are threatening to free
the slaves.
 
Okay.
 
Continental Congress said,
'Okay.
Not only is the South not
really able to grasp this at
this particular moment,
but this doesn't entirely match
up, Jefferson.'
 
So in a sense his ambiguity and
ambivalence reflected general
ambiguity and ambivalence.
 
But in the end,
the total effect of all of
these charges was to suggest
that the King had sort of
de-kinged himself.
 
He had displaced himself--that
he and not the colonies,
had brought events to where
they now stood.
Now, I think generally we and
also often scholars tend to
really focus on the preamble of
the Declaration,
but in fact at the time,
it was the specific charges
against the King that were
considered to be the real meat
of the document.
 
The preamble was actually just
supposed to be a preamble to the
real charges against the King,
which were the radical part of
the document at the time.
 
And since this document was
intended possibly to be a
declaration for foreign
audiences as well as domestic
audiences,
it was important that that
preamble be a statement,
a broad, sweeping statement of
epic proportions,
to inspire people to support
the cause.
 
The committee's draft
ultimately was presented to
Congress on June 28,
and then debating and editing
began on July 1.
 
Some of the changes had to do
with specific word choices--
so for example was the King
really guilty of,
quote, "unremitting
injuries"?
Congress preferred
"repeated injuries."
Okay.
 
That was the level of editing
taking place with the
Declaration.
 
So they thought well,
"repeated"
is a little less extreme than
"unremitting."
That word gets changed.
 
Not all of the changes were
intended to tame the document.
Sometimes Congress made some of
Jefferson's charges more
extreme,
as when they added to
Jefferson's statement about
foreign mercenaries words that
described it--
the act of sending them to the
colonies--
as, quote, "scarcely
paralleled in the most barbarous
ages."
And then as I mentioned before,
they struck the entire passage
on slavery.
 
For the--For many southern
delegates pretty much it was a
deal breaker,
and it happens so often in this
period.
 
We'll certainly come up with it
again at the--towards the end of
this course.
 
The issue of slavery comes up.
 
It can't be dealt with.
 
People don't know how to deal
with it,
particularly the Southerners,
and it keeps getting shunted to
the side,
and so in a sense that's what
happens here.
 
I'm going to stop at this
point, and I will start with a
story that should be here,
but I can't tell it here and I
want to do it justice,
about Jefferson's response to
the editing of his precious
draft.
He was not a happy camper at
the editing of the Declaration
of Independence.
 
And then I will move on to
really discussing organizing a
war.
 
 
 
