The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE / WRITING OF
You have doubtless seen Timothy Pickering's Fourth of July
observations on the Declaration of Independence. If his principles and
prejudices, personal and political, gave us no reason to doubt whether
he had truly quoted the information he alleges to have received from
Mr. Adams, I should then say, that in some of the particulars, Mr.
Adams' memory has led him into unquestionable error. At the age of
eighty-eight, and forty-seven years after the transactions of
Independence, this is not wonderful. Nor should I, at the age of
eighty, on the small advantage of that difference only, venture to
oppose my memory to his, were it not supported by written notes, taken
by myself at the moment and on the spot. He says, "the committee
of five, to wit, Dr. Franklin, Sherman, Livingston, and ourselves,
met, discussed the subject, and then appointed him and myself to make
the draught; that we, as a sub-committee, met, and after the urgencies
of each on the other, I consented to undertake the task; that the
draught being made, we, the subcommittee, met, and conned the paper
over, and he does not remember that he made or suggested a single
alteration." Now these details are quite incorrect. The committee
of five met; no such thing as a sub-committee was proposed, but they
unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught. I
consented; I drew it; hut before I reported it to the committee, I
commumcated it
separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, requesting their
corrections, because they were the two members of whose judgments and
amendments I wished most to have the benefit, before presenting it to
the committee; and you have seen the original paper now in my hands,
with the corrections of Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams interlined in their
own handwritings. Their alterations were two or three only, and merely
verbal. I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the committee, and
from them, unaltered, to Congress. This personal communication and
consultation with Mr. Adams, he has misremembered into the actings of
a sub-committee. Pickering's observations, and Mr. Adams' in addition,
"that it contained no new ideas, that it is a commonplace
compilation, its sentiments hackneyed in Congress for two years
before, and its essence contained in Otis' pamphlet," may all be
true. Of that I am not to be the judge. Richard Henry Lee charged it
as copied from Locke's treatise on government. Otis' pamphlet I never
saw, and whether I had gathered my ideas from reading or reflection I
do not know. I know only that I turned to neither book nor pamphlet
while writing it. I did not consider it as any part of my charge to
invent new ideas altogether, and to offer no sentiment which had ever
been expressed before. Had Mr. Adams been so restrained, Congress
would have lost the benefit of his bold and impressive advocations of
the rights of Revolution. For no man's confident and fervid addresses,
more than Mr. Adams', encouraged and supported us through the
difficulties surrounding us, which, like the ceaseless action of
gravity, weighed on us by night and by day. Yet, on the same ground,
we may ask what of these elevated thoughts was new, or can be affirmed
never before to have entered the conceptions of man?
Whether, also, the sentiments of Independence, and the reasons for
declaring it, which make so great a portion of the instrument, had
been hackneyed in Congress for two years before the 4th of July, '76,
or this dictum also of Mr. Adams be another slip of memory, let
history say. This, however, I will say for Mr. Adams, that he
supported the Declaration with zeal and ability, fighting fearlessly
for every word of it. As to myself, I thought it a duty to be, on that
occasion, a passive auditor of the opinions of others, more impartial
judges than I could be, of its merits or demerits. During the debate I
was sitting by Doctor Franklin, and he observed that I was writhing a
little under the acrimonious criticisms on some of its parts; and it
was on that occasion, that by way of comfort, he told me the story of
John Thompson, the hatter, and his new sign. Timothy thinks the
instrument the better for having a fourth of it expunged. He would
have thought it still better, had the other three-fourths gone out
also, all but the single sentiment (the only one he approves), which
recommends friendship to his dear England, whenever she is willing to
be at peace with us. His insinuations are, that although "the
high tone of the instrument was in unison with the warm feelings of
the times, this sentiment of habitual friendship to England should
never be forgotten, and that the duties it enjoins should especially
be borne in mind on every celebration of this anniversary." In
other words, that the Declaration, as being a libel on the government
of England, composed in times of passion, should now be buried in
utter oblivion, to spare the feelings of our English friends and
Angloman fellow citizens. But it is not to wound them that we wish to
keep it in mind; but to cherish the principles of the instrument in
the bosoms of our own citizens: and it is a heavenly comfort to see
that these principles are yet so strongly felt, as to render a
circumstance so trifling as this little lapse of memory of Mr. Adams,
worthy of being solemnly announced and supported at an anniversary
assemblage of the nation on its birthday.
to James Madison, 30 August 1823
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