Your teacher told you Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence.
Then you heard it from speeches, in lyrics of musicals, carved into memorials.
But riddle me this, here’s a highly dramatized painting depicting the signing of the Declaration
of Independence, July 4th, 1776.
In it, we see a group of five clustered around the Declaration: Adams, Jefferson, Benjamin
Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston.
These five men were a drafting committee, in charge of the creation of the Declaration
of Independence.
This was the so-called “Committee of Five”.
(16)
Let’s back up a couple weeks.
On June 7th, 1776, calls for independence were hitting a critical mass from attendees
at the Continental Congress.
A guy by the name of Richard Henry Lee put forward a motion- what might have been a declaration
of independence: quote “..these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent
States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown.”
(15,510).
John Adams seconded the motion.
(12,118)
But a few state delegations weren’t totally ready to declare independence.
After all, they knew war with Great Britain would follow.
So, on June 11th, 1776, the Continental Congress created the “Committee of Five” to draft
a proper document and buy the holdout states just a wee bit of time to make a final call.
So - the Declaration of Independence had five authors?
Eh, no.
We’re gonna get to the originality of the ideas and phrasing, but the actual physical
drafting, pen to paper?
While some of the details of the drafting are lost in competing evidence from Thomas
Jefferson and John Adams, the overall situation is clear.
The Committee of Five met, then decided to have either one or two members draft alone,
then bring it back for the four or five for edits, then take it to the full Continental
Congress for adoption.
We have two accounts of what happened next.
One: Jefferson claimed that the Committee of Five selected him to draft the document,
and that was that- he got to work.
But John Adams has a different story: he claimed that the Committee of Five selected both he
AND Jefferson to draft the Declaration.
And then he, out of graciousness, just let Jefferson handle it on his own.
(1,120)
As to whose story is true, well it’s a little question mark in history.
John Adams never missed an opportunity to insert himself into the story surrounding
the Declaration of Independence.
Whether or not it’s true, whether Adams really put his hand on Jefferson’s shoulder
and said, “You go for it, buddy.
It’s all you.”, this allegation from Adams had the effect of being repeated, making its
way into popular consciousness.
And that’s the point here.
Because however it came about, ultimately Jefferson went upstairs at the Graff House
in Philadelphia, and put the words of the Declaration’s first draft on paper.
We know that.
But John Adams wanted history, wanted you and me, to believe he played a bigger role.
Adams, the second president, had animosity towards Jefferson, the third president.
Their political rivalry inflamed personally through the elections of 1796 and 1800.
Even once they were old men and retired from political life, Adams remained intensely jealous
that Jefferson was more beloved, the most famous founder after George Washington.
This caused Adams to insert doubt in the originality and intellectual property of the Declaration
of Independence as often as he could.
It seemed, in his mind, key to Jefferson’s popularity.
Put down the declaration, put down Jefferson.
Adams did this in three ways.
First, by elevating his role in the drafting.
Ok, we got that already.
Two, claiming Jefferson’s Declaration wasn’t the REAL Declaration.
And three, claiming the words in Jefferson’s Declaration were heavily borrowed, or even
outright plagiarized.
Let’s investigate.
Let’s also see if there are deeper, more important questions to be found in this mystery.
But first, let’s talk about how North Carolina’s flag is fake news.
Here’s North Carolina’s flag.
Notice the date there: May 20th, 1775, over a year before July 4th, 1776, the signing
of the Declaration of Independence.
What’s the connection and why does North Carolina have this on their flag?
Turns out that May 20th, 1775 refers to the signing date of the so-called Mecklenburg
Declaration of Independence, a document which purports to have been signed in North Carolina
over a year before the American Declaration of Independence.
It’s purported the document explicitly called for independence from Great Britain, and was
brought with the North Carolina delegates to the Continental Congress where it supposedly
inspired the American Declaration of Independence.
The Mecklenburg Declaration first entered the popular consciousness in 1819, over 40
years after its alleged creation in the Raleigh Register and North Carolina Gazette: quote
“It is not probably known to many of our readers, that the citizens of Mecklenburg
County, in this state made a Declaration of Independence more than a year before Congress
made theirs.”
(4,3)
They go on to print the Declaration in full, notable among the whole, quote- “We the
citizens of Mecklenburg Country do...hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the
British Crown”
But more Interesting for our purposes, the independence declaration before the American
Declaration is not what made this document controversial.
It is the similarity in language, which if authentic would at the very least mean Jefferson
used it as a source, and at worst, plagiarized.
The common phrasing is striking American Declaration: "absolve ourselves from
all allegiance to the British Crown" Mecklenburg Declaration: “absolve ourselves
from all allegiance to the British Crown” American: "pledge to each other, our mutual
cooperation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor"
Mecklenburg: “pledge to each other our mutual cooperation, our lives, our fortunes, and
our most sacred honor” More similarities in the description.
John Adams, upon seeing these texts side by side in August of 1819, concluded quote: “Either
these resolutions are a plagiarism from Mr. Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, or
Mr. Jefferson's Declaration of Independence is a plagiarism from those resolutions.”
(5)
Here’s a letter directly from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson on June 22nd 1819, which
he must have scribbled with glee: “You know if I had possessed it, I would have made the
Hall of Congress Echo and re-echo with it fifteen Months before your Declaration of
Independence.”
(7,542).
The implication is, “Thomas Jefferson, you sir, are a plagiarist!”
Word of the rival Declaration was making the rounds in newspapers nationwide.
The founder and 3rd president of the United States, a man who took pride in his writing,
his pen’s gravitas, his intellectual prowess was a secret copycat.
Jefferson’s response to Adams came quick.
His letter, dated July 9, 1819 is quick to throw cold water on the claims of the North
Carolinians.
He begins with a jab: “You seem to think it genuine...I believe it spurious” (6).
First, he said the copy printed is supposedly from a book which is not available to us anymore.
Second, if this “flaming declaration” had been carried to the Continental Congress,
wouldn’t it have been a subject of discussion?
Jefferson concludes with this, quote “For the present I must be an unbeliever in this
apocryphal gospel”.
(7,544).
Jefferson wasn’t alone in his skepticism.
Another person to attempt a takedown of the Mecklenburg Declaration was an amatuer historian
by the name of William Henry Hoyt in 1906.
Mr. Hoyt wrote a snazzy 300 page book with the snazzy snappy title: “The Mecklenburg
Declaration Of Independence: A Study Of Evidence Showing That The Alleged Early Declaration
Of Independence By Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, May 1775, Is Spurious” ...Alright
maybe the dude needed an editor.
Hoyt argued there were a few glaring issues for Mecklenburg.
First , beyond this reprint, was there another copy of this document?
No.
The author of the piece in the newspaper, Dr. Alexander said his father’s papers detailing
the events were burned in a fire in 1800.
So was there any evidence for the authenticity of this rival Declaration of Independence?
When word of Thomas Jefferson’s doubt made it to North Carolina in 1819, an effort was
made to prove the Mecklenburg Declaration was real.
A bunch of people who said they participated or talked to someone at the time who participated
showed up.
So, eye witnesses.
That was enough for future North Carolinians, who went on to adopt the “First in Freedom”
line, put a carved commemorative stone in the capitol building, add it to the flag,
license plates, seals, etc.
But again, the eye witnesses weren’t backed up by a contemporary paper trail.
There’s more to this debate, but the consensus among historians seems to be that, not precluding
the possibility of other evidence that may one day come to us, the Mecklenburg Declaration
is a hoax.
When Adams read what Jefferson had to say about it in 1819, he too decided it wasn’t
real.
The old man wrote back to the other old man: quote “I am greatly obliged to you for your
letter of the 9th.
It has entirely convinced me that the Mecklenburg Resolutions[a] are a fiction.”
Ok.
So, Jefferson alone wrote the Declaration adopted on July 4th, 1776, not really a committee
of five.
And he in all likelihood didn’t plagiarize it from a Mecklenburg Declaration.
So - history mystery solved, right?
No.
Adams has another trick for us.
You see, what if the Declaration of Independence wasn’t THE Declaration of Independence?
You see, if John Adams had his way, instead of celebrating Jefferson’s Declaration of
Independence every year on July 4th, all the patriotic music, backyard barbeques, firework
shows, time-honored boat flags- all that would be done in May in honor of the REAL Declaration
of Independence: something called the May Resolution.
On May 10, 1776, the Continental Congress passed a resolution which instructed the thirteen
colonies to, quote, “where no Government sufficient to the Exigencies of their Affairs
hath been hitherto established, to adopt such Government.”
(20) In other words, 13 colonies, if Great Britain’s government isn’t good enough
for you, make your own.
They went further.
On May 15, the Continental Congress approved a preamble authored by John Adams: quote (21)
So, not only do we have the statutory instruction to the colonies to write new independent constitutions
on May 10, 1776, but with the preamble on May 15 we get the flowery rhetoric too.
In particular, the Lockean phrase of “lives, liberties, and properties” obviously makes
us think of “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” later seen in the July 4th
Declaration.
Is this May Resolution not the real Declaration of Independence?
Adams thought so.
He felt he had done the deed in May 1776.
It was, he wrote: quote “the final step”, “It was independence itself”.
(22,132).
If not May 15th, then why not July 2nd, 1776? two days before the adoption of Jefferson’s
Declaration, the Continental Congress passed a different Declaration of Independence.
Remember the resolution that was postponed in June?
They passed it on July 2nd, 1776: quote “..these United Colonies are, and of right ought to
be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British
Crown...”
Is the May Resolution not the Declaration of Independence?
Is the July 2nd Resolution not the Declaration of Independence?
John Adams wrote that quote: "The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha,
in the History of America.
. . . It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns,
Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this
Time forward forever more."
(23)...well, we don’t solemnize July 2nd.
We celebrate July 4th, 1776.
Jefferson’s Declaration of Indepence is the Declaration of Independence because we’ve
decided the Declaration of Independence is the Declaration of Independence.
Our cultural memory has chosen prose over prosaics.
Let’s leave John Adams behind and get real.
If you’ve made it this far, you’ve seen the progression of this video, from the least
subtle objection, “Jefferson’s Declaration was a forgery”, to a more subtle objection:
“Jefferson’s Declaration was the product of a committee, part of a larger institution
that had potentially already effectively declared independence.”
I want to take on a more subtle objection: was Jefferson’s writing intellectually original?
Jefferson claimed that he “turned to neither book nor pamphlet” while writing the Declaration
in June 1776 (1,122).
Further, he wrote in 1825: quote “This was the object of the Declaration of Independence…not
to find out new principles, or new arguments...but to place before mankind the common sense of
the subject...neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied
from any particular and previous writing” (25).
If Jefferson’s words are true- the Declaration came from “no particular and previous writings”,
we can still look at several that might have amalgamated in his mind.
Most immediate must have been the expressions of political thought and calls for independence
in the colonies during that period.
Jefferson had certainly seen George Mason’s proposed “Declaration of Rights” for Virginia,
which declared: “That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain
inherent rights...namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring
and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”
(26)
In fact, the preamble’s phrasing can be found all over.
Hop a couple years in the past and see James Wilson’s 1774 pamphlet “Considerations”:
“All men are by nature equal and free...All lawful government is founded on the consent
of those who are subject to it: such consent was given with a view to ensure and to increase
the happiness of the governed” (27).
The reason this wording was oh so very common by the time Jefferson remixed it into the
Declaration was because of this man, John Locke, an English philosopher who had died
72 years prior.
In Locke’s vision, government is limited.
And in the right circumstances, the people have the right to rebel.
This is the basis of Jefferson’s Declaration: quote “When in the Course of human events,
it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them
with another.”
This ability to dismiss a monarch is found in John Locke, which is why he is often referred
to as an honorary American Founder.
For our purposes, an honorary writer of the Declaration.
Thomas Jefferson was also surely aware of the English Declaration of Rights in 1689.
And his complaints about King George took a similar form to the complaints about King
James II from English nobles a century earlier.
So while Locke’s theoretical writing helps us understand the Preamble of the Declaration
(“Life, liberty, property”) The English Declaration of Rights helps us see the meat
of the Declaration of Independence.
Take a look at the similarity of language in a few of the complaints about King James
and King George:
“By raising and keeping a standing army within this kingdom in time of peace without
consent of Parliament,” “He has kept among us, in times of peace,
Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures,”
“and quartering soldiers contrary to law” “quartering large bodies of armed troops
among us,”
“King James the Second having abdicated the government,”
“He has abdicated Government here.”
The language is so similar, in fact, you can look at it another way: a lot of the phrasing
of the American Declaration of Independence echoes from the English Declaration of Rights.
The American Declaration of Independence from Great Britain was, in a way, authored by the
British from whom they declared their independence.
So that leaves us with the most famous phrase in Jefferson’s Declaration: “We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men...”?
Self-evident.
In his original draft in June 1776, Jefferson wrote, "We hold these truths to be sacred
and undeniable".
It was actually Benjamin Franklin who suggested condensing “sacred and undeniable” into
“self-evident” (28).
The idea of a ‘self-evident’ truth came from the Scottish philosopher David Hume.
And I’ve saved this detail for last because I believe it has something to tell us.
The phrasing is not, “these truths *are self-evident”, it’s “we hold these truths
to be self-evident”.
It implies an activity: holding- a participation.
People are created equal, but that doesn’t really matter until we do something.
Acknowledging self-evident truths doesn’t bend reality.
Not until we take possession of the self-evident truths can we actively pursue them.
I’m not trying for pseudo-depth here.
I don’t want to romanticize the founding, nor do I want to gloss over the fact that
none of these men, particularly Jefferson, lived out their written values.
In the first draft of the American Declaration of Independence, there was a complaint about
the King of England’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.
But it was cut because, well, because the American founding is full of horrible - my
word - horrible moral compromises.
Compromises that led Frederick Douglas in a famous 1852 speech to say “This Fourth
July is yours, not mine.
You may rejoice, I must mourn..”
(10)
The founders held the self-evident truths, and it seeped through like sand.
Was it merely eroded, or would it be the foundation of something new?......If it’s any clue,
when Abraham Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg in 1863, he spoke not of the formal ratification
of the Constitution in 1788, but of “four score and seven years ago”, which refers
to the signing of the Declaration of Independence (10,4).
If you’d like another History Mystery, click this video about what really happened to Julius
Caesar.
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Later y’all.