Virginians are no strangers to quaking ground. On February 21, 1774, Thomas Jefferson recorded in his Memorandum Book an earthquake felt at Monticello at 2:11 p.m. He said of the tremor, “It shook the houses so sensibly that everybody ran out of doors.” An aftershock was felt the next day.
From Princeton.edu
Jefferson’s “original Rough draught” of the Declaration of Independence
Click here for pdf version (best for printing)
EDITORIAL NOTE (2004)
This text of the Declaration of Independence is from The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 1: 1760-1776 (Princeton University Press, 1950), 423-8. Although at some point Jefferson labeled this manuscript as the “original Rough draught,” it was not his first drafting of language for the Declaration. Portions of what Julian P. Boyd, the founding editor of the Papers and a student of the writing of the Declaration, called Jefferson’s “composition draft” have survived. What Jefferson came to call his “original Rough draught” was, Boyd surmised, a fair copy made from the earlier drafts. It has considerable significance, however, as the earliest complete version of the Declaration in Jefferson’s hand. It did take on some characteristics of a draft, Jefferson making several emendations to it (including alterations he ascribed to John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, who along with Jefferson, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston made up the committee charged by the Continental Congress with the drafting of a declaration). In editing the “Rough draught” for publication, Boyd endeavored to recover the text of Jefferson’s fair copy—that is, Jefferson’s original full text before any collaborative revision. To that end, this rendition of the text does not take account of alterations to the manuscript that represented, in Boyd’s estimation, changes to the fair copy. In Volume 1 of the Papers, the “original Rough draught” is the third of a set of documents related to the Declaration. The other documents in the group are: two parts of the composition draft (pp. 417-23, referred to in the annotation below as Document I and Document II); a version showing changes made by the committee and by Congress (called Document IV, noted on p. 429 of the volume and incorporated in a set of Jefferson’s notes on pp. 315-19); and the Declaration as adopted by Congress (Document V, pp. 429-33). Boyd’s Editorial Note on the drafting of the Declaration is on pp. 413-17. There, and in the annotation to the “Rough draught” below, he cited John H. Hazelton, The Declaration of Independence: Its History (New York, 1906) and Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence. A Study in the History of Political Ideas (New York, 1922 and 1942). He also cited his own work, Julian P. Boyd, The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text (Princeton, 1945), which illustrated the “original Rough draught” along with other manuscript versions of the Declaration and is available in a revised edition edited by Gerard W. Gawalt (Hanover, N.H., 1999).
To view an image of page one of the “original Rough draught” click HERE.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, & to assume among the powers of the earth the equal & independant station to which the laws of nature & of nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the change.
We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable;[2] that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights[3] inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it’s foundation on such principles & organising it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness. prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light & transient causes: and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. but when a long train of abuses & usurpations, begun at a distinguished period, & pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to subject[4] them to arbitrary power[5] it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government & to provide new guards for their future security. such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; & such is now the necessity which constrains them to expunge their former systems of government. the history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations, among which no one fact stands single or solitary to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest, all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. to prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.
in every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered by repeated injury. a prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free. future ages will scarce believe that the hardiness of one man, adventured within the short compass of 12[12] years only, on so many acts of tyranny without a mask, over a people fostered & fixed in principles of liberty.
Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. we have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend a jurisdiction over these our states. we have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration & settlement here, no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension: that these were effected at the expence of our own blood & treasure, unassisted by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain: that in constituting indeed our several forms of government, we had adopted one common king, thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league & amity with them: but that submission to their parliament was no part of our constitution, nor ever in idea, if history may be credited: and we appealed to their native justice & magnanimity, as well as to the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which were likely to interrupt our correspondence & connection. they too have been deaf to the voice of justice & of consanguinity, & when occasions have been given them, by the regular course of their laws, of removing from their councils the disturbers of our harmony, they have by their free election re-established them in power. at this very time too they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch & foreign mercenaries to invade & deluge us in blood. these facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce for ever these unfeeling brethren. we must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and to hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. we might have been a free & a great people together; but a communication of grandeur & of freedom it seems is below their dignity. be it so, since they will have it: the road to glory & happiness[13] is open to us too; we will climb it in a separate state,[14] and acquiesce in the necessity which pronounces[15] our everlasting Adieu![16]
We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled do, in the name & by authority of the good people of these states, reject and renounce all allegiance & subjection to the kings of Great Britain & all others who may hereafter claim by, through, or under them; we utterly dissolve & break off all political connection which may have heretofore subsisted between us & the people or parliament of Great Britain; and finally we do assert and declare these colonies to be free and independant states, and that as free & independant states they shall hereafter have power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, & to do all other acts and things which independant states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, & our sacred honour.
original Rough draught.”
The text here presented approximates its state at the time TJ transcribed it from the manuscript of which the Fragment was a part (Document II; Boyd, Declaration of Independence, 1945, p. 18-22) and before John Adams took off the copy in his own handwriting (MS in Adams Manuscript Trust, Boston; facsimile in Boyd, pl. IV). The “Rough draught” includes changes made in the text in the various stages of its evolution—changes made by TJ himself, by Adams and Franklin, who were consulted separately, by the Committee or by Congress. The separation of the alterations made in these various stages has been traced in Hazelton, p. 306-42; Becker, ch. IV; and Boyd, p. 28-38. TJ’s indication of the changes made during the progress of the text at its various stages may be seen in Document IV in the present sequence of texts (printed above with TJ’s Notes of Proceedings in the Continental Congress, 7 June to 1 Aug. 1776). The alterations made in the text as here presented, with the possible exception of that indicated in note 9, were probably made by TJ in the course of making the “Rough draught”; this was certainly true of those indicated in notes 13-16.
[2] The phrase “sacred & undeniable” was changed to “self-evident” before Adams made his copy. This change has been attributed to Franklin, but the opinion rests on no conclusive evidence, and there seems to be even stronger evidence that the change was made by TJ or at least that it is in his handwriting (Boyd, Declaration of Independence, 1945, p. 22-3).
[3] The word “in” was deleted before “rights”; TJ may have started to write “inherent.”
[4] The word “subject” was changed to “reduce”; this, however, was not an interlineation but was a correction made on the same line, a clear evidence that the alteration was made at the time TJ wrote out the “Rough draught.”
[5] The phrase “to arbitrary power” was changed, in a sequence of two alterations, to “under absolute Despotism,” the first alteration being made by TJ so that, when Adams made his copy, the phrase read “under absolute power.” Franklin made the second change, substituting “Despotism” for “power.”
[6] The phrase “in the legislature” was interlined after the word “representation”; this change was probably made in the course of copying the “Rough draught,” for “in the legislature” occurs at the same point in Document I.
[7] The word “alone” was changed to read “only.” This change, like that indicated in notes 1, 10, and 12, was made by expunging or erasing one word while the ink was still wet and overwriting the substituted word; thus all three of these changes were probably made by TJ in the course of copying the “Rough draught.”
[8] The phrase “he has dissolved” was struck out at the beginning of this line; it is obvious that TJ had started to repeat the preceding sentence—a clear evidence that he was copying from an earlier draft (Boyd, Declaration of Independence, 1945, p. 26).
[9] Here an alteration was made by John Adams. After Adams had interlined, with a caret, the words “after such Dissolutions” and had transcribed the document as it stood with these alterations, TJ then crossed out the words “space of time” and prefixed “time” to Adams’ interlineation.
[10] TJ originally wrote “fellow-subjects,” copying the term from the corresponding passage in the first page of the First Draft of the Virginia Constitution; then, while the ink was still wet on the “Rough draught” he expunged or erased “subjects” and wrote “citizens” over it. The fact that he made the same change in Document I is evidence that he was using that document as the composition text for this part of the Declaration.
[11] The words “determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold” were bracketed in the “Rough draught” and then interlined at the point indicated; Adams copied the clause at the same point. TJ subsequently deleted the brackets, crossed out the interlined repetition of the words after “commerce,” and thus restored the original reading. While, therefore, the text at this point does not reflect its state at the time the Adams copy was written, it does give the text in the order in which TJ first copied it in the “Rough draught.” Congress, of course, struck out the entire passage.
[12] TJ first wrote the figure “12” and then, as in the changes indicated in notes 1, 7, and 10, wrote the word “twelve” over it, the correction being made in the course of copying.
[13] TJ deleted “glory &” before, and interlined “& to glory” after “happiness”; this alteration was made in the course of copying, since the same change was made in Document II.
[14] TJ changed “in a separate state” to “separately” in the “Rough draught”; then altered both that and the passage in Document II to read “apart from them”; this was the form which Adams copied. Thus we are able to follow TJ here in turning to two alternative readings in the “Rough draught” before going back to the text of Document II to record the one that finally satisfied him.
[15] This word was changed to “denounces” in both the “Rough draught” and in Document II; the Adams copy reads “denounces.”
[16] TJ struck out “everlasting Adieu” in both the “Rough draught” and the text of Document II, and substituted “eternal separation,” which is the reading of the Adams copy.
For the first time, selected writings of Thomas Jefferson are now available to Arabic readers. Published by Juan Cole, and the Global Americana Institute, the new edition will soon be available world wide.
by Juan Cole
I am excited to announce that the Global Americana Institute has, in partnership with Dar al-Saqi of Beirut brought out a volume of selected writings of Thomas Jefferson in Arabic. It was elegantly translated by Professors Mounira Soliman and Walid Hamamsy of Cairo University and is entitled in Arabic the equivalent of Revolutionary Democracy: How America became the Republic of Liberty.
It has a powerful, brief introduction by prominent Arab intellectual Hazem Saghieh, an editor of al-Hayat newspaper, which expresses admiration for Jefferson’s political thought while not attempting to paper over his personal foibles. Saghieh notes that post-World War II Arab thought has been strangely unengaged with liberal democratic ideas, especially in their American incarnation, but that that is a shame since figures such as Jefferson have much to offer. Of course, elite Arab families know English and travel to the United States, and don’t need this translation. But below that five percent at the top of society with regard to wealth and education, there is now a vast literate Arab middle class numbering in the hundreds of millions, who could not deal with Jefferson’s antique English but could read this translation. At least some of them will be interested in doing so.
Al-Demouqratiya-al-Thawria
I am hopeful that the book will find an eager reception in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries yearning for democracy in the Arab world, and in a way, it could not have come out at a better time. Jefferson could be good for them to think with, a colleague from across the centuries and the Atlantic.
From Colonial Williamsburg’s history.org
A new examination of Thomas Jefferson’s boyhood home reveals the forces that shaped the third president. Author Susan Kern talks about her new book, “The Jeffersons at Shadwell.”Comment.
Library of Congress
Proceeding, fellow-citizens, to that qualification which the Consitutution requires before my entrance on the charge again conferred on me, it is my duty to express the deep sense I entertain of this new proof of confidence from my fellow-citizens at large, and the zeal with which it inspires me so to conduct myself as may best satisfy their just expectations.
On taking this station on a former occassion I declared the principles on which I believed it my duty to administer the affairs of our Commonwealth. My conscience tells me I have on every occassion acted up to that declaration according to its obvious import and to the understanding of very candid mind.
In the transaction of your foreign affairs we have endeavored to cultivate the friendship of all nations, and especially of those which we have the most important relations. We have done them justice on all occasions, favored where favor was lawful, and cherished mutual interests and intercourse on fair and equal terms. We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others.
At home, fellow-citizens, you best know whether we have done well or ill. The suppression of unecessarey offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enable us to discontinue our internal taxes. These, covering our land with officers and opening our doors to their intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which once entered is scracely to be restrained from reaching succesively every article of property and produce. If among these taxes some minor ones fell which had not been inconvenient, it was because their amount would not have paid the officers who collected them, and because, if they had any merit, the State authorities might adopt them instead of others less approved,
The remaining revenue on the consumption of foreign artiacles is paid chiefly by those who can afford to add foreignb luxuries to domestic comforts, being collcted on our seaboard and frontiers only, and, incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be the pleasure and pride of an American to ask, What farmer, what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a taxgatherer of the United States? These contributions enable us to support the current expenses of the Government, to fulfill contracts with foreign nations to extinguish the native right of soil within our limits, to extend those limits, and to apply such a surplus to our public debts as places at a short day their final redemption, and that redemption once effected the revenue thereby liberated may, by a just repartition of it among the States and the corresponding amendment of the Constitution, be applied in time of peace to rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education, and other great objects within each state. In time of war, if injustice by ourselves or others must sometimes produce war, increased as the same revenue will be by increased population and consumption, and aided by other resources reserved for that crisis, it may meet within the year all the sexpenses of the year without encrioaching on the rights of future generations by burthening them with the debts of the past. War will then be but a suspension of useful works, and a return to a state of peace a return to the progress of improvement.
I have said, fellow-citizens, that the income reserved had enabled us to extend our limits, but that extension may possibly pay for itself before we are called on, and in the meantime may keep down the accruing interest; in all events, it will replace the advances we shall have made. I know that the acquisition of Louisiana had been disapproved by some from a candid apprehension that the enlargement of our territory would endanger its union. But who can limit the extent to which the federative principle may operate effectively? The larger our association the less will it be shaken by local passions; and in any view is it not better that the opposite bank of the Mississippi should be settled by our own brethren and children than by strangers of another family? With which should we be most likely to live in harmony and friendly intercourse?
In matters of religion I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the General Government. I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it, but have left them, as the Constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of the church or state authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies.
The aboriginal inhabitants of these countries I have regarded with the commiseration their history inspires. Endowed with the faculties and the rights of men, breathing an ardent love of liberty and independence, and occupying a country which left them no desire but to be undisturbed, the stream of overflowing population from other regions directed itself on these shores; without power to divert or habits to contend against it, they have been overwhelmed by the current or driven before it; now reduced within limits too narrow for the hunter’s state, humanity enjoins us to teach them agriculture and the domestic arts; to encourage them to that industry which alone can enable them to maintain their place in existence and to prepare them in time for that state of society which to bodily comforts adds the improvement of the mind and morals. We have therefore liberally furnished them with the implements of husbandry and household use; we have placed among them instructors in the arts of first necessity, and they are covered with the aegis of the law against aggressors from among ourselves.
But the endeavors to enlighten them on the fate which awaits their present course of life, to induce them to exercise their reason, follow its dictates, and change their pursuits with the change of circumstances have powerful obstacles to encounter; they are combated by the habits of their bodies, prejudices of their minds, ignorance, pride, and the influence of interested and crafty individuals among them who feel themselves something in the present order of things and fear to become nothing in any other. These persons inculcate a sanctimonious reverence for the customs of their ancestors; that whatsoever they did must be done through all time; that reason is a false guide, and to advance under its counsel in their physical, moral, or political condition is perilous innovation; that their duty is to remain as their Creator made them, ignorance being safety and knowledge full of danger; in short, my friends, among them also is seen the action and counteraction of good sense and of bigotry; they too have their antiphilosophists who find an interest in keeping things in their present state, who dread reformation, and exert all their faculties to maintain the ascendancy of habit over the duty of improving our reason and obeying its mandates.
In giving these outlines I do not mean, fellow-citizens, to arrogate to myself the merit of the measures. That is due, in the first place, to the reflecting character of our citizens at large, who, by the weight of public opinion, influence and strengthen the public measures. It is due to the sound discretion with which they select from among themselves those to whom they confide the legislative duties. It is due to the zeal and wisdom of the characters thus selected, who lay the foundations of public happiness in wholesome laws, the execution of which alone remains for others, and it is due to the able and faithful auxiliaries, whose patriotism has associated them with me in the executive functions.
During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety. They might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome punishments reserved to and provided by the laws of the several States against falsehood and defamation, but public duties more urgent press on the time of public servants, and the offenders have therefore been left to find their punishment in the public indignation.
Nor was it uninteresting to the world that an experiment should be fairly and fully made, whether freedom of discussion, unaided by power, is not sufficient for the propagation and protection of truth–whether a government conducting itself in the true spirit of its constitution, with zeal and purity, and doing no act which it would be unwilling the whole world should witness, can be written down by falsehood and defamation. The experiment has been tried; you have witnessed the scene; our fellow-citizens looked on, cool and collected; they saw the latent source from which these outrages proceeded; they gathered around their public functionaries, and when the Constitution called them to the decision by suffrage, they pronounced their verdict, honorable to those who had served them and consolatory to the friend of man who believes that he may be trusted with the control of his own affairs.
No inference is here intended that the laws provided by the States against false and defamatory publications should not be enforced; he who has time renders a service to public morals and public tranquillity in reforming these abuses by the salutary coercions of the law; but the experiment is noted to prove that, since truth and reason have maintained their ground against false opinions in league with false facts, the press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint; the public judgment will correct false reasoning and opinions on a full hearing of all parties; and no other definite line can be drawn between the inestimable liberty of the press and its demoralizing licentiousness. If there be still improprieties which this rule would not restrain, its supplement must be sought in the censorship of public opinion.
Contemplating the union of sentiment now manifested so generally as auguring harmony and happiness to our future course, I offer to our country sincere congratulations. With those, too, not yet rallied to the same point the disposition to do so is gaining strength; facts are piercing through the veil drawn over them, and our doubting brethren will at length see that the mass of their fellow-citizens with whom they can not yet resolve to act as to principles and measures, think as they think and desire what they desire; that our wish as well as theirs is that the public efforts may be directed honestly to the public good, that peace be cultivated, civil and religious liberty unassailed, law and order preserved, equality of rights maintained, and that state of property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own industry or that of his father’s. When satisfied of these views it is not in human nature that they should not approve and support them. In the meantime let us cherish them with patient affection, let us do them justice, and more than justice, in all competitions of interest; and we need not doubt that truth, reason, and their own interests will at length prevail, will gather them into the fold of their country, and will complete that entire union of opinion which gives to a nation the blessing of harmony and the benefit of all its strength.
I shall now enter on the duties to which my fellow-citizens have again called me, and shall proceed in the spirit of those principles which they have approved. I fear not that any motives of interest may lead me astray; I am sensible of no passion which could seduce me knowingly from the path of justice, but the weaknesses of human nature and the limits of my own understanding will produce errors of judgment sometimes injurious to your interests. I shall need, therefore, all the indulgence which I have heretofore experienced from my constituents; the want of it will certainly not lessen with increasing years. I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with His providence and our riper years with His wisdom and power, and to whose goodness I ask you to join in supplications with me that He will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures that whatsoever they do shall result in your good, and shall secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations.
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Friends and Fellow-Citizens
Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire.
A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye, when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue, and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, should I despair did not the presence of many whom I see here remind me that in the other high authorities provided by our Constitution I shall find resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal on which to rely under all difficulties. To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the sovereign functions of legislation, and to those associate with you, I look with encouragement for that guidance and support which may enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world.
During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will of course arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possesses their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all republicans, we are all federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve the Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world’s best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter, with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens, a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people, a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.
I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. Without pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had entitled him to the first place in his country’s love and destined for him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal administration of your affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts. The approbation implied by your suffrage is a great consolation to me for the past, and my future solicitude will be to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance, to conciliate that of others by doing them all the good in my power, and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.
Relying, then, on the patronage of your good will, I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make. And may that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity.
Jack Miller Center Faculty member, Peter McNamara, ruminates on America’s original “smart” classroom.
Originally published in The Utah Statesman
Dinner was over by the time I finally made it to the University of Virginia campus. It had been a long distracting day of driving, planes and airports. The conference organizer kindly secured me a drink and we went outside where a few other participants were milling around. There was a little conversation, cigarettes were smoked and drinks consumed. We mostly soaked up the atmosphere. Fireflies danced about, briefly illuminating the muggy, still Virginia night. A few students lounged about on the center of “the lawn.” They were surrounded on three sides by Thomas Jefferson’s creation, the “academical village.” Impressive as it looks today, I found myself wondering how startling it must have been to the first students who in 1825 arrived by horse or carriage. It was soon time to go inside for the evening’s lecture. I was not disappointed. The speaker was a prominent political commentator and I knew I would be back for a campus tour the day after next.
Along with his authorship of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Jefferson instructed that his tombstone should also record him as “Father of the University of Virginia.” For decades he had been contemplating the design of a university that would prepare students for careers and that would also prepare them to be free citizens. Jefferson did not make the misleading and largely artificial distinction between those two goals that we tend to make today. After he had gained legislative approval for a university, he mapped out the curriculum and took a leading role in hiring faculty. Once in operation though, the university was to be administered by the faculty under the supervision of an unpaid board, tellingly named the “visitors.”
The grounds, buildings and architecture were among Jefferson’s highest concerns. Jefferson disapproved of the traditional university, typified by Oxford and Cambridge, with its roots in religious education. The religious origins and the monarchical affiliations of those schools affected not only the curriculum but also the shape of the grounds and buildings. Jefferson found his alternative model in the philosophical schools of classical antiquity where students and teachers lived in close proximity but at a safe distance from the hurly-burly of the marketplace and the political assembly.
Jefferson was also concerned with the architecture of the campus. Jefferson owned and had studied closely Andrea Palladio’s Four Books of Architecture, a Renaissance compilation of the principles of classical architecture. His design for the university owed much to Palladio and something to his contemporaries Benjamin Henry Latrobe and William Thornton. But Jefferson mostly acted alone. In borrowing from the past, he was not engaged in a mere simulation (to use that post-modern term). His goal was something quite new: a university that is compatible with an enlightened republicanism. Most immediately, Jefferson was appalled at the state of American architecture. Its saving grace was its flimsy construction and hence, impermanence. It would not last. The buildings and grounds of Jefferson’s university were to serve as first-hand examples of buildings and gardens of beauty and permanence. Beyond this, Jefferson aimed to create an institution that was friendly to “health, to study, to manners, morals and order.” His “academical village” would make possible “that quiet retirement so friendly to study.”
Many of Jefferson’s hopes were disappointed. The first students were rowdier and less interested in education than he expected. Education and the progress of science and politics were neither as intimately connected nor as inevitable as he imagined. Some of his own ideas about states’ rights and the biological basis of racial differences contributed not a little to the hoisting of the secessionist flag over his university. Nevertheless, no other founder thought as deeply about education as Jefferson and none – although it is now only dimly perceived – made so lasting a contribution to the American idea of public education. Jefferson’s university is simply the great symbol of that contribution. As funding for and confidence in public education plummets, today might be good time to recover the thinking that went into Jefferson’s visionary blending of beauty and practicality, permanence and progress, order and freedom in his academical village.
Before I could take my campus tour, a remarkably destructive mini-hurricane swept through Charlottesville. As my host and I snaked our way toward campus, carefully avoiding the many downed trees and power lines, we were reduced to horse and buggy speeds. After arriving we wandered through the carefully-crafted gardens with their strange serpentine brick wall boundaries. Then we walked across the lawn flanked by the 10 stately neoclassical “pavilions” to the dominating “Rotunda.” Jefferson modeled the Rotunda on Rome’s Pantheon, originally a great temple to the gods. In the place of those ancient sources of wisdom and power, Jefferson located the library. My host, a distinguished professor of American politics, ended my tour with a visit to a classroom. He had won one of the much-coveted rooms in the old academical village. Opening the door revealed a quiet, austere but elegant room with a lectern and chairs.
Peter McNamara teaches political science at Utah State University.
Originally published in The Utah Statesman
The Jack Miller Center asked Pulitzer Prize winning historian, and JMC Faculty member, Gordon S. Wood, for his thoughts on the most divisive campaign in U.S. History:
John Adams
In 1801 Thomas Jefferson had just been elected president after a hard-fought and bitter campaign between the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans. It was in fact one of themost tumultuous and vicious electoral campaigns in American history. The Federalist press had tagged Jefferson with every epithet they could think of–a coward, a radical, an atheist, and, most alarming, the leader of a gang of Jacobins who were trying to take over the American government and make it a satellite of revolutionary France. For their part the Republicans gave as good as they got, accusing the Federalists of trying to foist an English-style monarchy on America. Never in American history has the press been as abusive and as vituperative as it was in the electoral campaign of 1800.
All this newspaper scurrility took place in the wake of the Sedition Act of 1798, by which the Federalist-controlled Congress had attempted to curb the Republican press’s vitriolic attacks on President John Adams and other Federalist leaders. The Federalists had become convinced that elective republican governments could not allow the press to abuse their political leaders and undermine their capacity to rule. How could John Adams exercise his authority as president if he were victimized, as he put it, by “the most envious malignity, the most base, vulgar, sordid, fish-woman scurrility, and the most palpable lies” that had ever been leveled against any public official?
Hence with the Sedition Act of 1798 the Federalists in Congress made it a federal crime to “write, print, utter or publish. . . any false, scandalous, and malicious writing” that brought the president or members of Congress “into contempt or disrepute, or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States.”
Americans believed in freedom of the press and had written that freedom into their Bill of Rights. But they believed in it as Englishmen did, who meant by it, in contrast to the French, no prior restraint or censorship of what was published. Under English law, people were nevertheless held responsible for what they published. If a person’s publications were slanderous and calumnious enough to bring public officials into disrespect, then under the common law the publisher could be prosecuted for seditious libel. The truth of what was published was no defense; indeed, it even aggravated the offense. Furthermore, under the common law judges, not juries, had the responsibility to decide whether or not a publication was seditious.
Although the Sedition Act horrified the Republicans, it was actually a liberalization of the English common law of seditious libel that continued to run in the state courts. Under the new federal statute, which resembled the liberal argument John Peter Zenger’s lawyer had used in 1735, the truth of what was said or published could be admitted as a defense, and juries could decide whether or not a particular piece was libelous and seditious.
The Republicans were in no mood to accept the Federalists liberalization of the common law. In the debate over the sedition law that spilled into the early nineteenth century several Republican libertarian theorists, including George Hay of Virginia and Tunis Wortman of New York, rejected both the old common law restrictions on the liberty of the press and the new legal recognition of the distinction between truth and falsity of opinion that the Federalists had incorporated into the Sedition Act. While the Federalists clung to the eighteenth century’s conception that “truths” were constant and universal and capable of being discovered by enlightened and reasonable men, the Republican libertarians argued that opinions about government and governors were many and diverse and their truth could not be determined simply by individual judges and juries, no matter how reasonable such men were. Hence, they concluded that all political opinions–that is, words as distinct from overt acts–even those opinions that were “false, scandalous, and malicious,” ought to be allowed, as Jefferson put it in his First Inaugural Address, to “stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
The Federalists were dumbfounded by these arguments. “How … could the rights of the people require a liberty to utter falsehood?” they asked. “How could it be right to do wrong?” It was not an easy question to answer, neither then nor later. “Truth,” the Federalists said, “has but one side and listening to error and falsehood is indeed a strange way to discover truth.” Any notion of multiple and varying truths would produce “universal uncertainty, universal misery,” and “set all morality afloat.” People needed to know the “criterion by which we may determine with certainty, who are right, and who are wrong.”
Most Republicans felt they could not deny outright the possibility of truth and falsity in political beliefs, and thus they fell back on a tenuous distinction, developed by Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address, between principles and opinions. Principles, it seemed, were hard and fixed, while opinions were soft and fluid; therefore, said Jefferson, “every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.” Individual opinions did not seem to count as much as they had in the past and thus could be permitted the freest possible expression.
What ultimately made such distinctions and arguments comprehensible was the Republicans’ assumption that opinions about politics were no longer the monopoly of the educated and aristocratic few. Not only were true and false and even malicious opinions equally to be tolerated, but everyone and anyone in the society should be equally able to express them. Sincerity and honesty, the Republican polemicists argued, were far more important in the articulation of ultimate political truth than learning and fancy words that had often been used to deceive and dissimulate. Truth was actually the creation of many voices and many minds, no one of which was more important than another and each of which made its own separate and equally significant contribution to the whole. Solitary opinions of single individuals may now have counted for less, but in their statistical collectivity they now added up to something far more significant than had ever existed before, something that the New York Republican Tunis Wortman referred to as “the extremely complicated term Public Opinion.”
Thomas Jefferson
Because American society was not the kind of organic hierarchy with “an intellectual unity” that the Federalists had wanted, public opinion in America, argued Wortman, the most articulate of the new Republican libertarians, could no longer be the consequence of the intellectual leadership of a few learned gentlemen. General public opinion was simply “an aggregation of individual sentiments,” the combined product of multitudes of minds thinking and reflecting independently, communicating their ideas in different ways, causing opinions to collide and blend with one another, to refine and correct each other, leading toward “the ultimate triumph of Truth.” Such a product, such a public opinion, could be trusted because it had so many sources, so many voices and minds, all interacting, that no privileged individual or group could manipulate or dominate the whole.
This vast, impersonal, and democratic idea of public opinion, said Federalist Theodore Sedgwick in disgust, “is of all things the most destructive of personal independence and of that weight of character which a great man ought to possess.” But no matter, it was the people’s opinion, and it could be trusted because no one controlled it and everyone contributed to it. Despite the Federalist warning that a government dependent exclusively on public opinion was a mere “democracy,” in which “opinion shifts with every current of caprice,” there was no turning back. In no country in the world did public opinion become more awesome and powerful than it did in the increasingly democratic America of the early Republic.
*
This essay is drawn from the forthcoming Oxford History of the Early Republic, Empire of Liberty. Several of Professor Wood’s current books in print are available in our JMC Book Store.
Noah Webster
From Edutopia
The importance of education cannot be overstated. Without a good education, one cannot get a good job, earn a good living, and provide for oneself and one’s family. Education is the key to individual prosperity.
And education is important to our economy. We have been hearing a lot recently about concerns that our education system is falling behind, particularly in math and science, hindering our competitiveness in the global market. The message is clear: If we don’t improve our educational system, our economy will fall apart (again).
But we have been hearing a lot less about the civic mission of our schools — and the importance of education for our democracy. Yet as Rick Hess pointed out a few weeks ago:
From the dawn of the Western tradition, dating back to Plato, Aristotle, and their contemporaries, education has been regarded as essential to the formation of good citizens and the cultivation of a proper attachment to the state. For America’s founders such as Benjamin Rush, Noah Webster, and Thomas Jefferson, one of the main functions of schools was producing democratic citizens.
I am reminded of our civic mission as the nation approaches a midterm election in the midst of an economic crisis. Voters will soon make difficult decisions on a number of issues that will shape at least the next two years in American politics.
But I have concerns about the state of civics education in America. The National Assessment of Student Progress (NAEP) test in civics found that about two out of every three students at grades 4 (73 percent), 8 (70 percent) and 12 (66 percent) have at least a basic knowledge of civics. But when you look at proficiency, the situation seems grim: just about 24 percent of students are considered proficient (24 percent of fourth graders, 22 percent of eighth graders, and 27 percent of twelfth graders). These students will become voters who have to make important decisions every election — but only about 24 percent have a proficient understanding of civics? It’s a bit scary.
Combine NAEP data with a recent American Enterprise Institute (AEI) study on what social studies teachers think and do. Findings I found particularly interesting: 83 percent of these teachers say it is absolutely essential for high schools to teach students “to identify the protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.” Just 64 percent deem it absolutely essential for high schools to teach students “to understand such concepts as federalism, separation of powers, and checks and balances.” And consider how that plays out in student knowledge — NAEP found that only 5 percent of twelfth graders could explain checks on the president’s power.
This lack of civics knowledge could have dire consequences. Our nation is designed for the participation of the people. If our citizens don’t understand how it works, how can we make the right decisions? We have to do better in teaching our children about our nation and its government.
Washington, DC…The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), the grantmaking arm of the National Archives, is pleased to announce a cooperative agreement with The University of Virginia (UVA) Press to make freely available online the historical documents of the Founders of the United States of America.
The NHPRC and UVA Press will create a new web site which provides access to the fully annotated published papers of key figures in the nation’s Founding era. The project is designed to include the papers of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin. The National Historical Publications and Records Commission will provide funding in the amount of up to $2 million for the UVA Press to undertake the work on the published papers.
Through this web resource, users will be able to read, browse, and search tens of thousands of documents from the Founding Era. A prototype web site including the contents of 154 volumes drawn from print editions of the papers of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison will be prepared by October 2011. The fully public version will be launched by June 2012 and will also include the 27 volumes of the Papers of Alexander Hamilton. By June 2013, the Founders Online expects to add the 39 published volumes of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin. The new resource will include the complete contents of 242 printed volumes, including all of the existing document transcriptions and the editors’ explanatory notes.
“This new archive of the Founding Era will revolutionize our understanding,” said David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, “by creating for the first time a free and fully searchable collection of the Founders’ own words in the context of their time. As scholars and statesmen debate the meaning of documents such as the Constitution and Bill of Rights, they can turn to the originals and the wit and wisdom of the Founders’ own debates. And we can only express our gratitude for the effort of dedicated editors and scholars to create this work, a national monument to the founding of our nation.”
This award to help the University of Virginia Press create a new online presence for the papers of our nation’s founders is great news for the University and for scholars everywhere,” said University President Teresa Sullivan. “For ten years, the Press has built on the pioneering vision of U.Va. faculty to harness digital technology in the service of scholarship and education through the Rotunda imprint. As a public university, we applaud the leadership of the National Archives in bringing this important archive to life. Making these materials available to the public for free reflects the core values of the University and indeed of our nation’s founding generation, whose words will now be readily available to teachers, students, and citizens.”
Historian Ron Chernow, author of the recent biography Washington: A Life, said, “Unfortunately, the Founders have become remote and abstract, when in fact they are rich, full-blooded, and fiery characters. This new site will not only help students learn more deeply and develop a visceral love and respect for this era, but it will stimulate interest in history for teachers, too, and will reconnect them to primary sources.”
In conjunction with entering into the cooperative agreement, Archivist David S. Ferriero also announced the appointment of three leading scholars to a special Founding Fathers Advisory Committee. The three members are Edward L. Ayers, President of University of Richmond, and leading scholar on the Civil War and American South; Mary Beth Norton,Professor of American History at Cornell University, and leading scholar on the social and political era of the 17th and 18th century America; and David Hackett Fisher, Professor of History at Brandeis, a leading scholar on the colonial era and Pulitzer Prize-winner author of Washington’s Crossing (2004). The Committee will advise the Archivist on the progress of the Founders’ editorial projects, and it is scheduled to meet at the National Archives on December 13, 2010.
# # #
For press information, contact NHPRC Communications Director Keith Donohue at 202.357-5365 or Keith.Donohue@nara.gov. See more information about the NHPRC[www.archives.gov/nhprc/].
Read the National Archives Press Release.
Facebook Constitution Day Campaign
January 18th, 2012 - Please join us in preparation for the celebration of the 225th Anniversary of the Constitution of the United States.
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John Zumbrunnen Joins the JMC Constitution Day Steering Group
January 18th, 2012 - The Jack Miller Center is proud to announce that Professor John Zumbrunnen has joined the JMC Constitution Day Initiative Steering Group.
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