Independence (71 page)

Today, the best-remembered aspect of the American Revolution may be the Declaration of Independence. However, as historian Pauline Maier has pointed out, the Declaration was quickly “all-but-forgotten” by the Revolutionary generation. The merrymaking in America’s cities and hamlets in the summer of 1776 had far more to do with Congress’s having declared independence than for the stirring Declaration of Independence itself. Little or nothing was said about the Declaration of Independence during the remainder of the war—or for that matter, until the 1790s. Only then did Americans care enough about the Declaration of Independence even to wonder for the first time who had been its principal author.
³⁷

It seems odd that a document that came to mean so much to Americans in the centuries that followed could have been so ignored by the Revolutionary generation. It may have been that Jefferson, who had said that his design was to avoid “aiming at originality of principle or sentiment,” had succeeded too well.
³⁸
What Jefferson had written about the rights of humankind, as well as the charges he leveled against Britain’s leaders, had been broached previously by colonial assemblies, local revolutionary committees, and the Continental Congress. What Jefferson had written was commonplace to his wartime audience.

Only two tracts written during the American Revolution, both penned by Thomas Paine, gained widespread traction with contemporaries.
Common Sense
, the first publication to openly denounce reconciliation and enumerate sound reasons for independence, was fresh and bold, and it electrified the public. In January 1777, in the midst of the despair that flowed from Washington’s humbling defeats in New York and his desperate retreat through New Jersey, Paine did it again with the initial essay in
The American Crisis
, a pamphlet that boosted the morale of the the shaken but hopeful Americans.

It was not until the 1790s that the Declaration of Independence first began to be seen as what has been called America’s “holy writ” and “sacred text.” Speeches or documents that win immediate acclaim are sometimes prized by subsequent generations. That was true of the majestic inaugural addresses of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy and of Martin Luther King Jr.’s inspirational “I have a dream” speech. More frequently, that which is hailed by contemporaries fails the test of time, as was the case with General Douglas MacArthur’s “Old soldiers never die” speech in 1951, now a largely forgotten oration. It is extremely rare indeed for something that was initially largely ignored to be exalted by subsequent generations.

Widespread appreciation of the Declaration of Independence initially became evident only when more than half the population was too young to have remembered 1776 or the bitter events leading to it. That, not coincidentally, occurred during the fierce party battles in the 1790s. The Republican Party, largely Jefferson’s creation, not only celebrated the Declaration; it also made sure that the public knew the identity of its author.

Starting around 1815, leading Americans, fearful that the memory of the American Revolution was in danger of being lost as the Revolutionary generation passed from the scene, made a concerted effort to preserve as much as possible about America’s struggle for independence. Documents and recollections were published, and paintings of events during the Revolution were commissioned. John Trumbull, for instance, painted four scenes commemorating the American Revolution for the new capitol in Washington. His initial work depicted the Committee of Five presenting the draft Declaration of Independence to the Continental Congress.
³⁹

The striking coincidence of the deaths of Adams and Jefferson on July 4, 1826—the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—additionally helped to reacquaint that generation with the document and to preserve the memory of those two revolutionaries. For that time period, the great triumvirate of the American Revolution, as broadcast by countless orators, came to be Washington, the Revolution’s mighty “sword”; Adams, its resounding “tongue”; and Jefferson, its eloquent “pen.”
⁴⁰

But it was not mere happenstance or politics that caused the Declaration of Independence to become America’s most treasured text. The Declaration’s content, and Jefferson’s felicitous composition, caused those who came after 1776 to embrace and sanctify it. Jefferson wrote about the threats faced by his generation, but he succeeded in penning a timeless message, an affirmation of human liberty and dignity that has captured the hopes of succeeding generations. In time, new generations emerged and faced their own battles against tyranny and injustice, whether the struggle was against slavery or racial oppression, or for the rights of workers or women. In the course of these crusades, people born long after 1776 discovered the Declaration of Independence’s ringing passages on equality and natural rights. As they drew sustenance from what Jefferson had said America stood for, the Declaration of Independence at last came to be a living document for Americans, a statement that embodied the national credo and gave an enduring meaning to the American Revolution.

A
BBREVIATIONS

N
OTES

PREFACE

1
. TJ to Samuel Kercheval, July 13, 1816, quoted in R. B. Bernstein,
The Founding Fathers Reconsidered
(New York, 2009), 108.

2
. JA to AA, April 26, 1777,
AFC
2:224.

CHAPTER 1: “IN THE VERY MIDST OF A REVOLUTION”: THE PROPOSAL TO DECLARE INDEPENDENCE

1
. Journal of Lord Adam Gordon, in Howard H. Peckham, ed.,
Narratives of Colonial America 1704–1765
(Chicago, 1971), 259–61.

2
. Carl and Jessica Bridenbaugh,
Rebels and Gentlemen: Philadelphia in the Age of Franklin
(New York, 1962), 6–21; David Hawke,
In the Midst of a Revolution
(Philadelphia, 1961), 33–57.

3
. Charlene Mires,
Independence Hall in American Memory
(Philadelphia, 2002), 6–7.

4
. Robert Morris to Silas Deane, June 6, 1776,
LDC
4:154; Secret Committee to William Hodge, May 30, 1776, ibid., 4:103.

5
. Secret Committee to Hodge, May 30, 1776,
LDC
4:103; Marine Committee to Lambert Wickes, June 10, 1776, ibid., 4:184; Robert Livingston to John Jay, May 21, 1776, ibid., 4:59; JA to Isaac Smith Jr., January 1, 1776, ibid., 4:112; Joseph Hewes to William Tokeley, May 18, 1776, ibid., 4:35; JH to the Colonies, June 7, 1776, ibid., 4:156.

6
. David Hawke,
A Transaction of Free Men: The Birth and Course of the Declaration of Independence
(New York, 1964), 6.

7
. An officer in Halifax to his friend in Edinburgh, June 8, 1776, in William Bell Clark and William James Morgan, eds.,
Naval Documents of the American Revolution
(Washington, D.C., 1964–), 5:421–22; Major Charles Stuart to the Earl of Bute, June 10, 1776, ibid., 5:445.

8
. John Hancock to the Massachusetts Assembly, June 14, 1776,
LDC
4:213; Thomas Stone to James Hollyday[?], May 20, 1776, ibid., 4:50; Josiah Bartlett to Mary Bartlett, June 3, 1776, ibid., 4:124; Commissioners to Canada to Hancock, May 17, 1776, ibid., 4:23; JA to Isaac Smith Sr., June 1, 1776,
AFC
2:1–2.

9
.
JCC
5:424–26.

10
. On Lee’s rise, see Oliver Perry Chitwood,
Richard Henry Lee: Statesman of the Revolution
(Morgantown, W.Va., 1967), 7–59, and J. Kent McGaughy,
Richard Henry Lee of Virginia: A Portrait of an American Revolutionary
(Lanham, Md., 2004), 16–78. The “fasten chains of slavery” quotation can be found in McGaughy’s biography of Lee, page 78.

11
. McGaughy,
Richard Henry Lee of Virginia
, 71–112.

12
. James T. Flexner,
George Washington
(Boston, 1965–72), 2:322.

13
. JA, Diary, August 29–September 5, October 10, 24, 1774,
DAJA
2:114–24, 150, 156–57.