the misery of thomas jefferson -- 12/18/23

18 Dec 2023

the misery of thomas jefferson -- 12/18/23

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Today's selection -- from American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence by Pauline Maier. In 1776, the delegates of the Second Continental Congress made a very large number of changes to Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence:

“The more alterations Congress made on his draft, the more miserable Jefferson became. He had forgotten, as has posterity, that a draftsman is not an author, and that the ‘declaration on independence,’ as Congress sometimes called it, was not a novel, or a poem, or even a political essay presented to the world as the work of a particular writer, but a public document, an authenticated expression of the American mind. Franklin, who was sitting nearby, ‘perceived that I was not insensible to these mutilations,’ Jefferson later recalled, and attempted to console him with the story of a young hatter, about to pen his own shop, who proposed to have a fine signboard made with the words ‘John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money’ and the figure of a hat. First, however, he asked his friends for their advice. One proposed taking out ‘hatter’ since it was redundant with ‘makes hats.’ Another recommended that ‘makes’ be removed since customers wouldn't care who exactly made the hats. A third said ‘for ready money’ was unnecessary since it was not the local custom to sell on credit. ‘Sells hats’" a fourth commented; did Thompson suppose people thought he meant to give them away? In the end, the sign said simply ‘John Thompson,’ with a picture of a hat, which probably served its function quite well. Franklin said, however, that he had learned from that anecdote to avoid, ‘whenever in my power, ... becoming the draughtsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body.’ Did Franklin understand how much Congress, like the relentless editors in his story, was practicing a technique that Jefferson had himself used to good effect when he compressed Mason's language until it gained in power far more than it lost in length?

Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776, a 1900 portrait by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris depicting Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson working on the Declaration[43]

“Others seem to have shared Jefferson's preference for the committee draft over the version Congress adopted. So strong was his conviction on that issue that Jefferson laboriously copied the earlier version several times over--by hand, of course, which made it a tedious, time consuming task--and sent those copies to friends so they could judge for themselves, as he wrote Richard Henry Lee, ‘whether it is the better or worse for the Critics.’ Lee responded that he ‘sincerely’ wished, ‘as well for the honor of Congress, as for that of the States, that the Manuscript had not been mangled as it is,’ and years later John Adams also said that Congress ‘obliterated some of the best’ of draft declaration ‘and left all that was exceptionable, if any thing in it was.’ Obviously the two versions were strikingly different in the opinion of contemporary observers. And what generations of Americans came to revere was not Jefferson's but Congress's Declaration, the work not of a single man, or even a committee, but of a larger body of men with the good sense to recognize a ‘pretty good’ draft when they saw it, and who were able to identify and eliminate Jefferson's more outlandish assertions and unnecessary words. So successful an exercise of group editing probably demanded a text that required cutting, not extensive rewriting. Congress's achievement was remarkable nonetheless. By exercising their intelligence, political good sense, and a discerning sense of language, the delegates managed to make the Declaration at once more accurate and more consonant with the convictions of their constituents, and to enhance both its power and its eloquence.”