2124. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, Signers of.—[further continued] .
I observe your toast of
Mr. [John] Jay on the 4th of July [1823]
wherein you say that the omission of his
signature to the Declaration of Independence
was by accident. Our impressions as to this
fact being different, I shall be glad to have
mine corrected, if wrong. Jay, you know,
had been in constant opposition to our laboring
majority. Our estimate at the time was,
that he, Dickinson and Johnson of Maryland,
by their ingenuity, perseverance and
partiality to our English connection, had constantly
kept us a year behind where we ought
to have been in our preparations and proceedings.
From about the date of the Virginia
instructions of May 15th, 1776, to declare
Independence, Mr. Jay absented himself
from Congress, and never came there again
until December, 1778. Of course, he had no
part in the discussions or decision of that
question. The instructions to their Delegates
by the Convention of New York, then sitting,
to sign the Declaration, were presented to
Congress on the 15th of July only, and on
that day the journals show the absence of
Mr. Jay, by a letter received from him, as
they had done as early as the 29th of May by
another letter. And I think he had been
omitted by the convention on a new election of
Delegates, when they changed their instructions.
Of this last fact, however, having no
evidence but an ancient impression, I shall
not affirm it. But whether so or not, no
agency of accident appears in the case. This
error of fact, however, whether yours or
mine, is of little consequence to the public.
But truth being as cheap as error, it is as well
to rectify it for our own satisfaction.—
To John Adams. Washington ed. vii, 308.
Ford ed., x, 271.
(M.
1823)
