The Declaration of independence : a study in the history of political ideas |
| I. |
| II. |
| III. |
 | IV. |
THE ROUGH DRAFT |
| V. |
| VI. |
 | CHAPTER IV The Declaration of independence : |  |
THE ROUGH DRAFT
(as it probably read when Jefferson
first submitted it to Franklin.)[7]
A Declaration by the Representatives of the
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General
Congress assembled.
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 & independent
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 self-evident,[8]
sacred and undeniable,
that all men are created equal & independent; that from
that equal creation they derive in rights inherent &
inalienable,[9]
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 & organizing
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
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
reduce them to arbitrary power, 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[11] by falsehood.
he has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and
necessary for the public good:
he has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate[12]
& pressing importance, unless suspended in their
operation till his assent should be obtained; and when
so suspended, he has neglected utterly to attend to
them.
he has refused to pass other laws for the accomodation
of large districts of people unless those people would
relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable
to them & formidable to tyrants only:
he has dissolved Representative houses repeatedly &
continually, for opposing with manly firmness his
invasions on the rights of the people:
he has dissolved, he has refused for a long space of time
to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative
powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the
people at large for their exercise, the state remaining
in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion
from without, & convulsions within:
he has endeavored to prevent the population of these
states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for
naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others
to encourage their migrations hither; & raising the
he has suffered the administration of justice totally to
cease in some of these colonies, refusing his assent to
laws for establishing judiciary powers:
he has made our judges dependent on his will alone, for
the tenure of their offices, and amount of their salaries:
he has erected a multitude of new offices by a self-assumed
power, & sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our
people & eat out their substance:
he has kept among us in times of peace standing armies
& ships of war:
he has affected to render the military, independent of
& superior to the civil power:
he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction
foreign to our constitutions[13]
and unacknoleged by our
laws; giving his assent to their pretended acts of
legislation, for quartering large bodies of armed troops
among us;
for protecting them by a mock-trial from punishment
for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants
of these states;
for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;
for imposing taxes on us without our consent;
for depriving us of the benefits of trial by jury;
for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended
offenses;
for taking away our charters, & altering fundamentally
the forms of our governments;
for suspending our own legislatures & declaring themselves
invested with power to legislate for us in
all cases whatsoever:
he has abdicated government here, withdrawing his
governors, & declaring us out of his allegiance &
protection:
he has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our
towns & destroyed the lives of our people:
he is at this time transporting large armies of foreign
mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation
& tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty
& perfidy unworthy the head of a civilized nation:
he has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our
frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known
rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all
ages, sexes, & conditions of existence:
he has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow
of our property:
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself,
violating it's most sacred rights[15]
of life & liberty in
the persons of a distant people who never offended
him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another
hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation
thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium
of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian
king of Great Britain. [determined to keep open a
market where MEN should be bought & sold,] he
has prostituted his negative for suppressing every
legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this
execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold:[16]
: and that this assemblage of
horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is
now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us,
and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived
them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded
them: thus paying off former crimes committed
against the liberties of one people, with crimes which
he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated
petitions have been answered by repeated injury.[17]
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 twelve years only, on so many
acts of tyranny without a mask, over a people fostered
& fixed in principles[18]
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 &
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 forever these unfeeling brethren.
we must endeavor to forget our former love for them,
and to hold them as we hold the rest of mankind,
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 & to glory is open to us too; we will climb it
apart from them, in a separately state, and acquiesce in the necessity
which de pronounces our everlasting Adieu! eternal separation!
We therefore the representatives of the United States
of America in General Congress assembled do, in the
name & by authority[19]
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 and 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 independent
states, and that as free & independent states they shall
hereafter have full power to levy war, conclude peace,
contract alliances, establish commerce, & to do all
other acts and things which independent states may of
mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes,
& our sacred honour.
Such, substantially, must have been the form
of the Rough Draft when Jefferson first submitted
it to Franklin. Between that day,
whenever it was, and the 28 of June when the
report of the Committee of Five was presented
to Congress (it will presently appear how the
report of the Committee can be approximately
reconstructed), a total of twenty-six alterations
were made in the Rough Draft. Twenty-three
of these were changes in phraseology —
two in Adams' hand, five in Franklin's, and
sixteen apparently in Jefferson's. Besides these
verbal changes, three entirely new paragraphs
were added. If this be true, what are we to
make of Jefferson's account of the matter in
his letter to Madison? In this letter, quoted
above, Jefferson says that having prepared the
Draft he submitted it to "Dr. Franklin and
Mr. Adams requesting their corrections; . . .
their alterations were two or three only, and
merely verbal. I then wrote a fair copy, reported
it to the committee, and from them, unaltered to
the Congress." Jefferson here asserts that no
changes were made in the Committee, and he
implies that none except those in the handwriting
before the `fair copy' was presented to the Committee.
Either in the assertion or in the implication
Jefferson's statement must be inaccurate.
Jefferson was probably right in the assertion
that no changes were made in the Committee.
He tells us that he submitted the Draft to Franklin
and Adams first because they were the men
whose corrections he most wished to have the
benefit of. Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams
were themselves a majority of the Committee;
and if the draft was satisfactory to them it is
quite likely that it would pass the Committee
without change. Besides, there is no evidence
to contradict Jefferson's statement on this
point. What I suppose then is that the twenty-six
alterations were all made before the `fair
copy' (or the Rough Draft, if Jefferson was
mistaken in thinking there was a `fair copy'
was submitted to the Committee, and that
these changes were the result of at least two,
perhaps more, consultations between Jefferson
and Franklin, and between Jefferson and Adams.
Jefferson must have submitted the Draft to
both Franklin and Adams at least twice, because
the copy which Adams took contains only two
of the five corrections which Franklin wrote into
the Draft, and only one of the two which Adams
himself wrote in. It was after Adams made his
that Franklin wrote in three of his corrections,
and that Jefferson wrote in the three
new paragraphs and sixteen verbal changes.
Now there is nothing to show whether the corrections
in Jefferson's hand were made before
or after the later corrections by Franklin and
Adams. I think we may assume that Jefferson,
having written in three new paragraphs and sixteen
verbal changes, would scarcely venture to
make a `fair copy' for the Committee, or, if
there was no fair copy, would he be likely to
present the Rough Draft thus corrected to the
Committee, without having first submitted the
Draft thus amended to Franklin and Adams
for their final approval. Is it not then likely
that it was on the occasion of this final submission
of the corrected Draft to Franklin and
Adams that they wrote in the corrections which
appear in their hands but are not in the copy
which Adams made?
The order of events in correcting the Rough
Draft cannot in most respects be known; but
I should guess that it was somewhat as follows.
Having prepared the Draft, in which were
eight slight verbal corrections made in process
of composition, Jefferson first submitted it to
Franklin. Franklin then wrote in one, and probably
two, of the five corrections that appear in
of their salaries," Franklin changed it to read,
"and the amount & payment of their salaries." A second
correction by Franklin was probably made at
this time also. Jefferson originally wrote "reduce
them to arbitrary power." Franklin's correction
reads "reduce them under absolute
Despotism." But Adams' copy reads "reduce
them under absolute power," which is
neither the original nor the corrected reading,
but a combination of both. Adams may of
course have made a mistake in copying (he
made a number of slight errors in copying);
or it may be that at this time Franklin wrote
in "under absolute" in place of "to arbitrary,"
and that not until later, after Adams made his
copy, was "power" crossed out and "Despotism"
written in. In the original manuscript,
"Despotism" appears to have been written with
a different pen, or with heavier ink, than "under
Absolute," as if written at a different time. At
all events, not more than two of Franklin's five
corrections had been made when Jefferson submitted
the Draft to Adams. Adams then
wrote in one of his two corrections: where
Jefferson had written "for a long space of time,"
Adams added "after such dissolutions." Having
made this correction, Adams made his copy
returned the Draft to Jefferson.
After receiving the Draft from Adams, Jefferson
wrote in, at least the greater part of the
sixteen verbal changes, and three new paragraphs.
The verbal changes he probably made
on his own initiative; they were mere improvements
in phraseology, such as would be likely
to occur to him upon rereading. He may likewise
have added the three new paragraphs on
his own initiative; but I think it extremely
likely that Adams suggested the addition of the
paragraph about calling legislative bodies at
places remote from their public records. This
had actually occurred in Massachusetts, and
who more likely than Adams to remember it,
or to wish to have it included in the list of
grievances? This at least we know, that Jefferson
wrote out on a slip of paper the following
paragraph:
he has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,
uncomfortable, & distant from the depository of their
public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into
compliance with his measures.
The slip was then pasted at one end to the Rough
Draft at the place where occurs the paragraph
beginning, "he has dissolved Representative
other paragraphs which Jefferson added after
Adams returned the Draft are the one beginning,
"for abolishing the free system of English
laws,"[21] and the one beginning, "he has constrained
others taken captives on the high
seas."[22]
In whatever order these changes were made,
and whether after only one or after several
he has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, unco t from
lly] for opposing
the depository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatigui nce
eople
with his measures.
The word "continually," of which only the letters "lly" can now be
seen, has the bracket because it was omitted by Congress, and Jefferson
bracketed on the Rough Draft those parts omitted by Congress.
think be assumed that Jefferson would submit
the Rough Draft, after these changes were incorporated,
to Franklin and Adams for their
final approval before presenting the `fair copy'
(or the Rough Draft, if it was the Rough Draft)
to the Committee. Now it may well have been
at the time of this last inspection, after all
other changes had been made, that Adams wrote
in the second, and Franklin the last three
of the corrections that appear in their handwriting.
If this was in fact the order of events,
it is not difficult to understand that Jefferson
should have recalled the affair as he related it
to Madison in 1823: "their alterations were
two or three only, and merely verbal. I then
wrote a fair copy, reported it to the Committee,
& from them, unaltered to the Congress."
So far we have assumed that the three new
paragraphs and the sixteen verbal changes in
Jefferson's hand were written into the Rough
Draft before it was submitted to the Committee
of Five. But how do we know this, since
Jefferson's `fair copy' has not been preserved?
How do we know these changes were not made
by Congress? Fortunately, it is possible to
reconstruct the report of the Committee of
Five substantially as it must have read. We
have a copy of the Declaration which Jefferson
of July, 1776, and which, in a letter to Lee
of that date, he says is the Declaration "as
originally framed."[23] This copy, now possessed
by the American Philosophical Society, and
printed in facsimile in the Proceedings of the
society,[24] is quite obviously not the Declaration
`as originally framed' — that is, as Jefferson
framed it before submitting it to Franklin
and Adams for the first time — because it
differs strikingly from the copy which Adams
made. It was probably made from the Rough
Draft at about the time that the Committee
of Five submitted its report to Congress; and
if that report was made, as Jefferson says, in
the form of a `fair copy,' it is safe to assume
that it was intended to be a duplicate of the
fair copy.[25] What Jefferson meant by the
phrase "as originally framed" was "as originally
reported." This is confirmed by the fact that
Jefferson described another copy of the Declaration,
and practically identical with the Lee
copy, by saying that it is the Declaration "as
originally reported." This latter copy is the
one which he wrote into his "Notes," later
during the debates in Congress or afterward, Jefferson
indicated on the Rough Draft the changes
made by Congress by bracketing the parts
omitted. Thus the Lee copy, the copy in Jefferson's
"Notes," and the Rough Draft exclusive
of the corrections made in connection with the
bracketed parts, furnish us with three texts
which were intended to conform to the report
of the Committee of Five. The most reliable
of these texts is probably the Lee copy. The
text given below is made by reproducing the
Rough Draft exclusive of all corrections that
do not appear in the Lee copy; that is, it is
the Rough Draft as it must have read when
Jefferson made the Lee copy, assuming that he
made the Lee copy from the Rough Draft,
and made no errors in copying. If Jefferson
made a `fair copy' for the Committee, he may
of course have made the Lee copy from that
fair copy instead of from the Rough Draft.
In either case it can hardly be supposed that
he made any changes deliberately; and if he
made any errors (he apparently made at least
one),[27] they were probably slight. The corrections
printed in roman are those which, being
incorporated in Adams' copy, I have assumed
before he first submitted the Draft to
Franklin. All other corrections and additions
are printed in italics. Where the reading of
the Lee copy differs from that of the copy in
the "Notes," excepting differences in punctuation
and capitalization, I have noted the difference
in footnotes.
The text here given is identical with the Adams copy except,
(1) the corrections of Franklin and Adams appearing on the Rough
Draft and incorporated by Adams in his copy are omitted, (2) the spelling,
capitalization, and punctuation of the Rough Draft have been followed,
(3) in a number of instances where Adams obviously made slips
in copying, the Rough Draft is followed. These slips, in each case, are
indicated in the footnotes.
It is not clear that this change was made by Jefferson. The
handwriting of "self-evident" resembles Franklin's.
Adams' copy reads "unalienable." This is the reading of the
Declaration as finally adopted, but as the change is not indicated on
the Rough Draft, Adams must have deliberately or inadvertently made
the change in copying. See below, p. 175, note 1.
The Rough Draft reads "injuries." But it is clear that the original
form was "injury." The "y" has been erased and "ies" written in.
All of the official texts read "injury," and all of Jefferson's own copies
of the Declaration read "injury" except the one which he copied into
his "Notes." It seems that Jefferson must have made this change after
the Declaration was adopted, since it is unlikely that it would have
been rejected by Congress if it had been in the report of the Committee
of Five.
In the course of time a part of this slip was torn out and lost;
but the rest of it, which is in two parts, was pasted down throughout,
over, and largely concealing, the paragraph which reads: "he has dissolved
Representative houses repeatedly & continually, for opposing
with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people:" Of
this paragraph, therefore, only a few words can now be seen on the Rough
Draft; and of the paragraph written on the slip, only about two thirds
can be seen. At this point the Rough Draft now reads as follows:
This paragraph is written in at the bottom of page 2 of the Rough
Draft; there was margin enough there to insert it by writing a very
small hand and crowding the lines.
This paragraph is written in on page 3 of the Rough Draft, between
the paragraph beginning, "he has incited treasonable insurrections,"
and the paragraph beginning, "he has waged cruel war." Jefferson
was able to crowd the new paragraph in because he left a pretty
wide space between the lines when he wrote the Rough Draft, but the
new paragraph had to be written so close and small that, even apart
from the fact that this paragraph does not appear in Adams's copy, we
should know it to be a later insertion.
| CHAPTER IV The Declaration of independence : | |