University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER V

THE LITERARY QUALITIES OF THE
DECLARATION

Jefferson was chosen to draft the Declaration
because he was known to possess a "masterly
pen." There were perhaps other reasons, but
this was the chief one. When he came to Congress
in 1775, "he brought with him," says John
Adams, "a reputation for literature, science, and
a happy talent for composition. Writings of
his were handed about remarkable for the
peculiar felicity of expression."[1] Peculiar felicity
of expression — the very words which one would
perhaps choose to sum up the distinguishing
characteristics of Jefferson's style.

Like many men who write with felicity,
Jefferson was no orator. He rarely, if ever, made
a speech. "During the whole time I sat with
him in Congress," John Adams says, "I never
heard him utter three sentences together" —
that is, on the floor of Congress; in committees
and in conversation he was, on the
contrary, "prompt, frank, explicit, and decisive."[2]

It might seem that a man who can
write effectively should be able to speak effectively.
It sometimes happens. But one whose
ear is sensitive to the subtler, elusive harmonies
of expression, one who in imagination hears
the pitch and cadence and rhythm of the thing
he wishes to say before he says it, often makes
a sad business of public speaking because,
painfully aware of the imperfect felicity of
what has been uttered, he forgets what he
ought to say next. He instinctively wishes to
cross out what he has just said, and say it over
again in a different way — and this is what he
often does, to the confusion of the audience. In
writing he can cross out and rewrite at leisure,
as often as he likes, until the sound and the sense
are perfectly suited — until the thing composes.
The reader sees only the finished draft.

Not that Jefferson wrote with difficulty, constructing
his sentences with slow and painful
effort. One who, as an incident to a busy public
career, wrote so much and so well, must have
written with ease and rapidity. But Jefferson,
as the original drafts of his papers show, revised
and corrected his writings with care, seeking,
yet without wearing his soul threadbare
in the search, for the better word, the happier
phrase, the smoother transition. His style

has not indeed the achieved perfection, the impeccable
surface, of that of a master-craftsman
like Flaubert, or Walter Pater; but neither has
it the objectivity, the impersonal frigidity of
writing that is perhaps too curiously and deliberately
integrated, too consciously made.
Having something to say, he says it, with as
much art as may be, yet not solely for the art's
sake, aiming rather at the ease, the simplicity,
the genial urbanity of cultivated conversation.
The grace and felicity of his style have a distinctly
personal flavor, something Jeffersonian
in the implication of the idea, or in the beat
and measure of the words. Franklin had equal
ease, simplicity, felicity; but no one who knows
the writings of Franklin could attribute the
Declaration to him. Jefferson communicated
an undefinable yet distinctive quality to the
Declaration which makes it his.

The Declaration is filled with these felicities
of phrase which bear the stamp of Jefferson's
mind and temperament: a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind; more disposed to suffer,
while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves
by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed;
for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into
compliance with his measures; sent hither swarms
of officers to harrass our people and eat out their
substance; hold them as we hold the rest of man-

kind, enemies in war, in peace friends. There
are some sentences in the Declaration which
are more than felicitous. The closing sentence,
for example, is perfection itself. Congress
amended the sentence by including the phrase,
"with a firm reliance upon the protection of
divine Providence." It may be that Providence
always welcomes the responsibilities thrust upon
it in times of war and revolution; but personally,
I like the sentence better as Jefferson wrote it.
"And for the support of this Declaration we
mutually pledge to each other our lives, our
fortunes, and our sacred honor." It is true
(assuming that men value life more than
property, which is doubtful) that the statement
violates the rhetorical rule of climax; but it
was a sure sense that made Jefferson place
`lives' first and `fortunes' second. How much
weaker if he had written "our fortunes, our lives,
and our sacred honor"! Or suppose him to have
used the word `property' instead of `fortunes!'
Or suppose him to have omitted `sacred!'
Consider the effect of omitting any of the words,
such as the last two `ours' — "our lives, fortunes,
and sacred honor." No, the sentence
can hardly be improved.

There are probably more of these Jeffersonian
felicities in the Declaration than in any other
writing by him of equal length. Jefferson

realized that, if the colonies won their independence,
this would prove to be a public document
of supreme importance; and the Rough Draft
(which may not be the first one) bears ample
evidence of his search for the right word, the
right phrasing. In the opening sentence, not
at all bad as it originally stood, there are four
corrections. The first part of the second paragraph
seems to have given him much trouble.
The Rough Draft reads as follows:

When Jefferson submitted the draft to Adams
the only correction which he had made was to
write `self-evident' in place of `sacred & undeniable.'
It is interesting to guess why, on a
later reading, the other changes were made. I
suspect that he erased `& independent' because,
having introduced `self-evident,' he did not like
the sound of the two phrases both closing with
`dent.' The phrase `they are endowed by their
creator' is obviously much better than `from
that equal creation'; but this correction, as

he first wrote it, left an awkward wording:
`that they are endowed by their creator with
equal rights some of which are inherent &
inalienable among which are.' Too many `which
ares'; and besides, why suppose that some rights
given by the creator were inherent and some not?
Thus we get the form, which is so much stronger,
as well as more agreeable to the ear: `that
they are endowed by their creator with inherent
& inalienable rights.' Finally, why say `the
preservation of life'? If a man has a right to
life, the right to preserve life is manifestly
included.

Again, take the close of the last paragraph
but one. The Rough Draft gives the following
reading:

The phrase `to happiness & to glory' is better
than `to glory & happiness.' Placing "glory"
before "happiness" might imply that the first
aim of the colonists was glory, and that their
happiness would come as an incident to the
achievement of glory. What needed to be
expressed was the idea that the colonists were
defending the natural right to happiness, and
that the vindication of this inherent human

right would confer glory upon them. Did
Jefferson, in making the change, reason thus?
Probably not. Upon reading it over he doubtless
instinctively felt that by placing `happiness'
first and repeating the `to' he would take the
flatness out of a prosaic phrase. As for the
latter part of the sentence, Jefferson evidently
first wrote it: `climb it in a separate state.'
Not liking the word "state," he erased `state'
and `in a' and added `-ly' to `separate':
so that it read: `we will climb it separately.'
But no, on second thought, that is not much
better. `Climb it apart from them' — that
would do. So apparently it read when the
Declaration was adopted, since `climb' and not
`tread' is the reading of all but one of the copies,
including the text finally adopted. It may be
that Jefferson made the change during the debates
in Congress, and then thought better of
it, or neglected to get the change incorporated
in the final text. There is another correction
in the Rough Draft which does not appear in
the final form of the Declaration. "Our repeated
petitions have been answered only by
repeated injury" — so the Declaration reads;
but in the Rough Draft the `injury' has been
changed to `injuries.' This is manifestly better;
and as one can hardly suppose Congress
would have preferred `injury' to `injuries,' it is
probable that the change was made after the
Declaration was adopted. Jefferson had something
of the artist's love of perfection for its
own sake, the writer's habit of correcting a
manuscript even after it has been published.

Apart from the peculiar felicities of phrasing,
what strikes one particularly in reading
the Declaration as a whole is the absence of
declamation. Everything considered, the Declaration
is brief, free of verbiage, a model of clear,
concise, and simple statement. In 1856 Rufus
Choate referred to it as "that passionate and
eloquent manifesto," made up of "glittering
and sounding generalities of natural right."[3]
Eloquent the Declaration frequently is, in virtue
of a certain high seriousness with which
Jefferson contrived to invest what was ostensibly
a direct and simple statement of fact.
Of all words in the language, `passionate' is
the one which is least applicable to Jefferson or
to his writings. As to `generalities,' the Declaration
contains relatively few; and if those
few are `glittering and sounding' it is in their
substance and not in their form that they are
so. You may not believe.

You may not believe this; but if you do believe
it, as Jefferson and his contemporaries did, you
would find it difficult to say it more concisely;
in words more direct, simple, precise, and appropriate;
with less of passionate declamation,
of rhetorical magniloquence, or of verbal ornament.
The second paragraph of the Declaration
of Independence reminds one of Lincoln's
Gettysburg Address in its unimpassioned simplicity
of statement. It glitters as much, or as
little, as that famous document.

Logical sequence and structural unity are not
always essential to good writing; but the rambling
and discursive method would scarcely be
appropriate to a declaration of independence.
Jefferson's declaration, read casually, seems not
to possess a high degree of unity. Superficially

considered, it might easily strike one as
the result of an uneasy marriage of convenience
between an abstract philosophy of government
and certain concrete political grievances. But
in truth the Declaration is built up around a
single idea, and its various parts are admirably
chosen and skilfully disposed for the production
of a particular effect. The grievances against
the king occupy so much space that one is apt
to think of them as the main theme. Such is
not the case. The primary purpose of the
Declaration was to convince a candid world that
the colonies had a moral and legal right to separate
from Great Britain. This would be difficult
to do, however many and serious their grievances
might be, if the candid world was to suppose
that the colonies were politically subordinate to
the British government in the ordinary sense.
It is difficult to justify rebellion against established
political authority. Accordingly, the idea
around which Jefferson built the Declaration
was that the colonists were not rebels against
established political authority, but a free people
maintaining long established and imprescriptible
rights against a usurping king. The effect
which he wished to produce was to leave a
candid world wondering why the colonies had so
long submitted to the oppressions of this king.

The major premise from which this conclusion

is derived is that every `people' has a natural
right to make and unmake its own government;
the minor premise is that the Americans are a
`people' in this sense. In establishing themselves
in America, the people of the colonies
exercised their natural rights to frame governments
suited to their ideas and conditions;
but at the same time they voluntarily retained
a union with the people of Great Britain by
professing allegiance to the same king. From
this allegiance they might at any time have
withdrawn; if they had not so withdrawn it
was because of the advantages of being associated
with the people of Great Britain; if they now
proposed to withdraw, it was not because they
now any less than formerly desired to maintain
the ancient association, but because the king
by repeated and deliberate actions had endeavored
to usurp an absolute authority over
them contrary to every natural right and to
long established custom. The minor premise
of the argument is easily overlooked because
it is not explicitly stated in the Declaration —
at least not in its final form. To have stated
it explicitly would perhaps have been to bring
into too glaring a light certain incongruities between
the assumed premise and known historical
facts. The rôle of the list of grievances against
the king is to make the assumed premise emerge,
of its own accord as it were, from a carefully
formulated but apparently straightforward statement
of concrete historical events. From the
point of view of structural unity, the rôle which
the list of grievances plays in the Declaration
is a subordinate one; its part is to exhibit
the historical circumstances under which the
colonists, as a `free people,' had thrust upon
them the high obligation of defending the imprescriptible
rights of all men.

Although occupying a subordinate place in
the logical structure, the list of grievances is
of the highest importance in respect to the
total effect which the Declaration aims to
produce. From this point of view, the form
and substance of these paragraphs constitute
not the least masterly part of the Declaration.
It is true, books upon rhetoric warn the candidate
for literary honors at all hazards to avoid
monotony; he ought, they say, to seek a pleasing
variety by alternating long and short sentences;
and while they consider it correct to
develop a single idea in each paragraph, they
consider it inadvisable to make more than one
paragraph out of a single sentence. These are
no doubt good rules, for writing in general;
but Jefferson violated them all, perhaps because
he was writing something in particular. Of set
purpose, throughout this part of the Declaration,

he began each charge against the king with `he
has': `he has refused his assent'; `he has forbidden
his governors'; `he has refused to pass
laws'; `he has called together legislative bodies';
`he has refused for a long time.' As if fearing
that the reader might not after all notice this
oft-repeated `he has,' Jefferson made it still
more conspicuous by beginning a new paragraph
with each `he has.' To perform thus is not to
be `literary' in a genteel sense; but for the particular
purpose of drawing an indictment against
the king it served very well indeed. Nothing
could be more effective than these brief, crisp
sentences, each one the bare affirmation of a
malevolent act. Keep your mind on the king,
Jefferson seems to say; he is the man: `he
has refused'; `he has forbidden'; `he has combined';
`he has incited'; `he has plundered'; `he
has abdicated.' I will say he has.

These hard, incisive sentences are all the more
effective as an indictment of the king because
of the sharp contrast between them and the
paragraphs, immediately preceding and following,
in which Jefferson touches upon the
sad state of the colonists. In these paragraphs
there is something in the carefully chosen words,
something in the falling cadence of the sentences,
that conveys a mournful, almost a funereal, sense
of evils apprehended and long forefended but

now unhappily realized. Consider the phrases
which give tone and pitch to the first two paragraphs:
`when in the course of human events';
`decent respect to the opinions of mankind';
`all experience hath shewn'; `suffer while evils
are sufferable'; `forms to which they are accustomed';
`patient sufferance of these colonies';
`no solitary fact to contradict the uniform tenor
of the rest.' Such phrases skilfully disposed
have this result, that the opening passages of
the Declaration give one the sense of fateful
things impending, of hopes defeated and injuries
sustained with unavailing fortitude. The contrast
in manner is accentuated by the fact
that whereas the king is represented as exclusively
aggressive, the colonists are represented
as essentially submissive. In this drama the
king alone acts — he conspires, incites, plunders;
the colonists have the passive part, never lifting
a hand to burn stamps or destroy tea;
they suffer while evils are sufferable. It is a
high literary merit of the Declaration that by
subtle contrasts Jefferson contrives to conjure
up for us a vision of the virtuous and long-suffering
colonists standing like martyrs to
receive on their defenseless heads the ceaseless
blows of the tyrant's hand.

Like many men with a sense for style, Jefferson,
although much given to polishing and

correcting his own manuscripts, did not always
welcome changes which others might make.
Congress discussed his draft for three successive
days. What uncomplimentary remarks the
members may have made is not known; but
it is known that in the end certain paragraphs
were greatly changed and others omitted altogether.
These `depredations' — so he speaks of
them — Jefferson did not enjoy: but we may
easily console ourselves for his discomfiture
since it moved the humane Franklin to tell
him a story. Writing in 1818, Jefferson says:

Jefferson's colleagues were not so ruthless as
the friends of John Thompson; and on the whole
it must be said that Congress left the Declaration
better than it found it. The few verbal
changes that were made improved the phraseology,
I am inclined to think, in every case.

Where Jefferson wrote: "He has erected a
multitude of new offices by a self-assumed
power, and sent hither swarms of officers to
harrass our people and eat out their substance,"
Congress cut out the phrase, "by a self-assumed
power." Again, Jefferson's sentence,
"He has abdicated government here, withdrawing
his governors, and declaring us out of
his allegiance and protection," Congress changed
to read, "He has abdicated government here
by declaring us out of his protection and waging
war against us." Is not the phraseology of
Congress, in both cases, more incisive, and does
it not thus add something to that very effect
which Jefferson himself wished to produce?

Aside from merely verbal changes, Congress
rewrote the final paragraph, cut out the greater
part of the paragraph next to the last, and
omitted altogether the last of Jefferson's charges
against the king. The final paragraph as it
stands is certainly much stronger than in its
original form. The Declaration was greatly
strengthened by using, for the renunciation of
allegiance, the very phraseology of the resolution
of July 2, by which Congress had officially
decreed that independence which it was the
function of the Declaration to justify. It was
no doubt for this reason mainly that Congress
rewrote the paragraph; but the revision had

in addition the merit of giving to the final
paragraph, what such a paragraph especially
needed, greater directness and assurance. In
its final form, the Declaration closes with the
air of accepting the issue with confident decision.

In cutting out the greater part of the next to
the last paragraph, Congress omitted, among
other things, the sentence in which Jefferson
formulated, not directly indeed but by allusion,
that theory of the constitutional relation of the
colonies to Great Britain which is elsewhere
taken for granted: "We have reminded them
[our British brethren] . . . that in constituting
indeed our several forms of government, we had
adopted one common king; thereby laying a foundation
for perpetual league and amity with them;
but that submission to their parliament was no
part of our constitution, nor ever in idea, if
history may be credited." Perhaps the Declaration
would have been strengthened by including
an explicit formulation of this theory.
But if the theory was to be expressly formulated
at all, Jefferson was unfortunate both in the
form and in the order of the statement. Unfortunate
in the form, which is allusive, and in
the last phrase ambiguous — "Nor ever in idea,
if history may be credited." Unfortunate in
the order, because, if the theory was to be
expressly formulated at all, its formulation

should manifestly have preceded the list of
charges against the king. In general, this
paragraph, as originally written, leaves one with
the feeling that the author, not quite aware
that he is done, is beginning over again. In
the form adopted, it is an admirable brief prelude
to the closing paragraph.

The last of Jefferson's charges against the
king was what John Adams called the "vehement
philippic against negro slavery."[5]

Congress omitted this passage altogether. I
am glad it did. One does not expect a declaration
of independence to represent historical
events with the objectivity and exactitude of
a scientific treatise; but here the discrepancy
between the fact and the representation is too
flagrant. Expecially, in view of the subsequent
history of the slave trade, and of slavery itself,
without which there would have been no slave
trade, these charges against the king lose whatever
plausibility, slight enough at best, they
may have had at the time. But I have quoted
this passage in full once more, not on account
of its substance but on account of its form,
which is interesting, and peculiarly significant
in its bearing upon Jefferson's qualities and
limitations as a writer. John Adams thought
it one of the best parts of the Declaration.
It is possible that Jefferson thought so too.
He evidently gave much attention to the wording
of it. But to me, even assuming the charges
against the king to be true, it is the part of the

Declaration in which Jefferson conspicuously
failed to achieve literary excellence.

The reason is, I think, that in this passage
Jefferson attempted something which he was
temperamentally unfitted to achieve. The passage
was to have been the climax of the charges
against the king; on its own showing of facts
it imputes to him the most inhuman acts, the
basest motives; its purpose, one supposes, is to
stir the reader's emotions, to make him feel a
righteous indignation at the king's acts, a profound
contempt for the man and his motives.
Well, the passage is clear, precise, carefully
balanced. It employs the most tremendous
words — "murder," "piratical warfare," "prostituted,"
"miserable death." But in spite of
every effort, the passage somehow leaves us
cold; it remains, like all of Jefferson's writing,
calm and quiescent; it lacks warmth; it fails
to lift us out of our equanimity. There is in
it even (something rare indeed in Jefferson's
writings) a sense of labored effort, of deliberate
striving for an effect that does not come.

This curious effect, or lack of effect, is partly
due to the fact that the king's base actions
are presented to us in abstract terms. We are
not permitted to see George III. George III
does not repeal a statute of South Carolina in
order that Sambo may be sold at the port

of Charleston. No, the Christian king
wages "cruel war against human nature," he
prostitutes "his negative for the suppression of
every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain
this execrable commerce." We have never a
glimpse of poor dumb negroes gasping for breath
in the foul hold of a transport ship, or driven with
whips like cattle to labor in a fetid rice swamp;
what we see is human nature, and the "violation
of its most sacred rights in the persons of a
distant people." The thin vision of things
in the abstract rarely reaches the sympathies.
Few things are less moving than to gaze upon
the concept of miserable death, and it is possible
to contemplate "an assemblage of horrors
that wants no fact of distinguished die" without
much righteous indignation.

Yet the real reason lies deeper. It is of course
quite possible to invest a generalized statement
with an emotional quality. Consider the famous
passage from Lincoln's second Inaugural:

Compare this with Jefferson's

Making every allowance for difference in subject
and in occasion, these passages differ as
light differs from darkness. There is a quality of
deep feeling about the first, an indefinable something
which is profoundly moving; and this
something, which informs and enriches much
of Lincoln's writing, is rarely, almost never
present in the writing of Jefferson.

This something, which Jefferson lacked but
which Lincoln possessed in full measure, may
perhaps for want of a better term be called a
profoundly emotional apprehension of experience.
One might say that Jefferson felt with the

mind, as some people think with the heart. He
had enthusiasm, but it was enthusiasm engendered
by an irrepressible intellectual curiosity.
He was ardent, but his ardors were cool, giving
forth light without heat. One never feels with
Jefferson, as one does with Washington, that
his restraint is the effect of a powerful will
persistently holding down a profoundly passionate
nature. One has every confidence that
Jefferson will never lose control of himself, will
never give way to purifying rage, relieving his
overwrought feelings by an outburst of divine
swearing. All his ideas and sentiments seem of
easy birth, flowing felicitously from an alert
and expeditious brain rather than slowly and
painfully welling up from the obscure depths of
his nature. "I looked for gravity," says Maclay,
giving his first impressions of Jefferson, "but
a laxity of manner seemed shed about him. He
spoke almost without ceasing; but even his discourse
partook of his personal demeanor. It
was loose and rambling; and yet he scattered
information wherever he went, and some even
brilliant sentiments sparkled from him."

Jefferson's writing is much like that — a ceaseless
flow, sparkling, often brilliant, a kind of
easy improvisation. There are in his writings
few of those ominous overtones charged with
emotion, and implying more than is expressed.

Sometimes, indeed, by virtue of a certain facility,
a certain complacent optimism, by virtue of saying
disputed things in such a pleasant way, his
words imply even less than they mean. When,
for example, Jefferson says "the tree of liberty
must be refreshed from time to time with the
blood of patriots and tyrants," so far from making
us shudder, he contrives to throw about this
unlovely picture a kind of arcadian charm. You
will hardly think of Jefferson, with lifted hand
and vibrant voice, in the heat of emotion striking
off the tremendous sentence, "Give me
liberty or give me death!" I can imagine him
saying, "Manly spirit bids us choose to die freemen
rather than to live slaves." The words
would scarcely lift us out of our seats, however
we might applaud the orator for his peculiar
felicity of expression.

Felicity of expression — certainly Jefferson
had that; but one wonders whether he did not
perhaps have too much of it. This sustained
felicity gives one at times a certain feeling of
insecurity, as of resting one's weight on something
fragile. Jefferson's placidity, the complacent
optimism of his sentiments and ideas,
carry him at times perilously near the fatuous.
One would like more evidence that the iron had
some time or other entered his soul, more evidence
of his having profoundly reflected upon the

enigma of existence, of having more deeply felt
its tragic import, of having won his convictions
and his optimisms and his felicities at the expense
of some painful travail of the spirit.
What saved Jefferson from futility was of course
his clear, alert intelligence, his insatiable curiosity,
his rarely failing candor, his loyalty to
ideas, his humane sympathies. Yet we feel that
his convictions, his sympathies, his ideas are
essentially of the intellect, somehow curiously
abstracted from reality, a consciously woven
drapery laid over the surface of a nature essentially
aristocratic, essentially fastidious, instinctively
shrinking from close contact with men
and things as they are.

Not without reason was Jefferson most at
home in Paris. By the qualities of his mind
and temperament he really belonged to the
philosophical school, to the Encyclopaedists,
those generous souls who loved mankind by
virtue of not knowing too much about men,
who worshipped reason with unreasoning faith,
who made a religion of Nature while cultivating
a studied aversion for `enthusiasm,' and
strong religious emotion. Like them, Jefferson,
in his earlier years especially, impresses
one as being a radical by profession. We
often feel that he defends certain practices and
ideas, that he denounces certain customs or

institutions, not so much from independent
reflection or deep-seated conviction on the particular
matter in hand as because in general
these are the things that a philosopher and
a man of virtue ought naturally to defend or
denounce. It belonged to the eighteenth-century
philosopher, as a matter of course, to
apostrophize Nature, to defend Liberty, to
denounce Tyranny, perchance to shed tears at
the thought of a virtuous action. It was always
in character for him to feel the degradation of
Human Nature when confronted with the idea
of Negro Slavery.

This academic accent, as of ideas and sentiments
belonging to a system, of ideas uncriticized
and sentiments no more than conventionally
felt, is what gives a labored and perfunctory
effect to Jefferson's famous `philippic against
Negro slavery.' Adams described it better
than he knew. It is indeed a philippic; it is
indeed vehement; but it is not moving. It
is such a piece as would be expected of a `philosopher'
on such an occasion. We remain calm
in reading it because Jefferson, one cannot but
think, remained calm in writing it. For want
of phrases charged with deep feeling, he resorts
to italics, vainly endeavoring to stir the reader
by capitalizing and underlining the words that
need to be stressed — a futile device, which

serves only to accentuate the sense of artifice
and effort, and, in the case of `the Christian
king of Great Britain,' introduces the wholly
incongruous note of snarling sarcasm, reminding
us for all the world of Shylock's `these be
the Christian husbands.' Jefferson apprehended
the injustice of slavery; but one is inclined to
ask how deeply he felt it.

It may be said that Jefferson touches the
emotions as little in other parts of the Declaration
as in the philippic on slavery. That is
in great measure true; but in the other parts
of the Declaration, which have to do for the
most part with an exposition of the constitutional
rights of the colonies, or with a categorical
statement of the king's violations of
these rights, the appeal is more properly to the
mind than to the heart; and it was in appealing
to the reader's mind, of course, that Jefferson
was at his best. Taking the Declaration as a
whole, this is indeed its conspicuous quality: it
states clearly, reasons lucidly, exposes felicitously;
its high virtue is in this, that it makes a
strong bid for the reader's assent. But it was
beyond the power of Jefferson to impregnate
the Declaration with qualities that would give
to the reader's assent the moving force of profound
conviction. With all its precision, its
concise rapidity, its clarity, its subtle implications

and engaging felicities, one misses a certain
unsophisticated directness, a certain sense
of impregnable solidity and massive strength,
a certain effect of passion restrained and deep
convictions held in reserve, which would have
given to it that accent of perfect sincerity and
that emotional content which belong to the
grand manner.

The Declaration has not the grand manner —
that passion under control which lifts prose to
the level of true poetry. Yet it has, what is
the next best thing, a quality which saves it
from falling to the prosaic. It has elevation.
I have said that Franklin had, equally with
Jefferson, clarity, simplicity, precision, felicity.
If Franklin had written the Declaration it would
have had all of these qualities; but Franklin
would have communicated to it something
homely and intimate and confidential, some
smell of homespun, some air of the tavern or
the print shop. Franklin could not, I think,
have written this sentence:

Or this one:

Or this:

These sentences may not be quite in the grand
manner; but they have a high seriousness, a
kind of lofty pathos which at least lift the Declaration
to the level of a great occasion. These
qualities Jefferson was able to communicate to
his writing by virtue of possessing a nature
exquisitely sensitive, and a mind finely tempered;
they illustrate, in its subtler forms, what John
Adams called his `peculiar felicity of expression.'