By Ken Bridges, Texas History Minute
This is part 1 in a two-part series.
The success of the American Revolution came from the hard work and bloodshed of thousands of people. Behind the scenes, legislators and diplomats worked to fund the armies and rally the people. Of those men and women, of all faiths, races and economic backgrounds, it was the words of one man that defined the cause and announced to the world that America had become an independent nation.
Lawyer, scholar, legislator, inventor, scientist and diplomat Thomas Jefferson became that man with his work on the Declaration of Independence during the fateful summer of 1776.
Thomas Jefferson was born in Virginia in April 1743. He was the third of 10 children. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a surveyor and wealthy planter who made sure his children received classical educations. Thomas excelled academically and eventually became fluent in five languages, including Latin, Greek and French. He also excelled in science and mathematics and developed lifelong interests in architecture, astronomy and geology.
In 1757, his father died. At just 14 years old, Jefferson inherited more than 2,700 acres and assumed responsibility for helping care for his mother. In 1760, he enrolled at the College of William and Mary, graduating just two years later. He then studied law under George Wythe, one of Virginia’s most respected legal scholars, who would later serve as a judge and delegate to the Continental Congress.
Jefferson was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1767. Two years later, he was elected to the colonial legislature. He built a respected law practice, handling some of the colony’s most prominent cases and even representing enslaved people suing for their freedom.
In 1768, Jefferson began building Monticello, the mansion he designed himself and which remains one of America’s best-known historic homes. He married Martha Skelton in 1772. The couple had five children, though only two daughters survived to adulthood.
As a legislator, Jefferson became increasingly critical of British rule. In 1774, he helped push a resolution through the Virginia legislature calling for a boycott of British goods in response to the Intolerable Acts. He later published A Summary View of the Rights of British America, defending the colonies’ right to self-government while arguing for limits on the authority of the king.
Jefferson traveled to Philadelphia in 1775 as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress. By the following year, as fighting spread throughout the colonies, independence appeared inevitable.
In June 1776, Congress appointed a committee of five to draft a formal declaration explaining why the colonies were separating from Great Britain. The committee consisted of Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston. Although all contributed ideas, the responsibility for writing the document fell primarily to Jefferson.
Jefferson agonized over the wording for weeks, drawing heavily upon the political philosophy of English thinker John Locke, whose writings argued that governments exist to protect the natural rights of the people and that Britain’s government had failed in that duty.
Congress voted to declare independence on July 2, 1776, but approved the Declaration of Independence itself on July 4 as British forces prepared to invade New York.
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” Jefferson wrote.
It was a sentence that would come to define the United States and its aspirations. Over the next 250 years, those words would inspire revolutions, independence movements and social reform efforts around the world.
The declaration that “all men are created equal” was a radical concept in 1776, especially within a British society built upon rigid social classes. It asserted that certain rights existed beyond the reach of kings, legislatures and governments. It declared that freedom belonged to the people and that government existed to protect those rights. Freedom and the consent of the governed would become the guiding principles of the new nation.
Jefferson would later write, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” He understood that free societies are governed by imperfect people. Yet he believed those people should have the opportunity to strive each day to become better than they were before, limited not by where they were born or who they were, but only by the boundaries of their own imagination.
Jefferson detailed 27 grievances against King George III and the British government, documenting repeated violations of the colonists’ rights. Contrary to popular belief, taxation appeared only once among those complaints. It stood alongside grievances over dissolving colonial legislatures, denying jury trials and imposing martial law.
Jefferson also criticized what he viewed as the pettiness of the king and Parliament, condemning their attacks on colonists “For opposing with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.”
His original draft also condemned the British slave trade, but Congress removed that passage to secure support from delegates representing the southern colonies.
Though Jefferson himself owned enslaved people, he repeatedly expressed moral unease about slavery throughout his writings. It became one of the great contradictions of his life. He never fully reconciled the ideals he wrote into the Declaration with the institution from which he personally benefited.
The Declaration concluded with the delegates pledging “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
The long and difficult war for independence still lay ahead. So too did the remarkable public career of Thomas Jefferson and the enduring legacy of the nation he helped bring into existence.