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The two principal writers (Jefferson the author and Adams the orator) of the Declaration died on its fiftieth anniversary. This has become a sort of cute, trivial point to us two hundred years later. But to the Americans of the day, it was astounding, surely confirmation that God smiled upon the Declaration and upon America.

Author’s Note: Dear Reader, please note, this was a lecture offered at Hillsdale College on October 29, 2024, and some parts of this essay—such as the timeline right in the middle—was to aid the listener. Additionally, I have kept all of the original spellings—many of which are downright archaic. Just know, they’re not typos.

Before I begin my talk, let me note that I was surprised to be asked to write a book on the Declaration of Independence. I have written on the American founding before—specifically a biography of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence—but that was fifteen years ago. Most of my published work has been biographical rather than thematic. But, on the last day of the spring semester, I got a call from the American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. They are, it turns out, the oldest think tank in America. They’ve published several great books, but they’re completely rebooting their press, and they want this book, The Declaration at 250, to be the first of the reboot. So, my manuscript is due to the press October 31, 2025. If you’re counting, that means I have just another 367 days to get it done.

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Let me offer eleven (in honor of Spinal Tap) interesting tidbits. Some of which are well known and some of which aren’t.

First, when the Second Continental Congress passed the Declaration of Independence they actually performed a beautiful and bizarre ritual. After the vote, they took a crown—to represent the king—and they placed it on the Congress’s copy of the bible; they then divided the crown into thirteen parts.

Second, by the time Congress passed the Declaration of Independence, there were already about 75-90 independent declarations passed in America. These were passed by communities, counties, townships, fire departments, Presbyterian churches, Grand Juries, etc. In other words, Congress was late in coming to the game. But, unquestionably, the national Declaration of Congress unified the American people.

Third, John Adams was very jealous of Thomas Jefferson’s role in the Declaration. “We whigs attempted somewhat of the kind. The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that… [in original] and all the glory of it.” John Adams to Benjamin Rush, June 21, 1811, in The Spur of Fame: Dialogues of John Adams and Benjamin Rush, 1805-1813, ed. by John A. Schutz and Douglass Adair (1966; Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2001), 197.

Amazingly enough, between 1776 and 1822, Americans still debated whether Jefferson or Adams was the primary author. It didn’t become widely accepted that Jefferson was the primary author (or draftsman, as they then said). John Adams finally ended the question in 1822 in a letter to an arch Federalist and extreme anti-jeffersonian by the name of Timothy Pickering.

Here’s a very long, but extremely interesting, quotation from that letter (arguably the best source we have regarding this whole subject).

“You enquire why so young a man as Jefferson was placed at the head of the Committee for preparing a declaration of Independence? I answer, it was the Frankfort advice, to place Virginia at the head of everything. Mr: Richard Henry Lee, might be gone to Virginia, to his sick family, for aught I know, but that was not the reason of Mr: Jefferson’s appointment. There were three Committees appointed at the same time. One for the declaration of Independence; another for preparing Articles of Confederation; and another for preparing a Treaty to be proposed to France. Mr Lee was chosen for the Committee of confederation, and it was not thought convenient that the same person should be upon both. Mr Jefferson came into Congress in June 1775. and brought with him a reputation for literature, science, and a happy talent at composition. Writings of his were handed about remarkable for the peculiar felicity of expression. Though a silent member in Congress, he was so prompt, frank, explicit and decisive upon Committees, not even Saml Adams was more so, that he soon seized upon my heart, and upon this occasion I gave him my vote and did all in my power to procure the votes of others. I think he had one more vote than any other, and that placed him at the head of the Committee. I had the next highest number and that placed me the second. The Committee met, discussed the subject, and then appointed Mr: Jefferson & me to make the draught; I suppose, because we were the two highest on the list. The Sub-Committee met; Jefferson proposed to me to make the draught. I said I will not; You shall do it. Oh No! Why will you not? You ought to do it. I will not. Why? Reasons enough. What can be your reasons? Reason 1st. You are a Virginian, and Virginia ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason 2d. I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular; You are very much otherwise. Reason 3d: You can write ten times better than I can. “Well,” said Jefferson, “if you are decided I will do as well as I can.” Very well, when you have drawn it up we will have a meeting. A meeting we accordingly had and conn’d the paper over. I was delighted with its high tone, and the flights of Oratory with which it abounded, especially that concerning Negro Slavery, which though I knew his Southern Bretheren would never suffer to pass in Congress, I certainly never would oppose. There were other expressions, which I would not have inserted if I had drawn it up; particularly that which called the King a Tyrant. I thought this too personal, for I never believed George to be a tyrant in disposition and in nature; I always believed him to be deceived by his Courtiers on both sides the Atlantic, and in his Official capacity only, Cruel.

I thought the expression too passionate and too much like scolding for so grave and solemn a document; but as Franklin and Sherman were to inspect it afterwards, I thought it would not become me to strike it out. I consented to report it and do not now remember that I made or suggested a single alteration. We reported it to the Committee of Five. It was read and I do not remember that Franklin or Sherman criticized any thing. We were all in haste; Congress was impatient and the Instrument was reported, as I believe in Jefferson’s hand writing as he first drew it. Congress cut off about a quarter part of it, as I expected they would, but they obliterated some of the best of it and left all that was exceptionable, if any thing in it was. I have long wondered that the Original draft has not been published. I suppose the reason is the vehement Phillipic against Negro Slavery. As you justly observe, there is not an idea in it, but what had been hackney’d in Congress for two years before. The substance of it is contained in the declaration of rights and the violation of those rights, in the Journals of Congress in 1774. Indeed, the essence of it is contained in a pamphlet, voted and printed by the Town of Boston before the first Congress met; composed by James Otis, as I suppose—in one of his lucid intervals, and pruned and polished by Saml: Adams.

If there is any other Question, that you wish to ask me, as long as my memory lasts, and I can procure an Amanuensis as good as the present, to answer you will give great pleasure to him, who is your Friend & Humble Servt”

Sorry, that was long, but, I think, incredibly important.

Fourth, American troops had to take a loyalty oath to the Declaration immediately after its passage, especially since it was sent immediately to George Washington.

“Thus a contemporary report in August 1776 noted that when the Declaration was first read out to the Continental troops at Ticonderoga, in western Pennsylvania, ‘the language of every man’s countenance was, ‘Now we are a people! We have a name among the states of this world!’ The first loyalty oath issued by the new United States similarly asked officials to ‘acknowledge the UNITED STATES of AMERICA to be Free, Independent and Sovereign States, and declare that the people thereof owed no allegiance or obedience to George the Third, King of Great Britain.’” David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 17-18. Tied to this, footnote 30 on pg. 253, the oath was as follows: “I [blank] do acknowledge the UNITED STATES of AMERICA to be Free, Independent and Sovereign States.”

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Let me pause here and give a brief timeline.

1774

“Without Jefferson’s knowledge they had the manuscript published with the title A Summery View of the Rights of British America. The Summery View laid the foundation of Jefferson’s Revolutionary reputation and was his most cogent and detailed examination of colonial rights before 1776. In some ways, the Summary View is more representative of Jefferson’s political thinking than the Declaration of Independence.” (Colbourn, Lamp of Experience, 197)

“’The New England Governments,’ he [GIII] wrote Lord North on November 18, 1774, ‘are in a state of rebellion’ and ‘blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent.’” (Maier, American Scripture, 23)

November 30, 1774: King opens Parliament with declaration that Mass. In rebellion. (Maier, American Scripture, 23)

1775

February 1775: “Parliament declared that Massachusetts was in a state of rebellion supported by illegal combinations in other colonies.” (Maier, American Scripture, 23)

May 10, 1775: convening of Second Continental Congress. Were to meet after First Continental Congress “only if Britain had not redressed the Americans’ grievances.” (Maier, American Scripture, 3)

June 1775—Jefferson writes Causes and Necessity of Their Taking Up Arms. Seriously revised by John Dickinson, Congress approves on July 6, 1775.

July 8, 1775—John Dickinson offers his Olive Branch Petition.

August 25, 1775, TJ, in a private letter, wants reunion with GB. (Maier, American Scripture, 21)

October 26, 1775: King to/in Parliament claims that Americans hoping to create independent empire.  “Jefferson was deeply disturbed by George III’s address to Parliament in October 1775, a speech in which the King claimed for Britain complete credit for the establishment and survival of the American colonies.” (Colbourn, Lamp of Experience, 202)

1776

January 5, 1776: New Hampshire constitution written/passed. Political theorist Donald Lutz claimed this was the “first constitution of an independent state” (Lutz, ORIGINS, 114). Has five of the later DOI’s 28 charges.

January 8, 1776—Congress learns of King George’s October speech to Parliament. (Maier, American Scripture, 27)

January 9, 1776—Philadelphia printer, Robert Bell, offers for sale copies of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. (Maier, American Scripture, 31)

John Adams writes THOUGHTS ON GOVERNMENT (1776) as a reaction to the governmental proposals put forth by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (see Maier, American Scripture, 34). It should be noted that both John Adams and John Quincy Adams absolutely despised Thomas Paine.

February: “Within a year, [James] Wilson had been elevated to the Second Continental Congress, where he and his colleagues decided they were ready to fight the just fight for ‘the virtuous Principles of our Ancestors.’ In ‘an address to the inhabitants of the United Colonies’ drafted in February 1776, give months before the Declaration of Independence, Wilson argued that ‘history, we believe, cannot furnish an Example of Trust, higher and more important than that which we have received from your hands . . . . The Calamities which threaten us would be attended with the total Loss of those Constitution, formed upon the venerable Model of British Liberty, which have long been our Pride and Felicity. To avert those Calamities we are under the disagreeable Necessity of making temporary Deviations from those Constitutions.’ George III ‘should be the Ruler of a free People,’ and not ‘be degraded into a Tyrant over Slaves.’

Denying that independence was their goal, Wilson and his fellow congressmen declared ‘that what we aim at, and what we are entrusting [the people] to pursue, is the Defence and Re-establishment of the constitutional rights of the Colonies.’ [An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, February 13, 1776]

“But the fight to preserve ‘the constitutional rights of the Colonies’ within the empire failed. Even before Wilson’s address was drafted, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense pressed for a more radical solution, and Wilson’s address was tabled by Congress.” (Colbourn, Lamp of Experience, 151)

March 26 1776: South Carolina adopts second revolutionary state constitution.

April 12, 1776: North Carolina tells its reps to Second Continental Congress to declare independence (Maier, American Scripture, 63)

May 10, 1776, Second Continental Congress asks states to re-write their constitutions to prepare for Independence.

May 10, 1776: Mass asks each town to debate independence. (Maier, American Scripture, 59)

May 15, 1776, Congress approves radical “Preface”—written by J.A., Richard Henry Lee, and Edward Rutledge—to accompany May 10 resolution. (Maier, American Scripture, 37)

June 6, 1776: “The phraseology of the Declaration greatly resembles the preamble to the Virginia Constitution, adopted in June 1776, especially in the list of abuses by the king. The other document upon which Jefferson drew was probably George Mason’s Declaration of Rights, which was first published on June 6, 1776, and widely reproduced.” (Lutz, ORIGINS, 120)

June 7—Richard Henry Lee introduces resolution from Virginian to SCC calling for independence. Debated over course of days and weeks.

June 11, 1776—Second Continental Congress appoints Declaration drafting committee (Maier, American Scripture, 99)

June 29, 1776: Virginia adopts third revolutionary state constitution.

[“South Carolina, Virginia, and New Hampshire, among them, gave twenty-four of the twenty-eight charges” in the DOI. (Lutz, ORIGINS, 115)]

June 29, 1776—newspaper letter by “Republicus” used, for the first time, “USA.” (Maier, American Scripture, 44)

July 1776

“The first publication of the Declaration of Independence in book form took place early in July 1776. It was an integral part of a little volume prepared by one ‘Demophilus’ entitled The Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon, or English Constitution.” (Colbourn, Lamp of Experience, 233; The Genuine Principles were published by Robert Bell in Philadelphia sometime between July 8 and 15th. Demophilus also wrote for the Pennsylvania Gazette, March 19, 1777)

July 6, 1776: Maryland has its own Declaration (didn’t know of the federal one at this point).

July 8—SCC sends DOI to American delegate, Silas Deane, in Paris. (Maier, American Scripture, 130)

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Fifth, as just noted the very first public printing of the Declaration of Independence had a very long preface entitled “The Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon, or English Constitution” written by “Demophilus” who was probably George Bryan, a radical whig from Pennsylvania.

In it, Demophilus claimed the origins of the Declaration to go back to the year 450 in the Anglo-Saxon meetings of the Witan (Parliament or Congress), when the Anglo-Saxon met under oak trees (to symbolize justice under Thor) to make their laws. The Declaration, according to this argument, was just one more moment in the history of “The Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon, or English Constitution.”

GOVERNMENT may be considered, a deposite of the power of society in certain hands, whose business it is to restrain, and in some cases to take off such members of the community as disturb the quiet and destroy the security of the honest and peaceable subject. This government is founded in the nature of man, and is the 〈…〉 of civil society; “yet such is the thist of power in most men, that they will sacrifice heaven and earth to wrest it from its foundation; to establish a power in themselves to tyrannize over the per∣sons and properties of others.” To prevent this, let every article of the constitution or sett of fun∣damental rules by which even the supreme power of the state shall be governed, be formed by a convention of the delegates of the people, ap∣pointed for that express purpose: which constitu∣tion shall neither be added to, diminished from, nor altered in any respect by any power besides the power which first framed it. By this means an effectual bar will be opposed to those enter∣prizing spirits, who have told us with much assurance, that after the people had made their annual or septennial offering, they had no more to do with government than their cattle.

Further, Demophilus notes, THE best constructed civil government that was devised, having but a poor chance for duration, unless it be defended by arms, against external force as well as internal conspiracies of bad men, it will be the next concern of the conven∣tion, to put the colony militia on the most re∣spectable footing.

THE Militia is the natural support of a government, founded on the authority of the people only.

AND to render both the people and the government, perfectly free from any jealousy of each other, it seems proper that the associators should have the choice of all officers immediately commanding them, inclusive of their respective captains—that deputations from a convenient number of companies, consisting both of officers and privates, should ballot for their field officers, and that the legislature should appoint every general officer.

AND at length, to come to that dangerous, but necessary engine of state, a standing army, whose operations must be conducted with all possible secrecy and dispatch; and for that reason, must be entrusted in few hands; I would pro∣pose that a committee of three gentlemen be chosen by joint ballot of the governor, council, and assembly, to be called the committee of war; and to have the conducting of all military affairs, under the direction of the governor and privy council, to whom in matters of great importance, they should always have recourse: but being competent in lesser matters, business would be less subject to delay. This committee being the joint choice of the whole legislature, and by them removeable annually, or at any time, on conviction of misbehaviour, would have a sufficient confidence placed in them, and yet no power that might become dangerous to the liberty of the people.

WHILE all kinds of governmental power reverts annually to the people, there can be little danger of their liberty. Because no maxim was ever more true than that, WHERE ANNUAL ELECTION ENDS, SLAVERY BEGINS.

Whether Demophilus is correct or not, it’s hard not to place the Declaration in line of Anglo-Saxon liberties (however mythical and imagined), especially given Thomas Jefferson’s many other writings, especially those leading up to the DOI. In particular, I think of his Summary View from 1774, which brought him continental-wide attention and directly led to him being chosen to write the Declaration:

“To remind him that our ancestors, before their emigration to America, were the free inhabitants of the British dominions in Europe, and possessed a right which nature has given to all men, of departing from the country in which chance, not choice, has placed them, of going in quest of new habitations, and of there establishing new societies, under such laws and regulations as to them shall seem most likely to promote public happiness. That their Saxon ancestors had, under this universal law, in like manner left their native wilds and woods in the north of Europe, had possessed themselves of the island of Britain, then less charged with inhabitants, and had established there that system of laws which has so long been the glory and protection of that country. Nor was ever any claim of superiority or dependence asserted over them by that mother country from which they had migrated; and were such a claim made, it is believed that his majesty’s subjects in Great Britain have too firm a feeling of the rights derived to them from their ancestors, to bow down the sovereignty of their state before such visionary pretensions. And it is thought that no circumstance has occurred to distinguish materially the British from the Saxon emigration. America was conquered, and her settlements made, and firmly established, at the expence of individuals, and not of the British public. Their own blood was spilt in acquiring lands for their settlement, their own fortunes expended in making that settlement effectual; for themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have right to hold. Not a shilling was ever issued from the public treasures of his majesty, or his ancestors, for their assistance, till of very late times, after the colonies had become established on a firm and permanent footing.”

Sixth, though there had been 75-90 local declarations in the 13 colonies prior to the national DOI, our national DOI was the first such declaration. “By the time Jefferson called the Declaration ‘an instrument pregnant with… the fate of the world’ in 1826 (we’ll get to this in a moment), it had already been joined by some twenty other declarations of independence from Northern and Southern Europe, the Caribbean, and Spanish America. Now, more than two centuries since 1776, over half the countries of the world have their own declarations of independence” David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3.

“More than one hundred declarations of independence have been issued since 1776” David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 20.

Seventh, Thomas Jefferson claimed, as did John Adams above, that there was nothing new in the DOI.

Famously, he wrote in May 1825: but with respect to our rights and the acts of the British government contravening those rights, there was but one opinion on this side of the water. all American whigs thought alike on these subjects. when forced therefore to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. this was the object of the Declaration of Independence. not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject; […] terms so plain and firm, as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independant stand we […] compelled to take. neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the american mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. all it’s authority rests then on the harmonising sentiments of the day, whether expressed, in conversations, in letters, printed essays or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney Etc. the historical documents which you mention as in your possession, ought all to be found, and I am persuaded you will find, to be corroborative of the facts and principles advanced in that Declaration.

He had said something quite similar to James Madison in 1823, just two years earlier. “Pickering’s observations, and mr Adams’s in addition, ‘that it contained no new ideas, that it is a commonplace compilation, it’s sentiments hacknied in Congress for two years before, and it’s essence contained in Otis’s pamphlet,’ may all be true. of that I am not to be the judge. Richd H. Lee charged it as copied from Locke’s Treatise on government. Otis’s pamphlet I never saw, & whether I had gathered my ideas from reading or reflection I do not know. I know only that I turned to neither book or pamphlet while writing it. I did not consider it as any part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether & to offer no sentiment which had ever been expressed before. had mr Adams been so restrained, Congress would have lost the benefit of his bold and impressive advocations of the rights of revolution. for no man’s confident & fervid addresses, more than mr Adams’s, encoraged and supported us thro’ the difficulties surrounding us, which, like the ceaseless action of gravity, weighed on us by night and by day. yet, on the same ground, we may ask what of these elevated thoughts was new, or can be affirmed never before to have entered the conceptions of man? Whether also the sentiments of independence, and the reasons for declaring it which make so great a portion of the instrument had been hacknied in Congress for two years before the 4th of July 76. or this dictum also of mr Adams be another slip of memory, let history say. this however I will say for mr Adams, that he supported the declaration with zeal & ability, fighting fearlessly for every word of it. as to myself, I thought it a duty to be, on that occasion, a passive auditor of the opinions of others. more impartial judges than I could be, of it’s merits or demerits.”

Further, he said: “The object was to assert, not to discover truths, and to make them the basis of the Revolutionary act. The merit of the draught therefore could only consist in a lucid enunciation of human rights, in a condensed enumeration of the reasons for such an exercise of them, and in a style & tone appropriate to the great occasion, & to the spirit of the American people.”

Seventh, Thomas Jefferson was really, really proud to have been the author of the Declaration.

In one of his final letters (mythologized as his final letter—which is incorrect), Jefferson wrote that the DOI had to do with the changes of the world. Famously, he noted:

“The kind invitation I recieve from you on the part of the citizens of the city of Washington, to be present with them at their celebration of the 50th anniversary of American independence; as one of the surviving signers of an instrument, pregnant with our own, and the fate of the world, is most flattering to myself, and heightened by the honorable accompaniment proposal for the comfort of such a journey. it adds sensibly to the sufferings of sickness, to be deprived by it of a personal participation in the rejoicings of that day. but acquiescence is a duty, under circumstances not placed among those we are permitted to controul. I should indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there, congratulations personally, with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us, on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make, for our country, between submission, or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made. may it be to the world what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all.) the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which Monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings & security of self government. the form which we have substituted restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. all eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man. the general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born, with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god. these are grounds of hope for others. for ourselves let the annual return of this day, for ever refresh our recollections of these rights and an undiminished devotion to them.”

To be sure, this was NOT TJ’s last letter. His last letter dealt with replenishing his wine cellar.

Eighth, in the original version, Thomas Jefferson demolished slavery!

“he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights 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: 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, & 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.”

Ninth, no American really knew that Thomas Jefferson was the author of the Declaration until George Wythe, Jefferson’s law professor, was murdered in 1806. He was poisoned. When investigated, it was found that he had an original copy of the Declaration among his affects, written by Jefferson.

Tenth and finally, it’s worth remembering that TJ and JA died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary. Let me state this again, the two principal writers (Jefferson the author and Adams the orator) of the Declaration died on its fiftieth anniversary. This has become a sort of cute, trivial point to us two hundred years later. But to the Americans of the day, it was astounding, surely confirmation that God smiled upon the Declaration and upon America.

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The featured image is “Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776” (1932) by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.


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