I have not yet seen Gary Wills’ renowned study of the Declaration. But I did read Carl Becker’s work on the same subject when I was a kid. I have made a small reputation by trying to show the global origins of the democratic idea, as opposed to the connect-the-dots Greece-Rome-Britain-America sequence that is still a major component of the currently confused understanding of democracy. However, that doesn’t mean that I consider documents like the Declaration to be unimportant. Far from it. It was so important, in fact, that minor variations in its phrasing would have made a profound difference in the subsequent history, not only of the United States, but of the world. Because the Declaration was in the pocket, so to speak, of every American, it could have repercussions, and utility, far beyond any philosophical essay. Frederick Douglas, whose character and intellect make most of the more famous thinkers of the 19th century seem puny by comparison, wrote movingly of the impact its wording had on him. When you are a plantation slave, as Douglas was, the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” are not just a snappy slogan. They are hope, enlightenment, destiny, righteous anger, humanity, solace, and conciliation compounded in a single sentence. That sentence is important to anyone who wishes to free themself from slavery, and is a precious gem in humanity’s strongbox, not just for Americans.
So it’s interesting to compare Jefferson’s first draft with the final article. The first version follows the conventions of mid-eighteenth-century prose more closely. It is said that Thomas Paine had some influence on the revision, and it does shift to blunter, more Quakerish phrasing that would seem unusual in a cultured Virginian like Jefferson. But I think it more likely that Jefferson realized he was thinking in a new way, and that it had to be said in a new way. The first version is a product of a writer to be read in a book. The final version is a product of a man tapping a moral dimension of the universe. The sad thing is that Jefferson himself could not live up to his own inspiration. The man who did more than anyone except John Woolman to lay down the moral argument against slavery himself kept slaves. It is true that the Virginia legislature, fearful of his example, had declared that if Jefferson attempted to free his slaves, they would be seized and sold to other, doubtless crueler masters, but Jefferson, being an undoubted genius, could surely have devised some stratagem to circumvent this. No, it was just another sad case of a brilliant intellect capable of imagining, but not of doing what reason demands.
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