Thomas Jefferson did not decide out of the clear blue one day in 1776 to write the Declaration of Independence. Even before the Second Continental Congress convened in May 1775, the idea of America separating from its imperial overlords in London was swirling in the political air.
So, after a year of often spirited debate, on June 11, 1776, Congress appointed a five-member committee to write a formal statement; Jefferson was assigned to do it.
We often hear Jefferson called a hypocritical phony because his bold words that “all men are created equal” did not square with his personal ownership of slaves. But we look at history through our struggles, not those that Jefferson faced in his day.
What men did Jefferson mean? What men were created equal? Jefferson was not writing abstract philosophy; Jefferson was using enlightenment philosophy to write practical politics. He borrowed ideas and phrases from European savants and from his own American colleagues to make a case that both Britain’s King and Parliament, and the people of the 13 British North American colonies could understand.
The men whom Jefferson deemed equal were the Americans developing a growing national confidence that they were the equals of their customarily regarded superiors in London.
After he set the stage for independence, Jefferson listed the “injuries and usurpations” which made the Americans unequal; which made them enslaved. He then declared “these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States….”
In doing so, he freed the colonial Americans from their inferiority complex, as well as their “political bands” in relation to England’s previously accepted superiority.
The Declaration of Independence had done exactly what Congress wanted it to do. Even better, Thomas Jefferson had written the most enlightened document the world had ever seen.
Paul M. Craig
Northampton