In this post below, I mentioned the fact that Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence, had the words “sacred and undeniable” instead of what is now there: “self-evident”: “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable …”
The stories of the editing sessions in the Continental Congress that sweltering summer in Philadelphia are famous. Jefferson couldn’t stand to be edited. He lived in a lofty realm of abstract ideals, and when he put his ideals down on paper, nothing was accidental or coincidental. He liked dichotomies – he used them often – pitting one thing against another. Perhaps exaggerating the case, or, in some cases, fictionalizing the struggle altogether. But his strength was never as a lawmaker, really – or a down-and-dirty compromiser. His strength lay in setting down the ideal – in no uncertain terms. And so to have all those petty other little delegates touch his prose was intolerable to him.
You can see Jefferson’s original mindset, with his word choice: the rights are “sacred and undeniable”. There’s something a bit more lofty and philosophical about those words, in comparison to the more blunt “self-evident”. Just an interpretation o’ mine. I find all of this interesting, because of how it reveals to us the workings of Jefferson’s mind, his concerns. Or, I like to think it does.
Joseph Ellis, in his prologue to American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
Before editorial changes were made by the Continental Congress, Jefferson’s early draft made it even clearer that his intention was to express a spiritual vision: ‘ We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & unalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.” These are the core articles of faith in the American Creed. Jefferson’s authorship of these words is the core of his seductive appeal across the ages, his central claim, on posterity’s affection. What, then, do they mean? How do they make magic?
Merely to ask the question is to risk being accused of some combination of treason and sacrilege, since self-evident truths are not meant to be analyzed; that is what being self-evident is all about. But when these words are stripped of the patriotic haze, read straightaway and literally, two monumental claims are being made here. The explicit claim is that the individual is the sovereign unit in society; his natural state is freedom from and equality with all other individuals; this is the natural order of things. The implicit claim is that all restrictions on this natural order are immoral transgressions, violations of what God intended; individuals liberated from such restrictions will interact with their fellows in a harmonious scheme requiring no external discipline and producing maximum human happiness.
This is a wildly idealistic message, the kind of good news simply too good to be true. It is, truth be told, a recipe for anarchy. Any national government that seriously attempted to operate in accord with these principles would be committing suicide. But, of course, the words were not intended to serve as an operational political blueprint. Jefferson was not a profound political thinker. He was, however, an utterly brilliant political rhetorician and visionary. The genius of his vision is to propose that our deepest yearnings for personal freedom are in fact attainable. The genius of his rhetoric is to articulate irreconcilable human urges at a sufficiently abstract level to mask their mutual exclusiveness. Jefferson guards the American Creed at this inspirational level, which is inherently immune to scholarly skepticism and a place where ordinary Americans can congregate to speak the magic words together. The Jeffersonian magic works because we permit it to function at a rarefied region where real-life choices do not have to be made.
This kind of “rarefied region” is why Jefferson is such a lightning rod for controversy. Who is this man of high ideals, lofty goals … who lived a life of such contradictions?
As a person who has behaved, at times, in completely incomprehensible ways, in ways that would BAFFLE biographers or historians trying to pin me down … I’m not all that disturbed by a man of contradictions.
The contradictions make him more interesting, not less. As I’ve said before, I’m an Adams girl myself – Thomas Jefferson always baffled me. I couldn’t seem to get in there, I couldn’t relate. Politically, I’m usually on John Adams’ side, through their many years of correspondence and collaboration. Not always, but usually. Jefferson’s political ideas and thoughts were … almost trying to create a Utopia. And I’m scared of utopias. Or scared of those who really believe they can bring them about. (Communism.) But then … there’s something really necessary about ideals, and abstracts … Hard to explain, but I think that that’s the realm where Jefferson really shone. He put the abstract into language. Unforgettable language. But still. The guy is confusing. Infuriating, at times. That’s why reading about him is always a fun endeavor. Everyone’s got a different take, the lines are clearly drawn …
I like Ellis’ style, though. He accepts that there will be contradictions, and he also seems to accept (rare for historians) that there are just some things we can never know. First of all, because of the massive fire at Monticello in 1770 – which destroyed pretty much all of Jefferson’s personal papers up until that time. We just don’t know what was lost, and so there are huge gaps in the knowledge-base, because of that fire.
Here’s what Ellis has to say about the current trend of tearing down the old heroes – the “let’s trash the dead white males” syndrome. Ellis is speaking, in particular, about historian Gordon Wood, who had this to say about Jefferson: “We Americans make a great mistake in idolizing and making symbols of authentic figures who cannot and should not be ripped out of their time and place … By turning Jefferson into the kind of transcendently moral hero that no authentic historically situated human being could ever be, we leave ourselves demoralized by the time-bound weaknesses of this 18th century slaveholder.” Okay – this is pretty typical rhetoric about Jefferson right now and for the last, oh, 30 years. Whatever. And he asked for it, really, because he’s such a contradictory kind of guy – but still. I get a bit tired of the argument, because – you know how PESKY actual FACTS can be – there is more than one side to this story. However, Ellis responds to Gordon Wood in this manner:
It seemed to me that Wood’s point was true enough; in fact, just the kind of sober assessment of the Jefferson problem one wanted to hear amid all the shrill pronouncements. But it also seemed abundantly clear that it would make absolutely no practical difference. Yes, perhaps we all would be better served if Americans were allowed to select their heroes (and villains) only from fictional characters, who would therefore never disappoint us. But we won’t and can’t. We would be even better served if we discarded our need for heroes altogether. But no people in recorded history have ever been able to do that, and there was no reason to believe that modern Americans would prove an exception. Moreover, the scholarly instinct to establish a secure checkpoint between the past and the present in order to prevent the flow of traffic back and forth, while it had the advantage of deterring those ideologiically motivated raiding parties that wanted to go back to capture heroes and villains to suit their own political agenda, also had the disadvantage of making history an irrelevant, cloistered, indeed dead place, populated only by historians.
And all of this makes me think of my favorite line of Walt Whitman’s:
“Do I contradict myself?
All right then. I contradict myself.
I am large.
I contain multitudes.”
It’s all just very very cool. As is obvious, I’m digging this book enormously.
digging it sounds like an understatement, Sheila.. but I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that, personally, I prefer the “sacred and undeniable” version.
Firstly because of the way the full sentnence is constructed – the repetition in pairs, “sacred and undeniable”, “equal & independent”, “inherent & unalienable”, only expanded to a triplet at the end.. he must have been, rightly, proud of that particular poetic flow.
Secondly.. it was meant as a manifesto (of sorts). “sacred and undeniable” doesn’t need to be in contrast with another system, it’s a declaration that these are the rights they believe in. “Self-evident” is, as has been said, angry and almost contemptuous of questioning.. I can imagine the sideways glance it casts could have been seen by Jefferson as too fixed in the time and circumstances.
Because the Declaration was such a utopian manifesto and the challenge for the Continental Congress was to be taken seriously in presenting the case for independence, it’s perhaps fortunate that Jefferson’s argument was not allowed to suffer from a too-delicate application of language. The Americans were making a bold argument; that argument needed the force of blunt language. Besides, if – as he no doubt would have perceived it – the King was sovereign by divine right, what, logically, was the utility of an appeal to “sacred” truths denying such right? No, that would only turn the argument into blasphemy. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” on the other hand, appeals to both secular and religious interpretation.
Sheila, did you read that essay 2 or 3 years ago in the New Yorker by Adam Gopnik, about meeting Karl Popper? He was amazed by how far Popper the person diverged from his ideals and his written vision of life. It was so extreme that Gopnik thought of it as illustrating the Law of the Mental Mirror Image – that is, that one’s ideals tend to be removed from oneself, to be some concrete external thing, because the things associated with our own inner experience are too close to even be visible.
Seems like it would be interesting to think about in conjunction with a biography of contradictions.
“Besides, if – as he no doubt would have perceived it – the King was sovereign by divine right…”
Despite the “Dei Gratia Rex” and “Fidei Defensor” on the coins, George III, like his Hanoverian grandfather and great-grandfather before him, was sovereign by the will of Parliament: specifically by the Act of Settlement of 1701. The Hanoverians would bnot have made an overt appeal to divine-right monarchy, doubly damned as such a thing was: first, it was the battlecry of the Jacobites, of the enduring Stuart claim to the throne that had been the basis for bloody rebellion nearly reaching London within living memory and that had cost Charles I his head a century before; and second, because it smacked of things Catholic and (even worse) French.
“‘We hold these truths to be self-evident,’ on the other hand, appeals to both secular and religious interpretation.”
I definitely concur here. Much as Jefferson original language was inspired, I think the edit is an improvement. Moreover, while the Declaration is a magnificent piece of political rhetoric, it’s also a legal document. “Sacred and undeniable” in that context seems overwrought and hollow puffery, full of sound and fury signifying nothing, while “self-evident” starts from a very concrete meaning: self-authentictaing, self-proving, law-school cliche though it may be, res ipsa loquitur, “the thing speaks for itself.” The abstract ideals of the Enlightenment weren’t, by themseleves, justification enough except to a very narrow and unrepresentative section of the public: the Declaration also had to, and does, tie back into the English common law and to England’s constitutional upheaval over the previous 150 years.
I takes a set to write the following line: ” Jefferson was not a profound political thinker.”
peteb:
Well, anger and contempt are, indeed, the main components of all the REST of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was so anti-England and so anti-monarchy that any question of reconciliation or trying to remain connected to Britain made him insane with anger (in his lofty Monticello way). The rest of the Declaration (except for the natural rights paragraphs) is a blistering attack on King George. To the end of his life, Jefferson hated Britain – it was a prejudice with him.
One of the strongest bonds between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson is that when they finally were presented to King George – long after they had won the war in the colonies – was that King George stood up, and turned his back to them. The contempt shown in that document towards King George burned many many years later. This was a proud proud moment for Jefferson. To be face to face with the tyrant he helped topple, the tyrant that he himself had told off in the Declaration.
As some of his other colleagues moved towards accepting Britain as an ally (this was much later) – Jefferson held back. He would never trust that nation. Never. This, of course, is another sort of contradiction in the man … he hated aristocracy with a passion, he HATED kings, and wanted to see all kings topple … and yet he lived a bit like a king on his mountain in Monticello.
Well I did say I was sticking my neck out, Sheila. And I do take your point on the anger and contempt on display in the rest of the Declaration.. but it’s that first part that sets up the rest and, arguably, it could be said that the more balanced a tone used there – in setting out those natural rights at the beginning – the greater the contrast with the anger in the tone used describing breaches of those rights by George III. What it comes down to is that I don’t see the original draft of that section as using less powerful language – it’s just that I can see the case for the change in tone employed when the whole document is considered.
I don’t suppose there’s a contemporary account of the discussion of the edits?
peteb:
I think there are numerous contemporary accounts of the editing process – but I think most of them are relatively self-serving. heh heh Like Thomas Jefferson’s account of it, for example. The other edits are even MORE illuminating … the cutting out of Jefferson’s indictment of slavery (which he placed all at the feet of King George, rather ingenuously) … and also the paragraphs where he pretty much yearned for the good old days in England, pre-1066, when Englishmen were free and happy and lived communally with no problems whatsoever. Those paragraphs were also struck – the delegates felt they had no place in the document – not just because it was a glossing over of history, but because it really didn’t have anything to do with the issue at hand.
Really interesting stuff.
Thomas Jefferson copied out his original version of the Declaration – because he wanted people to know what he REALLY wrote. He put in all the edits from Congress in the margins. I love that. He wanted his utopia to stand.
He wasn’t really a realist. He preferred the fantasy, or the black and white abstract. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
I said somewhere else on this blog – that if Thomas Jefferson ALONE had been responsible for creating America, we would have been in big trouble. And if John Adams ALONE had been responsible for creating America, we would have been in big trouble. But it was the combination (mainly) of Thomas Jefferson AND John Adams that helped create the original success.
Jefferson – the lofty idealist, the idea-man. And Adams, the pugnacious down-and-dirty bulldog … the two of them TOGETHER were dynamite.
Yeah I should have said, contemporary and unbiased accounts of the editing heh heh.. too much to ask for really.
I found a link to The Avalon Project which has Jefferson’s biography online and the section where he sets out the version as presented to Congress – As the sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also, I will state the form of the declaration as originally reported. The parts struck out by Congress shall be distinguished by a black line drawn under them; & those inserted by them shall be placed in the margin or in a concurrent column.
Unfortunately the online version of transcribing those doesn’t work very well.. and it seems to be the version that emerged from the Committee to Congress after the earlier edits that you’ve highlighted.
According to the text there “The committee for drawing the declaration of Independence desired me to do it. It was accordingly done, and being approved by them, I reported it to the house on Friday the 28th of June..”
Now, Thomas.. about that earlier draft…
The copy of the Declaration that I have at home has his original version, and also the edited one. It’s cool. I have, indeed, done a line by line analysis.
ahem. geek. ahem.
Is that the original version before it went through the committee of John Adams, Dr. (Ben?)Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston & Jefferson? or after the redrafting in committee but before it went through Congress?
Reading that piece from Jefferson you would be left with the impression that there was much editing done in the committee at all.
(and I think I can safely say that most of the commenters on your blog, myself included, can identify with the geek thing on some level)
“…the paragraphs where he pretty much yearned for the good old days in England, pre-1066, when Englishmen were free and happy and lived communally with no problems whatsoever. … He wasn’t really a realist. He preferred the fantasy, or the black and white abstract.”
Wow, no doubt. That really does have absolutely no connection to reality at all. Weird utopian nostalgia: oh, if only for the days of Ye Jolly Olde Angle-lande under Good Cynge Edward the Confessor, when everything was (at least relatively, somehow) perfect.
davej:
It was his whole Whig thing. Not the powdered-head kind, but the OTHER kind. He was not alone in carrying around that fantasist philosophy – but thank goodness it was struck from the public record of that document.
peteb:
It is the original before anyone touched it. It is Thomas Jefferson’s untouched version.
I suppose, but it’s such a nonsensically reactionary vision that it can be both a Whig and Tory one at the same time, except maybe with different emphases. As an example, it’s basically Tolkien’s utopia as well, and JRRT was an uber-Tory to a point that doesn’t really even exist in the Tory Party any more: pro-Church, pro-divine right monarchy and very distrustful of democracy. So while I can understand it, I also find it very odd that this would be basically the same utopia yearned for Jefferson the deist, anti-monarchist, “small d” democrat, since the only thing they seem to share is an aversion to encroaching modernity and unfettered large-scale capitalism. I mean, if he’d lived at the same time, JRRT would’ve opposed George III for exactly the opposite reasons that Jefferson did: because he was a usurper and the legitimate king was the Catholic one who’d lived in exile almost all his life.
Well, this “oh for ye goode olde days” mentality, in Jefferson’s time, was, as I understand it, purely Whig.
Oh, and there’s that thing about Jefferson: Any time you try to say: “But if THIS is true about him, then THIS must also be true” … he wiggles free. Pesky fella.
Well, as I tried to point out above, to adopt the pro-monarchy Tory version of romantic utopian nostalgia at the time would’ve meant supporting the Stuart Pretender, which unless you lived in exile yourself was basically as good as signing your own death warrant. Hence, not nearly as prevalent a view as the Whig version at the time. It’s only after the direct line of descent from James II died out in 1807 that a pro-crown, pro-Church version of this vision became possible precisely because it became less concrete: it was no longer attached to a particular person.
Yeah, I got your point, Dave J.
But the fact still remains that Jefferson wanted to highlight (at the expense of reality, quite often) the difference between essential British corruption and the “virtue” of the colonies. His claim was that England was corrupt from the Norman conquest, and before then, everything was hunky-dory.
He had already set forth this theory in his Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms – where he paints the story of British imperialism in the colonies in broad black-and-white strokes.
Causes and Necessity was his own document – written on his own accord – and didn’t have to go through any group editing process.
When he tried to put his romanticized version of events (at least insofar as the corruption of England post-1066 is concerned) the delegates at the Congress said: Uh, hang on, that’s a bit much, bro. Take a step back.
Perhaps it’s unwise for a non-American to dip into these family matters, but I thought it interesting that you said you were with Adams. I too have difficulty getting at Jefferson even though his views would seem to mesh best with my own (can someone be Madisonian even though Madison himself was Jeffersonian?).
But the true magic of the entire period was that all of these men participated in the grandest project ever undertaken and then also lived to fight it out at street level (Ellis or Chernow says something similar, but I’m too lazy to look it up). Consequently, you have a compromise constitution that simply couldn’t be improved upon and still function as intended, and a group of truly astonishing individuals who provided the same checks and balances against each other that were built into the paper document.
Would the United States be the country it is if both Hamilton and Jefferson had not existed. Either one without the other would have been a problem. The same point could be made for all the others (with the possible exception of Washington, as I genuinely believe he was the reason why there weren’t the serious problems such as those suffered in Paris, Moscow, Bejing etc.). You may be an Adams girl, but the very statement shows the incredible greatness af a small number of men. No matter what your beliefs about societal organization, there was someone fighting for those views at the foundation — and they didn’t get their heads chopped off!