now

committee (of 5. to wit, D' Franklin, Sherman, Livingston and ourselves) met, discussed the subject, and then appointed him and myself to make the draught: that we, as a subcommittee met, & after the urgencies of each on the other, I consented to undertake the task; that the draught being made, we, the subcommittee, met, & conned the paper over, and he does not remember that he made or suggested a single alteration.' these details are quite incorrect. the committee of 5. met, no such thing as a subcommittee was proposed, but they unanimously 5 pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught. I consented; I drew it; but before I reported it to the committee, I communicated it separately to D! Franklin' and mr Adams requesting their corrections; because they were the two members of whose judgments and amendments I wished most to have the benefit before presenting it to the Committee; and you have seen the original paper now 9 in my hands, with the corrections 10 of Doctor Franklin and mr Adams interlined in their own handwritings.

their

=

alterations were two or three only, and merely verbal. I then wrote a fair copy 12, reported it to the Committee, and from them, unaltered to Congress. this personal communication and consultation with mr Adams he has misremembered into the meetings of a sub-committee. Pickering's observations, and mr Adams's in addition, that it contained no new ideas, that it is a common place 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. Rich H. Lee charged it as copied from Locke's treatise on government.13 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.14 I did not consider it as any part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether & to offer no sentiment which had

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British love warned thim from time to time of attempts by their legislature to.

diction over these our states we have reminded them of the cir mer emigration & settlement here, [no one of which could warra pretension: that these were effected at the expence of our own bt unassisted by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain that indeed our several forms of government, we had adopted laving a foundation for perpetual league & amity with them: but that #aj sa ca timpania, com ift

one com

would

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credited and we appealed to their native justice & magnanimity, a Joer common kindred to diso vow these usurpations which were our comespondence them they too have been deaf to the We must therefore of consanguinity, & when & when occasions have been given them, by the regu Keir lows, of removing from their councils the disturbers four & have by their free election re-established them in power, at this

n,by

permitting their chicef magistrate to send over not only soldiers blood, but Scotch & foreign mercenaries to invady

en

have given the last state to agonizing affection, and manly spis nounce for ever these unfeeling brethren, we must endeavor to fo love for them, and to hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, in preace friends, we might have been a free & a great people togeth -nication of grandeur & of freedom it seems is below their dignity. be will have it: the road to happiness, is open to us too; wen its, and acquiesce in the necessity which is on

to glory.

which de

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 inde

which make so great a portion of the instrument

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pendance, and the reasons for declaring it 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 m? 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. during the debate I was sitting by D: Franklin, and he observed that I was writhing a little under the acrimonious criticisms on some of it's parts; and it was on that occasion that, by way of comfort, he told me the story 15 of John Thompson, the Hatter, and his new sign. Timothy thinks the instrument the better for having a fourth of it expunged. he would have thought it still better had the other three fourths gone out also, all but the single sentiment (the only one he approves) which recommends friendship to his dear England, whenever she is willing to be at peace with us. his insinuations are that altho' the high tone of the instrument was in union with the warm feelings of the times, this sentiment of habitual friendship to England should never be forgotten, and that the duties it enjoins should especially be borne in mind on every celebration of this anniversary.' in other words, that the Declaration, as being a libel on the government of England, composed in times of passion, should now be buried in utter oblivion

but to spare the feelings of our English friends and Angloman fellow citizens. but it is not to wound them that we wish to keep it in mind; but to cherish the principles of the instrument in the bosoms of our own citizens; and it is a heavenly comfort to see that these principles are yet so strongly felt as to render a circumstance so trifling as this little lapse of memory of mr Adams worthy of being solemnly announced and supported at an anniversary assemblage of the nation on it's birthday. In opposition however to mr Pickering, I pray God that these principles may be eternal. . .

The "written notes, taken by myself at the moment and on the spot" of which he speaks say merely :

do

the committee for drawing the declaration of Independance desired me to prepare it. Ididso it was accordingly done, and being approved by them, I reported it to the house

.

It seems that, at one time, it was believed that the recital of wrongs in the Declaration was not Jefferson's composition arising from the facts that this portion. of the instrument was almost identical with similar recitals in the preamble to the Constitution of Virginia and that, when the Constitution was framed, Jefferson was not in Virginia.

The matter has since been cleared up, however; and it appears that both were composed by Jefferson - the recitals in the preamble to the Constitution first.

Certainly on May 27th, the resolutions of the Convention of Virginia of May 15th were laid before Congress, we believe by Nelson.