A dying declaration is a legal exception to the hearsay rule, when a dying person’s last words are admitted as evidence to prove the truth of a matter asserted. Today, we consider a declaration of creation for the American mind.
The committee’s initial work began June 11, 1776.
From Virginia, Thomas Jefferson was a landowner not known for his public speaking skills. Venturing down from the hills of Massachusetts, John Adams was known for his quick temper. Pennsylvania’s Benjamin Franklin was a man of many talents, who never forgot how to laugh. Connecticut dispatched Roger Sherman, a judge who was active in Yale College campus life. New York attorney Robert Livingston was trained at King’s College, now Columbia University.
When making the case that Jefferson should be first drafter of this Declaration of Independence, Adams argued,
“1) That he was a Virginian and I a Massachusettensian, 2) That he was a Southern man and I a Northern one. 3) That I had been so obnoxious for my early and constant zeal…4) And lastly…I had a great opinion of the elegance of his pen and none at all of my own.”
Bolstered by such faith and duly chosen, Jefferson set to work writing the document between June 11 and June 28, seeking periodic input from his fellow committee members along the way.
Later, he pondered the larger meaning behind this task, noting
“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.”
In this defining moment, Jefferson scaled his own station in life, wielding that quill pen as a vehicle of national consciousness.
While he opened no book or pamphlet while writing, he continued,
“All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c.”
In its succinct statement of American ideals for “a candid world,” those words remind us what we are, even when people protest, measuring how far from them our modern society may stray.
Their echoes reverberate within those who pause to hear, as the footprints of Jefferson’s quill tip may fill each of us with new breath, fresh as black ink drying on his first handwritten page. What do these mean to us today?
John Adams was not just right about the “elegance of his pen” manifesting artful language on the surface. The resilience of those words is self-evident and we gauge the strength of their elegance by the beauty they compel us to mold into the landscapes of today.
Writing during the month of June in 1776, Thomas Jefferson sought to speak on behalf of a larger American mind. He saw a sea of ideas, rising from an ancient past toward the then-present and he heard these converge into one harmonic refrain.
Independence was declared already when that Committee of Five agreed to set the words free.
As for what happened next, John Adams also spoke plainly,
“Posterity! You will never know, how much it cost the present Generation, to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.”
Submitted by Jason Bowns
ASPA National Weblog 