Thomas Jefferson and the Composition of the Declaration

Show notes

Who was Thomas Jefferson and how did he come to write the Declaration of Independence at the tender age of 33?

In this episode, historian Robert McDonald (US Military Academy) discusses the genius of Thomas Jefferson. Topics include the following:

-Jefferson's evolution into a revolutionary

-The long tradition of self government in the Colonies

-The process of composing the Declaration of Independence

-The deletion of the passage condemning slavery (see the full passage below)

-Jefferson's reputation in his own time

Here is the deleted passage about slavery from Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration:

"He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."

Robert McDonald's publications are listed below.

Ed. (with Peter S. Onuf), Revolutionary Prophecies: The Founders and America's Future (University of Virginia Press, 2021).

Ed., The American Revolution: Core Documents (Ashbrook Press, 2019).

Ed., Thomas Jefferson's Lives: Biographers and the Battle for History (University of Virginia Press, 2019).

Confounding Father: Thomas Jefferson's Image in His Own Time (University of Virginia Press, 2016).

Ed., Sons of the Father: George Washington and His Protégés (University of Virginia Press, 2013).

Ed., Light and Liberty: Thomas Jefferson and the Power of Knowledge (University of Virginia Press, 2012).

Ed., Thomas Jefferson's Military Academy: Founding West Point (University of Virginia Press, 2004).