He really did not want to be in Philadelphia that summer. It was hot, and he yearned for his cooler mountaintop. He was surrounded by people, but he liked solitude. Most of all, his wife was sick, and he felt the need to be with her.
Thomas Jefferson was not happy in his role as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress. He had actually left the assembly, with its interminable meetings and droning speakers, to go home to Virginia at the end of December 1775. His mother had been ill, and he had stayed at home to help care for her. His care was of no avail, for she died in March. Jefferson simply did not feel able to return to the Congress, and he consoled himself being busy with the affairs of his beloved Monticello and in nursing his wife, who had been ill for some time.
Finally, in mid-May, Jefferson bowed to the inescapable fact that he was an elected delegate to the Congress and returned to Philadelphia. That trip led to perhaps the most dramatic moment of his life, but he always wished he were elsewhere.
Truly, what was happening in Philadelphia did not seem nearly as significant as the events transpiring in Richmond. The assembly in Philadelphia was essentially a protest meeting. The delegates had no legal power; they were not members of a government, for no national government existed in America other than that of the King of England. They could not pass laws, levy taxes, or do much of anything. But in Richmond, as in many state capitals, constitutions were being written as the basis for new state governments. In these new state governments, both houses of the legislature and the governors would be elected. It was in these assemblies that the future was being forged, and Jefferson wanted to be a part of that process. Like any man of ability with even a shred of ambition, Jefferson wanted to be where the action was taking place.
Perhaps Jefferson even wished he had kept quiet back in 1774. At that time he had been a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, and when the members of the First Continental Congress were elected, he was moved to write A Summary View of the Rights of British America. This pamphlet was a brash attack on not just the British government, but on King George III himself. Jefferson took the monarch to task for a variety of failings and ended by advising the king to be more honest if he wanted more sympathy from his people. That pamphlet’s popularity had led to Jefferson’s election as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress. But now he wanted to go home.
The mood of the Congress was shifting, slowly, toward separation from Britain. Six months earlier the bombshell of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense had exploded in the minds of Americans. Now that the path toward independence had been identified, it remained to be seen who would tread on it. On June 7, 1776, that question began to be answered when Richard Henry Lee, another Virginia delegate, proposed a resolution declaring that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.”
While Lee’s resolution was being debated on the floor of Congress, those favoring independence succeeded in getting a committee appointed to prepare a formal declaration of independence, should Lee’s motion pass. The members of the committee were Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. Being a member of the committee left Jefferson with mixed opinions. He was afraid that the group might get bogged down in endless wrangling over the language and details of the declaration, but, on the other hand, at least something was being done that might lead to a conclusion of business.
At any rate it did not seem likely that Jefferson would be called on to do a lot of the work; he was the youngest and least experienced member of the group. Franklin was a man of international renown as a writer and scientist; Adams was widely respected as a politician and statesman. Indeed, if Jefferson’s old law professor, George Wythe, had been in town, the committee assignment probably would have gone to him, but Wythe had returned to Virginia to take care of personal business. So Jefferson was on the committee to write the declaration. But he wanted to go home.
As often happens, being the junior member of a committee meant that the work got dumped in his lap. Neither Franklin nor Adams showed much interest in being the author of the declaration, in part because no one thought it would become a famous, historic document. Franklin tended a little toward laziness, and Adams was much more interested in hatching political schemes with other delegates. Jefferson was a good writer. So Jefferson took the job of writing the declaration. Finish it, he thought, and go home.
One son of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN supported the Crown during the Revolution.
Jefferson wrote a lot. He kept up a large correspondence about his plantation at Monticello, wrote daily to his wife, and frequently corresponded with his political friends back in Virginia. Too, there was considerable writing connected with the work of the Congress: reports, speeches, and such. To help him get through this work, Jefferson traveled with a writing box, a portable desk light enough to hold on his knees. It was five in the morning when Jefferson entered his parlor and went to work. The early rising habits of a country farmer had not deserted him. Besides, when he finished, he could go home. At nine o’clock he stood up to go to the state-house where Congress was meeting.
The material Jefferson had written was good. He knew that. He had drawn on the classics and on common sense to lay out his ideas. Of great use was the list of American rights recently drawn up by George Mason, his fellow Virginian. What Jefferson dreaded was the debate.
The Congress had as members a number of men fond of the sound of their own voices and a number of others who felt they had to speak for the record on every issue. Jefferson was essentially a shy man, not given to public speaking. Fortunately, committee members John Adams and Benjamin Franklin could talk enough for all the members. And their talents were needed. After Lee’s motion to declare independence had been taken up, the attention of Congress focused on the formal declaration prepared by Jefferson. For three interminable days words flew back and forth across the room. Jefferson suffered in silence as changes were suggested to his document. Some of them seemed like mutilations to his own flesh, but he kept quiet, hoping for an end to the debate.
Suddenly, it was over. In the evening of July 4, the room fell silent. Relatively few changes had actually been made, and they had only strengthened the document. A “handsome copy” was ordered to be prepared for the delegates to sign, and the Declaration of Independence was read aloud to a cheering crowd on July 8. Before the end of the month, Jefferson was on his way home, never to serve in Congress again. He had been a reluctant author, but he had written one of the greatest documents in the history of government.