Content with his intellectual, architectural and other pursuits at home in Monticello, Thomas Jefferson had no intention of becoming a political leader during the founding of America.
Jefferson was well versed in the writings of Locke, Montesquieu and others. He could speak, read and write in seven languages. He had a library of more than 16,000 books. Jefferson was perfectly happy to study and live out a quiet life.
But when the Second Continental Congress appointed John Adams to head up a committee writing a document to justify the American Colonies’ break from Great Britain, Jefferson soon got to work and penned the words for which he is most well-known today.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Jefferson wrote. “That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The promise of those words was not fully realized immediately. But the Declaration of Independence set in motion a series of events that have led to progress relating to fundamental rights, government structure and the conditions for the ongoing Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
“Jefferson was extraordinary and ordinary,” said Brandon Dillard, director of historic interpretation and audience engagement at Monticello, a National Historic Landmark in Charlottesville, Virginia. “He lived in extraordinary times, and he was somebody who thought in ways that were extraordinary. But the challenges of his times called him to do those things in order to maintain a democracy.”
For colonies on the brink of war and eventual independence, Jefferson quickly became an important part of the political picture.
As the author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wasn’t aiming for originality. The Virginia Declaration of Rights had been published just weeks before. He was heavily influenced by the ideas of Locke and other political philosophers of the time as well.
“Jefferson would have said those documents were expressions of the kinds of things and the kinds of conversations out of which the United States was born,” Dillard said.
As part of a committee of five other men, Jefferson was selected to write out the first draft. In a matter of hours, the document seen today came to light. Though it was edited and revised, much of the Declaration remains as Jefferson wrote it in late June 1776.
One of the biggest contradictions with the Declaration was the topic of slavery. In his original draft, Jefferson included among the grievances against King George his institution of slavery in the colonies. The first draft was then brought to the committee for discussion, and that passage ultimately was removed.
“You can imagine the small room with Jefferson and Franklin and Adams and Sherman and Livingston arguing about these things. And you can imagine the kinds of emotionally fraught conversations for these men having to compromise some of the most important things that they held dear. Had those words not been stricken from the declaration, who knows what the early founding could have been?” Dillard said.
Influenced by the writings of Locke, who wrote on life, liberty and property, Jefferson took a more general view, changing the phrase to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
“Jefferson was looking at the innate human rights into which all people are born,” Dillard said. “And even though he was born a wealthy property owner, he spent much of his life trying to expand the citizenry and set up those first steps that would move beyond propertied white men to white men. And then in the generations that would follow, more and more Americans would fight for those same kinds of rights to where all people do have the same rights before the law.”
Much of this change came about through the Constitution of the United States.
Brian Krisch, manager of training and program development at the National Constitution Center, said, “In the decades to come, with various amendments to the Constitution, with the 14th amendment making promises of due process and equal protection, with the 19th amendment expanding the right to vote … and really helping them fulfill those promises of the declaration.”
Though both important documents to the founding of the United States of America, the Declaration and Constitution fulfilled different purposes.
“The Declaration of Independence would establish us as a nation and say the principles upon which the United States has been founded. But the Constitution will say how we, the American people, are to be done, what kind of nation the United States will be, and that it is left to us and to future generations to continue to do that, to work, to make a more perfect union and fulfill the promises of the Declaration,” Krisch said.
The promises made in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” and have a right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are celebrated each year at Monticello. On the Fourth of July, people are sworn in as citizens of the United States of America.
“There's nothing here that embodies the American dream more than seeing dozens of people from around the world become citizens of the United States, on the 4th of July, at the home of the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence,” Dillard said.
Thomas Jefferson’s legacy of fighting for freedom and independence continues throughout each generation.
“Despite all this complexity, this is an optimist who believed in the ideas of the United States and believed it was up to us to make sure that we continue them. And that's what I hope Monticello inspires, and that's Jefferson's legacy,” Dillard said.