Note 668 — Chapter III

There is a slight conflict of testimony in private records—for we have none that are official—as to some of the details in the preparation of the Declaration. John Adams, trusting to his memory, wrote in his Autobiography (cf. Works, ii. 512), twenty-eight years after the transaction, and again in a letter to Timothy Pickering, forty-seven years after it (cf. Life of Pickering, iv. 463), and when he was in his eighty-eighth year, substantially to the same effect, namely, that Jefferson and himself were appointed by their associates a sub-committee to make the draft. Jefferson (Mem. and Corresp., iv. 375), on reading this letter, published in 1823, wrote to Madison denying this statement, and making another, relying on notes which he had made at the time. He says there was no sub-committee, and that when he himself had prepared the draft he submitted it for perusal and judgment separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, each of whom made a few verbal alterations in it. These he adopted in a fair copy which he reported to the committee, and on June 28th to Congress, where, after the reading, it was laid on the table. On July 1st Congress took up for debate Mr. Lee's resolution for independence. Nine colonies—New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia—voted for the resolution. The two delegates of Delaware were divided. South Carolina and Pennsylvania voted against it. The New York delegates affirmed that they approved it, but that their instructions at present did not warrant their voting for it; but on July 9th a New York convention ratified it. Rutledge moved for a day's delay, which being granted, South Carolina accorded. A third delegate coming by post from Delaware turned that colony to the affirmative. Two substituted delegates from Pennsylvania carried that province. The roll of the thirteen colonies was now in union. On the same day, July 2d, and the two days following, Jefferson's draft was under debate, and was amended in committee of the whole. The author of the instrument leaves us to infer that he sat in an impatient and annoyed silence through the ordeal of criticism and objection passed upon it. The two principal amendments were the striking out a severe censure on "the people of England", lest "it might offend some of our friends there." and the omission of a reprobation of slavery, in deference to South Carolina and Georgia. When the committee reported to Congress, such notes of the debates as we have inform us, that, with much vehemence, discordance, remonstrance, and pleadings for delay, with doubts as to whether the people were ready for and would ratify the Declaration, it secured a majority of one in the count of the delegates. Jefferson said that John Adams was "the colossus" in that stirring debate.