Word: jefferson
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...various changes on the whole improved the document by making it more austere and spare. Nonetheless, Jefferson's pride of authorship seems to have been wounded. After the Congress adjourned last week, he sent copies of his original document to several friends, patently assuming that they would see for themselves that it was superior to the one finally adopted. At one point during the session, the mellow Franklin attempted to console Jefferson by telling him an anecdote about a Philadelphia hatter named John Thompson who had a sign made for his shop that read: JOHN THOMPSON, HATTER, MAKES AND SELLS...
...this Revolution. Britain has been filled with folly, and America with wisdom, at least this is my judgment. Time will determine ... I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these states." Thomas Jefferson, too, understands the immense stakes of the American gamble. To him, "all eyes are open, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles...
...another two days, on July 4, the Congress endorsed an extraordinary document, a Declaration that stated the Colonies' numerous reasons for leaving the imperial embrace. That date and that document may eventually loom larger in the American mind than what happened on July 2, for the Declaration, written by Jefferson, endows the revolt with a philosophical foundation and justification...
Consideration was postponed until the 8th, then until the 10th, when congressional moderates succeeded in having the question postponed until July 1. But on June 11, the Congress appointed "a committee to prepare a declaration to the effect of the said resolution." Its members: Thomas Jefferson, 33, John Adams, 40, Benjamin Franklin, 70, Connecticut Lawyer and Merchant Roger Sherman, 55, and New York Lawyer Robert R. Livingston...
...some ways, it was an accident of politics that the young Jefferson came to write the Declaration. According to one story, Jefferson urged the task on John Adams, the brilliant, truculent Boston lawyer who had proved himself the ablest debater of the revolutionary cause. By this account, Adams demurred on grounds that he was personally "obnoxious" to many members of Congress, that a Virginian should write the document since Virginia had first moved for independence, and that, in any case, Jefferson was the superior writer...