Jefferson and the contradictions behind ‘All men are created equal’

On May 14, 1776, after eight days traveling across Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, lodging at simple boardinghouses and dining with locals, Thomas Jefferson boarded a ferry across the Schuylkill River and arrived in clamorous, thriving Philadelphia, where delegates to the Continental Congress were arriving.

Jefferson considered himself a quiet farmer and thinker, and he despised urban quarters, with their teeming masses and rancid air. Yet here he was, readying to remain for months in the tightly packed city of nearly 40,000 people, the most populous metropolis in British America. Shipyards spread across the banks of the Delaware River, supplying goods to the city’s markets. Red-brick townhouses lined cobbled streets, which led slightly uphill toward the State House that would later be known as Independence Hall. A few blocks farther, along dirt roads, lay a gentler landscape of fields and farms and a handful of estates.

Jefferson strolled through a scene strikingly different from the isolation and slavery at his plantations and mountaintop villa. Here was an astonishingly diverse city, with Quakers and Jews joining those of other faiths attracted by Pennsylvania’s policy of religious tolerance. There were free and enslaved Black people, poor and wealthy White people, merchants and bankers and industrialists. Here, too, was the Athens of America, as some called it, with scientists and historians and tinkerers and legislators, exemplified by Benjamin Franklin and his American Philosophical Society.

Jefferson initially stayed as a guest of cabinetmaker Benjamin Randolph on Chestnut Street, in the same block as Franklin’s home across from Carpenters’ Hall, an elegant structure topped by a cupola and a weather vane, where the first Continental Congress met two years earlier. Nearby was a printer’s shop that recently had published a book Jefferson greatly admired: a 47-page volume by Thomas Paine, a poor immigrant from Britain, called “Common Sense.” Arguing against reconciliation with the monarchy, Paine wrote that “the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests.” The book sold more than 500,000 copies during the Revolutionary War and was cited by Jefferson and others as a key influence on the Declaration.

Jefferson ran errands, bought a glass of punch, received $300 in delegate pay and purchased $9 worth of paper, on which he would write the rationale for liberty. After nine days living in the center of the hot, muggy city, and tired of the smell from a nearby stable and tannery, Jefferson searched for lodging in what he called “the skirts of the town where I may have the benefit of a freely circulating air.” He found a place just a few blocks away at what was then the edge of Philadelphia.

He took one memento from his former lodging: a mahogany “writing box” built by Randolph, the cabinetmaker, on which he would compose the Declaration. The box had an easel-like hinge-and-peg system on which a writing surface could be adjusted, allowing it to be placed on a desk or a lap.

Having been through months of turmoil at home — the destruction of Norfolk, the death of his mother, the ceaseless migraines, the potential that he would face charges of treason — Jefferson sounded both unnerved and exultant. Two days after arrival, he had written to one friend that he was in an “uneasy anxious state” because he was not accompanied by his often-ill wife. The following day, he sounded reborn, telling his friend John Page, “I have been so long out of the political world that I am almost a new man in it.”

Jefferson, who had recently turned 33, had been accompanied in his journey only by his valet, the enslaved 14-year-old Robert Hemings. Robert was the Black half brother of Jefferson’s wife, Martha, who was White. Robert had become extraordinarily close to Jefferson and was among a small number of enslaved people at Jefferson’s plantations who could read and write (and on at least one occasion signed his name as Hemmings.) Robert’s then-3-year-old sister, Sally, would become the mother of six of Jefferson’s children, researchers at Monticello have concluded.

Hemings’s presence provided Jefferson — who enslaved more than 600 people in his lifetime — with a deeply personal reminder of the slavery issue that would become central in Philadelphia. He trusted that Hemings would not flee, perhaps because of what that could have meant for the many other members of the enslaved family who remained at Monticello. Together, Jefferson and Hemings shared lodgings, with Jefferson duly noting in his memorandum book that he “pd. for shoes for Bob” and “pd. for 2 pairs of stockings for Bob.” There is no account by Hemings of his time with Jefferson, but no doubt they spent many hours together at this extraordinary moment.

The delegates who arrived in Philadelphia were all White men, most of them among the wealthiest in the colonies, and many were enslavers. They were merchants and traders, bankers and farmers and many lawyers. One of the greatest impetuses for independence, as Jefferson had put it, was to end the tyranny of being governed without representation. Yet the delegates didn’t want anything close to full-fledged democracy in the modern sense, which they feared could lead to anarchy. Their vision would exclude Blacks, women, poorer Whites who didn’t own property, Native Americans and others. They believed in a form of what would be called elitism, but not one controlled by a monarch and Parliament in which they were not members. Ousting a monarchy was the first goal, and Jefferson would be called upon to list the grievances and legal justification.

The leaders wanted unanimous approval for independence. Virginia was the first to put forward a proposal that the colonies unite, immediately putting attention on Jefferson’s view. But unanimity was not immediately forthcoming.

“Why all this haste?” asked James Duane of New York, according to John Adams’s diary. The Congress had no more right than Parliament to pass the resolution, Duane said, arguing that he must consult with his constituents.

Jefferson was sympathetic to concerns that some delegates needed more direction from their constituents, many of whom were still loyal to Britain — or at least fearful of the consequences of independence and war. In fact, Jefferson quietly lobbied recalcitrant delegates and assured them that they could take the time needed before declaring their vote.

As the Congress met, word came that British warships with thousands of men were heading to the colonies, which may have prompted delegates to act more quickly. The Congress prepared its endgame by naming a five-man committee to propose a Declaration of Independence.

Adams, a pivotal thinker behind the Declaration, proposed that Jefferson be the main author. Adams later explained that it was hopeless to have someone like him from Massachusetts draft the Declaration because there would be too much opposition from Southern states. The ideal would be to have a member from Virginia, the most powerful and populous state — presumed to have more men than any other state prepared to join the Continental Army — take the helm and bring along other Southern representatives.

Jefferson “brought with him a reputation for literature, science, and a happy talent of composition,” Adams later wrote to a friend. “Writings of his were handed about, remarkable for the peculiar felicity of expression.”

Jefferson urged Adams to write the Declaration.

“I will not,” Adams replied, according to his recollection of the conversation.

Jefferson asked why the responsibility should fall upon him.

“Reason 1st. You are a Virginian, and Virginia ought to appear at the head of this business,” Adams said. “Reason 2nd. I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular; You are very much otherwise. Reason 3d: You can write ten times better than I can.”

“Well, if you are decided I will do as well as I can,” Jefferson said.

(Forty-seven years later, Jefferson said Adams imagined the conversation; he said it was a committee of five that unanimously asked him to write the Declaration, and “I consented; I drew it.”)

For 17 days in late June 1776, Jefferson hunched over his writing box, turning out drafts of the Declaration.

At the time, Jefferson focused mainly on the rationale for breaking with Britain. The poetry of the preamble, as it is so well-known today, was considered less important at the time, but it included the most-remembered phrase: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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.”

Jefferson later acknowledged that the preamble was not based on original ideas. He wrote a friend that “I did not consider it as any part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether,” and told another that “it was intended to be an expression of the american mind.” In fact, the preamble echoed writings of many others. Philosopher John Locke, one of Jefferson’s heroes, had written in 1689 that natural rights included “life, liberty and estate.” Jefferson had translated his friend Philip Mazzei’s words in 1774 that “all men are by nature equally free and independent.”

For Jefferson and other founders, one of the most contentious debates was over Jefferson’s draft language that excoriated King George III for enabling the importation of slaves. In his draft, Jefferson wrote that the monarch was “Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold,” which Jefferson called a “cruel war against human nature itself.” Still, even this section did not envision a ban on slavery. Indeed, Jefferson wrote that the king was “now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us.”

This slave-trade section faced wide opposition because so many states profited from such business. The opposition came not just from Southerners where enslavement was greatest, but also from the Middle Colonies of Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Rhode Island, while having one of the smallest populations of enslaved people, at around 3,700 in 1774, was a pivotal player over a century-long period, with merchants there sponsoring at least 934 sailings from Africa of 1.1 million enslaved men, women and children, and would continue after the revolution to control much of the slave trade.

Nearly the entire section was struck from the Declaration, and the word slavery was no longer mentioned. All that was left was a vague reference to a charge that the king has “excited domestic insurrection against us,” which referred to Lord Dunmore’s proclamation to free enslaved men who fought for Britain.

While estimates of the total vary, many of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence were enslavers, with Jefferson among the largest. John Hancock of Massachusetts, the president of the Congress and one of the richest men in New England, owned enslaved people. Even Franklin of Pennsylvania had once owned enslaved people before becoming a leading abolitionist, according to research by the Benjamin Franklin House.

The Declaration has long been analyzed for its failure to call for the end of slavery. But it has received less scrutiny for the fact that it set the foundation for ending Native American control for much of the land west of the Appalachians. In Jefferson’s wording, he accused the king of encouraging the “merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, & conditions of existence.”

Jefferson had written about how he believed that Native Americans were “in body and mind, equal to the white man,” while saying Black people “might not be so.” But as his attack on Native Americans in the Declaration demonstrated, that did not mean they would have the same rights as White people. He believed that Native Americans could be part of American society if they adopted its beliefs, became farmers, adopted Christian principles and left certain desired lands for White people. In effect, the Declaration of Independence meant that the United States did not recognize the Proclamation Line or other British measures designed to protect Native American land, and many tribes joined forces with London to fight the Americans. This further drove Jefferson to become one of the most aggressive leaders in calling for the removal of Indians.

At the time the Declaration was adopted, the Cherokee tribe in Southern states believed they had made peace in exchange for land, but a dispute broke out and the Indians attacked a White settlement, perhaps urged on by the British. Militia forces then destroyed many Cherokee villages. Whoever was to blame, Jefferson viewed this as an opportunity to call for the removal of many tribes, with the subtext being that revolutionaries could now take their lands.

Jefferson wrote to Page about his insistence that Indians be immediately pushed far to the west. “Nothing will reduce those wretches so soon as pushing the war into the heart of their country. But I would not stop there. I would never cease pursuing them while one of them remained on this side of the” Mississippi River.

A few days later, Jefferson wrote to another friend that the Cherokees “will now be driven beyond” the Mississippi. In the following years, as Virginia’s governor and then president, Jefferson would push repeatedly for relocating more tribes farther west.

Jefferson easily won support for other ideas, including the need to establish free trade with every nation and a requirement that taxation be approved only with representation, albeit only for certain White male property owners.

Still, much to Jefferson’s frustration, about one-fourth of his words, including some of his most original phrases, were deleted.

In addition to the slave-trade clause, the deletions included Jefferson’s emotional expression of grief about the separation from Britain. Jefferson had written that London’s actions had “given the last stab to agonizing affection, and many spirits bids us to renounce forever these unfeeling brethren. We must endeavor to forget our former love for them. … We might have been a free & great people together.” The Continental Congress felt admitting such affection was ill-suited for such a revolutionary document and spiked it.

Jefferson was so angry that he later wrote that other delegates were responsible for “mutilations” of his work, and he sent copies of his original draft to close friends.

While the Declaration is known today as the beginning of American democracy, that was not the founders’ immediate goal. In fact, many revolutionary leaders feared the modern democratic idea that any adult citizen could vote; they generally favored a republic with some expansion of voting for landowning White people, which they viewed as a liberalization of the system, but with limits that would last for generations. Jefferson later said that democracies were “impracticable beyond the limits of a town,” James Madison wrote they were “spectacles of turbulence and contention,” and Alexander Hamilton rebutted the suggestion that “pure democracy” was the “most perfect government,” saying that “no position in politics is more false than this.” Ancient democracies, he said, were tyrannies.

Nor did the Declaration explicitly cite rights for women, notwithstanding a March 1776 letter from Abigail Adams to her husband, John, beseeching him to “Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.” There was little expectation at the time that women would gain equality — and the country to this day has not had a female president — but Abigail Adams’s words would be cited by suffragists as they sought the right to vote and take their place in history. (There are no surviving letters between Jefferson and his wife, Martha.)

As word of the Declaration spread, with copies read aloud at town squares and reprinted in newspapers, scenes of celebration rippled across the landscape. A sizable number who called themselves Loyalists were repulsed and in some cases taking arms on opposite sides within families. But the overwhelming public display was one of joy and a keen awareness of the history — and the risks.

John Adams wrote to Abigail that he thought the Declaration would be celebrated “as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

Still, Adams wrote that he was “well aware of the Toil and Blood” that was to come. The country was ready for independence, if not the fight that followed. While today the Declaration is known as America’s day of birth, the founders knew that they were far outgunned by Britain and hoped that the document would lead to foreign financial assistance and alliance, particularly with France. That took far longer than hoped, but it wouldn’t have happened without the Declaration, and it proved crucial to winning what became a global war.

The Declaration was also notable for what it did not say; there is no mention of a state religion or sect, referring generally to “Nature’s God,” the “Creator” and “divine Providence.” The Declaration’s signers included many Christians of varying traditions, but they did not seek to impose their faith on others. The Congress met in a colony founded by Quakers who sought religious freedom, and it did so at a time of Enlightenment thinking and a desire among many to break from taxation that supported a de facto state religion. Jefferson and some other signers were influential in viewing religion through a Deist frame, which focused on rationality and moral teachings instead of supernatural events. George Washington years later wrote to a Jewish congregation in Rhode Island that the United States was founded not on “toleration … as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people,” but on a government that “gives to bigotry no sanction.”

The tone was set. Virginia disestablished the Anglican Church and Jefferson pushed legislation to establish a wall of separation between church and state, which was passed by Virginia’s assembly. The federal Constitution later specifically barred the establishment of religion or any prohibition on the free exercise of faith.

The end result of the Declaration was “very conservative,” Lindsay Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library, said in an interview. Much of the British legal system was retained; most of the elites were still elites; and public participation mainly by White property owners was allowed. The gradualness of the revolution, instead of a complete and sudden overturn, helped it succeed, she said.

The Declaration was not the immediate social revolution that might have been suggested by the preamble, and this would soon lead to internal rebellions and provide an impetus behind the Constitution. For now, the radical part was that it ended monarchical control. At the time, most countries were ruled by hereditary rulers — King Louis XVI in France, Catherine the Great in Russia, the Habsburgs in Austria, the Ottoman Empire in Asia, the Qing Dynasty in China, and kingdoms in Africa and elsewhere.

The fact that the creation of America was premised on the idea that it would have no king was a nearly unprecedented concept. As Jefferson later put it, expressing his concern about the danger of a monarch holding too much power and military might, “there is no king, who, with a sufficient force, is not always ready to make himself absolute.”

Shortly after the Declaration’s adoption, it became clear to a Black preacher and Continental Army veteran named Lemuel Haynes that the assertion that “all men are created equal” did not apply to Black people.

In his essay, “Liberty Further Extended,” Haynes quoted Jefferson’s preamble and then dissected its fallacies. “Even an [African] has equally as good a right to his Liberty in common with Englishmen,” he wrote. Haynes’s essay would not be discovered until two centuries after it was written, but it is just one of many pieces of evidence that many of those in revolutionary times understood the contradictions of the Declaration.

After the Declaration was published, several Northern states passed laws banning slavery under various timelines, but it took 89 years and the end of the Civil War before enslavement was banned nationally.

Ever since Jefferson wrote the Declaration, the question would be asked how Jefferson could write that all men are created equal while continuing to enslave hundreds of Black people. One answer comes from Philip Mazzei, the friend whose words were said by Congress to have been an inspiration for Jefferson’s equality phrase. He later wrote a memoir in Italian that included his explanation. If accurate — and Mazzei was an avid promoter of his friend — the account is one of most insightful about Jefferson’s soul-searching at the time.

Mazzei wrote that Jefferson said at the time that “he himself would have proposed the total abolition of slavery in the name of humanity and justice,” according to the memoir, which was translated into English in 1942. “He said further that to keep in a state of slavery human beings who are born with rights equal to ours, and who do not differ from us save in color, is not only a barbarous and cruel injustice, but also a shameful act, especially since this people braved everything for our liberty.”

But as was so often the case, Jefferson said the proposal was too risky and would have to be postponed. In Mazzei’s telling, Jefferson agreed with George Mason, the Virginia enslaver and legislator who said that freeing enslaved people would give them “nothing” while turning them into “thieves.” With that as his rationale, Jefferson continued enslavement, Mazzei wrote.

On July 4, the day Americans would later celebrate for his work, Jefferson made no mention of the Declaration. Instead, he attended a hearing on the conduct of Benedict Arnold, who at the time was still an American military leader.

He could hardly imagine that Arnold would turn traitor, lead a British naval armada, and eventually send Jefferson on the run.