Thomas Jefferson, the Apostle of Americanism

by Gilbert Chinard

Finally, Jefferson reiterated once more his favorite contention, the theory which has become one of the fundamental axioms of the doctrine of Americanism: that America did not owe anything to the older civilization of Europe, and was a self-made country:

In our native land, in defence of the freedom that is our birthright, and which we ever enjoyed until the late violation of it; for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our forefathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.

Then came a perfunctory appeal to conciliation, and a final religious note strictly nonsectarian; for of his religious faith the young delegate had retained the form and the tone which scarcely concealed his deism:

With an humble confidence in the mercies of the supreme and impartial Judge and Ruler of the Universe, we most devoutly implore his divine goodness to conduct us happily through this great conflict, to dispose our adversaries to reconciliation on reasonable terms, and thereby to relieve the empire from the calamity of civil war.

No wonder this "Declaration" was read amid thundering huzzas in every market place and amid fervent prayers in nearly every pulpit in the colonies. With an extraordinary "felicity of expression", with a unique sense of fitness, Jefferson had struck every chord susceptible of response in every American heart. He had drawn for the people an ideal picture of the nation and themselves, he had portrayed them as they yearned to be looked upon by posterity and the nations of the world: he had formulated the creed of Americanism.

Far more judicial in tone was the neat state paper prepared by Jefferson to answer Lord North's "Conciliatory Proposition." The committee appointed consisted of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Richard H. Lee. The youngest member of the committee was chosen to draw up the document, the answer of the Virginia Assembly he had brought with him having been approved. Not for nothing had Jefferson attended the courts of justice of Albemarle County and Williamsburg for more than ten years and listened to decisions from the bench. The answer strives to be a cold, dispassionate enumeration of facts, with its short paragraphs beginning: "we are of opinion"—recalling the "Whereases" of legal documents. But there is an undertone of indignation, cropping up in every sentence, which belies the studied reserve. The conclusion, one might call it a peroration, is a genuine specimen of revolutionary eloquence:

When it considers the great armaments with which they have invaded us, and the circumstances of cruelty with which these have commenced and prosecuted hostilities; when these things, we say, are laid together and attentively considered, can the world be deceived into an opinion that we are unreasonable? Or can it hesitate to believe with us, that nothing but our own exertions may defeat the ministerial sentence of death or abject submission?

Truly Jefferson might have become a great orator had he chosen to correct his handicap in speech and train his voice. Historians who attribute much importance to racial traits and inherited characteristics may believe that this was due to the Welshman that reappeared in him at times; but the Welsh temperament was suppressed and checked by the puritanical restraint of Mr. Small, Mr. Maury, the judicial reserve of Mr. Wythe, the example of Mr. Peyton Randolph; and, carried away as he was by Patrick Henry's oratory, Jefferson saw in him impulsive and emotional qualities to be admired but to be shunned. More than any of his contemporaries, however, he was unconsciously influenced by reminiscences of speeches he had read and memorized in Livy, Cicero and perhaps Demosthenes. These sentences have a classical ring; his true models were the Greek and Latin orators, and if a critical edition of Jefferson's early papers were ever attempted, a careful investigation could not fail to bring to light the classical sources of his inspiration.

The report was adopted on July 31, and Congress adjourned the next day. Jefferson returned at once to Monticello, to stay in Virginia until the opening of Congress. In spite of the fiery tone of the answer to Lord North's proposition, it seems that neither he nor any of his friends seriously entertained nor even considered the possibility of the colonies separating entirely from the mother country. War had already begun, but it was a civil war. There still remained some hope that an "everlasting avulsion from Great Britain would be avoided." Yet it could be avoided only on one condition: that the British Government should accept, without reservation or restriction, the minimum terms of Congress. Jefferson then wrote to his friend, John Randolph, who had decided to remove to England:

I would rather be in dependence on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation upon earth, or than on no nation. But I am one of those, too, who, rather than submit to the rights of legislation for us, assumed by the British Parliament, and which late experience has shown they will so cruelly exercise, would lend my hand to sink the whole island in the ocean.[37]