The History of the City of Fredericksburg, Virginia

by S. J. Quinn

“The debate began on this resolution on the 8th of June, but on the 10th, it having developed that five colonies north of the Potomac were not ready to vote, the final decision was then postponed until the first day of July. In the meantime a committee had been elected to draft a Declaration of Independence. Mr. Lee, the mover of the above resolution, was unexpectedly called home by the illness of his wife, and was not on the committee. The committee was not appointed by the presiding officer, but was elected by ballot by Congress, and Jefferson, having received the highest number of votes cast, was its chairman. Its work was completed by the 28th of June. The Declaration of Independence was, on that date, reported to the House by Jefferson, and was then read and ordered to lie on the table. The Virginia resolution was carried in the affirmative, in the Committee of the Whole July 1st. On the 2nd day the Declaration of Independence was taken up and debated each day until the fourth, when it was adopted. It will be observed that the Declaration was completed before Congress had adopted the Virginia resolution.

“The committee, elected to draft the Declaration of Independence, consisted of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert R. Livingston. Mr. Jefferson drew the Declaration of Independence at the request of the other members of the committee. Had another been its author, we believe the Declaration would have been different in tone, while, of course, the leading principles would have been the same. Many members were conservative, while Jefferson was radical. They had in view chiefly independence and freedom; Jefferson had the same opinions, but even then contemplated a complete revolution in the existing conditions—for anything which, in the slightest degree, partook of the nature of the government of Great Britain, her customs or traditions, was odious to him. He wished an irrevocable change, so that the new would supersede the old beyond recall.

“When, in framing that great document, he wrote these words: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,’ * * * it doubtless did not require a prophet to tell what his future course would be, or the principles, considered radical then, for which he would stand, or the wonderful influence ‘these truths’ would have in forming constitutions and shaping legislation, State and national, provided the British were beaten on the field of battle.

“It is worthy of note that the Declaration of Independence, as it came from his hands, suffered little change, except in two instances. He inserted in the original draft what might be called an emancipation proclamation—a clause condemning as piratical warfare against human nature itself, the enslaving of Africans—the slave trade being then sanctioned by North and South—the former being carriers and the latter principally buyers—a business which Virginia would, years before, have prohibited had she not been met, in every effort, by royal vetoes. The other change was made by striking out some animadversions upon the English people. This was done by those who yet hoped for reconciliation, or something, they knew not what, which might avert the desperate struggle.

“To those who believe in freedom of thought and action; in the sovereignty of the people; in the equality of all men before the law, based upon constitutional rights, restrictions and limitations, made by the wisdom of the greatest men this world has ever produced; in opening the door to promotion to all men whose talents, integrity and general high characters entitle them to such honors, the Declaration of Independence must forever commend itself; and it seems to the writer that upon the strict adherence to the principles, therein enunciated, rests the very life of the government of the United States.

“There are many other great things which came from the brain of Jefferson besides the Declaration of Independence, though the Declaration may have been the basis of all. The principles of the Declaration having been once established, these followed as a natural sequence. In a limited space only a few can be simply noted. After he retired from Congress, in 1776, to become a member of the Virginia Legislature, he presented, in the session of that year, a bill for the revisal of the laws of the State, which was soon passed, and Jefferson, Pendleton, Wythe, George Mason and Thomas L. Lee were appointed a committee for revision.

“This committee of distinguished men met in Fredericksburg on the 13th day of February, 1777. Here various propositions were submitted and discussed—Mason, Wythe and Jefferson almost always agreeing and voting together, and Pendleton, of all, being the most unwilling to depart from the old conditions, except, to the astonishment of the committee, he proposed a new system, that all common law and equity jurisprudence, which had received the sanction of ages, should be abrogated—a new institute, after the model of Justinian or Bracton, should be reported, thus giving us what is called, in this day, a code law, which would have been set afloat, without a precedent to guide it, and to construe which, would have taken our courts from that time to this.

“After this committee had agreed on measures and propositions, and the general outline of the system to be pursued, Mason and Lee, having given the other members the benefit of their advice, retired from further participation in its labors, because they were not lawyers, and left the work to be done by the other three members, who then divided it, and completed the arduous task in 1779.

“There were four measures proposed by Jefferson before the full committee, then sitting in Fredericksburg, which were his especial pride, and these were the repeal of the laws of entail, the abolition of primogeniture, the establishment of a system of public education, and the act for the establishment of religious freedom. These four bills, he himself afterwards said, he ‘considered as forming a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of ancient, or future, aristocracy, and a foundation laid for a government truly republican.’

“To use his own language again, ‘the repeal of the laws of entail would prevent the accumulation and perpetuation of wealth in select families and preserve the soil of the country from being more and more absorbed in mortmain.’