By Jason Herron

Considering Thomas Jefferson was an experienced lawyer, the Declaration of Independence reads more like poetry than a legal document. In what many believe is the greatest breakup letter of all time, Jefferson clearly explained, to the entire world, that the problem was not the colonists in America, the problem was the king. 

Try to imagine what it took to get 56 men, residing from New England to Georgia, to all agree on an entire political doctrine and then sign their entire life to it. This was required before any declaration of separation could be sent. 

In his first paragraph Jefferson identified the signers as “one People” and justified the separation from Great Brittian due to the “Law’s of Nature and of Nature’s God,” which was a legal term coined by Sir William Blackstone.

Blackstone wrote the “Commentaries on the Laws of England,” and during Jefferson’s time, those volumes were studied by aspiring lawyers especially in the colonies. Almost a century later, Abraham Lincoln “devoured” Blackstone’s Commentaries while obtaining his self-taught law degree. Lincoln said that the more he read Blackstone, “the more intensely interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured them.”

Blackstone claimed that certain rights and moral principles are inherent and can be understood through reason and observation of the natural world, which was established by a divine Creator. 

It is a law of nature to defend yourself, your home, and your family. Even the tiniest creature will defend its life, home, and offspring. On the other spectrum, abolitionists argued that slavery is not found in nature and therefore should not be perpetuated by men. Which leads us into the second paragraph of the Declaration. 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal (…)” 

In those 14 words, the government paradigm was shifted. English colonists no longer considered themselves as subjects to a king and the royal lines of succession; they were self-governing citizens of God. 

To add some clarification, the use of the word “men” throughout history has been used to describe all of humanity. In this case, Jefferson was appealing directly to the men signing the Declaration, similar to Lincoln’s appeal to the men signing the 13^th Amendment. However, both men clearly believed that all of humanity was created by God and therefore entitled to certain inherent rights. 

When Jefferson states that men are created, and they are created equal, our Founders held that as a “truth” which was “self-evident,” it was not subjective, it was obvious. So, this is where it gets interesting. 

Jefferson owned slaves, and there were men among him who considered slaves their property. However, Jefferson did not see the slaves he inherited as property. Even after the Revolution, it was Virginia law that made it all but impossible for men like Jefferson and Washington to free slaves they inherited.

Jefferson found slavery and the slave trade “a cruel war against human nature itself” and stated so in his Original Draft of the Declaration. Jefferson wrote that the king “has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. (…) determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, (…) suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce (…)”

Jefferson’s longest and most passionate grievance against the king was rejected by 2 of the 13 colonies. Without unanimous consent, it was removed. If those two colonies had agreed with the other 11, slavery would have been “clearly” abolished in the Declaration by the hand of Thomas Jefferson.  

Did you notice that he capitalized the word MEN? Thomas left a clear record of his opinion; slaves were MEN, not property. 

In 1865, the civil war ended. Abraham Lincoln held steadfast until his assassination that the principles in the Declaration conflicted with slavery. 3 years before his presidency began, on August 17, 1858, Lincoln begged his countrymen to “come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence.” 

“Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur, and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me – take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever – but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. (…) I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man’s success. (…) do not destroy that immortal emblem of Humanity – the Declaration of American Independence.” 

The Declaration is poetry, how else could you present so much with so few words? 

The author is a Guilford resident and former candidate for the Vernon-Guilford seat in the House of Representatives.