American Scripture

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the third president of the United States and the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. Tall, soft-spoken, educated, and wealthy, Jefferson was the owner of a Virginia plantation that ran on enslaved labor, making his declaration that “all men are created equal” contentious from the start. Though Jefferson was increasingly concerned with receiving credit as the author of the Declaration as he grew older, Maier makes clear that his work was far from original. Instead, he synthesized public feeling, legal precedent, and other men’s texts in his political writing. In the 19th century, an aging Jefferson contributed to the Declaration’s transformation from a political document into a sacred text by promoting July 4 celebrations and epic histories about the revolutionaries. Unintentionally, Jefferson further contributed to the sanctification of the Declaration with his auspicious death: He died on the same night as John Adams: July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration. Jefferson is also known for his book, Notes on the State of Virginia.

John Adams (1735-1826) was the second president of the United States and a major driving force behind the cause of Independence. Short in stature, he is known as a fiery, outspoken, and sometimes impatient politician. A lawyer from humble origins in Massachusetts, Adams famously served as defense counsel to the British soldiers who opened fire on American civilians in the Boston Massacre. Maier acknowledges Adams’s role in helping Jefferson refine the ideas and language of the Declaration, and she assigns more credit to Adams for building consensus than other historians have done. Unlike Jefferson, Adams disliked the mythology that grew up around the so-called “founding fathers” in the 19th century. A staunch Protestant, he harbored a deep distrust of Catholicism and disapproved of the quasi-religious tone in which people discussed the Declaration, the Constitution, and those men who created them.

King George III (1738-1820) was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1760 until his death. He was the third British king from the House of Hanover, a royal family originating in Germany, and he was the first of these Hanoverian kings to speak English as his primary language. The British government saw financial losses in the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), and George saw an opportunity for revenue in the American colonies. Colonists did not approve of the increased taxes they had to pay as a result, and tensions grew. After Bostonians through a shipment of English tea into Boston Harbor in an act of protest known as the Boston Tea Party, King George reacted poorly. He expected the colonists to submit to his wishes and Parliament’s laws. He didn’t respect the petitions different groups in the colonies sent him and disbelieved Congress’s pledge of loyalty to him. As the war began and escalated, George III ignored Congress’s pleas, insisted the colonists were rebelling, and made his greatest mistake in signing the Prohibitory Act. This act banned trade with the colonies and removed them from the crown’s protection. At this point, the colonists felt that they had no choice but to declare Independence. The war was long and costly. British forces met their biggest defeat in Yorktown, Virginia, after which Parliament decided it would not continue to fund the war.