 The year 1774 began with earth-shaking events in Virginia and with life and death in my family. On the 21st of February, at 2.11 pm, we felt the shock of an earthquake at Monticello. It shook the houses so sensibly that everybody ran out of doors. In case you're wondering, yes. My first reaction upon realizing I was experiencing the exceedingly rare phenomenon of an earthquake in Virginia was to look at a clock and note the exact time. It is what I do. Where was I? Ah, yes. The ground was shifting beneath my feet. The covenant of Virginia was shaken at its very foundations. We felt another shock of the earthquake the next day. We were also deluged by torrential rains. The Ravana River flooded higher than it had ever except for the great fresh of 1771. My younger sister, Elizabeth's body, was found two days following the aftershock. It appeared that she had been swept away by the raging waters of the Ravana. We held a service for her on March 7th. She was just over a year younger than I was. It was not long after this sad event that we experienced the joy of new life. My wife Martha gave birth to our second child, a daughter, on April 3rd at about 11 o'clock a.m. In spite of my best efforts, no matter how significant certain events sometimes defy the precision of record that is my predilection. We named her Jane after my mother. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to remain home for very long. The Virginia House of Burgesses met in Williamsburg in early May, and it was my duty to represent Albemarle County. Tensions with one of our neighbouring colonies in Pennsylvania regarding our shared border and which colony held the rightful claim to the land around the forks of the Ohio River were growing. Making matters worse, an intensifying conflict with the Charnese and Mingos in the same region demanded our urgent attention. In spite of those press and concerns to the west, however, our focus was suddenly drawn far to the north by the next event which excited our sympathies for our sister colony, Massachusetts. On May 19th, news arrived in Williamsburg of the Boston Port Bill by which that port was to be shut up on the 1st of June of 1774. The lead in the House on these subjects being no longer left to the old members, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, three or four other members whom I do not recollect and myself, agreed that we must boldly take an unequivocal stand in the line with Massachusetts. We determined to meet and consult on the proper measures in the council chamber for the benefit of a library in that room. We were under conviction of the necessity of arousing our people from the lethargy into which they had fallen as to passing events and thought that the appointment of a day of general fast and prayer would be most likely to call up and alarm their attention. A no-example of such solemnity had existed since the days of our distresses in the French and Indian War and since then a new generation had grown up forgetful of past alarms. With the help of John Rusworth's historical collections, we rummaged over them for the revolutionary precedents and forms of the Puritans of the day, which of course were preserved by Mr. Rusworth. We cooked up a resolution. While somewhat modernizing their phrases, it appointed the first day of June on which the port bill was to commence for a day of fast and humiliation and prayer to implore heaven to avert from us the evils of civil war to inspire us with firmness and support of our rights and to turn the hearts of the king and parliament to moderation and justice. To give greater emphasis to our proposition, we agreed to wait the next morning on Robert Carter Nicholas, whose grave and religious character was more in unison with the tone of our resolution and to solicit him to move it. We accorded and they went to him in the morning and he moved at the same day. The first of June was proposed and it passed without opposition. Governor Dunmore dissolved us as usual. We promptly retired to the Apollo Room of the Rattataven as before. Upon this extra official reconvening, we agreed to an association and instructed the Committee of Correspondents to propose to the Correspondent Committees of the other colonies to appoint deputies to meet in Congress at such place annually as should be convenient to direct from time to time the measures required about the general interest. We further declared that an attack on any one colony should be considered as an attack on the whole. This resolution was signed on May 27th by 89 delegates, including myself. Considering this as an accomplishment worthy of common and end to the extended session, most of the delegates returned to their home counties. The tumbling forward of events and news, however, did not allow us to rest in the way that we had expected. A few days later, news arrived from Boston, urgently requesting support from her sister colonies. Peyton Randolph took the lead as was his well-earned place. He convened all the members who were then in town and sent for all the members who lived close enough to assemble rapidly. On May 30th, 25 purchases included myself, met again at the Rattataven to decide upon a response to Boston's call for aid. We agreed that Virginia should adhere to Massachusetts request and concur with our fellow colonies in a boycott of British goods. Twenty-five members, however, were not enough to speak for the entire colony. We therefore recommended to the several colonies to elect deputies to meet at Williamsburg the 1st of August and soon to consider the state of the colony and particularly to appoint delegates to a general congress should that measure be exceeded to by the committees of correspondents generally. Until this point, the colonies' representatives had always been called together by the royal governor, speaking on behalf of the king. With this resolution, unofficial as it technically was, the legislators were calling themselves to meet speaking on behalf of the people. It is with such quiet incremental actions that true revolutions occur. We returned home. In our several counties, we invited the clergy to meet assemblies of the people on the 1st of June to perform the ceremonies of the day and to address to them discourses suited to the occasion. The people met generally with anxiety and alarm in their countenances and the effect of the day through the whole colony was like a shock of electricity. Throughout the discussions and decisions made by the people's representatives in May, I had been called upon as a principal draftsman for the various resolutions. Witness in first hand the effect of those resolutions on the people, I was encouraged to elaborate. I set myself to compose a proposed set of resolutions for the most delegates as Virginia would send to the inter-colonial meeting. I worked on the manuscript during June and July and haven't been re-elected along with my compatriot John Walker to represent Abelmaier County. I planned to deliver my ideas in person in Williamsburg. Unfortunately, I became ill and had to turn back to Monticello. But I forwarded two copies. One to Peyton Randolph and the other to Patrick Henry. I do not know what happened to Mr. Henry's copy. I thought that he read it. He's more of a talker than a reader. Fortunately, Mr. Randolph's copy was presented for the inspection and review of a large number of delegates. They were gathered at Mr. Randolph's house because we, of course, had not been officially convened by the Royal Governor and therefore could not meet in Virginia's official legislative house. The ideas that I expressed in this document were applauded by most of the delegates in Williamsburg, but they were never voted upon. They were referred, and I believe wisely, referred at the time. The leap I proposed was too long as of 1774 for the mass of our citizens. In two years' time, I would be given another opportunity to propose many of those same sentiments in a more fully developed and carefully considered manner in the Declaration of Independence. In that later and much more famous document, I would also follow the implications to their logical conclusion, which of course was that of a complete independence. But not even I was ready for that in 1774. Although I never intended it for general publication, my set of proposed instructions was eventually published and generally distributed. It gained me a reputation throughout the common as a radical thinker and writer well before my first appearance as a Virginia delegate in Philadelphia. The title under which it was eventually published was a summary view of the rights of British America. As I discussed the essay here, I will refer to it simply as my summary view. Both the later Declaration of Independence and my summary view were based on the theory of natural law. The summary view, however, contained no, well, the summary of the concept of natural law and universal human rights. They were woven throughout my 1774 essay, but I did not attempt to compress them into the form of a preamble two years later. It was challenging enough even to assert that the king served natural law and the people rather than the other way around. For instance, my summary view stated that these are grievances which we have thus laid before his Majesty with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes free people claim and their rights as derived from the laws of nature and not as the gift of their chief magistrate. Let us flatter who fear it is not an American art to give praise which is not due might be well from the venal but would ill-beseem those who are ascertain the rights of human nature. They know and will therefore say that kings are the servants not the proprietors of the people. The style of the summary view was one of direct address to the king. Nonetheless, I throughout placed blame on and asserted separation from parliament. The king would have to wait two more years to receive a correspondent acknowledgement. But that last passage which so directly reduced the authority of the king was a prime specimen of the qualities which made the earlier documents something that would have divided rather than unite the colonies in 1774 by going too far too fast. There is a snail-paced gate for the advance of new ideas on the general mind under which we must acquiesce. A 40 years experience of popular assemblies has taught me that you must give them time for every step you take if too hard pushed they will bulk and the machine retrogrades. The thoughts I put on paper in the summer of 1774 therefore served as acknowledgments to those who had begun to think along the same lines as was I. They also served as encouragements to those people. It was not yet their time to become the standard of the American cause. That slow pace helped me to develop my thoughts and expressions. I did include some of the same concepts in the earlier as well as the later document. For instance, in the summary view I asserted that parliament had no right to legislate for us at all. I referred to parliament as a body of men foreign to our constitutions and unacknowledged by our laws. I later expressed that idea with similar words in a grievance in the declaration to it. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation. In 1774 however, a complete denial of parliament's authority over the colonies was beyond what most Americans were willing to claim. The general distinction was still of the difference between the colonial legislatures' rights to internal government and taxation as balanced with parliament's right to external regulation. My summary view basically stated that the American colonies shared with England, at least politically, a king and nothing else. My negation of the authority of parliament was based on my own reading of history, even if it was not unique. As had been asserted by my cousin Richard Bland ten years earlier, Virginia was originally a private business venture, not an effort of the crowns and the public's resources. In my summary view, I set it in part this way. America was conquered and settlements made and firmly established at the expense of individuals and not of the British public. Their own blood was spilled in acquiring lands for their settlement. Their own fortunes expended in making that settlement effectual. For themselves they fought. For themselves they conquered. And for themselves alone they have right to hold. I later included the same idea in my original draft of the Declaration of Independence with these words. Nor have we been wanted in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend a jurisdiction over these our states. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here, no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension. That these were affected at the expense of our own blood and treasure unassisted by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain. That in constituting indeed our several forms of government we had adopted one common king, thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league and enmity with them, but that submission to their parliament was no part of our constitution, no ever in idea if history may be credited. Ultimately, the specifics of the historical interpretation were unable to unify the American mind in 1776 in the final approved version of the Declaration. The concept was limited to the following expression. Nor have we been wanted in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. And that's it. As you of course are well aware, no dissertation on exactly how the American colonies were settled and funded found its way into the Declaration of Independence, at least not in the final version. It is as if Congress was eventually willing to say, we have reminded our British brethren of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here quite enough by now. Thank you very much. So we very well believe that we are fully justified in saying that we do not remind them again here. That is one of the edits that I think made the Declaration of Independence weaker than it could have been. Which is not the only one. The Continental Congress gave a similarly silent treatment in 1776 to another idea that I expressed in my 1774 summary view. i.e. slavery. Echoes of the general phrase with which I introduced the subject in 1774 made their way past the cutting and chopping of congressional edits in 1776. In my summary view I wrote for the most trifling reasons and sometimes for no conceivable reason at all. His Majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. The correspondent grievance in the Declaration's final draft later read, he has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. But that grievance in 1774 went on to state the abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in these colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa. Yet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition have been hitherto defeated by his Majesty's negative. I included a similar sentiment with some alteration of rhetorical purpose in my draft of the Declaration. It never saw the final vote on July 4th. During this time my ideals and my efforts regarding universal human liberty were approaching their height. I believed during that period that a complete end to slavery in America was within our grasp, strengthened as it was by the philosophy that justified our revolution. In retrospect I now understand that my youthful exuberance reached not only further than the mass of my countrymen in 1774, nor even of 1776, but indeed of my entire generation. My own efforts had not yet waxed fully as I was writing a summer review. But that is a story for later time. Perhaps a discussion of 1776. Some unjust patterns of parliamentary legislation had expanded from their first instances by the time of my summer review. For instance, the Massachusetts Government Act, which was passed by parliament on May 20th of 1774, had combined with an act for the better securing and preserving his Majesty's reputation. This act also enforced the unjust idea that, as I explained in my summer review, a murder committed there in Boston is if the Governor pleases to be tried in the court of King's Bench, in the island of Great Britain. My summer review examined the implications and repercussions of these laws through the extent of the paragraph. In the declaration, the issue was condensed into a brief grievance for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses, which effectively expressed the core issue at stake. Some of the elements of my summer review had grown in significance by the time of the declaration. For instance, I initially examined the injustice of the Boston Port Act with an entire paragraph based on the premise that, as I wrote in 1774, a large and populous town whose trade was their sole substance was deprived of that trade and involved in utter ruin. By 1776, the British blockade of colonial trade had expanded far beyond merely that of Boston. Ultimately, the declaration provided a grievance that blamed the King for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world. In 1774, I expressed the issue of the stationing of royal troops and mercenaries in the colonies with another full paragraph beginning that in order to enforce the arbitrary measures before complained of, His Majesty has from time to time sent among us large bodies of armed forces not made up of the people here, nor raised by the authority of our laws. In 1776, the same concept found its way into its final expression with, for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us. This process of concision from the summary view to the declaration may also be demonstrated by my treatment of taxation. Having already expanded on the argument that Parliament held no authority over us, I wrote in 1774 that, still less let it be proposed that our properties within our own territories shall be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own. The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them. The grievance in 1776 read simply, for imposing tax as honors, without our consent. As I've mentioned, no part of my summary view was voted on in 1774. No part was specifically accepted or rejected at that time. Some aspects were later adopted in other documents. Some allowed to lapse into silence and others explicitly rejected to the favour of contrary ideas by the voice of the American people as represented by their change in governments. In regard to my summary view of the rights of British America I suppose it can be said that I was in some ways ahead of my time, in others behind it and in yet others in step with the mass of my generation. Perhaps the same can be said in regard to a summary view of my entire life's legacy. The Virginia convention met on the 1st of August, renewed their association, appointed delegates to the Congress, gave them instructions very temperately and properly expressed both as to style and matter and they repaired to Philadelphia at the time appointed. The splendid proceedings of that Congress at their first session belonged to general history are known to everyone and need not therefore been noted here. Throughout the continental region what became known as Dunmore's War. The conflict pitted Virginia and her militia against the Shawnee and Mingo for control of the Ohio River Ballet. Whether or not that region belonged to Virginia or Pennsylvania was still a matter of negotiation. We could not have known at the time but Dunmore's War marked the final time an American militia of the 13 colonies embroiled in this conflict would take the field in his majesty's service and under royal command. We could not have known it because the people of Virginia were not imagining independence yet. The year 1774 came to a close with events that would eventually shake the world and with endens and new beginnings in my own life. The first continental congress was the first gathering of colonies that would become states that would become the United States of America. As for myself I came into the inheritance from my father-in-law John Wales who had passed away the previous year. The inheritance was composed of significant land and debts as well as 135 slaves including the Hemmings family. During that year I retired from my law practice and I entered into my first viticultural experiments with Philip Mottze. The seeds planted by the tumultuous events of 1774 of a variety and extent that none of us could possibly foresee at the time. But speaking of time I look at the clock now and I see that my own time to discourse with you my fellow citizen of the Republic of Letters is up. Until we have another opportunity to meet rest assured that I remain your humble and obedient servant Thomas Jefferson.