 Good day to you. I am Thomas Jefferson. If I had but ten seconds to tell you about myself, I would tell you these three things and not a word more. I was the author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and the father of the University of Virginia. Fortunately, we have a bit more time than that to spend together today. Thus, I am honored to introduce myself a little more thoroughly than the fleeting tick-tock of your modern timekeeping might otherwise allow. You may have wondered why I did not include any public offices in that list. I do not want to be remembered for having been representative to the Virginia House of Burgesses from the County of Albemarle when I grew up, nor as a representative of Virginia to the Second Continental Congress and to the Congress of the United States under the Articles of Confederation. I do not want to be remembered as having represented the United States in France, nor as having served as the first Secretary of State under the U.S. Constitution. I do not want to be remembered as having served as the nation's second Vice President. Well, nobody wants to be remembered as having been Vice President. And I do not want to be remembered for having been the third President of the United States. In a government by the people, those who hold public offices are servants. If they serve well, they deserve to be remembered fondly for what they did, not for the title they held. I devoted roughly half of my 83 years from 1743 to 1826 to public service. On July 4th, 1776, after the vote on the Declaration of Independence, I was placed on a committee for, among other purposes, proposing a motto for the United States. The motto that Congress eventually adopted was e pluribus unum, which is Latin for out of many, one. I dedicated my life in public service to the idea that America will derive our greatness from the vast resources that can be found only in a diversity of opinion and that we will derive our strength from our ability to focus that diversity into a unity of purpose. I articulated our purpose as one people in the Declaration of Independence. If I had but 10 seconds to tell you that purpose, I would say it this way. One day, all men, meaning all mankind, will be treated as they are created as equals. Fortunately, I have decidedly more time than the instantaneous grammar or other forms of communication like the twittering of the birds and the trees in your day would otherwise permit. This allows me to continue telling the story of the Declaration of Independence, a story so aptly begun in this series of conversations by my compatriot Richard Henry Lee. Mr. Lee told you of how on Friday, June 7th, 1776, he proposed the three resolutions that brought us one step closer to a declaration of our independence. The first of the resolutions proposed independence. The second proposed the forming of foreign alliances. The third proposed that we create a plan of consideration between the colonies. On Saturday, June 8th, Congress proceeded to take the first resolution that of independence into consideration and referred it to a committee of the whole into which they immediately resolved themselves and passed that day and Monday the 10th in debating on the subject. I took notes on these debates which I saved as a record for posterity. The debate was not on whether we should become independent, but on when and how. It was argued by James Wilson, Robert R. Livingston, Edward Rutledge, John Dickinson, others that though they were friends to the measures themselves and saw the impossibility that we should ever again be united with Great Britain, yet they were against adopting them at this time. They said that we should wait for the voice of the people to drive us to it, which would happen soon enough. They essentially argued that we should first affect the second two resolutions by establishing alliances and organizing ourselves internally. Only then would we be ready to officially declare our independence. On the other side, it was argued by John Adams, Mr. Lee, George Whith and others that this was the best opportunity we would have and that if we waited we would miss our chance. The King had already made us independent by declaring us out of his protection and no delegates could be denied a power of declaring an existing truth. They said that the people were waiting for us to lead the way. We had to take the risk of making the commitment publicly if we were to expect anyone, be they foreign powers or our own people, to join in the cause. It appearing in the course of these debates that the colonies of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, South Carolina, Maryland were not yet matured for following from the parent stem, but that they were fast advancing to that state. It was thought most prudent to wait a while for them and to postpone the final decision for three weeks, but that this might occasion as little delay as possible, a committee was appointed to prepare a declaration of independence. The committee were John Adams, Dr. Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston and myself. You may be wondering if Robert R. Livingston of New York had been one of the leading spokesmen for not declaring independence so soon, why was he placed on the committee to draft the declaration? The people of New York had not voted to support independence by June 11th, but we believed they soon would. Having Mr. Livingston on that committee would encourage them. Roger Sherman of Connecticut was universally respected in Congress as a man of moderation. He, like Livingston, did not participate actively in the drafting process. However, their presence on the committee helped to reassure the more tenuous delegates that this declaration would not be too radical to effect unity. Dr. Franklin was the most well known and respected of the delegates in the eyes of European nations whom we needed to enlist to our aid. He brought to the committee an international reputation as well as extended practical understanding of what the delicacy of foreign courts would require in a formal declaration. He was not eager to write the draft. I have made it a rule, said he to me, whenever in my power to avoid becoming the draftsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body. John Adams had been one of the leaders of independency and the independency movement from the very beginning. Moreover, he represented Massachusetts, which had long suffered the worst infringements of rights by Parliament and the King. He was, however, busy with other committees. Among the reasons he gave that I should write the draft was the fact that I was a Virginian. This made sense. The majority of the conflicts having taken place in New England up until that point, part of our task was to convince the southern states that this was their struggle too. Of the southern states, Virginia was the most populous and had early become a leader in the movement to assert our equal rights. He also acknowledged that while his vehemence and forthrightness of expression had caused some in Congress to look at him with a jaundiced eye, my own habitual silence during debates when I made it a practice to take careful notes meant that the draft coming from my pen would earn it no enemies, our prior eye. Delegates would be more likely to consider the words on their own account. It may seem strange to you that all of the committee members were not vying for the honor of writing such an important document. In June of 1776, none of us realized how important the Declaration of Independence would eventually become. Oh, we knew that what we were doing over all was important, but we thought that the June 7th resolution for independency would be the most memorable document. Between the 11th and the 28th, I primarily worked alone. I did most of the work in one of the two rooms that I had rented on the southwest corner of High Street, which you may know better as Market Street, and 7th from one Mr. Jacob Graff. This location was, at the time, situated toward the outskirts of Philadelphia. At that location, I enjoyed the benefits of freely circulating air, and more peace and quiet than a more centrally situated living quarters would allow. I wrote a number of drafts, of which I preserved a portion. Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams made a few alterations during this process. For instance, my original draft read, We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable. At the suggestion of the committee that was changed to the much more scientific expression, we hold these truths to be self-evident. I knew it was my duty not to find out new principles or new arguments never before thought of, nor merely to say things which had never been said before. But to place before mankind the common sense of the subject in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we were compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. It therefore should come as no surprise that I found expressions that harmonized with sentiments expressed elsewhere in the colonies. For instance, the Virginia Bill of Rights, which was adopted by the convention at Williamsburg on the day after our committee had been formed in Philadelphia to write the Declaration, read in part that all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights of which when they enter into a state of society they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity, namely the enjoyment of life and liberty with the means of acquiring and possessing property and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. After changes by the committee, as well as by Congress, the Declaration as approved by the Continental Congress read that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This brings me to the changes made by Congress. After the committee approved the draft, I reported it to the House on Friday, the 28th of June, when it was read and ordered to lie on the table. Richard Henry Lee kept a tally of the July 2nd vote on the same page where he had written the independency resolution. John Adams will tell you the story of the debates and the vote, so I will move my story forward to the afternoon of the 2nd. After the vote on independence, Congress proceeded the same day to consider the declaration, the announcement of independence. This is when they began to make their changes. The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many. For this reason, those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offence. Congress made many more changes than that, 86 in all, including the shortening of the document by a quarter. On the afternoon of the 4th, it was read aloud for final review and approved. Congress then ordered the Declaration of Independence printed. That part of the story, however, will be told by John Dunlap, the man who printed the document. I was asked to introduce myself and to tell a part of the story of the Declaration of Independence. Having fulfilled those duties, I see that I have a little time left to respond to some questions that have been sent to me. This question is from one Praetoria Berrycloth, from Wyatt then, Pennsylvania. Praetoria writes, You wrote, all men are created equal in the Declaration of Independence, yet you owned slaves. Did you attempt to address the issue of slavery while you were writing the Declaration of Independence? Yes, Praetoria, my original draft of the Declaration of Independence included a paragraph condemning the institution of slavery. The paragraph was included in the list of grievances and read thus. He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for the suppressing of every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this extricable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them, thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another. This paragraph was only implicitly a condemnation of slavery. The purpose of the paragraph was to accuse King George III of committing crimes not only against our rights as British subjects, but against human nature itself. But no matter where I would have included the subject of slavery in the document, I would have needed to express it within the context of a condemnation of the King and of Parliament, because that was the nature of the document I was writing. Congress decided that the subject did not serve as an effective grievance. At least partially because the paragraph seemed to place the blame of slavery entirely on the shoulders of the King. When I was writing the Declaration of Independence, I was serving as council for the United States of America, in the Court of the World, prosecuting King George III and Parliament for crimes under natural law. Of course I did not include any mention of the fault of the colonies in the matter of slavery, any more than I would have mentioned our own blame in any other subject in my argument. If you ever have the misfortune of needing to retain the assistance of legal counsel and your attorney begins making arguments for the other side of the case, you may wish to consider seeking new counsel. Perhaps the logic of the paragraph was unwieldy, but if the structure of the grievance was the only issue, Congress could have made alterations to the paragraph as they made changes elsewhere. Instead, they removed the entire subject of slavery from the document I maintained ever afterward that their real reason for striking out the clause reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa was something other than any perceived inefficacy of the writing style or logic. I argue that it was removed in complacence to South Carolina and Georgia who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of slaves to others. What they did was to silence the discussion about the problem within the context of this statement of the underlying reasons for our revolution. I well understand that this is a difficult subject to talk about, but we cannot find a solution for problems we refuse to discuss. Man, see here. This question was sent to me by one Framingham Edirvayne in Maybell Knot, Georgia. Framingham writes, How did you feel while Congress was debating and editing the committee's final draft of the Declaration of Independence? Well, Framlington, I admit to you that I was not happy about the edits made by Congress. I was sitting by Dr. Franklin at the time who perceived that I was not insensible to these mutilations. He then told me the following story. When I was a journeyman printer, said he, One of my companions, an apprentice Hatter, having served out his time, was about to open shop for himself. His first concern was to have a handsome signboard with a proper inscription. He composed it in these words, John Thompson Hatter, Makes and sells hats for ready money with a figure of a hat subjoined. But he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed it to thought the word Hatter, tautologist, because followed by the words makes hats, which shows he was a Hatter, it was struck out. The next observed that the word makes might as well be omitted because his customers would not care who made the hats. If good and to their mind, they would buy by whom ever made. He struck it out. A third said he thought the words for ready money were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit. Everyone who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with, and the inscription now stood John Thompson sells hats. Sells hats, said his next friend, why nobody will expect you to give them away. What then is the use of that word? It was stricken out and hats followed it. The rather as there was one painted on the board. So the inscription was reduced, ultimately, to John Thompson with the figure of a hat subjoined. I suppose that the good Dr. Franklin was trying to solve my wounded pride while gently reminding me to take myself a little as seriously. Anyone who has ever written anything to be reviewed by a committee is probably able to relate to the good Mr. Thompson Hatter. If so, they can understand how I felt as the Continental Congress wreaked their depredations upon my work. In spite of my personal feelings, however, I remained silent during the process because I knew that we needed to use compromise in order to achieve consensus if we were going to overcome this crisis. This question comes all the way from the town of Couchent, Pinnacles, California, sent to me by one gammon with a gooey. Gammon writes, you mentioned that at the time you were writing the Declaration of Independence, you didn't know how important it was going to become. How did your opinion of what the document means change during your life? What do you hope it will mean to future generations of Americans? Well, Gammon, the Declaration and the Fourth of July began to enjoy public fame as early as 1777 with Americans celebrating the day and the document. As both the day and the document were elevated in the popular mind over the years, I became associated with them. This association played a significant role in my being considered by the American people as a representative of what our revolution and our nation stood for. By the time the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence was approaching, I thought of it in the following terms. May it be to the world what I believe it will be, to some part sooner, to others later, but finally to all, the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights and an undiminished devotion to them.