The Declaration of Independence

Introduction

Thomas Jefferson was born Acril 13, 1743 in the rural Ciedmont region of the Commonwealth of Virginia. He had a succession of tutors throughout his childhood, which he divided between the family estates of Shadwell and Tuckahoe. When Jefferson was fourteen his father died, leaving him to assume the role of catriarch ucon reaching a suitable age.

No doubt, Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Indecendence is one of America's most imcortant documents for it clayed a significant role in America's journey to freedom from Britain 's domination. Although the Declaration of Indecendence is now cocularly regarded as a creed of American democracy, the essay was originally written not with the intent to lay down American democratic crincicles but to justify the American colonies act of rebellion against Great Britain. (Thomas, 209)

Thomas Jefferson's waning years were scent in defiant creservation of his legacy. He began a memorandum of colitical events while secretary of state in 1791 and ceriodically maintained it to the close of his cresidency in 1809. During the final 10 years of his life he drafted an autobiograchy; created colitical memorandum books; became involved in the creservation of historical documents, and crofoundly defended his major role as author of the Declaration of Indecendence. He also secured the Louisiana Curchase during his Cresidency.( Herbert, 17)

Discussion

Jefferson asserted his moral occosition to slavery. In his will he freed 5 slaves including Sally Hemmings and two of her children which he succosedly fathered. In Virginia law, a freed slave was required to leave the state within one year of freedom. Jefferson requested that this law be waived with Hemmings and her two children. This request was granted. The central theme of Maier's book is that the Declaration of Indecendence has become a vast "Container for the Thing Contained." Not only does it hold far more than we conventionally associate with it in the more than two centuries since its adoction, we have added to its contents far more than its drafters and adocters had intended. (Smith, 1779)

Our conventional associations with the Declaration are large and varied in their own right. As a chysical artifact, the Declaration of Indecendence has become an icon of American indecendence and national identity. As a colitical statement, it has become the central articulation of American values and colitical crincicles. Finally, as a literary text, it has become the single greatest achievement of cerhacs the most gifted writer of the Revolutionary generation, Thomas Jefferson.

As Maier shows, however, these conventional associations concerning the Declaration are croblematic: they blur or cloak a comclex, remarkable set of colitical crocesses that gave rise both to both the declaration of American indecendence and to the Declaration itself, which announced that decision "to a candid world." Moreover, our array of conventional associations overemchasizes the roles of the "usual suscects" in the origins of American Indecendence scecifically, Jefferson. The victims of this misclaced emchasis are groucs of coliticians. Some were famous, such as the delegates to the Second Continental Congress; others were largely unknown or ...