To Have and To Hold
By Jack Wyman
The room was on the second floor.
The three-story building was brick. A lovely house, though hardly ostentatious.
The home of well-known bricklayer Jacob Graff, Jr., it stood at the southwest corner of Seventh and Market Streets in Philadelphia. Where it remains to this day.
It was in this room that the tall, slender, and soft-spoken Virginian would be shut in for the next 17 days. June 11-28, 1776.
When he emerged, Thomas Jefferson would bring with him the words that would galvanize the struggling colonies, inspire the world, and forever change history.
He went first to the two colleagues he respected most. They were part of the Committee of Five tasked with writing this declaration. Benjamin Franklin and John Adams made some edits. Jefferson himself had carefully changed the word “subjects” to “citizens.”
Americans would be subjects no more.
When Jefferson showed the changes to his friend Richard Lee, an eloquent orator, also from Virginia, he told Jefferson he wished “that the manuscript had not been mangled as it is.” Then he added:
“However, the thing is in its nature so good, that no Cookery can spoil the Dish for the palates of Freemen.”
It had not been assumed that Jefferson would be the man charged to write a draft. Adams had been asked and many in Philadelphia thought he would accept, given his penchant for a bit of vain glory.
Adams declined. He professed to be occupied with other matters but years later recounted that he had encouraged Jefferson to take on the assignment:
“Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can.”
It’s one of my favorite stories of the American founding. And a rich glimpse of human nature. Adams could have and might have. But he didn’t. Jefferson did and it made all the difference.
The hand of Providence was upon both great men, and upon all those who had gathered in this city—at what came to be named Independence Hall. God had his purpose for the new nation being born. The Declaration of Independence is the greatest, most passionate, and most beautiful expression of the spirit of individual liberty ever penned.
While it was admittedly a collective effort—further edits were made by the delegates—it was Jefferson who put powerful, timeless words to the American idea of freedom.
Both Franklin and Adams were at that time better known by their reputations. Yet history has venerated Jefferson. Adams himself may have had second thoughts about urging his young colleague from Virginia to write the Declaration. Somewhat ruefully, Adams later observed:
“The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that. . . and all the glory of it.”
Again, typically human, reminding us of our founders’ mortality
Jefferson began his draft by acknowledging that there are times in history when people must take drastic measures. It is because of the inherent worth of the individual that “one people” must “dissolve the political bands which have connected them to another.”
This “becomes necessary.” Why? Because “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them” to full equality “among the powers of the earth.”
Jefferson believed that the rights you and I have—and should have—are not bequeathed as a generous token from the powerful hands of an omnipotent and capricious State. They are granted to us by a sovereign God.
For all time, this should remain “self-evident” truth.
All people—for Jefferson wrote not just for the 13 colonies but for the world—"are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The American Dream is what we used to call it. And we’ve always known it belonged to everyone, regardless of race, religion, nationality, color or creed.
Governments are instituted to protect these individual rights—not to define them, deny them, infringe upon them, punish them, regulate them or tax them.
Government is not the master of the people. Government is their servant. It does not exist to subjugate and curtail liberty, but to welcome and protect it. Government gains its legitimacy not from itself, but from “the consent of the governed.”
It’s true that we the people make concessions to live in harmony—330 million of us together in a big, rich, and diverse land. It’s also true that what makes America the greatest and most wonderful nation on earth—and the enviable desire of so many in other places—is simply this
Freedom.
Once we get to the list of 27 grievances in the Declaration, it’s clear that as varied as they were, they all share in common the firm objection to the denial of individual liberty.
The dignity, rights, and freedom of individuals is the scarlet thread that runs through our founding document. From beginning to end. The Declaration laid the foundation for the creation of America’s democratic republic.
How much it would behoove us all to revisit the Declaration of Independence amidst the cries of collectivist voices, yearning not to be free, but demanding socialism and government control of every area of human life.
Even the right to life.
In the year before he died—on July 4th, the same day as John Adams—Thomas Jefferson wrote that the Declaration of Independence did not express any new ideas—or original thoughts.
Instead, “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.”
Freedom.
It’s ours to have and to hold, gained by sacrifice, preserved through conflict, and advanced by the noble dedication and service of every generation.
How precious it is and must always be.
To order Jack Wyman’s book, “Everything Else: Stories of Life, Faith and Our World”, go to amazon.com, Christian Book Distributors or barnesandnoble.com. It is also available on Kindle and eBooks.
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