Jefferson's Declaration Of Independence example essay topic

... on,' they were vital to its rhetorical strategy. They came last partly because they were the most recent of George's 'abuses and usurpations,' but also because they constituted the ultimate proof of his plan to reduce the colonies under 'absolute despotism. ' Whereas the first twenty-two grievances describe the king's acts with such temperate verbs as 'refused,' 'called together,' 'dissolved,' 'endeavored,' 'made,' 'erected,' 'kept,' and 'affected,' the war grievances use emotionally charged verbs such as 'plundered,' 'ravaged,' 'burnt,' and 'destroyed. ' With the exception of grievance 10, there is nothing in the earlier charges to compare with the evocative accusation that George was spreading 'death, desolation and tyranny... with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages,' or with the characterization of 'the merciless Indian Savages, whose known mode of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. ' Coming on the heels of the previous twenty-two charges, the war grievances make George out as little better than the notorious Richard, who had forfeited his crown in 1485 for 'unnatural, mischievous, and great Perjuries, Treasons, Homicides and Murders, in shedding of Infants' blood, with many other Wrongs, odious Offences, and abominations against God and Man.

' (24) To some extent, of course, the emotional intensity of the war grievances was a natural outgrowth of their subject. It is hard to write about warfare without using strong language. Moreover, as Jefferson explained a decade later in his famous 'Head and Heart' letter to Maria Cosway, for many of the revolutionaries independence was, at bottom, an emotional -- or sentimental -- issue. But the emotional pitch of the war grievances was also part of a rhetorical strategy designed to solidify support for independence in those parts of America that had yet to suffer the physical and economic hardships of war. As late as May 1776 John Adams lamented that while independence had strong support in New England and the South, it was less secure in the middle colonies, which 'have never tasted the bitter Cup; they have never Smarted -- and are therefore a little cooler.

' As Thomas Paine recognized, 'the evil' of British domination was not yet 'sufficiently brought to their doors to make them feel the precariousness with which all American property is possessed. ' Paine sought to bring the evil home to readers of Common Sense by inducing them to identify with the 'horror' inflicted on other Americans by the British forces 'that hath carried fire and sword' into the land. In similar fashion, the Declaration of Independence used images of terror to magnify the wickedness of George, to arouse 'the passions and feelings' of readers, and to awaken 'from fatal and unmanly slumbers' those Americans who had yet to be directly touched by the ravages of war. (25) Fourth, all of the charges against George contain a substantial amount of strategic ambiguity.

While they have a certain specificity in that they refer to actual historical events, they do not identify names, dates, or places. This magnified the seriousness of the grievances by making it seem as if each charge referred not to a particular piece of legislation or to an isolated act in a single colony, but to a violation of the constitution that had been repeated on many occasions throughout America. The ambiguity of the grievances also made them more difficult to refute. In order to build a convincing case against the grievances, defenders of the king had to clarify each charge and what specific act or events it referred to, and then explain why the charge was not true. Thus it took John Lind, who composed the most sustained British response to the Declaration, 110 pages to answer the charges set forth by the Continental Congress in fewer than two dozen sentences. Although Lind deftly exposed many of the charges to be flimsy at best, his detailed and complex rebuttal did not stand a chance against the Declaration as a propaganda document.

Nor has Lind's work fared much better since 1776. While the Declaration continues to command an international audience and has created an indelible popular image of George as a tyrant, Lind's tract remains a piece of arcana, buried in the dustheap of history. (26) In addition to petitioning Parliament and George, Whig leaders had also worked hard to cultivate friends of the American cause in England. But the British people had proved no more receptive to the Whigs than had the government, and so the Declaration follows the attack on George by noting that the colonies had also appealed in vain to the people of Great Britain: Nor have we been wanting 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. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

This is one of the most artfully written sections of the Declaration. The first sentence, beginning 'Nor... ,' shifts attention quickly and cleanly away from George to the colonists' 'British brethren. ' The 'have we' of the first sentence is neatly reversed in the 'We have' at the start of the second. Sentences two through four, containing four successive clauses beginning 'We Have... ,' give a pronounced sense of momentum to the paragraph while underlining the colonists' active efforts to reach the British people.

The repetition of 'We have' here also parallels the repetition of 'He has' in the grievances against George. The fifth sentence -- 'They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity' -- contains one of the few metaphors in the Declaration and acquires added force by its simplicity and brevity, which contrast with the greater length and complexity of the preceding sentence. The final sentence unifies the paragraph by returning to the pattern of beginning with 'We,' and its intricate periodic structure plays off the simple structure of the fifth sentence so as to strengthen the cadence of the entire paragraph. The closing words -- 'Enemies in War, in Peace Friends' -- employ chiasmus, a favorite rhetorical device of eighteenth-century writers.

How effective the device is in this case can be gauged by rearranging the final words to read, 'Enemies in War, Friends in Peace,' which weakens both the force and harmony of the Declaration's phrasing. It is worth noting, as well, that this is the only part of the Declaration to employ much alliteration: 'British brethren,' 'time to time,' 'common kindred,' 'which would,' 'connections and correspondence. ' The euphony gained by these phrases is fortified by the heavy repetition of medial and terminal consonants in adjoining words: 'been wanting in attentions to,' 'them from time to time,' 'to their native justice,' 'disavow these usurpations,' 'have been deaf to the voice of. ' Finally, this paragraph, like the rest of the Declaration, contains a high proportion of one- and two-syllable words (82 percent). Of those words, an overwhelming number (eighty-one of ninety-six) contain only one syllable. The rest of the paragraph contains nine three- syllable words, eight four-syllable words, and four five-syllable words.

This felicitous blend of a large number of very short words with a few very long ones is reminiscent of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and contributes greatly to the harmony, cadence, and eloquence of the Declaration, much as it contributes to the same features in Lincoln's immortal speech. The British brethren section essentially finished the case for independence. Congress had set forth the conditions that justified revolution and had shown, as best it could, that those conditions existed in Great Britain's thirteen North American colonies. All that remained was for Congress to conclude the Declaration: We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. This final section of the Declaration is highly formulaic and has attracted attention primarily because of its closing sentence.

Carl Becker deemed this sentence 'perfection itself': It is true (assuming that men value life more than property, which is doubtful) that the statement violates the rhetorical rule of climax; but it was a sure sense that made Jefferson place 'lives' first and 'fortunes's second. How much weaker if he had written 'our fortunes, our lives, and our sacred honor'! Or suppose him to have used the word 'property' instead of 'fortunes'! Or suppose him to have omitted 'sacred'!

Consider the effect of omitting any of the words, such as the last two 'ours' -- 'our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. ' No, the sentence can hardly be improved. (27) Becker is correct in his judgment about the wording and rhythm of the sentence, but he errs in attributing high marks to Jefferson for his 'sure sense' in placing 'lives' before 'fortunes. ' 'Lives and fortunes' was one of the most hackneyed phrases of eighteenth-century Anglo-American political discourse. Colonial writers had used it with numbing regularity throughout the dispute with England (along with other stock phrases such as 'liberties and estates' and 'life, liberty, and property'). Its appearance in the Declaration can hardly be taken as a measure of Jefferson's felicity of expression.

What marks Jefferson's 'happy talent for composition' in this case is the coupling of 'our sacred Honor' with 'our Lives' and 'our Fortunes' to create the eloquent trilogy that closes the Declaration. The concept of honor (and its cognates fame and glory) exerted a powerful hold on the eighteenth-century mind. Writers of all kinds -- philosophers, preachers, politicians, playwrights, poets -- repeatedly speculated about the sources of honor and how to achieve it. Virtually every educated man in England or America was schooled in the classical maxim, 'What is left when honor is lost?' Or as Joseph Addison wrote in his Cato, whose sentiments were widely admired throughout the eighteenth century on both sides of the Atlantic: 'Better to die ten thousand deaths / Than wound my honour. ' The cult of honor was so strong that in English judicial proceedings a peer of the realm did not answer to bills in chancery or give a verdict 'upon oath, like an ordinary juryman, but upon his honor. ' (28) By pledging 'our sacred Honor' in support of the Declaration, Congress made a particularly solemn vow.

The pledge also carried a latent message that the revolutionaries, contrary to the claims of their detractors, were men of honor whose motives and actions could not only withstand the closest scrutiny by contemporary persons of quality and merit but would also deserve the approbation of posterity. If the Revolution succeeded, its leaders stood to achieve lasting honor as what Francis Bacon called 'Liberators or Salvatores' -- men who 'compound the long Miseries of Civil Wars, or deliver their Countries from Servitude of Strangers or Tyrants. ' Historical examples included Augustus Caesar, Henry VII of England, and Henry IV of France. On Bacon's five-point scale of supreme honor, such heroes ranked below only 'Condit ores Imperio rum, Founders of States and Commonwealths,' such as Romulus, Caesar, and Ottoman, and 'Lawgivers's uch as Solon, Lycurgus, and Justinian, 'also called Second Founders, or Perpetua Principes, because they Govern by their Ordinances after they are gone.

' Seen in this way, 'our sacred Honor' lifts the motives of Congress above the more immediate concerns of 'our Lives' and 'our Fortunes' and places the revolutionaries in the footsteps of history's most honorable figures. As a result it also unifies the whole text by subtly playing out the notion that the Revolution is a major turn in the broad 'course of human events. ' (29) At the same time, the final sentence completes a crucial metamorphosis in the text. Although the Declaration begins in an impersonal, even philosophical voice, it gradually becomes a kind of drama, with its tensions expressed more and more in personal terms. This transformation begins with the appearance of the villain, 'the present King of Great Britain,' who dominates the stage through the first nine grievances, all of which note what 'He has' done without identifying the victim of his evil deeds. Beginning with grievance 10 the king is joined on stage by the American colonists, who are identified as the victim by some form of first person plural reference: The king has sent 'swarms of officers to harass our people,' has quartered 'armed troops among us,' has imposed 'taxes on us without our consent,' 'has taken away our charters, abolished our most valuable laws,' and altered 'the Forms of our Governments.

' He has 'plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, ... destroyed the lives of our people,' and 'excited domestic insurrections amongst us. ' The word 'our' is used twenty-six times from its first appearance in grievance 10 through the last sentence of the Declaration, while 'us' occurs eleven times from its first appearance in grievance 11 through the rest of the grievances. (30) Throughout the grievances action is instigated by the king, as the colonists passively accept blow after blow without wavering in their loyalty. His villainy complete, George leaves the stage and it is occupied next by the colonists and their 'British brethren. ' The heavy use of personal pronouns continues, but by now the colonists have become the instigators of action as they actively seek redress of their grievances. This is marked by a shift in idiom from 'He has' to 'We have': 'We have petitioned for redress...

,' 'We have reminded them... ,' 'We have appealed to their... ,' and 'We have conjured them. ' But 'they have been deaf' to all pleas, so 'We must... hold them' as enemies. By the conclusion, only the colonists remain on stage to pronounce their dramatic closing lines: 'We... solemnly publish and declare... ' And to support this declaration, 'we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. ' The persistent use of 'he' and 'them,' 'us' and 'our,' 'we' and 'they' personalizes the British-American conflict and transfigures it from a complex struggle of multifarious origins and diverse motives to a simple moral drama in which a patiently suffering people courageously defend their liberty against a cruel and vicious tyrant.

It also reduces the psychic distance between the reader and the text and coaxes the reader into seeing the dispute with Great Britain through the eyes of the revolutionaries. As the drama of the Declaration unfolds, the reader is increasingly solicited to identify with Congress and 'the good People of these Colonies,' to share their sense of victim age, to participate vicariously in their struggle, and ultimately to act with them in their heroic quest for freedom. In this respect, as in others, the Declaration is a work of consummate artistry. From its eloquent introduction to its aphoristic maxims of government, to its relentless accumulation of charges against George, to its elegiac denunciation of the British people, to its heroic closing sentence, it sustains an almost perfect synthesis of style, form, and content.

Its solemn and dignified tone, its graceful and unhurried cadence, its symmetry, energy, and confidence, its combination of logical structure and dramatic appeal, its adroit use of nuance and implication all contribute to its rhetorical power. And all help to explain why the Declaration remains one of the handful of American political documents that, in addition to meeting the immediate needs of the moment, continues to enjoy a lustrous literary reputation. Notes 1989 by Stephen E. Lucas Stephen E. Lucas is professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI. The present essay is derived from a more comprehensive study, 'Justifying America: The Declaration of Independence as a Rhetorical Document,' in Thomas W. Benson, ed., American Rhetoric: Context and Criticism (1989).

(1) Moses Coit Tyler, The Literary History of the American Revolution (1897), vol. 1, p. 520. The best known study of the style of the Declaration is Carl Becker's 'The Literary Qualities of the Declaration,' in his The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (1922), pp. 194-223. Useful also are Robert Ginsberg, 'The Declaration as Rhetoric,' in Robert Ginsberg, ed., A Casebook on the Declaration of Independence (1967), pp. 219-244; Edwin Gittleman, 'Jefferson's 'Slave Narrative': The Declaration of Independence as a Literary Text,' Early American Literature 8 (1974): 239-256; and James Boyd White, When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions and Re constitutions of Language, Character, and Community (1984), 231 240. Although most books on the Declaration contain a chapter on the 'style' of the document, those chapters are typically historical accounts of the evolution of the text from its drafting by Thomas Jefferson through its approval by the Continental Congress or philosophical speculations about the meaning of its famous passages. (2) As Garry Wills demonstrates in Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence (1978), there are two Declarations of Independence the version drafted by Thomas Jefferson and that revised and adopted on July 4, 1776, by the Continental Congress sitting as a committee of the whole. Altogether Congress deleted 630 words from Jefferson's draft and added 146, producing a final text of 1,322 words (excluding the title).

Although Jefferson complained that Congress 'mangled' his manuscript and altered it 'much for the worse,' the judgment of posterity, stated well by Becker, is that 'Congress left the Declaration better than it found it' (Declaration of Independence, p. 209). In any event, for better or worse, it was Congress's text that presented America's case to the world, and it is that text with which we are concerned in this essay. (3) Nothing in this essay should be interpreted to mean that a firm line can be drawn between style and substance in the Declaration or in any other work of political or literary discourse. As Peter Gay has noted, style is 'form and content woven into the texture of every art and craft... Apart from a few mechanical tricks of rhetoric, manner is indissolubly linked to matter; style shapes and is in turn shaped by, substance' (Style in History [1974], p. 3).

(4) All quotations from the Declaration follow the text as presented in Julian P. Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1950), vol. 1, pp. 429-432. (5) Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopedia: Or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1728), vol. 2, p. 621; Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, ed. Paul Ramsey (1957), p. 149. (6) Declaration of the Lords and Commons to Justify Their Taking Up Arms, August 1642, in John Rushworth, ed., Historical Collections of Private Passages of State, Weighty Matters in Law, Remarkable Proceedings in Five Parliaments (1680-1722), vol. 4, pp. 761-768; Declaration of the Continental Congress Setting Forth the Causes and Necessity of Their Taking Up Arms, July 1775, in James H. Hutson, ed., A Decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind: Congressional State Papers, 1774-1776 (1975), pp. 89-98. The importance of necessity as a justification for war among nations is evident in the many declarations of war issued by European monarchs throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is discussed in T avers Twist, The Law of Nations Considered as Independent Political Communities (1863), pp. 54-55. (7) The first additional invocation of the doctrine of necessity in the Declaration comes immediately after the preamble, when Congress states, 'Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of Government.

' The second is at the end of the penultimate section, in which Congress ends its denunciation of the British people by announcing, 'We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. ' (8) [Thomas Paine], Common Sense: Addressed to the Inhabitants of America... (1776), pp. 41, 43. (9) Samuel Adams to Joseph Hawley, Apr. 15, 1776, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774 1789, ed. Paul H. Smith (1976), vol. 3, p. 528; Thomas Jefferson, Notes of Proceedings in the Continental Congress, Jefferson Papers 1: 312. (10) Jonathan Mayhew, A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Nonresistance to the Higher Powers...

(1750), p. 45; [John, Lord Somers], The Judgment of Whole Kingdoms and Nations, Concerning the Rights, Power and Prerogative of Kings, and the Rights, Privileges and Properties of the People (1710), par. 186; Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government (1693), p. 181; John Hoadly, ed., The Works of Benjamin Hoadly (1773), vol. 2, p. 36; 'Pacific us,' Pennsylvania Gazette, Sept. 14, 1774. (11) Becker, Declaration of Independence, p. 201. (12) Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783), vol. 1, pp. 206-207,259. (13) 'Thoughts on English Prosody' was enclosed in an undated letter of ca.

October 1786 to the Marquis de Chastellux. The letter is printed in Jefferson Papers 10: 498; the draft of Jefferson's essay, which has not been printed, is with the letter to Chastellux in the Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Julian P. Boyd, 'The Declaration of Independence: The Mystery of the Lost Original,' Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 100 (1976): 455-462, discusses 'Thoughts on English Prosody' and its relation to Jefferson's reading text of the Declaration. Given the changes made by Congress in some sections of the Declaration, it should be noted that the style of the preamble is distinctly Jeffersonian and was approved by Congress with only two minor changes in wording from Jefferson's fair copy as reported by the Committee of Five.

(14) William Duncan, The Elements of Logick (1748), p. 242. See also Isaac Watts, Logick: or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry After Truth, 8th ed. (1745), p. 304; [Henry Aldrich], A Compendium of Logic, 3d ed. (1790), p. 23. (15) Jefferson to Henry Lee, May 5, 1825, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed.

Paul Leicester Ford (1892-1899), vol. 10, p. 343. (16) Wilbur Samuel Howell, 'The Declaration of Independence and Eighteenth-Century Logic,' William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser. 18 (1961): 463-484, claims Jefferson consciously structured the Declaration as a syllogism with a self-evident major premise to fit the standards for scientific proof advanced in William Duncan's Elements of Logick, a leading logical treatise of the eighteenth century. As I argue in a forthcoming essay, however, there is no hard evidence to connect Duncan's book with the Declaration.

Jefferson may have read Elements of Logick while he was a student at the College of William and Mary, but we are not certain that he did. He owned a copy of it, but we cannot establish whether the edition he owned was purchased before or after 1776. We cannot even say with complete confidence that Jefferson inserted the words 'self-evident' in the Declaration; if he did, it was only as an afterthought in the process of polishing his original draft. Moreover, upon close examination it becomes clear that the Declaration does not fit the method of scientific reasoning recommended in Duncan's Logick. Its 'self- evident' truths are not self-evident in the rigorous technical sense used by Duncan; it does not provide the definitions of terms that Duncan regards as the crucial first step in syllogistic demonstration; and it does not follow Duncan's injunction that both the minor premise and the major premise must be self-evident if a conclusion is to be demonstrated in a single act of reasoning. The syllogism had been part of the intellectual baggage of Western civilization for two thousand years, and the notion of self-evident truth was central to eighteenth-century philosophy.

Jefferson could readily have used both without turning to Duncan's Logick for instruction. (17) 'Declaration' in John Cowell, Nomothetes. The Interpreter, Concerning the Genuine Signification of Such Obscure Words and Terms Used Either in the Common or Statute Laws of This Realm... (1684). For the requirements of legal declarations in various kinds of civil suits during the eighteenth century, see William Selwyn, An Abridgement of the Law of Nisi Prius, 4th ed. (1817).

(18) 'Fact' in Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language: In Which the Words are Deduced from Their Origins and Illustrated in Their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers (1755). (19) Oxford English Dictionary (1933), vol. 4, pp. 11-12; Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1771), vol. 4, p. 39; The Annual Register, Or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature for the Year 1772 (1773), p. 57. (20) John Lind, Answer to the Declaration of the American Congress... , 5th ed. (1776), p. 123. Because the grievances are not numbered in the Declaration, there has been disagreement over how many there are and how they should be numbered.

I have followed Sidney George Fisher, 'The Twenty-Eight Charges against the King in the Declaration of Independence,' Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 31 (1907): 257-303. An alternative numbering system is used by Wills, Inventing America, pp. 68-75. (21) Samuel Adams to John Pitts, ca. July 9, 1776, Letters of Delegates 4: 417. The sole congressional paper before the Declaration of Independence to list grievances topically was the 1774 Bill of Rights (Hutson, Decent Respect, pp. 49-57). (22) [Thomas Hutchinson], Strictures upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia...

(1776), p. 16; Ralph Cud worth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678), p. 601; Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastic all Politi e (1594 1596), vol. 5, sec. 67, p. 178. (23) Between 1764 and 1766 England added twenty-five comptrollers, four surveyors general, and one plantation clerk to its customs service in America. It added seventeen more officials in 1767 with the creation of a Board of Customs Commissioners to reside in Boston. These appointments may also have generated a mild ripple effect, resulting in the hiring of a few lesser employees to help with office chores and customs searches, but there is no way to know, since the records are now lost. See Thomas C. Barrow, Trade and Empire: The British Customs Service in Colonial America, 1660 1775 (1967), pp. 186-187,220-221.

(24) Howard Mumford Jones, 'The Declaration of Independence: A Critique,' in The Declaration of Independence: Two Essays (1976), p. 7; sentence against Richard in Rot uli Parliamentorum; ut et petitions in Parliament (1783 1832), vol. 6, p. 276. (25) Thomas Jefferson to Maria Cosway, Oct. 12, 1786, Jefferson Papers 10: 451; John Adams to Benjamin Hichborn, May 29, 1776, Letters of Delegates 4: 96; Paine, Common Sense, pp. 40-42. (26) See note 20 for bibliographic information on Lind's pamphlet. (27) Becker, Declaration of Independence, p. 197.

(28) For the importance of fame and honor to the revolutionaries, see Douglass Adair, 'Fame and the Founding Fathers,' in Fame and the Founding Fathers, ed. Trevor Colburn (1974), pp. 3-26; Garry Wills, Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (1984), pp. 109 148; Bruce Mir off, 'John Adams: Merit, Fame, and Political Leadership,' Journal of Politics 48 (1986): 116-132. The quotation about Jefferson's 'happy talent for composition' is from John Adams to Timothy Pickering, Aug. 6, 1822, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams (1850), vol. 2, p. 511.

The statement about peers of the realm is from Blackstone, Commentaries 1: 40 (29) Francis Bacon, The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Mor all... (1625), pp. 313-314. See Adair, 'Fame and the Founding Fathers,' pp. 114-115, for the importance of Bacon's essay on honor among the revolutionaries. (30) Cf.

Ginsberg, 'The Declaration as Rhetoric,' p. 228. [ Declaration Page| Exhibit Hall] National Archives and Records Administration URL: web updated: January 13, 1997.