More correspondence and reports; appointments for commanders of frigates, and a memorial from four privateer owners in Philadelphia; compensations reported by the claims committee; what to do with officers without soldiers (their enlistments having ended); the transference of cannons and trucks from Connecticut to Pennsylvania. But the major action of the day involved a committee of the whole’s consideration of a report of June 9 and 10 letters from General Washington concerning what would be called the Cedars Cartel.

This had to do with a proposed exchange of prisoners between Brigadier General Benedict Arnold and Captain George Foster, at the close of the calamitous attack on Quebec. Although the committee wanted to continue its discussion, it did issue resolutions. One was that a committee of four be appointed to prepare and present the resolutions; Jefferson was one of those appointed – and that will bring us back, to some degree, to the draft fragment of the Declaration I described yesterday.

In correspondence, Elbridge Gerry expanded on the “Canada Expedition” in a letter to James Warren, touched on matters of loans, and added a couple of PSs, one on office holders and the other on husbanding Massachusetts resources (as did other states).

Robert R. Livingston addressed the gunpowder issue as well as his recent illness with his brother, expressing his “hope to be home in 20 days.” Livingston, of course, had been appointed to the Declaration drafting committee; we cannot say when Livingston left to return to New York, but probably even before the committee had prepared its final draft (i.e., June 28). Therefore, he never signed the engrossed parchment (although his brother Philip replaced him and eventually did sign), and accordingly, Livingston is positioned at the very back of the drafting committee in John Trumbull’s famous painting in the Capitol Rotunda. (Trumbull, it should be noted, had met with Jefferson in Paris in 1786 to discuss plans for what became this painting). Probably Livingston did little more than attend the first committee meeting.

Back to that draft fragment. Julian Boyd characterized his discovery of it as a “pure accident,” but, although the fragment itself is no great gamechanger in the Declaration’s meaning, it was more than that, because only someone of Boyd’s acumen and knowledge (and memory) could have immediately understood even what it was. As I (in Boyd’s words) described, it is only one half one of one of three half-leaves (i.e., what we would think of as “scratch paper”; moreover, it begins in mid-sentence and is obviously torn and separated from other text that doesn’t survive.

More importantly, only a string of phrasing from this fragment even survived at all into the final Congress-approved Declaration.

We’ll return to this matter latter, but for now let’s note that two of Congress’s edits of the submitted draft especially irked Jefferson. One was a long slavery clause (itself an expanded revision of a line in the Virginia Constitution draft) and the other was the gutting of a long paragraph denouncing the “British brethren” for turning a deaf ear to American pleas, about three-quarters of the way through. The draft fragment that Boyd found was part of this gutting.

But it is also fascinating for giving us a glimpse into how Jefferson drafted material, as it is filled with strikeouts, and then carets and interlineations, as he reconsidered wording and sometimes repositioned (and rethought) phrases. We’ll have to think that this draft fragment – which closely resembles that of other Jefferson’s drafts at this time (like the Virginia Constitution, similarly marked) – conveys a good sense of his visually messy drafting style that was probably true of the rest of the Declaration draft.

Boyd’s task as an editor, even for a draft fragment like this was, was to render a readable, typographic final version, by taking into account the various possibilities and making judicious editorial decisions – and he excelled at this, using available technologies of the 1940s. But that also means that we, as readers, are then subject to his account (although trustworthy) rather than to sort out such readings for ourselves – or at least to trace out the layers of composition as best we can. We can see the complications from Boyd’s typographic version, filled with angle brackets, italicized text, and footnotes (some a bit extensive) throughout, in an effort to capture the drafting process.

To give one small example: Jefferson’s initial draft referred to their “chief magistrate” dispatching “soldiers of our own blood but foreign mercenaries to destroy us, to deluge us in blood.” Jefferson then crossed out “own” for “common” and interlinearly inserted “Scottish &” before “foreign mercenaries” – but “Scottish &” did not appear in the final submitted draft, although it did much later occasion a humorous moment in the Sherman Edwards/Peter Stone 1969 musical 1776.

Two Delaware delegates, George Read and the defensive Scotsman Thomas McKean, argue over this specific phrase – a historical inaccuracy, as the phrase was never actually submitted to Congress. McKean: “Mr. Jefferson, it’s a bonny paper y’ve written, but somewhere in it ye’ve mentioned ‘Scottish and foreign mercenaries sent t’destroy us.’ Scottish, Tom?” Despite Read’s correction, McKean insists, and Jefferson allows the phrase to be struck. We’ll return to 1776 in the future.

Boyd was also an excellent detective and reconstructor of drafting process. Although his meticulous notes can be long and detailed, they are very much worth one’s time and attention.

Still I would supplement Boyd by examining a digitized photofacsimile, just to get one’s sense of Jefferson’s process.

Here’s my own attempt at what I think a final, unmarked version of this fragment would be:

at this very time too, they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our own blood but Scottish & foreign mercenaries to invade and deluge us in blood. these facts have given the last stab to agonizing affect, and manly spirit bids us to renounce forever these unfeeling brethren. we must endeavor to forget our former love for them and to hold, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. we might have been a free & a great people together but communication of grandeur & freedom it seems is below their dignity. be it so, since they will have it. the road to happiness & to glory is open to us, we will climb it apart from them & acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our eternal separation.

Jefferson had a few drafting idiosyncrasies. The most obvious is his habit of not capitalizing the initial letter of new sentences; another is the use of an ampersand for “and” – both of which he assumed would editorially altered in the printing process (a point first noticed, I believe, by Timothy Pickering, who had made himself closely acquainted with Jefferson’s manuscript writing style).

So, what of this survived into the final version? Slightly reworded and reconnected:

to hold, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends” and “acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our eternal separation.

Still, I find it fascinating to consider how early on in the drafting process Jefferson had hit on the denunciation of the “British brethren” and then how much drafting effort he put into this section, only to find it not merely gutted but so softened in tone (he described the motivation as “pusillanimous”) and palliative as to remove the barb altogether.

Countdown to Semiquincentennial: Number 9, June 15
By Michael G. Ditmore