AND IT ENDED IN 1776:

We know Jefferson most emphatically, of course, as the writer of these words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Most of us still feel chills upon reading those words.  They are truly immortal and if Jefferson had never written anything else ... by virtue of those words alone he would deserve a special place in history.

But ... one thing that has always struck me about that passage is that Jefferson didn't claim to have suddenly arrived at "these truths."  Or to have reached them through some laborious exercise of logic or have had them delivered to him carved into stone tablets.

Instead, they were "self evident."

Obvious, in short, to anyone with eyes to see and a brain to comprehend and beyond argument.  Now, once you have established something as self-evident, the question becomes, "Okay, then, what next?"

For Jefferson and the rest of the founders the immediate answer was - concluding favorably that messy business with the English king and his soldiers, writing a Constitution, building a nation, and other monumental challenges that still inspire us to marvel that they were willing even to take them on, much less to accomplish them with such transcendent, lasting success.

But that was action.  On the thought side of things, the issue was settled.  These truths were self-evident and ... case closed.

Jefferson, in fact, later defended himself when it was suggested that the Declaration was not an original work and that he had, to put it charitably, "borrowed" from the writings and speeches of others:


This was the object of the declaration of independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not 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 are 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. All of its authority rest, then, on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sydney, &c.

So with the transcendent political question of the age now settled, Jefferson went on to other things.  Many, many things.  He was never - and this is crucial to why Jefferson is important to us, even today - was never a man totally consumed by the political.  He was the voice of what was arguably the only successful political revolution of the last three centuries but he never became that horror, the total political actor.

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