While most Americans connect Thomas Jefferson with the Declaration of Independence, we are vaguely aware he had some help composing this historic document. Pauline Maier’s exhaustive research for “American Scripture” exposes the stirring mental image of a young patriot with a ponytail thoughtfully creating timeless sentences in magisterial script as the view from a distance, which resolves into an intricate jigsaw puzzle as we examine it more closely.
From dozens of “other” declarations to borrowed phrases from colonial leaders, the document we revere is much like the nation it helped form: the final product of arduous effort by many. Jefferson may have distilled these thoughts into polished prose, but the author’s illumination of philosophical origins of words and ideas adds to our appreciation of this national rhetorical cornerstone.
Maier’s account of not only a committee, but a Congress editing Jefferson’s draft, leaving no records of their fiddling or reasons, can move any writer to sympathetic tears.
