206
defeat, in October 1781, the British
surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia.
The war would not formally end for
another year, but in every important
respect, the colonists—and their
French allies—had dealt a huge
blow to their British masters.
The French involvement in the
creation of this new nation owed
everything to a desire to reverse
the humiliations of the Seven Years’
War. But the debts incurred would,
ironically, be among the many
causes of the bankruptcy of the
French crown that led to the French
Revolution in 1789. There was a
profound irony, too, in absolutist
France seeking to win Americans
the freedoms that it was unwilling
to accord its own citizens.Revolutionary ideals
At the heart of the American
Revolution was the new political
philosophy encapsulated by the
Declaration of Independence.It was the work of a distinctly
patrician Virginian, a haughty,
wealthy slave-owner named
Thomas Jefferson. He was one of
a committee of five charged with
writing the Declaration, yet the two
drafts it went through in June 1776
were almost entirely his own. It is
hard to overstate the importance of
the Declaration of Independence. It
made, for the time, an astonishing
claim: “that all men are created
equal.” It further claimed “that
governments are instituted among
men deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed.”
These were actively seditious
sentiments that neither George III
of England nor Louis XVI of France
could have any sympathy with.
They nonetheless formed the
bedrock of what would become
the United States and, indeed,
liberal political systems across
the Western world. These political
creeds, derived from the work ofTHE SIGNING OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
In Declaration of Independence, by
John Trumbull, the drafting committee
is shown presenting its work to
Congress. Thomas Jefferson can be
seen standing in a red waistcoat.British and French Enlightenment
thinkers, led to the creation of the
first modern state and, in doing so,
changed the world.The destiny of America
Jefferson remains an enigma.
He loathed monarchy yet loved
pre-Revolutionary France, where
he was the United States’ first
ambassador, delighting in its
civilized elegance. He claimed to
despise high office yet served two
terms as President of the United
States. And, as president, in 1803
he drove through the Louisiana
Purchase, which saw a vast area
west of the Mississippi transferred
at a bargain price from France, its
nominal ruler, to the United States.US_204-207_Dec_Independence.indd 206 15/02/2016 16:43
207
He understood that the destiny of
the US lay in its colonization of the
vast lands to the west, he assented
to the notion that its indigenous
inhabitants should be driven off,
and he owned slaves. “Blacks,” he
asserted, “are inferior to the whites
in the endowments both of body
and mind.” Whereas George
Washington, also a patrician
Virginian, freed his slaves,
Jefferson opted not to.
None of this, though, can
diminish Jefferson’s significance in
articulating notions of liberty that
resonate today. And even though he
felt slavery was wrong, his personal
belief was that emancipation wouldbe bad for both slaves and white
Americans—unless they were
returned to Africa.A new constitution
Although Jefferson can readily be
considered the guiding spirit behind
the Declaration of Independence, he
played no formal role in the drawing
up of the next great document that
shaped the nation: its Constitution.
The United States was legally able
to assert its independence from
Britain in 1783. But for the next four
years, it existed in an increasingly
unstable political vacuum, its fate
decided by an ever-more divided
Confederation Congress, meeting
variously in Pennsylvania, New
York, and New Jersey.
There were serious reasons to
believe the new nation might fail,
torn apart by those arguing for
the primacy of the rights of the
individual states over the central
government, and those in favor
of a strong central government or
even the creation of an American
monarchy. In the spring of 1787, a
Constitutional Convention took
place in Philadelphia. The written,
formalized Constitution proposed
would not be provisionally ratifiedCHANGING SOCIETIES
until June the following year, and
then only after prolonged disputes.
The result was an assertion of a new
form of government. It was both a
bill of rights and a blueprint for an
ideal government, whose three
branches—executive, legislative,
and judiciary—would keep each
other in check. It would have a
profound influence on that issued
in Revolutionary France in 1791
and remains a model of its kind.“Unfinished business”
The founding fathers were rightly
optimistic about the United States’
potential, but they had failed to
resolve one crucial question.
Jefferson’s first draft of the
Declaration of Independence called
slavery “an execrable commerce”
and “a cruel war against human
nature itself.” However, to placate
the slave states of the south and the
slave traders of the north, these
radical statements were later
dropped. Almost 90 years later, it
would take a civil war and 620,000
dead to end the practice and
complete what Abraham Lincoln
saw as the “unfinished business”
of the Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution. ■George Washington Born in 1732, George Washington
served the British crown with
distinction during the Seven
Years’ War (1754–61) against
France. He represented Virginia
in the House of Burgesses and in
the Continental Congresses of
1774 and 1775. With the outbreak
of the Revolutionary War, he was
the unanimous choice to lead
the Continental Army, which he
did with imagination and great
fortitude, especially in the very
difficult early years of the conflict:
his “skeleton of an army,” under-
equipped and close to starving,
was forced to endure anexceptionally harsh winter
in 1777–78 at Valley Forge in
Pennsylvania. From 1783,
Washington sought to establish
a constitutional government for
the new nation. The nation’s
first president, he served two
terms, retiring in 1797 in the
face of increasing disputes
between Jefferson’s Democratic
Republicans and the Federalists,
who were led by the quick-
tempered Alexander Hamilton.
Washington died in 1799 and
was buried at his Virginia
plantation, Mount Vernon,
overlooking the Potomac River.The god who gave us
life, gave us liberty
at the same time.
Thomas JeffersonUS_204-207_Dec_Independence.indd 207 15/02/2016 16:43