A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)
Editor’s Note: The Summary View, Jefferson’s first manifesto, which served as great grist for Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of July 4, 1776, contains one of the most radical declarations of rights ever made. In the document Jefferson declares that we all have the right to expatriate — and that when we do, we have the right to establish society anew. […]
Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (1775)
Editor’s note: Thomas Jefferson took his first stab at bona fide ‘Declaration creation’ with this document. Issued on July 6, 1775 by the Second Continental Congress, this declaration presaged in some ways the Declaration that the same Congress would proclaim on July 4, 1776. Credit for this declaration’s more temperate final version is given to John Dickenson, […]
