Before “American Sphinx” by Joseph Ellis (1996), and “American Scripture” by Pauline Maier (1997), there was “Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence,” by Garry Wills. Published in 1978, Wills’ was the first popular book to closely examine the vast storehouse of Enlightenment literature that influenced the writing of the Declaration of Independence, while at the same time revealing Thomas Jefferson as brilliant but somewhat quirky. While Ellis and Maier are well-versed in early American history and are exceptionally fine writers, they lack the sheer intellectual gravitas and commanding writing style of Wills. Ellis seems to relish exposing Jefferson’s many weaknesses, while Maier takes the high road. She examines the various European philosophers that Jefferson drew upon, and how the Declaration’s ideas influenced future generations of Americans, notably Abraham Lincoln. Wills, on the other hand, takes the issue of Jefferson and the Declaration to an entirely different level.
In Wills’ narrative, the Founding Fathers are high-minded but human after all. They're well-read on Enlightenment ideals that, in turn, they employed to justify breaking free of the arbitrary rule of kings and then applied to creating a nation based on the rule of law. Unlike several U.S. historians (Dumas Malone, Ralph Ketchum and Forest McDonald come to mind), Wills does not take sides. For example, he is neither a Jeffersonian nor a Hamiltonian. Wills’ is a world ideas and how they shaped U.S. history, and second a world of political players. Indeed, he takes exception with historians who, for example, raise up Jefferson at the expense of tearing down Hamilton, and vice versa.
English philosopher John Locke has gotten much of the credit as Jefferson’s source material for composing the first draft of the Declaration. Wills, however, makes a compelling case for the influence of Scottish philosopher Francis Hutcheson as Jefferson’s primary source. For example, the phrase, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is purely Hutchesonian. Why has Hutcheson’s influence been overlooked until now? Because, says Wills, Jefferson’s first library burned to the ground, thereby destroying evidence of the Virginian having read Hutcheson in his formative years. How can Wills be certain of the Scot’s influence? Because Jefferson’s tutor William Small was a Scot and an ardent reader of Hutcheson, who no double influenced young Jefferson while he was being schooled in Williamsburg. Hutcheson was the father of the Scottish Enlightenment, and therefore a man widely read by America’s intelligentsia. Equally compelling, he was against slavery on purely moral grounds, which is evident in Jefferson’s initial draft that included a call for the abolition of slavery, a call stricken out by the Continental Congress at large. As far as Locke goes, the most traceable influence he had on Jefferson was in the area of religious tolerance. Elsewhere, when Jefferson refers to Locke, it is to his role in the major Enlightenment trinity (of Bacon, Newton, and Locke), where the contribution was epistemological. Wills discusses the evidence on Jefferson of other Scottish philosophers as well, including Lord Kames and Thomas Reid.
Also interesting is Wills’ take on the revolution itself. The revolution was more evolution than revolution, not an overthrow of the existing order, but a redress of grievances that resulted in separation from the mother country. “There was no ‘overturn’ of a central government in the American Revolution,” writes Wills, “no decapitated king in Paris, no basement execution of a czar.” The accepted word for violent withdrawal from allegiance was “revolt,” not revolution, he says. “Americans were willing to call their actions a revolution precisely because it was an orderly and legal procedure.”
The strength of Wills’ account is that he examines every issue from several points of view, like an attorney arguing a case, point by point, pro and con, until evidence is more than sufficient to draw a compelling conclusion. Wills’ account is scholarly but imminently readably. Five stars.
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