ovisions from Jefferson’s draft.
Quite aside from these fundamental points, it is necessary to present all of Jefferson’s drafts because the first of the three must now assume a stature greater than has hitherto been accorded it. As a result of a minute comparison of the three texts, the First Draft must now be regarded as a single document adapted to two purposes. Its first page, bearing the list of charges against the king, served as the rough draft for that portion of the Third Draft of the Virginia Constitution. Having served this purpose, it was then altered, added to, and its paragraphs numbered in a different order so as to adapt it to a similar purpose in the Declaration of Independence. Even after Jefferson had drawn up the Declaration of Independence and had permitted John Adams to make a copy of it, at least one change was made in both the Declaration and in this first page of the First Draft. To be sure, the similarities between this part of the First Draft and the Declaration had been noted even during Jefferson’s lifetime: in 1825 he declared that “both having the same object, of justifying our separation from Great Britain, they used necessarily the same materials of justification: hence their similitude” (TJ to Augustus B. Woodward, 3 Apr. 1825). In the discussions of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence that occurred a few years before his death, Jefferson declared that he had “turned to neither book nor pamphlet while writing” the Declaration and that it was not copied “from any particular and previous writing” (TJ to Madison, 30 Aug. 1823; to Henry Lee, 8 May 1825). Nevertheless, the evidence is conclusive that Jefferson did use the first page of the First Draft of his Virginia Constitution in drawing up the corresponding part of the Declaration. We are now justified in elevating this remarkable document to the status of a part of the composition draft of the Declaration of Independence.
Moreover, there can scarcely be any doubt that the Virginia Resolutions of 15 May provided at least some of the additional charges against the king inserted on page 1 of the First Draft when Jefferson revised it to meet the purposes of the Declaration of Independence. “I expected,” Edmund Pendleton wrote to Jefferson on 22 July, “you had in the Preamble to our form of Government, exhausted the Subject of complaint against Geo. 3d. and was at a loss to discover what the Congress would do for one to their Declaration of Independance without copying, but find you have acquitted yourselves very well on that score.” The answer is that Jefferson not only copied from the First Draft of his constitution but also, in part, utilized the Resolutions adopted by the Virginia Convention of 15 May (see notes under Declaration of Independence).
It is not enough, however, merely to present the three Jefferson drafts and the text of the Constitution as finally adopted by the Convention. The extent of Jefferson’s contribution to that document cannot be fully gauged without an examination of some of the other texts that formed the antecedents of the Virginia Constitution. From the autumn of 1775 down through the final days of the Convention, various leaders in and out of Virginia contributed to the momentous discussion: John Adams, Richard Henry Lee, Meriwether Smith, George Mason, Carter Braxton, Patrick Henry, and others besides Jefferson are among those who wrote or are reputed to have written plans of government that may have been considered by the Convention of 1776. As Edmund Randolph, a member of the Convention, wrote in his MS History of Virginia: “A very large committee was nominated to prepare the proper instruments, and many projects of a bill of rights and constitution discovered the ardor for political notice, rather than a ripeness in political wisdom. That proposed by George Mason swallowed up all the rest, by fixing the grounds and plan, which after great discussion and correction, were finally ratified” (Randolph, “Essay,” VMHB description begins Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 1893- description end