Nearly fifty years after he drafted it, Jefferson wrote about “the object of the Declaration of Independence.”9 It was “[n]ot to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of” or “to say things which had never been said before.”10 It was meant “to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent.”11 It did not aim “at originality of principle or sentiment.”12 Put simply, “it was intended to be an expression of the American mind.”13 Carl Becker, the American historian who wrote the book on the subject—The
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