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NO MONOPOLY IN REVOLUTIONARY DEEDS. [СПАР. IV.

and writers, who did the whole. Not a profession, nor scarcely a human occupation, could have been spared; and in each the good work was achieved, not by one individual, but by a multitude. Peyton Randolph was not the only eminent Crown officer who faced a bill of attainder; Hancock was not the only princely merchant who bade the batteries train their guns on his store-houses; Putnam was not the only farmer who left one horse in the furrow, and mounted the other, in his farmer's frock, to speed to the battle muster; King's Mountain was not the only earth that drank the blood poured forth like water, of gentlemen of family, and name and condition, fighting in the ranks as private soldiers: the mechanic who gave his all-his labor, and sat up night and day to forge the pike-heads, make the wagons, or manufacture any of the different habiliments or equipments of war (and what handicraft would this leave out?) was but one of ten thousand; the matron who sent her last tender son to the fray, and defended her hearth with gun and axe against Indian and British savages, and the maiden who stopped not to weep her slain lover, but handed up the cartridges and carried water to the dying soldiers on the skirts of the battle, were each but one among thousands. Away, then, with the trash of ascribing the whole American Revolution, its deeds and its fruits, to a few supernatural men, as fabulous in their conception as the Guys of Warwick, and Bevises of Hampton, or the Sir Rolands and Sir Otuels, of the metrical romances of the Middle Ages! Of the nine towering names in that struggle, which we have mentioned respectively as generals, orators, and writers, perhaps not one individual of them decidedly excelled in either of the departments except in that in which we have given his name.

Reducing these mythical characters to something like their natural proportions, is neither unjust disparagement nor is it unkindness. Biography should aim at the truth, or it should be silent. The warmed-up biographer may run into exaggerated eulogy on his hero, and be somewhat excusable; but if he deliberately converts biography into a "Mutual Admiration Society "praises to draw praise for his subject, or avert criticism from himself-makes for this purpose Cæsar, Brutus, Cassius "and all," "honorable men "-he deserves, in our judg ment, quite as much contempt as he who deliberately converts

CHAP. IV.]

HERO WORSHIP.

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biography into a vehicle of personal or political, or other individual resentments. We conceive there is one plain rule to follow in all cases; and that is to be truthful in the expression of opinions formed on fair, and what is believed to be sufficiently full investigation. In other words, the writer should be fearlessly true to himself, to his own mind and conscience.

We much mistake the calibre of the Revolutionary leaders if they would not have scorned that claim to a monopoly in their single persons of all the shades of ability, and of a good share of the great exploits which the world witnessed in that remarkable struggle. We much mistake the men if they would not say, "save us from our friends." And, in very truth, faith fully delineated, they would in most instances be equally revered, and vastly better loved than now. A few admitted faults or foibles a few piquant individualities-a few of the lackings of common humanity-would show them to be human, to be real. Nobody puts actual faith in human impersonations of the perfect, either in intellect or character. Instinct instructs every man when he gazes on such, that they are, like the allegoric personages, the Christians and the Mr. Greathearts of Bunyan's story-the Goody-two-Shoes of the nursery tale-the Sir Guyons or Britomartises of Spenser's "faerie" song-that is to say, personifications of an idea-symbols of a virtue, or of a crowd of virtues. They are as vague in outline, as unsubstantial, and have as little individuality, as the cloudy heroes of Ossian-they are as cold, as bloodless, as little human as the marble demigods of Greece. It is easy to affect, and perhaps feel, an abstract admiration for a myth. A mind "diseased of its own beauty," may invest a myth with such a halo of sentiment as to fancy a genuine love for it. But there are but few of these Pygmalions in the world to animate stone, few who, like Bulwer's German student, have "a system of dreams," and can fall in love and die for the princess of their dreams-that is, few who have the qualifications which the law demands on various occasions for a whole man-"that he shall be twenty-one years of age, sound mind," etc. Animals of the class "Mammalia," do not congenerate (if we may be excused in a neologism)—do not sympathize with white-blooded and cold-blooded, and particularly no-blooded animals! The mind admires perfection in the abstract-but it does not admire claimed human perfection, for

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FOLLY OF DISGUISING FAULTS.

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it knows it to be false; and, moreover, we are not quite certain that beings

1

"Not too pure and good

For human nature's daily food,"

are not more agreeable per se--for common humanity likes to be kept in countenance by knowing that if it errs daily, all err sometimes. A perfect human being, could such an one be found, would move like a lone planet in a distant sphere-its solitary heaven not irradiated by another star!

On the score of character, we will not say we regret Mr. Jefferson's scrupulousness of demeanor down to trifles, but we regard it as a serious misfortune to the writer of his life. The relish of the most exquisite biographies in our language (we do not speak of mere histories sometimes called biographies) depends upon their freely narrating personal incidents illustrative of character, and recording little faults and foibles, absurdities, blunders, and even, on occasion, serious errors, as frankly as specimens of nun-like fastidiousness of deportment. Who would strike the perverse and unappeasable bearishness. of Johnson from the pages of Boswell? Who laments the sharp, clear, dissecting exposure of every one of Sir Walter Scott's pet foibles and melancholy misjudgments, by the pen of his profound admirer and son-in-law, Lockhart? And who, let us ask, in these and parallel cases, regrets such revelations on account of the real reputation of the subject of them? Who whines about violating the grave? Do the great masters of fiction, untrammelled by the biographer's facts, free to choose both their traits and their incidents, represent their favorite characters-those they mean to render most attractive to their readers either as icicles or prudes? Would any one have the gallant, sparkling Mercutio transformed into a hum-drum gentleman, too precise to take snuff and sneeze for fear of violating decorum? Would anybody mercilessly stretch or cut off Uncle Toby by the Procrustean bed of a very different class of deacons, from what we suspect to have been "my father the deacon?" Would any person make the inimitable Antiquary freër in the article of expense-less liable to be taken in by a Prætorium-or more lenient to "woman-kind" and dogs? Finally (and that is going the whole length), let us ask, who

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SHADOWS NECESSARY TO THE PICTURE.

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would venture to strip Falstaff of his vices, for fear of spoiling one of the most consummate and favorite delineations of dramatic literature?

In a word, we all love better a character on paper, if not in actual life, which has a seasoning of piquant faults. For instance, there is not a more thoroughly jumbled mixture of good and bad qualities in any hero of the National pantheon than in John Adams. Yet we predict the Alleghanies will disappear before the name of old "Sink or Swim " will cease to be a household word, or will cease among liberal men to be loved wherever it is pronounced.

And another paramount advantage had by the biographer of a man out of the "Goody-two-Shoes" line, is, that he can cheaply win the credit of candor. A face viewed in a level front light has no shadows, and thus Elizabeth wished to be painted. The artist knows that shadows are necessary to throw out what should be prominent and give expression to his picture; and, consequently, he throws the light so on his subject as to make shadows. Without this all is flat and tame. Minor faults, in biography, are the painter's shadows. But what might well be only the result of pure art, in this particu lar, is regarded as such extraordinary candor, that the biographer, after dashing on a shadow or two, might (if he desired) purposely exaggerate in important particulars without bringing his sincerity under suspicion. We suppose every lawyer has heard sharp and finessing witnesses on the stand, ostensibly lean, in the unimportant details, strongly against the very man whom they have ascended the witness-stand to swear safely through thick and thin. This is a wonderfully plausible way of enlisting credulity for the lie which is to follow! If some such admissions will win credence for falsehood, it is a pity, when they can be truthfully made, that their corroboration of an honest intention to tell the whole truth should ever be thrown away; for we take it that the good sense of mankind generally, in the long run, will distinguish between the biographical witness who will not see faults, or will intentionally suppress them-the artful one who will give a penny and ask back a pound in change-and the fair one who will tell his story rose-colored or sable, straight or crooked, just as he finds it. But it is time we drop a digression, which has wandered wide of the precise question from which it started.

CHAPTER V.

1776.

Jefferson desired by Colleagues to draft Declaration-J. Adams's Statement of a SubCommittee-Jefferson's Correction-His Contemporaneous Notes-Sustained by the Original Draught-Adams's Inaccuracy as a Writer-Jefferson's Habitual Accuracy in Facts-Authorship of Declaration undisputed-C. F. Adams's extraordinary Comments -Proceedings in Congress on Independence Resolution-Proceedings on the Declaration Jefferson's Remarks on the Amendments-Lord John Russell's-The Declaration adopted-Signing the Declaration-Fac-simile of the Draught-The Draught and Amendments Where the Declaration was written-The Writing Desk-Jefferson during the Debate-John Thompson, the Hatter-The Entries in the Account BookMeteorological Register-J. Adams, the Champion of Declaration Jefferson's Commemoration of it-J. Adams's great Speech-This not preserved-Webster's "Restoraration" of it-Webster's and Wirt's "Restorations" unequal to Originals-The Meagre History of the Debates-The probable Speakers-Jefferson's Description of S. Adams -Nelson, Harrison, and McKean-Gerry, Sherman, and others-Franklin's Influence on the Question-Jefferson's-Declaration as a Literary and Political Production-Its Originality examined-J. Adams's and R. H. Lee's Views J. Adams's Assertion that it repeats a Report of his-Unfortunateness of the Claim-How far it was borrowed from Otis or Locke-Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence-Contemporaneous Reception of National Declaration-Effects on the Public Mind-Effects on the Loyalists -On the Whigs-Reception in Southern and Middle States-In New England-Jeffer son's Appointments in Congress after the 4th of July-Letters.

THE Committee to prepare a Declaration of Independence "unanimously pressed" Mr. Jefferson "to undertake the draft." He did so, but before submitting the paper to the full Committee, communicated it separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, requesting their corrections, "which were two or three only, and merely verbal." The report was then laid before the entire Committee, which made no amendments; and on the 28th of June it was presented in Congress by its author. It was immediately read, and ordered to lie on the table.

In the often-quoted letter of John Adams to Timothy Pickering, in 1822, a somewhat different version of this affair is given. He says:

ACA