![]() ![]() ![]() Maier’s account of not only a committee, but a Congress editing Jefferson’s draft, leaving no records of their fiddling or reasons, can move any writer to sympathetic tears. Pauline Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation. She describes the transformation of the Second Continental Congress into a national government, unlike anything that preceded or followed it. Jefferson may have distilled these thoughts into polished prose, but the author’s illumination of philosophical origins of words and ideas adds to our appreciation of this national rhetorical cornerstone. Historian Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation. Pauline Maier’s exhaustive research for " American Scripture" exposes the stirring mental image of a young patriot with a ponytail thoughtfully creating timeless sentences in magisterial script as the view from a distance, which resolves into an intricate jigsaw puzzle as we examine it more closely.įrom dozens of “other” declarations to borrowed phrases from colonial leaders, the document we revere is much like the nation it helped form: the final product of arduous effort by many. While most Americans connect Thomas Jefferson with the Declaration of Independence, we are vaguely aware he had some help composing this historic document. ![]()
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