Thomas Jefferson on the meaning of the Fourth of July

[Pete F.]

Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Roger Weightman, the mayor of Washington D.C., regretfully declining an invitation to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence because of his poor health. In this letter an elderly and broken Jefferson summoned for one last time the spirit that he brought to the Declaration itself. Ten days after drafting it, he was dead. On the 50th anniversary of his greatest achievement. And so this marks his final message to future Americans about what, exactly, it is that the anniversary of the Declaration marks:

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all) the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings & security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view. The palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.