Thomas Jefferson Used ‘Subjects’ Instead of ‘Citizens’ in Early Declaration of Independence

Fox News.com ^ | 02 Jul 2010 | staff reporter

[Daffynition]

WASHINGTON - Library of Congress officials say Thomas Jefferson made a Freudian slip while penning a rough draft of the Declaration of Independence.

In an early draft of the document, which is kept under lock and key in one of the Library's vaults, Jefferson referred to the American population as "subjects," then replaced it with the word "citizens," a term he used frequently throughout the final draft.

[F.J. Mitchell]

Just as surely as God made little green apples.

[FrankR]

Only the one that was ratified and signed, counts. The others are rough drafts and done by someone who had been one of the King's "subjects".

Old habits are hard to break. My old, Southern grandmother never, ever referred to my bike as a "bicycle", or "bike"...she called it a "wheel". When I rode over to her house, she would ask, "Did you come over her on your wheel?. Obviously a holdover from her childhood when people rode those big wheel bikes, and I think they did call them "wheels" then.

[Daffynition]

Exactly. The summer interns at Fox have completly taken over the news room.

[patlin]

They were subjects at the time...Old habits are hard to break. My old, Southern grandmother never, ever referred to my bike as a “bicycle”, or “bike”...she called it a “wheel”. When I rode over to her house, she would ask, “Did you come over her on your wheel?. Obviously a holdover from her childhood when people rode those big wheel bikes, and I think they did call them “wheels” then.

I take a completely different perspective on this. As this probably was the 1st draft, the subjects were writing their grievances to the King. But how can subjects who derived their rights from the King, not from God as inherent rights, justify such a course of action? With the smudging, which no doubt took place immediately because of the lightness of the wording underneath & the croosing off in all other places, it would be a more reasonable conclusion that Jefferson realized this grave error rather quickly & corrected it. We have to keep in mind that although the Brit Parliament came in & forced themselves on the colonist, from the beginning, the colonies were always considered separate from that of the Brit Parliament as they were afforded no representation in it. The owed loyalty to the crown, but not Parliaments laws. Each colony had its separate constitution well before the revolution & the laws differed in each state as did the whole of the citizenry of each colony (the ancestry of each colony established, i.e. Holland, Sweden, France, England etc). IOW, not all the colonies(less than half) were of British origin and thus their laws were derived from a completely different ancestry. To get a real grasp of the make up of the colonies, prior to and after the very short rule of the English Parliament (separate from the crown), you need to read ALL the appendixes to St George Tucker's Blackstone. Balckstone's Commentaries are NOT a place to look for original intent of the framers says St George Tucker.

“That neither the common law of England, nor the statutes of that kingdom, were, at any period antecedent to the revolution, the general and uniform law of the land in the British colonies, now constituting the United States.”

http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/tucker/index.html

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2539663/posts?page=83#83

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=lljc&fileName=024/lljc024.db&recNum=90&itemLink=D?hlaw:2:./temp/~ammem_DwR3::%230240091&linkText=1

“John Jay & Washington both were taught in French in grammar school as well as most of the framers that grew up in America. But especially Jay who’s heritage is Dutch and who’s ancestry can be traced back to those 1st Dutch settlements (New Netherlands). It is no coincidence that so much attention was given to the United Netherlands in the Federalist Papers because it was from that heritage that many of the framers had their ancestry in.”

http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa00.htm

[Verginius Rufus]

It was on this date in 1776 that Congress voted for independence, and John Adams thought that the second day of July would be celebrated as a holiday with bonfires, fireworks, etc. Instead, of course, the date that the declaration was adopted became Independence Day.

[bravo whiskey]

there is a reason it’s called a DRAFT.

[FrankR]

Wow...that’s deep...I was just speculating.

[No Truce With Kings]

So, he changed the subjects?

[patlin]

That's ok, just spreading the word of America's true heritage & it didn't stem from British rule, quite the contrary. We need to get this history in the hands of every American, especially the youth.

[katana]

It actually may represent a dawning in the mind of Jefferson, mid-sentence, that with this document the whole relationship between individuals and government is turned on its head from what had been accepted for thousands of years before. For an historian this is like an astronomer seeing a snapshot of the Big Bang.

People in Europe, even in those countries which have no royal heads of state, still behave like "subjects" instead of "citizens". Our revolution was based on a profound reordering of some very ancient ideas. God - the People - the Government versus God (although He has been largely removed from the equation in modern Europe) - the Government - the People.

Obama, Reid, Nancy Pelosi and their ilk may act like our overlords but only in violation of this fundamental concept and only so long as we permit the charade.

[KingLudd]

This is not news. How can LOC get this wrong? Taking credit for someone else’s work. What?

http://www.princeton.edu/~tjpapers/declaration/declaration.html#_ednref10

Check out footnote #10

[Marty62]

This is what you get with a generation that doesn't know that Computers were not available at this time in our history. They were in fact REVOLUTIONARIES. Writing such a document was a crime against the KING. By changing subject (of King)to citizen(free people), he was making a declaratory statement. Yes virginia, people use to use a quill pen.