their mother country over England." This was cutting at the common root
of allegiance, emigration and colonization; but such radicalism was too
thorough-going for the immediate end. The resolutions were published,
however, as a pamphlet, entitled _A Summary View of the Rights of
America_, which was widely circulated. In England, after receiving such
modifications--attributed to Burke--as adapted it to the purposes of the
opposition, this pamphlet ran through many editions, and procured for
its author, as he said, "the honour of having his name inserted in a
long list of proscriptions enrolled in a bill of attainder commenced in
one of the two houses of parliament, but suppressed in embryo by the
hasty course of events." It placed Jefferson among the foremost leaders
of revolution, and procured for him the honour of drafting, later, the
Declaration of Independence, whose historical portions were, in large
part, only a revised transcript of the _Summary View_. In June 1775 he
took his seat in the Continental Congress, taking with him fresh
credentials of radicalism in the shape of Virginia's answer, which he
had drafted, to Lord North's conciliatory propositions. Jefferson soon
drafted the reply of Congress to the same propositions. Reappointed to
the next Congress, he signalized his service by the authorship of the
Declaration of Independence (q.v.). Again reappointed, he surrendered
his seat, and after refusing a proffered election to serve as a
commissioner with Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane in France, he
entered again, in October 1776, the Virginia legislature, where he
considered his services most needed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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