Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (22664)	8/15/2002 9:13:24 AM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 74559

You get a Thomas Jefferson single handled to write the US constitution and makes a successful country. My favorite restaurant is in Philadelphia, the City Tavern, where Jefferson wrote the first draft Declaration of Independence on his lap desk, while drinking pints of madeira wine. They serve the type of food and drink that was available at the time, and the servers dress in the style of the time. At night, it is lit only by candles. Nice view of Independence Square. Last year the Library of Congress exhibited the draft version of the Declaration of Independence. There were quite a few places scratched out and something else written in by another handwriting -- Ben Franklin, John Adams. But Congress did rewrite it, and Jefferson did not like it. >>The draft of the Declaration was revised first by Adams and Franklin, and then by the full committee. A total of 47 alterations, including the insertion of three complete paragraphs, were made to the text before it was presented to Congress on June 28. After voting for independence on July 2, Congress continued to refine the document, making 39 additional revisions to the committee draft before its final adoption on the morning of July 4. The draft shows the multiplicity of corrections, additions and deletions that were made at each step. Although most of the alterations are in Jefferson's handwriting (Jefferson later indicated which changes he believed were made by Adams and Franklin), he felt slighted by the way Congress rewrote the manuscript. In a consoling letter of July 21, 1776, the state's senior delegate, Richard Henry Lee, wrote to Jefferson that he wished that "the manuscript had not been mangled as it is." In an 1823 letter to Madison, Jefferson wrote that, at the time, "during the debate, I was sitting by Dr. Franklin and he observed that I was writhing a little under the acrimonious criticisms" of Congress. In fact, as Congress neared completion of the document by altering nearly all of his last paragraph, Jefferson could only write in the margin "a different phraseology inserted." Jefferson remained bitter about the changes made to the Declaration of Independence right up to his death. His autobiography was a major effort to set the record straight on its writing. Within a few decades, even the major characters, including Jefferson and Adams, could not remember who wrote what, when Congress approved the Declaration, or even when the Declaration was signed. Small wonder, then, that scholars have puzzled over the text for nearly 200 years, assigning authorship here, ascribing a deletion there, arguing over the weather and time of day Congress agreed to the Declaration and the sequencing of drafts and copies.<< loc.gov So, the Declaration is both an expression of individual thought, and the expression of collective thought. Collective thought is good when the thinkers are good thinkers. It's not that groups themselves are bad, it's that intelligent people are rare, and groups of intelligent people rarer still. But here we all are.;^) BTW, Jefferson did not write the Constitution. That was also written by a committee, and it took many months, and involved a lot of compromises. Primary author James Madison, who lived very near Jefferson and was a good friend. Jefferson was not even a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. Probably still miffed over the Declaration.-g- He was Ambassador to France at the time, but communicated regularly with Madison and gave him suggestions.