WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS [NEW EXHIBIT SHOWS THE EVOLUTION OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE]

Beginning this Friday through Aug. 1, the New York Public Library's Fifth Avenue branch will display one of only two surviving handwritten copies of the Declaration of Independence -- a window into our nation's history and the ulcer of Thomas Jefferson. The author had forwarded his finished draft on July 1, 1776, but a number of deletions, additions and changes were made to the text before its ratification July 4. Jefferson sent about six copies to friends, and, as seen here, he underlined passages that were changed to his annoyance. Here's a peek at the famous ode to freedom, with notes from Rod Gragg's history "The Declaration of Independence."

1. Jefferson's original version was edited by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin before he presented it to the Continental Congress. Knowing Jefferson's sensitivity to editing, Adams made few changes to the draft. "I was delighted with its high tone and flights of oratory," Adams would say, though he did feel Jefferson's charges against the king were "too much like scolding." Franklin, who was nursing gout at the time, made mostly stylistic changes.

2. Jefferson was the first to call the 13 "united colonies" a name -- the United States of America.

3. Jefferson was unhappy with the editing and sat glumly in his seat throughout the process. He later said his work had been defaced by "mutilations." Franklin tried to cheer him up with a story about a hat maker who made a sign for his business that read: "John Thompson, Hatter, Makes and sells Hats for Ready Money." By the time his friends had edited it, it was reduced to the words "John Thompson" with a picture of a hat, but it worked, Franklin said.

Thomas Paine was the first person to publish the phrase. "The United States of America." In Common Sense. Jefferson may have been the second one to do that.

Congressman Billybob

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Billybob, I don’t see that phrase in Common Sense. Where do you see it used? I see united colonies but not United States of America, at least not within the text of Common Sense.

http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/commonsense/text.html

I used a secondary source, but one I thought was reliable, Thomas Edison. See below: (Opening paragraphs only.)

The Philosophy of Paine
by Thomas A. Edison

June 7, 1925

Tom Paine has almost no influence on present-day thinking in the United States because he is unknown to the average citizen. Perhaps I might say right here that this is a national loss and a deplorable lack of understanding concerning the man who first proposed and first wrote those impressive words, ‘the United States of America.’ But it is hardly strange. Paine's teachings have been debarred from schools everywhere and his views of life misrepresented until his memory is hidden in shadows, or he is looked upon as of unsound mind.

We never had a sounder intelligence in this Republic. He was the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible. Where Washington performed Paine devised and wrote. The deeds of one in the Weld were matched by the deeds of the other with his pen. Washington himself appreciated Paine at his true worth. Franklin knew him for a great patriot and clear thinker. He was a friend and confidant of Jefferson, and the two must often have debated the academic and practical phases of liberty.

John / Billybob

Found it, in a Paine tract for the “Public Good” proposing a Constitutional Convention. So writes George Bancroft on page 12 of his History of the formation of the Constitution of the United States of America. Sorry I had the wrong source.

John / Billybob

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