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Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence
From one of America's foremost historians, Inventing America compares Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence with the final, accepted version, thereby challenging many long-cherished assumptions about both the man and the document. Although Jefferson has long been idealized as a champion of individual rights, Wills argues that in fact his vision was one in which interdependence, not self-interest, lay at the foundation of society.
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
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About the author
Garry Wills
149 books247 followersGarry Wills is an American author, journalist, political philosopher, and historian, specializing in American history, politics, and religion, especially the history of the Catholic Church. He won a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1993.
Wills has written over fifty books and, since 1973, has been a frequent reviewer for The New York Review of Books. He became a faculty member of the history department at Northwestern University in 1980, where he is an Emeritus Professor of History.
Wills has written over fifty books and, since 1973, has been a frequent reviewer for The New York Review of Books. He became a faculty member of the history department at Northwestern University in 1980, where he is an Emeritus Professor of History.
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July 4, 2025
In July of 1776, against the sweltering heat and humidity of a Philadelphia summer, a new nation was born. The instrument of its birth was a 1300-word document: the Declaration of Independence, written by a 33-year-old Virginian named Thomas Jefferson.
Inventing America is Garry Wills’s exploration of the history, both political and intellectual, of the Declaration. Wills, now an emeritus professor of history at Northwestern University, wrote this book back in 1978; then, as now, he displays a formidable degree of erudition, and seems to know absolutely everything. And he brings that erudition to bear most effectively in considering the Declaration from a variety of angles – historic, political, philosophical, scientific, and moral.
When engaging the political history of the Declaration, Wills interrogates the terms we use to talk about the American Revolution – indeed, down to the word “revolution” itself, a term that Wills links with England’s “Glorious Revolution” of 1688:
There was no “overturn” of a central government in the American Revolution, no decapitated king in Paris, no basement execution of a czar. George III ruled for another four decades, and Lord North’s career continued despite his voluntary resignation. But Americans were willing to call their action a revolution precisely because it was an orderly and legal procedure. The first English meaning of “revolution” had been astronomical – the revolving of the heavens, an exchange of planetary positions; or the “period” (which is simply “revolution” in Greek) covered by such alterations. (p. 51; emphasis in original)
Aptly, in a section titled “The Scientific Paper,” Wills focuses on how Jefferson’s faith in science affected his authorship of the Declaration, as when he discusses Jefferson’s “persistent and thorough admiration” for “America’s supreme mechanic, David Rittenhouse” and goes on to suggest that “Jefferson’s praise of Rittenhouse was an extension of the conventions surrounding the cult of Newton, who was often compared to his own Maker as a governor of the universe by thought” (p. 100).
So mathematically minded was Jefferson, the creator of the phrase “the pursuit of happiness,” that “He even thought of happiness, the pursuit of which is sometimes called the vaguest thing in the Declaration, as susceptible of numbered measurement and distribution” – even if, as Wills argues, “Jefferson let the beauty of a mathematically regular scheme blind him to the recalcitrant human realities being schematized” (pp. 147-48).
Wills also focuses on the Declaration as “A Moral Paper,” emphasizing the great Virginian’s debt to thinkers like Frances Hutcheson, David Hume, and Henry Home, Lord Kames. That famous phrase about “the pursuit of happiness” comes into play once again, as Hutcheson, who in 1725 had written of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number,” influenced Jefferson’s 1776 use of the term “happiness” in a decisive way: Jefferson’s “use of the ‘pursuit of happiness’ as the natural right to rank with life and liberty is not a vague or ‘idealistic’ or ill-defined action, but one consistent with everything else he wrote in the Declaration and outside it” (p. 255). The Declaration of Independence is a document in which Jefferson brings together the scientific sense and the moral sense of his time.
In considering Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (the book's subtitle), Wills does not shy from considering Jefferson’s views on race and slavery. Characteristically judicious, Wills suggests that Jefferson “can be quoted to sound like an ardent abolitionist, or to sound like the most oppressive of masters”, but that Jefferson “always opposed enslavement in general and further slave imports to Virginia in particular” (p. 299). So far, so good, one would think – but there is another side to Jefferson’s attitude toward slavery. “He always supported the freeing of slaves en masse, but always and only in connection with a scheme of deportation” (p. 299). As always, Jefferson’s attitudes regarding slavery and race, like Jefferson himself, are maddeningly complex.
Wills closes by considering the Declaration as “national symbol,” pointing out, among other things, that, notwithstanding that great painting of all those Signers there in Philadelphia, ready to sign promptly on July 4, 1776, it didn’t really happen that way at all. “Was it ever ‘the Fourth’? For Jefferson died on the anniversary of a day that never was. The Fourth includes celebration of some things that happened on different days and of other things that did not happen at all” (p. 351).
Wills even suggests that the Declaration may have taken on the significance it has in our national life because of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams dying on the same day – July 4, 1826. In that reading, “The huge glow cast through the years from the Fourth was not visible to the men who worked and argued through the actual July 4 of 1776. It is in every way an afterglow, drawing almost as much of its intensity from the deathbeds of these two men as from the event that took place fifty years before” (p. 351; emphasis in original).
The United States of America draws its collective national sense of itself from the Declaration of Independence. Understanding the Declaration, and its importance in our lives, is as vital a task today as it was when the nation was brand-new. In Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, Garry Wills provides a well-reasoned, thoroughly researched, and intellectually rigorous examination of those 1300 words that started a nation.
Inventing America is Garry Wills’s exploration of the history, both political and intellectual, of the Declaration. Wills, now an emeritus professor of history at Northwestern University, wrote this book back in 1978; then, as now, he displays a formidable degree of erudition, and seems to know absolutely everything. And he brings that erudition to bear most effectively in considering the Declaration from a variety of angles – historic, political, philosophical, scientific, and moral.
When engaging the political history of the Declaration, Wills interrogates the terms we use to talk about the American Revolution – indeed, down to the word “revolution” itself, a term that Wills links with England’s “Glorious Revolution” of 1688:
There was no “overturn” of a central government in the American Revolution, no decapitated king in Paris, no basement execution of a czar. George III ruled for another four decades, and Lord North’s career continued despite his voluntary resignation. But Americans were willing to call their action a revolution precisely because it was an orderly and legal procedure. The first English meaning of “revolution” had been astronomical – the revolving of the heavens, an exchange of planetary positions; or the “period” (which is simply “revolution” in Greek) covered by such alterations. (p. 51; emphasis in original)
Aptly, in a section titled “The Scientific Paper,” Wills focuses on how Jefferson’s faith in science affected his authorship of the Declaration, as when he discusses Jefferson’s “persistent and thorough admiration” for “America’s supreme mechanic, David Rittenhouse” and goes on to suggest that “Jefferson’s praise of Rittenhouse was an extension of the conventions surrounding the cult of Newton, who was often compared to his own Maker as a governor of the universe by thought” (p. 100).
So mathematically minded was Jefferson, the creator of the phrase “the pursuit of happiness,” that “He even thought of happiness, the pursuit of which is sometimes called the vaguest thing in the Declaration, as susceptible of numbered measurement and distribution” – even if, as Wills argues, “Jefferson let the beauty of a mathematically regular scheme blind him to the recalcitrant human realities being schematized” (pp. 147-48).
Wills also focuses on the Declaration as “A Moral Paper,” emphasizing the great Virginian’s debt to thinkers like Frances Hutcheson, David Hume, and Henry Home, Lord Kames. That famous phrase about “the pursuit of happiness” comes into play once again, as Hutcheson, who in 1725 had written of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number,” influenced Jefferson’s 1776 use of the term “happiness” in a decisive way: Jefferson’s “use of the ‘pursuit of happiness’ as the natural right to rank with life and liberty is not a vague or ‘idealistic’ or ill-defined action, but one consistent with everything else he wrote in the Declaration and outside it” (p. 255). The Declaration of Independence is a document in which Jefferson brings together the scientific sense and the moral sense of his time.
In considering Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (the book's subtitle), Wills does not shy from considering Jefferson’s views on race and slavery. Characteristically judicious, Wills suggests that Jefferson “can be quoted to sound like an ardent abolitionist, or to sound like the most oppressive of masters”, but that Jefferson “always opposed enslavement in general and further slave imports to Virginia in particular” (p. 299). So far, so good, one would think – but there is another side to Jefferson’s attitude toward slavery. “He always supported the freeing of slaves en masse, but always and only in connection with a scheme of deportation” (p. 299). As always, Jefferson’s attitudes regarding slavery and race, like Jefferson himself, are maddeningly complex.
Wills closes by considering the Declaration as “national symbol,” pointing out, among other things, that, notwithstanding that great painting of all those Signers there in Philadelphia, ready to sign promptly on July 4, 1776, it didn’t really happen that way at all. “Was it ever ‘the Fourth’? For Jefferson died on the anniversary of a day that never was. The Fourth includes celebration of some things that happened on different days and of other things that did not happen at all” (p. 351).
Wills even suggests that the Declaration may have taken on the significance it has in our national life because of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams dying on the same day – July 4, 1826. In that reading, “The huge glow cast through the years from the Fourth was not visible to the men who worked and argued through the actual July 4 of 1776. It is in every way an afterglow, drawing almost as much of its intensity from the deathbeds of these two men as from the event that took place fifty years before” (p. 351; emphasis in original).
The United States of America draws its collective national sense of itself from the Declaration of Independence. Understanding the Declaration, and its importance in our lives, is as vital a task today as it was when the nation was brand-new. In Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, Garry Wills provides a well-reasoned, thoroughly researched, and intellectually rigorous examination of those 1300 words that started a nation.
November 5, 2018
I’m not sure how to rate or review this book. It was interesting, and I learned quite a bit from it, but for me it was not a page turner.
It is an extremely academic book, intended for those with an existing knowledge that I did not have. In addition, the author frequently quotes extensive passages in French with no translation. The middle bit gets quite deep into discussions of philosophy, which I admit I have little patience for. As a result, I thought more than once about abandoning it. However, I am glad that I did not, because after the philosophy discussions the book became much more interesting for me.
I don’t know that I will ever read this book again, but it has motivated me to read more about the events and the people of this time period. If you have a good background in the topic and don’t mind detailed discussions of philosophy, this book probably deserves 4-5 stars. For me, 3.5 stars seems about right.
It is an extremely academic book, intended for those with an existing knowledge that I did not have. In addition, the author frequently quotes extensive passages in French with no translation. The middle bit gets quite deep into discussions of philosophy, which I admit I have little patience for. As a result, I thought more than once about abandoning it. However, I am glad that I did not, because after the philosophy discussions the book became much more interesting for me.
I don’t know that I will ever read this book again, but it has motivated me to read more about the events and the people of this time period. If you have a good background in the topic and don’t mind detailed discussions of philosophy, this book probably deserves 4-5 stars. For me, 3.5 stars seems about right.
February 27, 2021
Wills did an amazing amount of research to give us a good sense of how Thomas Jefferson would have understood his words in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence. Instead of reading the Declaration from how we in the 21st Century hear the words and argue about them, he goes back in time to look at what Jefferson read, what other things he wrote, and how the people who influenced Jefferson understood the concepts and terms Jefferson used. Jefferson is a complex figure, definitely influenced by the Enlightenment, especially the Scot Englightenment writers. He had a 'scientific' mind and tried to see the world from the point of view of math which he sometimes applied to social ideas in a way we would find unacceptable today. Wills shows the consistency in Jefferson who both holds "all men are created equal" and also held a view of the superiority of Europeans over all other people in the world. Wills says Jefferson's Preamble was targetting the people of England more than the King or Parlaiment. He felt Americans and Britons were brothers and he was angry that the British people did not arise in support of the American move for independence. Learned a lot from the book, but the long sections dealing with philosophy were beyond my interest or ability to appreciate all the nuances present in the world of Jefferson.
February 19, 2016
Wills' book presents an intellectual biography and a historical record of Jefferson and his Declaration. He parses Jefferson's document and provides the influences that went into his thinking. I found it a revelation.
I was unaware of the Scottish Enlightenment and its proponents (Hutcheson, Hume) and Locke's role seemed minimal to Jefferson's regard for the Scotsmen. Learning this deepened my understanding.
Additionally, I found Jefferson's reading list intriguing. Sterne, Bacon, Blackstone, Burke, Chastellux, Condorcet, Reid, Voltaire have become tree branches in evidence of Jefferson's complex tree of thinking.
Most of all, I respect Wills' emphasis on understanding the age in which Jefferson lived and making the effort to know THAT rather then reading a sentence or two and giving it a glib interpretation based on our current political or social needs. Reading this has grounded me in a deeper way; reading FOR history, not just reading history means to me understanding the range of choices that an individual had (here, Jefferson) in order to respect his (or her) choices.
I think this essential reading for any who wish to know and understand this era. Wills' account provides the high watermark for intellectual histories. If this book is assigned reading, I'm signing up for that class.
I was unaware of the Scottish Enlightenment and its proponents (Hutcheson, Hume) and Locke's role seemed minimal to Jefferson's regard for the Scotsmen. Learning this deepened my understanding.
Additionally, I found Jefferson's reading list intriguing. Sterne, Bacon, Blackstone, Burke, Chastellux, Condorcet, Reid, Voltaire have become tree branches in evidence of Jefferson's complex tree of thinking.
Most of all, I respect Wills' emphasis on understanding the age in which Jefferson lived and making the effort to know THAT rather then reading a sentence or two and giving it a glib interpretation based on our current political or social needs. Reading this has grounded me in a deeper way; reading FOR history, not just reading history means to me understanding the range of choices that an individual had (here, Jefferson) in order to respect his (or her) choices.
I think this essential reading for any who wish to know and understand this era. Wills' account provides the high watermark for intellectual histories. If this book is assigned reading, I'm signing up for that class.
December 4, 2024
Review title: Grounding the Declaration in context
On the 40th anniversary of its 1978 publication, Garry Wills's study of the Declaration of Independence was republished with a new introduction by the author addressing the major criticisms (including some of his own) of the original. Suffice it to say that the existence of criticism and the publisher's willingness to release a new edition speak for the significance of Wills's analysis. I am fairly certain I read the original long before I started reviewing my reading (and some time after I had so sadly lost my list of books read that I started in high school), so given the chance to reenter this world I took it up.
Wills starts by setting the political and historical stage of the men sent to the Congress that read, revised, and signed the Declaration.
Were they making a revolution--or reclaiming their ancient rights as Englishmen? Wills says that the revolution that this generation referenced was in fact the Glorious Revolution of 17th century England, then less than a century in the past. His resetting of our understanding of the historical and political context of the time is both necessary and helpful and, claims Wills, lacking in scholarly studies on the Declaration before his.
He then begins to look specifically at the draft of the document that Jefferson brought with him to Philadelphia, and looks at the additions, changes, and subtractions agreed by the Congress (see p. 379-384 where Wills reprints Jefferson's own marked-up document showing the changes). He considers the Declaration first as a scientific paper, starting with the Newtonian use of the term "necessary" in the first sentence of the preamble to mean that the declaration of rights and the events that would follow from it were driven by the knowable and unbreakable mechanisms of nature.
So "when Jefferson spoke of pursuing happiness, he had nothing vague or private in mind. He meant a public happiness which is measurable." (p. 164). Jefferson was deeply impressed by how orrery models of the orbits of the planets demonstrated the regularity of the universe as measured by clocks of increasing accuracy. See the excellent book About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks for a longer study of how time and clocks changed our perception of the world and our place in it.
Wills then moved on to consider the origins of Jefferson's thoughts as expressed in his draft of the Declaration as a "Moral Paper" and a "Sentimental Paper" based in his influences by Scottish and French philosophers and thinkers of his time. For example the often criticized or misunderstood phrase "the pursuit of happiness" "had meanings for Jefferson that were hard and scientific (chapter Ten), moral (Seventeen), and political (Eighteen)" (p. 313, chapter references to Wills's book). Wills spends considerable time refuting accepted notions that John Locke was Jefferson's primary influence and that the Declaration as approved was little changed from Jefferson's draft. In fact, after the debates on July 3, Jefferson wrote and sent two copies of his draft to close friends to preserve his draft, and continued to make multiple copies of his draft for posterity (p. 307-308), a fact that suggests that Jefferson himself recognized substantial changes in the signed document. His Declaration "does not offer the American Revolution as something permissible, merely. It is necessaryin nature." (p. 317)
WIlls concludes his study with a quick summary of the life of the Declaration after July 4, 1776, including the fact that while the document was signed on multiple dates, none of them were July 4! This is a vital study for understanding the context and purpose of the Declaration, and what it really meant to Jefferson, its signers (the 13 colonies, not the individuals who represented them), and its intended targets--the King and Parliament of England, but more importantly the French whose support was needed but not forthcoming until the revolution had been declared.
On the 40th anniversary of its 1978 publication, Garry Wills's study of the Declaration of Independence was republished with a new introduction by the author addressing the major criticisms (including some of his own) of the original. Suffice it to say that the existence of criticism and the publisher's willingness to release a new edition speak for the significance of Wills's analysis. I am fairly certain I read the original long before I started reviewing my reading (and some time after I had so sadly lost my list of books read that I started in high school), so given the chance to reenter this world I took it up.
Wills starts by setting the political and historical stage of the men sent to the Congress that read, revised, and signed the Declaration.
A subtle distortions colors all our efforts to look at these men as the judged one another. it seems clear to us that they were brokering our own "birth," initiating a history. They stand at the beginning. But they saw themselves as defenders of a history accomplished; taking risks that might end, rather than launch, a noble experiment. They were speaking for deliberative assemblies of great antiquity--some nearly a century old; one that had held its sessions in unbroken sequence for over one hundred and fifty years. (p.37-38)
Were they making a revolution--or reclaiming their ancient rights as Englishmen? Wills says that the revolution that this generation referenced was in fact the Glorious Revolution of 17th century England, then less than a century in the past. His resetting of our understanding of the historical and political context of the time is both necessary and helpful and, claims Wills, lacking in scholarly studies on the Declaration before his.
He then begins to look specifically at the draft of the document that Jefferson brought with him to Philadelphia, and looks at the additions, changes, and subtractions agreed by the Congress (see p. 379-384 where Wills reprints Jefferson's own marked-up document showing the changes). He considers the Declaration first as a scientific paper, starting with the Newtonian use of the term "necessary" in the first sentence of the preamble to mean that the declaration of rights and the events that would follow from it were driven by the knowable and unbreakable mechanisms of nature.
So "when Jefferson spoke of pursuing happiness, he had nothing vague or private in mind. He meant a public happiness which is measurable." (p. 164). Jefferson was deeply impressed by how orrery models of the orbits of the planets demonstrated the regularity of the universe as measured by clocks of increasing accuracy. See the excellent book About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks for a longer study of how time and clocks changed our perception of the world and our place in it.
Wills then moved on to consider the origins of Jefferson's thoughts as expressed in his draft of the Declaration as a "Moral Paper" and a "Sentimental Paper" based in his influences by Scottish and French philosophers and thinkers of his time. For example the often criticized or misunderstood phrase "the pursuit of happiness" "had meanings for Jefferson that were hard and scientific (chapter Ten), moral (Seventeen), and political (Eighteen)" (p. 313, chapter references to Wills's book). Wills spends considerable time refuting accepted notions that John Locke was Jefferson's primary influence and that the Declaration as approved was little changed from Jefferson's draft. In fact, after the debates on July 3, Jefferson wrote and sent two copies of his draft to close friends to preserve his draft, and continued to make multiple copies of his draft for posterity (p. 307-308), a fact that suggests that Jefferson himself recognized substantial changes in the signed document. His Declaration "does not offer the American Revolution as something permissible, merely. It is necessaryin nature." (p. 317)
WIlls concludes his study with a quick summary of the life of the Declaration after July 4, 1776, including the fact that while the document was signed on multiple dates, none of them were July 4! This is a vital study for understanding the context and purpose of the Declaration, and what it really meant to Jefferson, its signers (the 13 colonies, not the individuals who represented them), and its intended targets--the King and Parliament of England, but more importantly the French whose support was needed but not forthcoming until the revolution had been declared.
June 8, 2017
Let it be clearly understood, this is a bad book, but it is bad in an instructive way. In reading this book, I was struck by how often the author makes air quotes around two or three words at a time and makes strong statements that are unsupported by other sources, and the book does not even include endnotes and a bibliography at the end, which this book really is missing. It struck me that the author was using the texts of the American founding in search of proof texts for his own progressive political ideology and came to the texts as someone looking for support for his defective worldview rather than as someone seeking to learn from them or seeking to understand the Founding Fathers as they were. The author makes a particularly ironic comment that looking anachronistically at the founders causes problems and proceeds to do that through the entirety of this book. To be sure, Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence are popular subjects for people to write about [1], but there are far better books one can look at if one wants to know about what Thomas Jefferson write. All one finds out here is what Garry Wills thinks, and that is not particularly worthwhile.
This book consists of 27 fairly short chapters totaling about 360 pages in five parts. The first part looks at the Declaration of Independence as a revolutionary charter, the second part as a scientific paper, the third part as a moral paper, the fourth part as a sentimental paper, and the fifth part as a symbol. Throughout the author's attempts to examine the different layers of the Declaration of Independence and the origin of Thomas Jefferson's thought are undercut by a variety of assumptions. Among these is the way that the author seeks to discredit Thomas Jefferson on account of his conduct as a slaveowner while simultaneously claiming from Thomas Jefferson a legitimacy for his own form of egalitarian politics. The author's ambivalence towards its subject and his confidence in his own insight and knowledge lead him to combine a sound comparison of Thomas Jefferson's thought with that of the Scottish enlightenment and with some unsound and facile repetitions of the trite statement that the American founders were slavish imitators of the Whig tradition of political thinkers. The raw materials for a good book are present, but this author is simply not equipped to take his subject matter seriously enough and respectfully enough to make this a good book.
In reading this book, we find out a little bit about Thomas Jefferson, but much of that is unreliable because it depends on the word of the author, and quite frankly he is not someone whose word can be trusted as an authority of anything. Really, we find out far more in this book about Gary Wills, and that is instructive in dealing with progressive political philosophy in general. We learn the ways that the thought of the founding fathers is mined for proof texts to support bogus contemporary political ideas, and how there is a great deal of chronological snobbery even in those who claim an expertise in classics. The author also makes some fundamental assumptions that are unexamined, such as the extent to which we can look at Thomas Jefferson as a representative example of the political thought of his time. We can also learn that even people who fancy themselves smart can be extremely foolish, such as the way that the author continually misrepresents the founders as having created thirteen states rather than one nation. When the author shows himself unable to understand the nature of American federalism from the moment of its founding, something amply demonstrated, for example, by Harry Jaffa in his own writings on the Declaration of Independence, it is hard to believe what he has to say about anything else.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2014...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...
This book consists of 27 fairly short chapters totaling about 360 pages in five parts. The first part looks at the Declaration of Independence as a revolutionary charter, the second part as a scientific paper, the third part as a moral paper, the fourth part as a sentimental paper, and the fifth part as a symbol. Throughout the author's attempts to examine the different layers of the Declaration of Independence and the origin of Thomas Jefferson's thought are undercut by a variety of assumptions. Among these is the way that the author seeks to discredit Thomas Jefferson on account of his conduct as a slaveowner while simultaneously claiming from Thomas Jefferson a legitimacy for his own form of egalitarian politics. The author's ambivalence towards its subject and his confidence in his own insight and knowledge lead him to combine a sound comparison of Thomas Jefferson's thought with that of the Scottish enlightenment and with some unsound and facile repetitions of the trite statement that the American founders were slavish imitators of the Whig tradition of political thinkers. The raw materials for a good book are present, but this author is simply not equipped to take his subject matter seriously enough and respectfully enough to make this a good book.
In reading this book, we find out a little bit about Thomas Jefferson, but much of that is unreliable because it depends on the word of the author, and quite frankly he is not someone whose word can be trusted as an authority of anything. Really, we find out far more in this book about Gary Wills, and that is instructive in dealing with progressive political philosophy in general. We learn the ways that the thought of the founding fathers is mined for proof texts to support bogus contemporary political ideas, and how there is a great deal of chronological snobbery even in those who claim an expertise in classics. The author also makes some fundamental assumptions that are unexamined, such as the extent to which we can look at Thomas Jefferson as a representative example of the political thought of his time. We can also learn that even people who fancy themselves smart can be extremely foolish, such as the way that the author continually misrepresents the founders as having created thirteen states rather than one nation. When the author shows himself unable to understand the nature of American federalism from the moment of its founding, something amply demonstrated, for example, by Harry Jaffa in his own writings on the Declaration of Independence, it is hard to believe what he has to say about anything else.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2014...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...
September 15, 2019
Well the rating really doesn’t matter: I learned much from this book. Very academic, really aimed at his peer historians (Jeffersonians), also contains important insights into property, race relations, human rights. Wills teaches us much about the Scottish enlightenment. He aims to see through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson, reveals his collection of books, and points toward his contemporaries. There are some very dense parts, like the first part picking away at what was changed from the rough draft to the final draft, or sifting through his other compositions to get inside his mind. Readers might want to brush up on the history & government lessons prior to reading this (I should’ve), important names in literature (Locke, Diderot, Hume, Hutcheson, Adam Smith, Richard Henry Lee, Ben Franklin, et. al.) are referenced over and again, and there are French and Latin words here and there (I saw a review complaining about the absence of any translations but I found it a higher point to try and read the French anyway, as a sort of lab-like experiment in etymology, I don’t know French but did take three years Spanish and wasn’t too bothered by it).
Some other stuff:
Wills makes clear points and cogent arguments. He has a stance. Mainly that (as I understand) Jefferson did not advocate the philosophy of John Locke but that of Scottish thinkers Francis Hutcheson and Hume. The difference is that the former is more self-centered and pro-individual & property, the latter, more humane, realistic yet ultimately idealistic. The book’s certainly a scholarly work! Chapters short, some are dense and some pass rather easily. The author goes everywhere, from natural science, discussion on how people thought Africans and Indians were blurred into the animal kingdom, bestiality between orangutan and woman, views on the moral capacity of non-whites, their fidelity, shared sense for communal well-being, the exposition of Jefferson’s writings; the inventive mind of Rittenhouse and Franklin are referred to in the beginning parts, the orrery, the watch, the telescope, the meaning of revolution; it’s a solid book for the discussion of how America became.
Some other stuff:
Wills makes clear points and cogent arguments. He has a stance. Mainly that (as I understand) Jefferson did not advocate the philosophy of John Locke but that of Scottish thinkers Francis Hutcheson and Hume. The difference is that the former is more self-centered and pro-individual & property, the latter, more humane, realistic yet ultimately idealistic. The book’s certainly a scholarly work! Chapters short, some are dense and some pass rather easily. The author goes everywhere, from natural science, discussion on how people thought Africans and Indians were blurred into the animal kingdom, bestiality between orangutan and woman, views on the moral capacity of non-whites, their fidelity, shared sense for communal well-being, the exposition of Jefferson’s writings; the inventive mind of Rittenhouse and Franklin are referred to in the beginning parts, the orrery, the watch, the telescope, the meaning of revolution; it’s a solid book for the discussion of how America became.
January 12, 2020
It was difficult to assign the "correct" star rating for this book because while on the one hand it is a superb example of in-depth scholarship and the result of an exceptional range of reading primary sources, it is also not really a book for the average reader -- not because readers lack the necessary intelligence, but because much of what Wills explores here fits in the kind of "arcane" category about which professional historians are most likely to find interesting.
Nonetheless, for the patient reader, the rewards are great, indeed!
What Wills attempts to do -- most soundly, in my judgement -- is to help us in our time understand the mind of Jefferson (how he thought, what the words he used meant to him, etc.) so as to better understand the product he produced in the Declaration of Independence.
Along the way, you will learn (among other things):
- Why the Declaration was, in its day, seen as a necessary step for winning foreign (especially, French) assistance in the colonies' struggle against Great Britain
- Why Jefferson persisted throughout the rest of his life to prefer his unchanged original document to the one eventually adopted by the assembly after amending it
- The complex circumstances behind and in Jefferson's thoughts about black people, slavery itself, and the "problem" of how to eliminate it once it had taken a strong foothold
- The amazing mathematical "reasoning" behind so much of what Jefferson wrote
- The influence of the ethical thought of the "Scottish" school upon Jefferson's framing of "equality" and the "inalienable rights of all"
- How our modern -- indeed, loudly vitriolic -- age makes it difficult for us to understand both "liberalism" and "conservatism" as these terms were used in the 18th century
An immensely impressive accomplishment!
Nonetheless, for the patient reader, the rewards are great, indeed!
What Wills attempts to do -- most soundly, in my judgement -- is to help us in our time understand the mind of Jefferson (how he thought, what the words he used meant to him, etc.) so as to better understand the product he produced in the Declaration of Independence.
Along the way, you will learn (among other things):
- Why the Declaration was, in its day, seen as a necessary step for winning foreign (especially, French) assistance in the colonies' struggle against Great Britain
- Why Jefferson persisted throughout the rest of his life to prefer his unchanged original document to the one eventually adopted by the assembly after amending it
- The complex circumstances behind and in Jefferson's thoughts about black people, slavery itself, and the "problem" of how to eliminate it once it had taken a strong foothold
- The amazing mathematical "reasoning" behind so much of what Jefferson wrote
- The influence of the ethical thought of the "Scottish" school upon Jefferson's framing of "equality" and the "inalienable rights of all"
- How our modern -- indeed, loudly vitriolic -- age makes it difficult for us to understand both "liberalism" and "conservatism" as these terms were used in the 18th century
An immensely impressive accomplishment!
September 24, 2025
If America is the only country in the world founded upon an idea, what was that idea, and is it still alive? Conservatives who study the Declaration of Independence stress Thomas Jefferson's commitment to small government and private property, John Locke meets Friedrich von Hayek. Liberal scholars, Crane Brinton being an outstanding example, favor an Enlightenment interpretation of America's founding charter. Jefferson in liberal eyes is a "Newtonian" who saw government acting automatically on the basis of reason, not religion or some other source outside the rational mind. Gary Wills's outstanding study of the invention of America lays bare Jefferson's strong sense of community. Big Tom is not a nationalist or rationalist but appeals to a common purpose in arguing for American independence and popular sovereignty. His America constantly needs fine-tuning and even an occasional revolution to make it work, a task Lincoln would take up during the Civil War. (Wills addresses this point in another book, on the Gettysburg Address.) Neither liberal nor conservative, Wills is the kind of combative Jefferson scholar we need.
February 9, 2015
In July of 1776, against the sweltering heat and humidity of a Philadelphia summer, a new nation was born. The instrument of its birth was a 1300-word document, the Declaration of Independence, the work of a shy, 33-year-old Virginian named Thomas Jefferson.
Inventing America is Garry Wills’s exploration of the history, both political and intellectual, of the Declaration. Wills, today an emeritus professor of history at Northwestern University, wrote this book back in 1978; then, as now, he displays a formidable degree of erudition, and seems to know absolutely everything. And he brings that erudition to bear most effectively in considering the Declaration from a variety of angles – historic, political, philosophical, scientific, and moral.
When engaging the political history of the Declaration, Wills interrogates the terms we use to talk about the American Revolution – indeed, down to the word “revolution” itself, a term that Wills links with England’s “Glorious Revolution” of 1688:
There was no “overturn” of a central government in the American Revolution, no decapitated king in Paris, no basement execution of a czar. George III ruled for another four decades, and Lord North’s career continued despite his voluntary resignation. But Americans were willing to call their action a revolution precisely because it was an orderly and legal procedure. The first English meaning of “revolution” had been astronomical – the revolving of the heavens, an exchange of planetary positions; or the “period” (which is simply “revolution” in Greek) covered by such alterations. (p. 51; emphasis in original)
Aptly, in a section titled “The Scientific Paper,” Wills focuses on how Jefferson’s faith in science affected his authorship of the Declaration, as when he discusses Jefferson’s “persistent and thorough admiration” for “America’s supreme mechanic, David Rittenhouse” and goes on to suggest that “Jefferson’s praise of Rittenhouse was an extension of the conventions surrounding the cult of Newton, who was often compared to his own Maker as a governor of the universe by thought” (p. 100). So mathematically minded was Jefferson, the creator of the phrase “the pursuit of happiness,” that “He even thought of happiness, the pursuit of which is sometimes called the vaguest thing in the Declaration, as susceptible of numbered measurement and distribution” – even if, as Wills argues, “Jefferson let the beauty of a mathematically regular scheme blind him to the recalcitrant human realities being schematized” (pp. 147-48).
Wills also focuses on the Declaration as “A Moral Paper,” emphasizing the great Virginian’s debt to thinkers like Frances Hutcheson, David Hume, and Henry Home, Lord Kames. That famous phrase about “the pursuit of happiness” comes into play once again, as Hutcheson, who in 1725 had written of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number,” influenced Jefferson’s 1776 use of the term “happiness” in a decisive way: Jefferson’s “use of the ‘pursuit of happiness’ as the natural right to rank with life and liberty is not a vague or ‘idealistic’ or ill-defined action, but one consistent with everything else he wrote in the Declaration and outside it” (p. 255). The Declaration of Independence is a document in which Jefferson brings together the scientific sense and the moral sense of his time.
In considering Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, Wills does not shy from considering Jefferson’s views on race and slavery. Characteristically judicious, Wills suggests that Jefferson “can be quoted to sound like an ardent abolitionist, or to sound like the most oppressive of masters”, but that Jefferson “always opposed enslavement in general and further slave imports to Virginia in particular” (p. 299). So far, so good, one would think – but there is another side to Jefferson’s attitude toward slavery. “He always supported the freeing of slaves en masse, but always and only in connection with a scheme of deportation” (p. 299). As always, Jefferson’s attitudes regarding slavery and race, like Jefferson himself, are maddeningly complex.
Wills closes by considering the Declaration as “national symbol,” pointing out, among other things, that, notwithstanding that great painting of all those Signers there in Philadelphia, ready to sign promptly on July 4, 1776, it didn’t really happen that way at all. “Was it ever ‘the Fourth’? For Jefferson died on the anniversary of a day that never was. The Fourth includes celebration of some things that happened on different days and of other things that did not happen at all” (p. 351) – and may, Wills suggests, have taken on its significance in our national life because of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams dying on the same day – July, 4, 1826. In that reading, “The huge glow cast through the years from the Fourth was not visible to the men who worked and argued through the actual July 4 of 1776. It is in every way an afterglow, drawing almost as much of its intensity from the deathbeds of these two men as from the event that took place fifty years before” (p. 351; emphasis in original).
The United States of America draws its collective national sense of itself from the Declaration of Independence. Understanding the Declaration, and its importance in our lives, is as vital a task today as it was when the nation was brand-new. In Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, Garry Wills provides a well-reasoned, thoroughly researched, and intellectually rigorous examination of those 1300 words that started a nation.
Inventing America is Garry Wills’s exploration of the history, both political and intellectual, of the Declaration. Wills, today an emeritus professor of history at Northwestern University, wrote this book back in 1978; then, as now, he displays a formidable degree of erudition, and seems to know absolutely everything. And he brings that erudition to bear most effectively in considering the Declaration from a variety of angles – historic, political, philosophical, scientific, and moral.
When engaging the political history of the Declaration, Wills interrogates the terms we use to talk about the American Revolution – indeed, down to the word “revolution” itself, a term that Wills links with England’s “Glorious Revolution” of 1688:
There was no “overturn” of a central government in the American Revolution, no decapitated king in Paris, no basement execution of a czar. George III ruled for another four decades, and Lord North’s career continued despite his voluntary resignation. But Americans were willing to call their action a revolution precisely because it was an orderly and legal procedure. The first English meaning of “revolution” had been astronomical – the revolving of the heavens, an exchange of planetary positions; or the “period” (which is simply “revolution” in Greek) covered by such alterations. (p. 51; emphasis in original)
Aptly, in a section titled “The Scientific Paper,” Wills focuses on how Jefferson’s faith in science affected his authorship of the Declaration, as when he discusses Jefferson’s “persistent and thorough admiration” for “America’s supreme mechanic, David Rittenhouse” and goes on to suggest that “Jefferson’s praise of Rittenhouse was an extension of the conventions surrounding the cult of Newton, who was often compared to his own Maker as a governor of the universe by thought” (p. 100). So mathematically minded was Jefferson, the creator of the phrase “the pursuit of happiness,” that “He even thought of happiness, the pursuit of which is sometimes called the vaguest thing in the Declaration, as susceptible of numbered measurement and distribution” – even if, as Wills argues, “Jefferson let the beauty of a mathematically regular scheme blind him to the recalcitrant human realities being schematized” (pp. 147-48).
Wills also focuses on the Declaration as “A Moral Paper,” emphasizing the great Virginian’s debt to thinkers like Frances Hutcheson, David Hume, and Henry Home, Lord Kames. That famous phrase about “the pursuit of happiness” comes into play once again, as Hutcheson, who in 1725 had written of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number,” influenced Jefferson’s 1776 use of the term “happiness” in a decisive way: Jefferson’s “use of the ‘pursuit of happiness’ as the natural right to rank with life and liberty is not a vague or ‘idealistic’ or ill-defined action, but one consistent with everything else he wrote in the Declaration and outside it” (p. 255). The Declaration of Independence is a document in which Jefferson brings together the scientific sense and the moral sense of his time.
In considering Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, Wills does not shy from considering Jefferson’s views on race and slavery. Characteristically judicious, Wills suggests that Jefferson “can be quoted to sound like an ardent abolitionist, or to sound like the most oppressive of masters”, but that Jefferson “always opposed enslavement in general and further slave imports to Virginia in particular” (p. 299). So far, so good, one would think – but there is another side to Jefferson’s attitude toward slavery. “He always supported the freeing of slaves en masse, but always and only in connection with a scheme of deportation” (p. 299). As always, Jefferson’s attitudes regarding slavery and race, like Jefferson himself, are maddeningly complex.
Wills closes by considering the Declaration as “national symbol,” pointing out, among other things, that, notwithstanding that great painting of all those Signers there in Philadelphia, ready to sign promptly on July 4, 1776, it didn’t really happen that way at all. “Was it ever ‘the Fourth’? For Jefferson died on the anniversary of a day that never was. The Fourth includes celebration of some things that happened on different days and of other things that did not happen at all” (p. 351) – and may, Wills suggests, have taken on its significance in our national life because of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams dying on the same day – July, 4, 1826. In that reading, “The huge glow cast through the years from the Fourth was not visible to the men who worked and argued through the actual July 4 of 1776. It is in every way an afterglow, drawing almost as much of its intensity from the deathbeds of these two men as from the event that took place fifty years before” (p. 351; emphasis in original).
The United States of America draws its collective national sense of itself from the Declaration of Independence. Understanding the Declaration, and its importance in our lives, is as vital a task today as it was when the nation was brand-new. In Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, Garry Wills provides a well-reasoned, thoroughly researched, and intellectually rigorous examination of those 1300 words that started a nation.
January 13, 2025
What a book! I oicked this up wanting to rwad more Wills and recognizing that I will probably need to teach teenagers about the Declaration some day. Wills shows off that he is very well read and a serious thinker while demonstrating that how we've been reading the Declaration atleast since Lincoln is both wrong and embarrassing. Great mix of big, historical personalities and in-the-weeds intellectual history.
January 18, 2023
1978 edition.
April 29, 2024
This was a little too much detail for me. I know that the Declaration is a very fine document that served this young country well but it doesn't hold the same interest to me as it does to Wills.
January 5, 2025
Breaks down how Scottish Enlightenment thinkers impacted Jefferson's thinking and his draft of the Declaration of Independence.
June 25, 2015
I thought this was a great book, but I am not sure now. His thesis is that Jefferson's Declaration is anti-Lockean! He was much more infulence Francis Hutcheson and the Scottish Enlightenment. I got lost in this book. I have always had my students read excerpts from the "Second Treatise", and the Declaration sure sounds like Locke! As far as I can make out Wills thinks that Jefferson was more communitarian than a believer in individual rights. I will have to read the whole "Second Treatise" again. Most of the scholarly reviews I read did not seem to buy Wills argument. But he did make me change my mind about the thesis of the Declaration. I always have said it was the last portion of the second paragraph--"The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations . . ."
Now I am convinced it is "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another . . "
Now I am convinced it is "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another . . "
January 14, 2022
This is an incredibly interesting book that looks deep into the “thought process” behind the Declaration of Independence . Wills makes clear that it was the act of declaring independence that was key - the document justifying that act was secondary to most of the delegates (but not to Jefferson himself). Wills looks very closely at the Enlightenment philosophers that so strongly influenced Jefferson - not John Locke as is so often assumed, but the Scots such as David Hume and Frances Hutchinson. He also does not gloss over the appallingly racist view of Blacks in the writings not only of Jefferson but of Enlightenment philosophers such as David Hume. Perhaps most interesting to me was how little this document we treasure meant to the delegates at the continental congress at the time. They were much more focused on the act of independence itself - since that would open up the possibility of an alliance with France - the thing they were MOST concerned with.
June 6, 2022
Garry Wills has written a book describing the influences upon Thomas Jefferson as he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Wills wants to debunk the theory that Jefferson was a Lockean disciple and he offers prof that he studied the works of the great Scottish Enlightenment thinkers such as Hutcheson, Reid, Smith, and Hume. The Declaration was written to get support for the new nation from European powers anxious to cut Britain down to size. Jefferson proved to be a very capable wordsmith who crafted a document that did not excite much for the first 100 years of our nation's existence but slowly it has taken on new meaning. People seize upon the phrase that all men are created equal and Jefferson rightly has been pilloried for that falsehood. All in al, it is a good book even wen Wills uses the algebraic formulations of Hutcheson and Jefferson to underscore certain of their views. Be prepared to read this one slowly and carefully.
May 17, 2013
Not so well written as his later works but still excellent, Wills takes an exacting look at the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. He did a wonderful job tracing how earlier events and earlier petitions lead to the Declaration as written. This explains many of the phrases and the reasons for them. While the preamble is now the most commonly cited portion of the document, Congress spent most of its time compiling the list of greivances.
Wills does a good job explaining now mostly forgotten facts. For example, Sam Adams was a principal actor and orchestrated many important events, yet he preferred to remain behind the scenes, writing no pamphlets, having burned or destroyed most of his correspondence. Great book.
Wills does a good job explaining now mostly forgotten facts. For example, Sam Adams was a principal actor and orchestrated many important events, yet he preferred to remain behind the scenes, writing no pamphlets, having burned or destroyed most of his correspondence. Great book.
September 12, 2013
An analytical history unearthing the cultural, philosophical, and linguistic context of Jefferson's version of the Declaration of Independence. Didn't know his original is different from that which the Continental Congress adopted? It is so. Wills argues that contra most interpreters, (up to 1979 at the time of writing), Jefferson's language is from the perspective of Francis Hutcheson's moral philosophy and not that of John Locke's political philosophy. I, of course, don't know enough to adjudicate, but Wills makes what appears to a rank amateur a sound case. For the student of American Revolutionary history, this appears a "must" read.
April 20, 2010
Garry Wills has authored a number of provocative books on American politics and culture. This volume focuses on Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Experience, focusing on his draft as opposed to the document finally passed. The final version cointained a number of revisions of his original draft. A fascinating analysis of Jefferson's thought and what distinguished him from later thinkers, such as Abraham Lincoln.
August 5, 2018
My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.
April 5, 2019
I need to come back to this analysis. I struggled with the very premise--a focus not on the Declaration, but on Jefferson's first draft. This book sometimes failed to make the case for why the draft matters, particularly where we have such little documentary evidence of the pre-Declaration Jefferson. That said, I loved the detailed, line-by-line analysis and the attempt to put the document in historical context.
March 10, 2013
After years of reading bits by or about him in the NY Review of Books and elsewhere, this was the first book by Garry Wills I actually found in a used bookstore and eventually read. A revisionist account of Jefferson's political beliefs, I was particularly struck by the part about Jefferson's views regarding Africans and slavery.
November 17, 2014
I skipped over a lot of the explanations and analyses of Enlightenment philosophy. I almost put it down for good several times. But the chapters on the real purpose of the Declaration and the act of its signing were fascinating.
October 10, 2015
Interesting read and thesis that Jefferson's philosophy was less inspired by Locke (if at all) and more by Scottish Enlightenment moral philospohers. There are a few rebuttals which I'll have to read.
November 20, 2008
Very well written but a little more detail than I was looking for.
January 10, 2011
very interesting; focusses on Jefferson's original and therefore illuminates the man more than the document
December 3, 2014
In depth look at the influence of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers and William Smith on Jefferson and his writing of the Declaration.
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