Colonial Williamsburg has a new feature in their programming. We can now meet with Thomas Jefferson about how he wrote the Declaration of Independence.  Before meeting him, I decided to prepare the kids for getting the most out of the presentation, which would include a question and answer session.

     We studied the Declaration of Independence for an entire week over a year ago.  That Fourth of July we took turns reading it aloud.  Then at CW's Revolutionary City, we listened to a recitation of it and joined in on some of the parts that we remembered.  Therefore, my kids have a pretty good sense of the Declaration of Independence. I decided to bump things up a notch, in preparation for engaging with Mr. Jefferson.     

    We began with this video clip from CW.  The clip is of a little girl reading, apparently the Declaration of Independence, to her stuffed animals. (I love this commercial!) My kids quickly caught the mistakes. Actually she is reading from the Virginia Declaration of Rights, precursor to the Declaration of Independence. The two documents have similar wording. We compared the two. George Mason wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights while at the Virginia Convention in Williamsburg, Virginia in May 1776. Rough drafts were sent to Thomas Jefferson in Philadelphia while he attended the Second Continental Congress. 

     Then we looked up John Locke, who wrote Two Treatises of Government in 1690, from which George Mason and Thomas Jefferson derived some of their ideas for the famous documents. A lot of these ideas of freedom are not new.  However the Declaration of Independence is the first document to put words to action.

     In fact, Colonial Williamsburg's Revolutionary City features the Virginia Declaration of Rights in their presentation of "Resolved: Free and Independent States May 15, 1776"

The new flag is raised in celebration of Virginia's declared independence.

In celebration of independence, the cannon is fired.

Another program, "The Challenge of Independence," is a question and answer session with the George Mason and others from the Virginia delegation who drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights.

Meanwhile, the colonies' delegates were assembling in Philadelphia, assigning the task of drafting the Declaration of Independence to a committee comprised of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston and Robert Sherman.  Thomas Jefferson did the actual writing of the declaration, which was later revised in Congress.  Jefferson had written "A Summary View of the Rights of British America," which paved the way for what John Adams called "the reputation of masterly pen."

      Saturday, we went to Colonial Williamsburg to meet with Thomas Jefferson. There was a table center stage set with props like his writing desk and many important documents.   President Jefferson arrived and told us many wonderful stories. I think my favorite was that if we want to see the original Declaration of Independence today, go to Washington City and knock on the door of one of his cabinet members. (I forget which one.)  He'll let you in and pull out the infamous document.  Perhaps that was true in 1809, but in 2009 one needs to stand in line at the National Archives like we did last summer, to see all the founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights along with England's first freedom document, the Magna Charta.  

     One of the most prominent features we noticed about the Declaration of Independence, when we saw it, was how faded it was.  Jefferson addressed that while explaining the new Declaration of Independence exhibit at the museum.  As with all significant events, the anticipation of the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence brought a sweeping sense of patriotism over the country.  Marketing on the opportunity, engravers competed to produce an accurate copy of the Declaration of Independence. This is precisely the focus of the current display at the DeWitt Wallace Museum at Colonial Williamsburg.  As we looked at various copies of competing engravers a few weeks ago, we noticed a great deal of artistic license was taken.  Surprisingly, one of these artistic copies arrived in my snail mail box yesterday!  The kids and I were excited to get it!  This is the Binn version.

     However, one copy and one copy alone was historically accurate...that of William Stone. This is the version that we are all familiar with today.   President Jefferson explained how Stone accurately made it.  Stone knocked on the door of this cabinet official who kept the famed document in his desk drawer, took a wet piece of paper, laid it over the original, pressed it firmly onto the embedded ink, then carefully lifted it up. He now had an exact copy of the original Declaration of Independence.  Unfortunately the process remove much of the ink from the original,  leaving it much faded.  From this, Stone produced the official government engraving.  Two hundred and one copies were printed and given to various government officials, including all the living signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Marquis de Lafayette.  Imagine the reaction and feelings of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Lafayette, all men who risked their lives to make this statement of freedom a reality, when they received these historic vellum copies.

      In researching this article, I found at the website Principles of Freedom, that the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has one of these rare surviving vellum Stone copies of the Declaration of Independence. Actually, I already knew that, since I got to see it in the museum with my family a few weeks ago.   I wanted to share the proof, that Colonial Williamsburg is more than a living history museum, where we take our kids in costume to engage with costumed interpreters. Colonial Williamsburg, like other important historical institutions, is a preserver of our history...our history of freedom.  They have been gifted many other important documents to our country.  It is a real treasure to see our history as we meet with costumed interpreters and when we visit the museum. History is more than pages in a book and essay tests.  Now that we know all this, our own gift  from the CW Educational Outreach Department last December is all the more meaningful.

     While President Jefferson talked about the writing of the Declaration of Independence, he showed us different things. He showed us how he used his writing desk. He also used the same booklets I have pictured above. After seeing how beat up his are, I don't feel so bad about how ratty mine got Saturday, enduring the rain and humidity. I had purchased them the year before on vacation and until now they had been pristinely sitting on display near my desk. Now they are getting used...and perhaps that's a good thing! When Jefferson mentioned the Virginia Declaration of Rights and held it up, I pulled out mine to show the kids, so they would remember, "Ah-ha, we talked about that the other day." When he showed us his "Summary View of Rights of British America", I held that out for the kids to see. Funny, it was almost as if he knew I had my own copies, because he would mention a certain page number and read from it and I was able to reference mine as well!   

     When it was opened for question and answer, my son queried, "I know you support freedom for slaves, yet you own your own. What do you think of freeing them and paying them for their labor?"  It was interesting listening to the reply to that, basically that the south did not have a ready cash economy. Instead it was all wrapped up in labor and product. However he did hope for freedom of slaves. Jefferson in fact worked with William Wilberforce, and with Congress finally ended the importation of slaves.  He talked about how gratifying that was at the end of his tenure as president, when he first sought it at the Continental Congress as he wrote the Declaration of Independence.  He also talked of his landmark feat as president, purchasing the Louisiana Purchase. He envisioned new states opening in that new land, that would be free to all, no matter the skin color.  Sadly that became a hotly contested battleground in Congress in the nineteenth century, arguing whether the states would enter as free or slave. 

       Afterwards, we went to meet President Jefferson. He was wonderful with my kids and made us feel as though he always knew us.  He told my kids that they were very smart and after posing for pictures...

...my daughter asked her question, "How did he feel as he signed the Declaration of Independence?" President Jefferson said that was an excellent question, and if she had raised her hand, he would definitely have called on her. Then he qualified that by saying he must have missed her. No he didn't. She is extremely shy and this was the first time she ever asked a Founding Father a question.  She had her hand timidly raised at shoulder level during the Q&A, so of course he couldn't see that.  I told her when we waited our turn for pictures to ask him the question. The kids had formed these questions on their own ahead of time, when we prepared for this opportunity.  She is so quiet, I thought I'd have to be the one to bring his attention to her question, but I was so proud of her for speaking up! And I was truely glad that he affirmed her question.  He talked about how uncertain their future was when they signed that document, because they were commiting treason and were risking their lives and fortunes. 

     Then he asked if we knew who the Paul Revere of Virginia was. My kids immediately answered that it was Mann Page.   I knew that President Jefferson was referring to someone else, because we heard him tell about him during a Conversation in Democracy from Poplar Forest. I also knew that this was important to him, and I had planned on teaching this to the kids now that we are Virginia residents. Alas, I hadn't gotten to that yet! President Jefferson proceeded to tell the kids about Captain Jack Jouett who speedily delivered the news of Tarleton's hastening arrival so that Jefferson  could escape to safety. Then I told President Jefferson that we have recently moved here from Texas, so we were still learning our Virginia history. He found out we were in Northern Virginia now and he asked if we were from Fairfax. That seemed to throw the kids so I told him which county we were now in. If I had thought of it I might have mentioned the plantation on which our house (within our subdivision among many subdivisions) now stands.  I wonder if he knew the original plantation owner?      

     Then President Jefferson said something about Virginians in Texas and I said that I was aware...then I stopped. My next words would not be in Jefferson's life time, but I had backed myself into a corner.  Oh well.  I decided to proceed and see what he would do with it. I told him that I know that many Virginians fought at the Alamo in San Antonio, where we are from. (The Seige on the Alamo occurred after Jefferson died.) He smiled and didn't tease me about being tipsy from visiting too many taverns. One just never knows what these actor interpreters are going to say!

     It was an incredible time and definitely the highlight of our day!  We learned a lot of new things about the Declaration of Independence, America's Treasure!