Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the most prolific writer to ever occupy the White House, bpth because of his proclivity for putting pen to paper and his longevity. Next Independence Day will mark the 200th anniversary of Jefferson’s death (as well as the death of his friend, rival, and colleague John Adams), but this year’s July 4th celebration was notable for Jefferson enthusiasts as well.
A 1783 letter from Jefferson to Benjamin Harrison V, who was then the governor of Virginia, went up for auction last Friday. While letters penned by the third president aren’t exactly rare, this particular missive was expected to sell for nearly $100,000, thanks in part to its subject matter.
The letter advocated for the right to bear arms in a revolutionary cause (though in this case, it referred to citizens of the Netherlands, not the U.S.)
It also conveyed Jefferson’s anxiety about whether a sufficient number of delegates would arrive at the Maryland State House in time to ratify the Treaty of Paris, which contained two critical provisions: British recognition of U.S. independence, and the delineation of boundaries allowing the new nation to expand westward.
“We have yet but seven states, and no more certain prospects of nine than at any time heretofore,” Jefferson writes. “We hope that the letters sent to the absent states will bring them forward.”
Raab Collection, which conducted the auction, noted that it was “not aware of any letter having reached the market from a Signer (let alone author) of the Declaration of Independence on the right of democratic citizens to bear arms and oppose autocracy.” What’s more, while the contents of the letter were known thanks to copies, the original wasn’t known to have survived.
The letter ended up being sold to a private collector in Maryland, who forked over $90,000 for the piece of history.
In his letter to Harrison, Jefferson wrote about the Patriot movement in the Netherlands, where “they are now pressing in the firmest tone the restoration of their constitutional rights”, including the “exercise in arms for the defense of their country.” Jefferson told the Virginia governor that “of 80000 men able to bear arms among them it is believed scarcely any will refuse to sign this demand.”
Jefferson was in Annapolis serving as a delegate to the Confederation Congress when he wrote to Harrison just a few months after the War of Independence formally came to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The letter doesn’t go into great detail about Jefferson’s thoughts on the right to keep and bear arms, which in itself is somewhat revealing.
Jefferson thought it worth noting that the Dutch Patriot movement was seeking to arm the people “for the defense of their country”, but it wasn’t just the British that the Patriot movement was fighting. They were also opposed to the Orangist regime in power in the Netherlands, which the Patriots believed to be aligned with the British government.
The Patriot Revolution (1786–1787) in the Dutch Republic was the first popular democratic revolution in continental Europe. The self-styled Patriot movement grew out of the political and economic crisis (brought on by Dutch involvement [1780–1784] in the American War of Independence), which began when the British discovered a secret commercial treaty between the city of Amsterdam and the rebellious colonies and declared war on the Dutch Republic. The Patriots eventually mobilized a broad interclass and interregional coalition around a program of political reform that demanded the institutionalization of popular sovereignty through electoral representation. The revolution began when the Patriots seized power locally in a series of municipal revolutions, beginning at Utrecht in 1786, and it came to a climax in the summer of 1787 when the Patriots, by virtue of such piecemeal local revolutions, controlled three of the Republic’s seven sovereign provinces (Holland, Overijssel, and Groningen), and divided power in two more (Friesland and Utrecht). The Patriot Revolution ended abruptly when British and Prussian military intervention restored the aristocratic Orangist regime in the fall of 1787.
While the Patriot Revolution failed, it’s seen today as a precursor for both the French Revolution and the Batavian Revolution of 1795, in which the aristocratic Dutch regime was finally overthrown by the Patriots (with some help from the French army).
Jefferson’s 1783 letter was prescient at the time, but today it’s a reminder of the importance of our right to keep and bear arms; not just for individual self-defense, but to secure (and in some cases, establish) a free state. The right of the people to keep and bear arms has never been solely about our ability to defend ourselves and our loved ones. It is fundamentally about defending freedom itself.
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