CONVERSATIONS ON JEFFERSON AND JEFFERSONIAN POLITICS
Thomas Jefferson and the Bill of Rights
FromThe Washington Times, Letters to the Editor
Richard E. Dixon:
Founder's legacy mischaracterizedIn the July 15 Commentary Forum column, "Gift of a Founder," Gary Aldrich and Katherine Seaman make the misleading assertion that Patrick Henry "would break from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson when he insisted that our new Constitution include the right of free speech coupled with the right to bear arms."
Henry was not a member of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, but, along with George Mason, opposed ratification of the proposed Constitution in the Virginia convention because he distrusted the federalist system orchestrated by James Madison. The Constitutional Convention took place when Jefferson was in France, although the Constitution had Jefferson's support, based on reports from Madison. Washington was the president of the convention but had no part in the later campaign for adoption of the Constitution by the states. Most of the states ratified the Constitution on the explicit condition that a bill of individual rights be added.
Henry, as a member of the Virginia ratification convention, also opposed the later adoption of the Bill of Rights, on the basis that the amendments did not go far enough to protect the people from the central power created by the Constitution. While Jefferson and Washington both supported the Bill of Rights, neither was a member of the Virginia convention that debated and ratified these amendments. There are numerous statements and actions from both, prior to and in their long public careers, in support of freedom of speech and the individual right to bear arms.
Patrick Henry is a fitting symbol for the opposition of centralized government power. There is no basis to imply, however, that he championed the right of free speech coupled with the right to bear arms while Washington and Jefferson opposed these individual freedoms.
Published originally in The Washington Times, August 3, 2001. Used by permission.
Eyler Coates
After the draft of the Constitution was submitted to the states for ratification, Jefferson wrote from France objecting to the lack of a Bill of Rights.
"I disapproved from the first moment... the want of a bill of rights [in the new Constitution] to guard liberty against the legislative as well as the executive branches of the government." --Thomas Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, 1789. ME 7:300
He later wrote to James Madison in response to a proposed draft for a declaration of rights to be an ammendment to the Constitution which Madison had sent to him,
"I like [the declaration of rights] as far as it goes, but I should have been for going further. For instance, the following alterations and additions would have pleased me:
Article 4. The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or otherwise to publish anything but false facts affecting injuriously the life, liberty, property or reputation of others, or affecting the peace of the confederacy with foreign nations..." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:450, Papers 15:367That preliminary draft of the Bill of Rights also contained a provision for the right to bear arms. Jefferson did not mention that provision in the above letter, presumably because he had nothing to add to it. But he certainly did not oppose it. He had previously included in his draft for a consitution for the State of Virginia the following provision:
"No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms (within his own lands or tenements)." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft Virginia Constitution (with his note added), 1776. Papers 1:353
Therefore, there is no question that the charge that Jefferson opposed "the right of free speech coupled with the right to bear arms," is absolutely untrue.
August 4, 2001