John Adams
brought Mecklenburg Declaration to Jefferson
brought Mecklenburg Declaration to Jefferson
In the record (2)
1819 · 1819-06-05
John Adams first brought the newly-published Mecklenburg Declaration to Jefferson's attention after reading a reprint in the Essex Register of June 5, 1819, provocatively suggesting to Jefferson that he must have seen the Mecklenburg document before 1776 and 'copied the spirit, the sense, and the expression of it verbatim' into his own Declaration of Independence -- a charge Jefferson denied and rebutted by questioning the document's authenticity.
Source · checked 2026-08-13
1819 · 1819-07-09
In a letter to John Adams dated July 9, 1819, Thomas Jefferson expressed skepticism about the newly-surfaced Mecklenburg Declaration, writing that he believed it 'spurious,' noting that unlike Patrick Henry's 1765 Stamp Act resolutions which 'flew like lightning thro' every paper' of the day, this supposedly sweeping 1775 declaration of independence had 'never once [been] quoted' in any contemporaneous source before its 1819 appearance.
Source · checked 2026-08-13