Trivia Quiz: The Declaration of Independence

[George H. Smith]

One of my first two scripts for Knowledge Products, written c. 1984, was on the Declaration of Independence. This project was what first prompted me to study details about the Declaration and to read the standard secondary sources. My interest in these details was recently revived by a series of articles on the Declaration that I am currently writing for the Cato Institute. Here is a "trivia" quiz about the Declaration and related matters. Anyone can easily find the answers via Google, but if you do this you are a cheater, and you will spend eternity in the lowest rung of Dante's Inferno.

Some of these questions are fairly easy, whereas others are not. See how many you get right on your own. Answers are at the bottom.

1) When did Congress officially declare American Independence?

a. July 2, 1776

b. July 3, 1776

c. July 4, 1776

2) Which Congress declared independence?

a. First Continental Congress

b. Second Continental Congress

c. The Confederation Congress

3) Where did Jefferson write his Rough Draft of the Declaration?

a. In the house of a German bricklayer in Philadelphia

b. In the home of Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia

c. In the "Man Full of Trouble" tavern in Philadelphia

4) In his Rough Draft, where we now read "We hold these truths to be self-evident" Jefferson originally wrote:

a. We hold these truths to be evident....

b. We hold these truths to be essential to liberty....

c. We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable...

5) Congress appointed a Committee of Five to draft the Declaration. In addition to Jefferson, this committee included:

a. Sam Adams and John Adams

b. John Adams and Benjamin Franklin

c. Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock

6) After the Committee of Five submitted a fair copy of the Declaration to Congress, it struck out:

a. Jefferson's condemnation of the slave trade

b. Jefferson condemnation of excise taxes

c. Jefferson's condemnation of mercantilist regulations

7) Who made the original resolution for American Independence?

a. George Wythe

b. John Adams

c. Richard Henry Lee

8) Who claimed that Jefferson had copied some of the Declaration from Locke's Second Treatise of Government?

a. John Adams

b. George Mason

c. Richard Henry Lee

9) Who claimed that the Declaration contained no idea "but what had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before"?

a. John Adams

b. John Dickinson

c. Richard Henry Lee

10) Many historians believe that Jefferson based some of the wording of the Declaration on the Virginia Bill of Rights. The Virginia Bill (or Declaration) of Rights was written by:

a. William Grayson

b. Patrick Henry

c. George Mason

11) Who said that the political principles of the Declaration were "an expression of the American mind"?

a. Thomas Paine

b. Thomas Jefferson

c. George Washington

12) The final version of the Declaration, as printed on parchment, refers to "unalienable" rights Jefferson originally referred to:

a. Inalienable rights

b. Imprescriptible rights

c. Natural rights

13) The term "self-evident" appears to have been inserted in Jefferson's Rough Draft by:

a. John Adams

b. Benjamin Franklin

c. Robert Sherman

Ghs

Answers: 1a; 2b; 3a; 4c; 5b; 6a; 7c; 8c; 9 a; 10c; 11 b; 12 a; 13b.

[Brant Gaede]

I missed four. I guessed the answers you can't read are all "c".

--Brant

©

[George H. Smith]

I missed four. I guessed the answers you can't read are all "c".

--Brant

©

I fixed the answers. The c's in parentheses showed up as copyright logos.

ghs

[Selene]

Good questions George.

I missed two (2), but I guessed two (2) which turned out to be correct.

Adam

[9thdoctor]

Anyone can easily find the answers via Google, but if you do this you are a cheater, and you will spend eternity in the lowest rung of Dante's Inferno.

Ahem, I beg to differ. Cheaters go to the 8th rung, look it up.

Some of these questions are fairly easy, whereas others are not. See how many you get right on your own.

I knew 8 of them. If I had guessed the others odds are I would have gotten another 2 right that way. Richard Henry Lee isn't a familiar name to me.

[9thdoctor]

Richard Henry Lee isn't a familiar name to me.

I bet he's popular with the NRA:

To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Henry_Lee

Nowadays this would translate into government subsidies for gun makers and firing ranges.

[George H. Smith]

Richard Henry Lee isn't a familiar name to me.

I bet he's popular with the NRA:

To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.

http://en.wikipedia....chard_Henry_Lee

Nowadays this would translate into government subsidies for gun makers and firing ranges.

I like this bit of advice that Jefferson gave to his nephew, from http://www.monticell...ctions/firearms:

In 1785 Thomas Jefferson wrote to his fifteen-year-old nephew, Peter Carr, regarding what he considered the best form of exercise: "...I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprize, and independance to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks."

Jefferson was thinking of shooting game, as opportunities presented themselves. But the meaning of "game" is contextual, as we all know.

Ghs

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Wasn't it President Benjamin Franklin who signed the Declaration of Independence into law and made it an Amendment to the Constitution in 1776?

Michael

[George H. Smith]

Wasn't it President Benjamin Franklin who signed the Declaration of Independence into law and made it an Amendment to the Constitution in 1776?

Michael

No. Benjamin Franklin may have been a British spy, according to Murray Rothbard -- the king of conspiracy theorists. Seriously.

Ghs

[9thdoctor]

Wasn't it President Benjamin Franklin who signed the Declaration of Independence into law and made it an Amendment to the Constitution in 1776?

After this, now even I think the Phil bashing has gone too far.

[Selene]

On Tuesday night, while Republican candidates in Nevada were debating such American issues as nuclear waste disposal and the immigration status of Mitt Romney's gardener, American and British lawyers in Philadelphia were taking on a far more fundamental topic.

Namely, just what did Thomas Jefferson think he was doing?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15345511

I am going to see if I can find the video of the entire debate!

[syrakusos]

Thanks, Adam! I followed the link and wrote a cogent and stunning reply that got lost... damned computers...

Just to say, the British with Locke-Hume-Berkeley only get half of Objectivism. It is not that the rights cannot be proved. They are axioms. The nature of an axiom is that it cannot be denied without using (or stealing) it.

[George H. Smith]

Here is some detective work for OLers. It concerns a topic over which historians have disagreed for many decades.

Below is the first page of Jefferson's "Rough Draft" of the Declaration. Some of the changes were made by Jefferson, some by Benjamin Franklin, and some by John Adams.

There is general agreement about who made which changes, except in one case: the insertion of "self-evident" in the first line of the second paragraph. Some reputable historians have said that "self-evident" appears to be the handwriting of Franklin, whereas other historians, equally reputable, say that the handwriting appears to be Jefferson's.

I am no handwriting expert, obviously, but I took a close look at this document earlier today, and I am convinced that this is Jefferson's handwriting. For example, compare the "s" in "self" with the "s" in "should" two lines above. Or compare the first "e" in "evident" to the "e" in "entitle" three lines above. These letters (and others) look virtually identical to me.

I have been aware of this controversy for decades, but I never bothered to compare letters for myself, at least not with any care, until today. Having done so, I fail to see what all the hullabaloo has been about.

Does anyone disagree? Does anyone think that "self-evident" does not appear to be in Jefferson's hand?

Ghs

[9thdoctor]

Does anyone disagree? Does anyone think that "self-evident" does not appear to be in Jefferson's hand?

My uninformed opinion is that "self evident" is in a different handwriting than Jefferson, but also not the same handwriting as "they are endowed by their creator...". However, it seems these edits are done with different ink, less dark than the original. Other edits are darker than the original, such as "dissolve the political bonds...". Looks like this got passed around quite a bit.

[George H. Smith]

Does anyone disagree? Does anyone think that "self-evident" does not appear to be in Jefferson's hand?

My uninformed opinion is that "self evident" is in a different handwriting than Jefferson, but also not the same handwriting as "they are endowed by their creator...". However, it seems these edits are done with different ink, less dark than the original. Other edits are darker than the original, such as "dissolve the political bonds...". Looks like this got passed around quite a bit.

Jefferson made changes at different times, and he submitted this Rough Draft to Adams and Franklin separately, at different times, for their changes. The differences in ink therefore don't necessarily mean anything about who wrote what. Historians are still trying to figure out the exact sequence.

Why do you think that "self-evident" is not in Jefferson's hand? As I said, the letters in "self-evident" look to me like dead ringers for the same letters in other parts that we know were written by Jefferson.

There is also some circumstantial evidence that "self-evident" had already been inserted in the Rough Draft before it ever got to Franklin, but this is conjectural to some extent, and I wanted to stay away from these details.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

http://candst.tripod.com/doitj.htm

I picked this analysis of changes more or less at random. Although I have not read it carefully yet, I did skim it, and the content seems fairly standard. It will give OLers some feel for the complexities involved.

The lengthy quotation is from the latest edition of of Julian P. Boyd's book, The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text (1945). Boyd later became the editor of the massive Princeton edition of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. While researching the first volume (published in 1950), Boyd happened across a fragment in Jefferson's hand that appears to be from a version of the Declaration that predates the Rough Draft, or what Jefferson called the "original rough draft." This fragment, now called the "composition draft," was not known when Boyd published his earlier book in 1945. This is why some changes are incorporated in parentheses in the Boyd material quoted on this site.

This may not be the best discussion, since it focuses on the word "creator," not on "self-evident." I should note that Boyd believed that "self-evident" is in Jefferson's hand.

Ghs

[9thdoctor]

Why do you think that "self-evident" is not in Jefferson's hand? As I said, the letters in "self-evident" look to me like dead ringers for the same letters in other parts that we know were written by Jefferson.

I looked back and forth at different letters, and finally convinced myself that “self-evident” is in a third hand. I think the fact that the letters are tilted diagonally was the deciding factor, but that could be explained by the fact that space is more limited when you do edits. I don’t know enough about handwriting to be talking, and doubt if you’ll even understand what I mean by “tilted diagonally” since I just invented the phrase. Also, the t and the f just don't look right.

[George H. Smith]

Why do you think that "self-evident" is not in Jefferson's hand? As I said, the letters in "self-evident" look to me like dead ringers for the same letters in other parts that we know were written by Jefferson.

I looked back and forth at different letters, and finally convinced myself that “self-evident” is in a third hand. I think the fact that the letters are tilted diagonally was the deciding factor, but that could be explained by the fact that space is more limited when you do edits. I don’t know enough about handwriting to be talking, and doubt if you’ll even understand what I mean by “tilted diagonally” since I just invented the phrase. Also, the t and the f just don't look right.

Okay, thanks. Discussions are always more interesting with disagreements. I will be interested to learn what others think.

I did some googling to see if "self-evident" has been analyzed by handwriting experts. I find it hard to believe that this has never been done, but I couldn't find anything. My googling skills are mediocre at best, however, so maybe someone else will have better luck.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

From Julian Boyd, The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text, rev. ed., Library of Congress, 1999, p. 27.

Regarding the change from "sacred & undeniable" to "self-evident," Boyd writes:

Such feeling as it exhibits for precisely the right word is quite Franklinian in character, but the handwriting in the phase "self-evident" bears the appearance of being equally Jeffersonian. I find it difficult to believe that the characteristically Jeffersonian "s" here -- another example appears immediately above it -- and the even more distinctive final "t" with its peculiar "A"-like quality, were not made by Jefferson. The matter, however, must rest at present upon the amateur's feeling for distinctions, rather than upon any scientific analysis. Fitzpatrick thought that Franklin unquestionably wrote "self-evident"; Mr. Becker was undecided but thought the handwriting resembled Franklin's, as it perhaps it does....

(This was originally written in 1945.)

I searched for a sample of Franklin's handwriting (other than his signature), but my googling skills failed me once again. Can someone else come up with something and post it?

Ghs

[Selene]

http://www.liveaucti...com/item/102662

left hand side - kinda small though

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/02/older-mistresses-are-so-grateful.html

From the pen of Benjamin Franklin in 1745 comes a once-scandalous letter to an unnamed recipient (very possibly fictitious but rumoured to be Cadwallader Colden) in which he begins by suggesting marriage as the best remedy for the young man's sexual urges. In the event of marriage being out of the question for his friend however, Franklin then goes on to write an eight-strong list detailing the advantages of an older mistress which, due to its "obscene" nature, resulted in its being omitted from published collections of his writings during the 19th Century.

[9thdoctor]

I find it difficult to believe that the characteristically Jeffersonian "s" here -- another example appears immediately above it -- and the even more distinctive final "t" with its peculiar "A"-like quality, were not made by Jefferson.

Humph. So he thinks the "t" is distinctively Jeffersonian. Oh well, he's probably seen more examples of TJ's handwriting than I have, beats me.

[Selene]

What a great thread...