In July 1815, former President John Adams wrote a letter to his successor, Thomas Jefferson. They had been close allies in the rebellion against Great Britain decades earlier and members of the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence. Political and personal differences had severely damaged their relationship, culminating in a serious rupture in 1800 when Adams lost his bid for re-election to Jefferson. The intervention of Benjamin Rush forged a reconciliation in 1812, initiating a remarkable exchange of letters that lasted until Adams and Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826 – the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration.
Adams’ letter posed a series of questions to Jefferson. “Who will write the history of the American Revolution?” he asked. “Who can write it? Who will ever be able to write it? The most essential documents, the debates and deliberations in Congress from 1774 to 1783, were all in secret and are now lost forever.” Jefferson responded with a simple, “Nobody.” He agreed that the secrecy of the Continental Congress’ deliberations would render the “life and soul” of that history to be “forever unknown.”
Decades earlier, in the summer of 1783, John Jay had contemplated the same question. In France with Benjamin Franklin and John Adams negotiating the treaty that would officially end the Revolutionary War, he reflected on the years of political and military struggle leading up to that moment. He wrote to his old friend and compatriot Charles Thomson, urging him to write “the political story of the revolution.” If he did not, Jay opined, “it will be most liable to misrepresentation.” After all, he continued, “ no person in the world is so profoundly acquainted with the conduct and conclusion of the American Revolution as yourself.”
Years later, Jefferson would add his name to others encouraging Thomson to write his history. “If there is anybody who possesses materials either written or on memory,” he suggested, “I should suppose it to be Charles Thomson.”
But who was Charles Thomson? His name is not included on the list of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, yet when the Continental Congress approved it on July 4, 1776, the signatures of only two men appeared – those of John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Due to his leadership and intense opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act, John Adams dubbed him “the Sam Adams of Philadelphia.” Later, Thomson was trusted with securing the Journals of the Continental Congress as Congress moved from city to city to avoid capture by the encroaching British army.
Thomson was the primary designer of the Great Seal of the United States and early on earned a reputation for integrity when intervening in a dispute between the proprietors of Pennsylvania and ten tribes of Native Americans. Declaring that the “the Indians…had been cheated and defrauded of their land,” Thomson assisted in the settlement of claims by mutual consent. Adopted by the Delaware tribe, he was given the name “the man who tells the truth.”
While fighting for liberty, Thomson decried slavery as “a cancer that we must get rid of.” If “this can be rooted out and our land filled with freemen, union preserved, and the spirit of liberty maintained and cherished, I think in 25 or 30 years we shall have nothing to fear from the rest of the world.” If not, it will one day be rooted out “by blood.”
A committed Christian, Thomas published Harmony of the Four Gospels and was the first to translate the Greek Septuagint (the Old Testament) into English. His robust correspondence with Jefferson on the subject of religion reveals much about the beliefs of both men.
After the French and Indian War, Thomson joined the ranks of those opposing British imposition of new taxes and regulations without the consent of the people. On September 5, 1774, the First Continental unanimously chose him to be secretary, a post he filled until July 23, 1789, when he delivered the books, records and papers of Congress to the new government under the Constitution. The position involved far more than making and keeping records. It was a high-level executive position, second only to that of the President and Congress itself. Thomson’s imprint of authority and critical decisions permeated Congress’s decisions for fifteen years.
In 1791, Jay implored Thomson once again to write a history. Others, he said, had written histories, but were lacking “either in completeness, candor or truthfulness.” Thomson, he said, was the only one who could “set the record straight…Only you were there from the beginning to the end, only you have the reputation to tell the story as it really happened without regard to faction or personality.”
Thomson collected materials and began to write a draft. Then, sometime after 1789 he destroyed all of it. He shared his reasoning with Benjamin Rush. “No, I ought not, for I should contradict all the histories of the great events of the revolution and show by my account of men, motives and measures, that we are wholly indebted to the agency of Providence for its successful issue. Let the world admire the supposed wisdom and valor of our great men. Perhaps they may adopt the qualities that have been ascribed to them and thus good may be done. I shall not undeceive future generations.”