“THE TRANSITION from ease and opulance to extreme poverty is remarkable,” wrote Thomas Jefferson as soon as he crossed the Dutch-Prussian border near Kleve. “The soil and climate are the same. The governments alone differ.” Notes from the man who authored the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson visited the Netherlands in 1788 and saw, across the border, “the fear of slaves” on the German faces. What a difference with Holland, where he took everything in with enthusiasm. Utrecht, Nijmegen, Heteren, Wijk bij Duurstede, Amsterdam. He made sketches of technical inventions, had never seen anything as practical as the Dutch wheelbarrow, “very convenient for loading and unloading.”
Thomas Jefferson had a deep respect for the Dutch, as did his companions who made America independent. John Trumbull’s famous painting (above) in the Capitol Rotunda speaks volumes. In Philadelphia, on July 2, 1776, members of the Second Continental Congress sit ready to approve the Declaration text. They are painted anonymously, but among them are many with a Dutch background, including Nico van Dyke, Jan de Hart, Fred Frelinghuysen, Jaap Schureman, Simon Boerum, Karel DeWitt, Leo Gansevoort, Flip Schuyler, Henk Wynkoop and many more.
FIVE GENTLEMEN are presenting the text by putting a set of copies on the table. From left to right they are John Adams, ambassador to Amsterdam and The Hague, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, the son of Margreet Beekman from Hasselt, and next to tall Jefferson is Benjamin Franklin, just back from Leiden where Piet van Musschenbroek had taught him how to catch lightning in a bottle.
Jefferson had imported the paper sheets from Holland, from the paper mills of Van Gerrevink, Honig, and Blauw in Egmond and Zaandam. That was not only because the Dutch were making the best paper at the time, but also because Jefferson knew what paragraphs he was going to write down. The entire American aspiration for independence was inspired from the outset by what the Dutch had accomplished during the Eighty Years’ War, and it was essentially based on two documents. The Netherlands broke away from the Spanish king with the Union of Utrecht and the subsequent Placard of Abandonment.
BOTH DECLARATIONS used firm language, and in America they were keenly familiar with it. “… Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” were Jefferson’s own words, but then he immediately turned to the reasons why the English king’s tyranny was insufferable, and what the thirteen states were going to do about it. He borrowed complete passages from Holland, well translated, and graced with Jeffersonian prose, and his four compadres in the writing committee made some adjustments. But at its core, there was no misunderstanding: the seven provinces across the ocean were the authors of the American Declaration of Independence. America became independent in a Dutch wheelbarrow.
Trumbull’s painting attests to that, and Jefferson himself saw it with his own eyes twelve years later. He was an ambassador in Paris by then, and wanted to see those independent Dutch, now no longer as big and strong as when they fought for their freedom, up close. And he recognized it as soon as he compared the well-managed, still wealthy, Dutch nation with what he saw across the border. A country with strong foundations still 200 years later. That gave hope for young, fledgling America.
On July 4, 1776, the Declaration was unanimously adopted. Independence Day had arrived.
