What views does Pauline Maier express about Thomas Jefferson, in American Scripture, that may be contrary to what the average American knows about...

Americans typically remember the Declaration of Independence as an individual work of genius, authored by Thomas Jefferson, who himself has become a sort of avatar of American liberty. Maier argues that the Declaration was really more of a statement of ideas that many Americans already held than an original document in its own right. As Maier points out, Jefferson himself said that it was intended to be "an expression of the American mind," and she...

Americans typically remember the Declaration of Independence as an individual work of genius, authored by Thomas Jefferson, who himself has become a sort of avatar of American liberty. Maier argues that the Declaration was really more of a statement of ideas that many Americans already held than an original document in its own right. As Maier points out, Jefferson himself said that it was intended to be "an expression of the American mind," and she notes that most of its ideas had been expressed in resolutions issued from several colonial assemblies, which Jefferson had surely read.

Maier's basic argument, which is very provocative, is that the Declaration of Independence was not a "solo performance," but rather a "production with a cast of hundreds, many of whom must remain nameless."  On top of the resolved issued on the colonial/state level, there were many "'other' Declarations of Independence," to quote the title of one of Maier's chapters. Town meetings, revolutionary Committees of Safety, and individual essayists (Thomas Paine, for example) issued a blizzard of calls for independence in the months preceding the summer of 1776. Most of these revolutionary documents were based on traditional English notions of liberty, ideas that dated back to the English Civil War and even the centuries-old Magna Carta. These "other Declarations," according to Maier, were the "voice of the people," and deserve more attention than they have received from scholars and ordinary Americans.

The Declaration, Maier argues, is only significant "insofar as it restated what virtually all Americans...thought and said in other words in other places." So according to American Scripture, Jefferson's role in "writing" the Declaration of Independence is perhaps less crucial than most Americans imagine.