I was just re-reading the article I have previously posted (The Stylistic Artistry of the Declaration of Independence). In this article, there are MANY nuggets of insight into the writing of the Declaration by Jefferson. Words matter!
The analysis of the word "Fact" is one that made me think today. This word is found in this line (underline/emphasis mine):
To prove this [the king's tyranny], let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
But "fact" had yet another connotation in the eighteenth century. The word derived from the Latin facere, to do. Its earliest meaning in English was "a thing done or performed"--an action or deed. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was used most frequently to denote an evil deed or a crime, a usage still in evidence at the time of the Revolution. In 1769, for example, Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, noted that "accessories after the fact" were "allowed the benefit of clergy in all cases." The Annual Register for 1772 wrote of a thief who was committed to prison for the "fact" of horse stealing. There is no way to know whether Jefferson and the Congress had this sense of "fact" in mind when they adopted the Declaration. Yet regardless of their intentions, for some eighteenth-century readers "facts" many have had a powerful double-edged meaning when applied to George III's actions toward America.19
Shot fired, Thomas Jefferson! So, King George III could have read the word "Fact" (emphasized by being capitalized?) to mean what we today would understand the word to mean OR he could have taken it to imply a crime of sorts---OR BOTH!
This is a nice reminder that when reading historical documents it is important to be mindful of every word and the context in which it is used.
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