![]() “What generations of Americans came to revere was not Jefferson’s but Congress’ Declaration.” “He was no Moses receiving the Ten Commandments from the hand of God,” Maier wrote of Jefferson. Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration, she wrote, simply reflected a growing political movement that reached its culmination on July 4, 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress. ![]() In her book, Maier uncovered more than 90 little-known local resolutions in which communities throughout Colonial America declared independence from the British crown. The New York Times named it one of the best books of the year. ![]() Maier was perhaps best known for her 1997 book, “American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence,” which stirred controversy for its assertion that the Declaration was a collaborative effort and did not spring, pure and unfiltered, from the mind of Jefferson. “She paid a lot of attention to what was happening on the ground at the time.” “What she did is to go back and look at everything fresh,” Mary Beth Norton, a historian at Cornell University, said Thursday. ![]() She wrote with a narrative flair that was rare and refreshing for an academic. In her other books, she breathed new life into seemingly familiar historical subjects - including the Declaration and the Constitution - by returning to the original 18th century documents and discovering insights. ![]()
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