O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth. Every spot of the old world is over-run with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted around the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her.--Europe regards her like a stranger; and England hath given her warning to depart. O receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind!
But greatly as he admired Paine's eloquence, Jefferson did not try to emulate it; impassioned as it was, his appeal to the inhabitants of the British colonies sounded more like the summing-up of a lawyer before the jury than an emotional sermon.
Our cause is just. Our union is perfect--our internal resources are great.... We fight not for glory or for conquest. We exhibit to mankind the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by provoked enemies, without any imputation or even suspicion of offense. They boast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder condition than servitude or death.
Thus was the uniqueness of America's position emphasized and called to the attention of her own people. Nor was it forgotten that the country was particularly favored by God, for it declared that:
We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instance of the Divine towards us, that His providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike apparatus, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves.
Finally, Jefferson reiterated once more his favorite contention, the theory which has become one of the fundamental axioms of the doctrine of Americanism: that America did not owe anything to the older civilization of Europe, and was a self-made country:
In our native land, in defence of the freedom that is our birthright, and which we ever enjoyed until the late violation of it; for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our forefathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.