Filippo Mazzei

Mazzei was born in Poggio a Caiano in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany as a son of Domenico and Elisabetta.^[1] After his studies in medicine between Prato and Florence, in 1752, following disagreements with his older brother Jacopo over the management of the family heritage, he settled in Pisa^[2] and then in Livorno, practicing as a doctor but after only two years he left the city and moved to Smyrna (then part of the Ottoman Empire) as a surgeon following a local doctor.

Mazzei practiced medicine in the Middle East for several years before moving to London in 1755 to take up a mercantile career as an importer.

In London, he worked as a teacher of Italian language.^[3] While in London he met the Americans Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. While doing work for Franklin, Mazzei shared his idea of importing Tuscan products, wine and olive trees, to the New World. Here Filippo Mazzei will cultivate vineyards, olives, and other Mediterranean fruit with the help of Italians.^[4]

On September 2, 1773, Mazzei boarded a ship from Livorno to the Colony of Virginia, bringing with him plants, seeds, silkworms, and 10 farmers from Lucca. He was also joined by a widow, Maria Martin, whom he married in 1778, and his friend Carlo Bellini who between 1779 and 1803 would become the first teacher of Italian at an American university, the College of William & Mary in Virginia.^[5]

He visited Jefferson at his estate, and the two became good friends. Jefferson gave Mazzei an allotment of land for an experimental plantation. Mazzei purchased more land adjoining this gift of acreage and established a plantation he named Colle. They shared an interest in politics and liberal values, and maintained an active correspondence for the rest of Mazzei's life.

In 1774 he published a pamphlet containing the phrase, which Jefferson incorporated essentially intact into the United States Declaration of Independence: "All men are by nature equally free and independent":^[6][7]

Tutti gli uomini sono per natura egualmente liberi e indipendenti. Quest'eguaglianza è necessaria per costituire un governo libero. Bisogna che ognuno sia uguale all'altro nel diritto naturale.

Translated by Jefferson as follow:

All men are by nature equally free and independent. Such equality is necessary in order to create a free government. All men must be equal to each other in natural law

In 1779, following the emergence of the independent United States after the colonial victory in the American Revolutionary War, Mazzei returned to Italy as a secret agent for Virginia.^[8] He purchased and shipped arms to them until 1783. After briefly visiting the United States again in 1785 for the last time, Mazzei travelled throughout Europe promoting republican ideals. His wife remained in the United States until her death in 1788 at the estate, which Mazzei had donated in 1783 to his stepdaughter, Margherita Maria Martini and to her husband, the Frenchman Justin Pierre Plumard, Count De Rieux.^[5]

He wrote a political history of the American Revolution, Recherches historiques et politiques sur les États-Unis de l'Amerique septentrionale, and published it in Paris in 1788.^[8] It was the first history of the American Revolution published in French. The work is still a valuable source of information on the movement that sparked the American Revolution.^[5]

While in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth he became attached as a Privy Councilor at the court of King Stanislaus II. There he became acquainted with Polish liberal and constitutional thought, like the works of Wawrzyniec Grzymała Goślicki and ideas of Golden Freedoms and Great Sejm. King Stanislaus appointed Mazzei to be Poland's representative in Paris, where he again met Jefferson.^[8]

After Poland was partitioned between Russia and Prussia in 1795, Mazzei, along with the rest of the Polish court, was given a pension by the Russian crown. He later spent more time in France, becoming active in the politics of the French Revolution under the Directorate. When Napoleon overthrew that government Mazzei returned definitively to Tuscany, settling in Pisa where in 1796 he married Antonina Tonini, with whom he had a daughter, Elisabetta, in 1798.^[5]

Mazzei always remained nostalgic for Virginia and his American friends, who hoped for his return and with whom he never interrupted his epistolary contact.^[5] He died in Pisa in 1816 without ever returning to America.^[5] After his death the remainder of his family returned to the United States at the urging of Jefferson. They settled in Massachusetts and Virginia.

He was buried at the Suburbano Cemetery in Pisa.

The friendship between Thomas Jefferson and Filippo Mazzei is attested by the numerous letters they exchanged, an estimate that was confirmed in letters to third parties:

[Mazzei] possesses first rate abilities .... He has been a zealous whig from the beginning and I think may be relied on perfectly in point of integrity. He is very sanguine in his expeditions of the services he could render us on this occasion and would undertake it on a very moderate appointment.^[9]

— Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Hancock, October 19, 1778

I am induced to this quick reply to [your letter] by an alarming paragraph in it, which is that Mazzei is coming to Annapolis. I tremble at the idea. I know he will be worse to me than a return of my double quotidian head-ach.^[10]

— Letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, March 16, 1784

[A]n intimacy of 40. years had proved to me his great worth; and a friendship, which had begun in personal acquaintance, was maintained after separation, without abatement, by a constant interchange of letters. his esteem too in this country was very general; his early & zealous cooperation in the establishment of our independance having acquired for him here a great degree of favor.^[11]

— Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Giovanni Carmignani, July 18, 1816

Your letters ... brought me the first information of the death of my antient friend Mazzei, which I learn with sincere regret. he had some peculiarities, & who of us has not? but he was of solid worth; honest, able, zealous in sound principles moral & political, constant in friendship, and punctual in all his undertakings. he was greatly esteemed in this country.^[12]

— Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Appleton, July 18, 1816

Many biographers believe Jefferson and George Washington had a falling out over a letter Jefferson sent to Mazzei in Italy, which called the Washington Administration "Anglican, monarchical, and aristocratical," and claimed that Washington had appointed as military officers "all timid men that prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty ... [I]t would give you a fever were I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies, men who were Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot England." The letter was eventually published overseas and then re-translated back into English by Noah Webster and published in the United States.^[13]

The contribution of Filippo Mazzei to the U.S. Declaration of Independence was acknowledged by John F. Kennedy in his 1958 book A Nation of Immigrants, in which he states that:^[14]

The great doctrine 'All men are created equal'^[15][16] and incorporated into the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson, was paraphrased from the writing of Philip Mazzei, an Italian-born patriot and pamphleteer, who was a close friend of Jefferson. A few alleged scholars try to discredit Mazzei as the creator of this statement and idea, saying that "there is no mention of it anywhere until after the Declaration was published". This phrase appears in Italian in Mazzei's own hand, written in Italian, several years prior to the writing of the Declaration of Independence. Mazzei and Jefferson often exchanged ideas about true liberty and freedom. No one man can take complete credit for the ideals of American democracy.

A 40-cent United States airmail stamp was issued in 1980 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mazzei's birth.^[17]

The World War II Liberty Ship SS Filipp Mazzei was named in his honor.

• American Revolution
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• George Mason, 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights
• James Monroe
• William Paca
• Francesco Vigo
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• Founding Fathers of the United States
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