Legacy and Future of the Republic

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No matter what comes next, you've got free talk and text with the text now app Wireless plans require the purchase of a SI card visit text nowow. com for terms and conditions piece of paper so powerful, it launches a global superpower In fact, I'm going to say it's the most important single piece of paper in the history of the world two hundred and fifty years ago, the Declaration of Independence was broadcast as a mission statement, as a planning document to introduce a revolutionary new form of government on this earth and as an eviction notice to British King George III But since then, it has become much more than that. For two and a half centuries, Americans haven't just lived In the shadow of that declaration, it has been given a new life by every generation. So how did a seventeen seventy six Notice of Termination create modern America? To mark the vitally important two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration's adoption on the fourth of July, we are going to look at the raw politics of Americans founding Creed Joining us to dissect how those radical words still shape our world in twenty twenty six is the Emeritus Professor of history at Cambridge University Gary Gerssel, author of Liberty and Cercion, The Paradox of American Government from the foundounding to the present. He's one of the best in the business. Let's get into it Dry, greatreat to have you back on. It feels like this is the big one. We've been building up to this. It was brewing for a while. Let We're going to just briefly give the backstorory. I want to get into that summer of ' seventy six and the writing what it means in a second is it worth going back to the people a lot of people start this story, don't they? with Britain and Britain and its American colonies great victory over the French in what people call the French Indian War, the Seven Ye years War in North America. So suddenly Th These British colonies, suddenly the the British Empire in North America, A is vast. And there are no obvious Well, no obvious threats to it, really. No certainly no big European threats to it because Britain is now dominant across this space. The French have been defeated Spain increases its territory in North America as a result of the British victory because the French see the vast Louisiana territory, the continent of what becomes the United States west of the Mississippi. They ced that to Spain. So Spain Spain is present, but France has been defeated but The colonies have acquired enormous territory And the settlers and the colonies which are hugging the eastern Seaboard, especially the poorer settlers are heading west for free land. and the cost of maintaining this suddenly much larger territorial space. is exorbitant and the British in Britain feel as though They helped the colonists by defeating the French And now that such a big empire has been acquired stretching far to the west that the colonists ought to pay more of share for the upkeep of that empire, especially as they're pushing west They're encountering lots of indigenous peoples Tribes, fights are breaking out. colonists are winning some. They're losing others They're demanding forts on the frontier. It' a vast territory and a costly one to defend. and maintained. So it's not as though they're no enemies of the British because the indigenous Peoples are there and many of them are emboldened by the French Indian War. And so Britain feels compelled to establish forts extend its protection and in return for that it begins to impose taxes and some of the costs of maintaining that empire. on the colonies of the sort that they haven't had to put up with before This is a good time. The defeat of the French is good for the colonists. This increases their abilities to trade They are beginning to prosper. they are beginning to feel their present and the upbeat of the future There are elites, there are merchants They have power, they have established partially self governing institutions. and so it's a The war speeds up the process of the British colonies in North America Beginning to feel more independent, more self sufficient, more successful And if they are going to be asked to contribute, to the British Empire through taxation, they want representation in parliaments And this is something that Britain is simply not willing to grant And that's one of the slogans that generates a lot of conflict No taxation without representation Th then there are conflicts, efforts to impose taxes, resistance On the part of the British colonists in North America and an increasing desire for uh Respect, representation, And barring that discussion begins to consider some form of more distant relationship and perhaps some form of separation The Another flashpoint for the colonies is the British are quartering more and more troops in American cities, especially Northern cities and especially Boston And colonists are expected to quarter these troops in their homes pay for their upkeep And this militarization of British colonial policy becomes very upsetting and helps to explain why the city, one of the cities that has the most intensive quartering Boston begins to explode first with the so called Boston Massacre in seventeen seventy. when a demonstration of Bostonians engages with British troops, the British troops are scared, they're frightened. They fire on the crowd. kill five people. It's a flash pointoint and it generates a tremendous amount of anger and further consolidates the feeling that the Americans ought to think more deeply about some kind of independence some kind of separation Another flash pointoint is the teea Party of seventeen seventy three This was also a time of mercantile expansion on the part of the Americans And the British are trying to enforce Mercantilist policies. They want to control all trade and they want to run all trade through their trade routes and they want to control everything from the metropol And the merchants of the Northern colonies in particular want their freedom, want their independence. And when a tax is slapped on se, the the sons of Liberty, so called sons of Liberty gather in Boston in a nighttime raid on British ships dress up as Indians sneak onto the ships and toss lot of tons of precious tea overboard That is a tea partarty. That is when the slogan of Lberty begins to enter the discussions and the consciousness of these British colonists in North America And that further accelerates the confrontation and begins to lead to a situation that is going to lead by seventeen seventy five to armed conflict. Gary, what is so striking to me about this and listening to you talk about it is it is like like all wars It's about land and power and money and trade and threat And yet what we're talking about today is this astonishing document, and you've mentioned it a few times now. What's so striking about the American Revolutionary War is it's also a war of words and ink and extraordinary scholarship and polemic on both sides as they and there's a sort of intellectual plane on which this conflict takes place, which this declaration So reently falls into What is it about that highly literate society? It's the enlightenment As sort of merchants are getting annoyed about trade and sort of know taxes, There is also this superstructure, isn't there? off thought And how do the two relate? I mean, is the flowery language just a cover for venal, you know, people worrying about how much tax they're paying for the immperial center?r or does the ideas, the intellectual ideas really matter here The ideas really matter think it's not just to cover. There were, of course thoseose in the ranks of the revolutionaries who were doing it for instrumental reasons and just to free their Mercantile projects to gain the greatest profit and to have the most freedom of the seas and opportunity to prosper without the British overlords But what distinguishes this moment is the conversion of of these resentments into a set of universal principles And I think what really and I think in a moment, you or I should read a sentence from the Declaration of Independence just so we can it's a beautiful, extraordinary sentence, but I think it ought to be with us as we because it illustrates your point about the depths of learning and the deep aspirations of this moment The British subjects in North America On the one hand, are heirs to a vigorous discussion going on in Britain really from the time of the Civil War in the sixteen hundreds about The rights of Englishmen The Rs of the crrown the significance of Parliament as an institution of representation even though There is a glorious revolution and settlement in the late seventeenth century That doesn't end the discussion about the proper way of organizing the politics of a society So some of this thought comes from that extraordinary set of events in seventeenth century England that live on in the colonies And of course especially in the north, in the ranks of the colonists, they are well represented by puritans who are who come from the parts of England where Cromwell was very, very strong and and where discussion of Republicanism small our Republicanism as a proper way of organizing society took off so that lives on and the elites in American society wantanting to be like the elites of British society, even though none of themach with the possible exception of New York, none of them approach the scale of wealth that aristocrats had in England They want the classical learning They want to understand the classics of Athens and Rome, and they are well versed in this. And in throughout the American Revolution, not just the Revolution, but leading up to the Constitution ese discussions are constantly drawing on parallels with ancient Greece and Rome. and the desire to establish public to sustain a republic, understanding that republics are by their nature, very fragile institutions This is all on the minds of the American revolutionaries, and there's a depth to this discussion which makes it impossible to see it simply as a cover or a set of instrumentalities that are going to get up bunch of hungry merchants there due. So these ideas circulate It should also be said that There's nothing new about an anti colonial revolt, right? in human history Wherever there have been empires, there have been anti colonial rev revolts and the anti colonial revolts very much part of the Roman Empire itself, you know all over the place. The Romans were constantly trying to put down anti colonial revolts But this may have been the first anti colonial revolt to clothe the ambitions of that anti colonial revolt in universalist terms And this may be a moment just to read a sentence from the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the government that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends It is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. and to institute new government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness That's an extraordinary sentence, it is one sentence for several reasons The most important reason is that It universalizes the aspirations toward life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It's declaration that all men are created equal, we can talk We will talk soon about the contradictions of making that declaration and what was a deeply slave society But what we see here is the declaration that in effect All men are to be judges of their own happiness And if they judge their own happiness to have been neglected or betrayed or forgotten They have the right to withdraw their consent from the government that is ruling over them. Yeah. Now, this may sound plain to twenty first century years or twentieth century time Revolutionary revolutionary because this was a time in which almost everywhere on the planet. Kings and queens were expected to rule And they did not rule by consent of the government And they did not think that All people had a right to judge the adequacy of their own happiness their own life and their own liberty These words make that aspiration to be free. T to have liberty, to have happiness It makes that aspiration available to everyone in the world The closest we get to this kind of universalism before this time would be in one of the great religions of the world Catholicism Protestantism Islam, but of course, as universal as they wish to be Anyone who wanted to partake of the benefits of that religion had to subscribe to the beliefs of that religion So this is a universalism that there is a reference to the creator. But it's the creator.s'ss it's not God. It's not the it's not the church It makes the aspiration contained in these words available to the whole world. We are obviously going to come back to the text, but let me just let's just get everyone from venty seventy five shhots are fired in New England There is an unsatisfactory messy campaign in around Boston. The Brits withdraw from Boston seventeen seventy six matters this big year because the Brits are sending the largest expeditionary force that has ever sailed from British shores to try and reconquer their colonies in North America. What is the political and military context for the decelaration? It's clear there's a campaign coming. The Brits and nooubt some in America were expecting to be decisive going be a year where there's going to be a massive clash of armies a massive siege U S for the American Cony's largest city, New York. And so why does the language of the revolutionaries over that winter se thir five to seventy six, how does it change from? while we still might be able to have compromise. We're going to send a petition out saying actually if you give us devolution or Divo max We might be able to come to an agreement. how does that harden into independence? actual independence by the early summer of seventeen seventy six? Well, as you mentioned, there is military conflict in the spring of seventeen seventy five in Lexington and Concord. But Ralphaldo Emerson called the shot heard around the world. Not quite the shot heard around the world, but a significant shock. And there are fights that are continuing after that time. The colonies in response call the first Continental Congress. So this is the first Congress that assembles all of the colonies in North America into one assembly. So that is a very significant step because the colonies were deeply independent of each other. and for many of the colonies, their relationship to London was much closer than to their neighbors in the north and south. So they are developing a sense of themselves As a nation B calling this Continental Congress And they send various proposals to to London, to the King The king is hugely annoyed. He doesn't want to be bothered by this He thinks it's a minor rebellion that can be easily put down And then when they refuse to relinquish their claims, the North Americans in early August, He declares them to be in revolt against him and his crown and declares them to be beyond the protection of Britain or its empire And this is in effect, a declaration of war. not in so many words, but That becomes the occasion for beginning to mobilize a fleet and and an army that has got to sail to North America to put down the rebels. There are efforts by various colonies to strike a compromise, strike an agreement The colonies are very different from each other. The biggest differenceces between the North where you have a lot of self sufficient farmers and artisans in the south which is ruled by large plantations with slave labor forces There are also differences within the colonies of the North. New York doesn't really fit very comfortably with Boston and Nor does New York fit very comfortably with Pennsylvania So there are negotiations going on throughout this period And they're going nowhere. And the preparations for war are intensifying. And the firstirst Continental Congress begins to raise an army of its own. And then into the middle of this, Ces this little pamphlet, actually not so little for the time. by a British immigrant to North America by the name of Thomas Payne called common sense And this forty seven page pamphlet, which is published in January of seventeen seventy six. is one of the most successful polemics of the modern world. The US, not the US. the colonies at this time have a population of about three million It's estimated that in the first three months, this pamphlet sells fifty thousand copies in a nation of fifty million people. overver the first six months, it's estimated that one hundred thousand are sold. And of course, these Copies are being passed from person to person. so everyone is talking about Tom Payne and commommon sense and There are two maj there two or three major points in the in the common sense pamphlet One is that kingship is for fools Every king O kingship began through theft U through Rue individuals seizing territory, seizing power No legitimacy Dynasties produce simply bad blood and stupid heirs. It's a stupid way to govern the sarcasm of this toward royalty and kingship. is deep, it's biting and brutally effective And this encourages many, many Americans. Tom Payne is just an ordinary artisan. He's not part of any elite, but he effectively changes the discourse and he allows Americans to begin thinking of haaving a system of government that has no king And if they are going to begin to think about having a government that has no king Then they have to begin to think of independence because under no circumstances will King George III allow a set of his colonies. renounce their loyalty to him Kings, of course, are used to ruling by divine right and claiming their authority from God And Thomas Payaine declares all this to be a form of foolishness. He also makes a very effective economic argument which is that the colonies are growing. their territory is larger than Britain The commerce is more vigorous than Britain He's arguing that it's in the natural course of evolving societies that these colonies are going to continue to expand, they're going to overtake the economy of Britain They are going to have economies of scale. They are going to have vigorous production, they are going to have vigorous forms of innovation. They have access to resources not available to Britain itself And he begins to make an argument that it is a natural set of events for this nation that is growing by leaps and bounds year by year to simply be independent. And it's a matter of common sense just as gettinget Ring of kingship is a matter of common sense So it's a set of radical revolutionary arguments dressed up in extraordinarily accessible fantastic and brilliantly effective language and this prorofoundly changes the discourse. and also helps us understand that at this moment, this revolution ceases to be a matter of what elites are doing and not doing in the American colonies. This is a moment when the revolution begins to acquire a popular base among artisans and farmers who of course are going to fill the ranks of the soldiers and the military that George Washington is trying to organize. It's hard to think of another example of a political thinker transform changing the course of history, that changing the real world politics and events. I mean Markx's Communist manifesto was published decades, generations before anybol any version of it was even then problematic. An any version of it was put to the practical test. And here we go justust months after the publication of this book the Americans are taking the almost unimaginable step That's fascinating Yes, yes. I think it is comparable to the Communist manifesto. The Communist manifesto does have some short term effect in terms of the revolutions of eighteen forty eight, but you're right. Its greatest impact is going to be felt in the in the twentieth century So for Tom Payne to write a pamphlet of this sort and for it to have such immediate and powerful effect It's hard to find a precedent for that or a subsequent development that matches this extraordinary influence. 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And on the betwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors, and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits In other words, it's the best bits of history, with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to but twwix the sheets of the history of sex scandal and society twice a week every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts brought to you by the award winning network, History Hit this continental Congress they through the through the what we might go, through the spring, Are they edging closer towards independence? What's stopping? What's stopping the machine the Declaration? Is there still some dissension? Do they need to like the Some of the parliaments in England in the seventeenth century, they have to get rid of a few delegates before they can all agree How What are the politics of getting towards this dececlaration of indndependence Well, there is no declaration yet and no one is yet thinking of a declaration, but the man who is there are some people thinking about independence and probably The most important figure in this respect is John Adams, who's a political figure. in Massachusetts, and he's got to play a critical role in the Declaration in the Constitution. And of course, he's going to be the second presresident of the United States of America And interestingly Aong the founding fathers of the United States, he's not thought of as one of the more Uh, radical figures, but he is the one who begins to push hard for independence. And I think it's no accident that the hardest push for independence is coming out of Massachusetts. It's coming out of Boston It's coming out out of the home of of Puritan intensity. John Adams is not a Puritan, but he's not that far removed from Th original religious zealots who settled in who settled the Massachusetts Bay colony. They were fiery figures And they were no longer those who the Bostonians making the revolution are not themselves puritans But they have of some of that puritanical Fire and they're putting it to secler uses And he is the key figure in trying to move the Continental Congress toward considering independence. And you're absolutely right, this There is support among some colonies. There is not support among other colonies Several of the de allegations are split But you begin to see the momentum begin to build and hear the constant availability and discussion of common sense This is a natural development This is not a matter of treason or betrayal This is a story of a people coming into its own and deserving its own Nationhood this begins to increase and at the same time that Ager at George III increases because The military confrontation is coming. The armed conflict is becoming more and more of a possibility He is the one who pushes the Continental Congress T independence and insists that the Continental Congress begin discussing this as a possibility And when he gets close enough to think that It's time draft to draft a memo. He actually drafts the first memos, but he doesn't consider himself to be a great writer or a great draftsman So he plucks the man who he considers to be the finest draftsman and the finest political writer in America, a man by the name of Thomas Jefferson to actually write the declaration And he gets authorization from the Continental Congress to appoint a committee of five. This occurs in May and early june, seventeen seventy six And he he cur curates, let's say he curates the voting among the delegates to make sure that Thomas Jefferson is the man to get the most votes for the committee, which means he then is in a position to actually do the draft of the Declaration of Independence. Gary, it's very exciting to think that this is ' I'd love you to help me here that that's There's much haiography in it. Is this so this is not a case of pork barrel politics and people boats being bought and people being locked in bathrooms during keyvotes. This really is in April, May June This is a discussion about ideas, about principles, about a kind of intellectual debate going on, the kind of thing wed like to hope that we'd like to hope happens all the time in our representative bodies. But is that what you think was a foot Was there a spirit of intellectual debate in Sring of ' seventy six in Philadelphia Yes, but not just a spirit of intellectual debate. it was also a commitment to a mission that was going to have the elites of these colonies accused of treason and thus subject to jail and death as they were to be defeated. So Right. So the Brits are going them nowhere. The Brits are painting them in as well. Yes So it is a very spirited discussion. But it has to be accompanied by a seriousness of purpose and understanding that to take this step is going to imperil the lives and fortunes and families of those delegates and anyone who supports them There are moments in history where extraordinary Eents happen where extraordinary breakthroughs occur. And this is the moment Now Thomas Jefferson pllantation owner in Virginia, brilliant man, polymath He was a political thinker. He had been writing Even though he was still a young man, he had been writing extensively on Questions of politics, questions of rule, questions of governing by consent, questions of religious freedom He was able to do this because He was the inheritor of ich rich set of of British experiences thinking, he's developing them further, adapting them to the environment in which he was living And he was an extraordinary writer, John Adams Um This put his money on the right man So it is a it is a very spiritited debate. it is a very serious discussion of ideas, but They understood the risks they were undertaking by by committing themselves to this enterprise. And it may be that their determination to clothe their rebellion in universalist terms was a way of them in a way protecting themselves or at least insisting on the integrity of their aspirations that these were not simply a bunch of Rei merchants in New England or Greedies, land owners, plantation owners in the. People who owe a bunch of money to London money lenders. Yeah. And you know There was that side to them. George Washington was a was a great speculator when we when this group of architects of the American Republic When it comes time to design the Constitution after the revolutionary wars are over, they are deep into expanding their own enterprises expanding their land to the west, expanding their plantations, getting rich, wanting to approximate the wealth of British aristocrats. So I don't want to suggest that this was not part of who they were But this is a moment when an extraordinary set of ideas coales and receive the support of Ultimately unanimously of all thirteen delegations represented. And talk to me about that unanimous acclamation or vote. did it how did it go? Was it ever in doubt? W there some tense moments in the days leading up to july fourth, seventy seventy six The draft had to be submitted by Jefferson first to his committee and they didn't make that many changes to it because John Adams and Jefferson were thinking along similar lines and the other members of the committee either didn't feel themselves capable or didn't take that much interest. One of the commommittee members was Benjamin Franklin, who was very distinguished, but also very ill. But between it comes out of the committee on july first or second of seventeen seventy six And then it goes to the entire Continental Congress. and it's heavily debated and edited over the next two days and Jefferson was a wonderful writer, but also a rather verbose writer And they cut about twenty five to thirty percent of the declaration out of the decelaration. Jeffers said the best bits are gone, but my finest writing That's always what an author thinks, right Just quickly go, do we have those do we have the twenty five percent that was cut? Do we know what those? Oh yeah yeah. we have that. we have that. And the most and then some of it was was due to redundancy in flowery language and they wanted something direct and efficient. But there was also a very significant paragraph that Jefferson wanted in that the Cal Congress got rid of, and that was on the slave trade And the Jefferson, a slave owner himself and a deeply committed slave owner, by the way. We can talk about that contradiction before our time together is up He wanted to put in a paragraph on as one of the one of the grievances against King George I third that he had started a slave trade which had burdened North America with a terrible, terrible problem So you see what Jefferson was doing here. On the one hand He was acknowledging the the sin of slavery On the other hand, he was blaming it entirely on someone external to the North American colonies The king and but for the King America would have been free of this terrible problem Jefferson, in fact was prospering on his plantation from the work of his slaves Some of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence would ultimately free their slaves. Jefferson never did. So this was disingenuous on his part, but he felt that if you're going to write a document in which the most prominent words that are all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with an unalienable rights He felt compelled to say something about the slave question in the North American colonies But he hastened to absolve him and all the other slave owners from responsibility, targeting George III as another of the terrible policies he inflicted on what would otherwise be a healthy and free society governed by a healthy and Free people now The it's not that delegates wanted to put in a frank or recognition of the reality of slavery It just was the case that this never would have gotten through the Continental Congress. It never would have attracted the support of the Southern delegations where slavery was flourishing had any reference to slavery state in that document. So the most substantive excision from the document was this paragraph acknowledging the horror of slavery on North American shores. And I guess Gary, it's a good point that stage Being a member of that Congress was already a seditious act if the Brits were going to reconquer the these colonies, these men would have been in dire straits on trial, know as you say families, property all at threat, lives So actually in a way, that British intransigence does to make John Adams's case much easier because you say, look guys We've crossed whether or not we issue this declaration or not we've crossed the rubricant. You're all do if the Brits landed army in Philadelphia, you're all doomed, right? So we might as well go the whole hog here. We might as well dissolve these bonds and give ourselves some justification for this war. because the die is already cast Yes, once they land And we lose, if we lose, we're cooked. Yeah Yes. So let's go down all with the calls that we can proud that we Yes, you know, go down go go down with with our banners unfurled and and flying in the wind. Yes It also raises the question of whether a more adept ruler a more adept king with more adept advisors might have found a way through this at an earlier moment when compromise was still possible because There was plenty of support for compromise may have been possible to contemplate some sort of representation for the colonists in parliament. There were other paths forward, which to the rulers of Britain, just all of them u werere unacceptable. And one wonders whether there might have been more cleverness, more flexibility um U more of a Machiavellian approach to politics where they could appear to be giving something while maintaining control in the Mropol. One does wonder that, Gary. w this one wonders it all the time. big I think the other thing you don't mention, a big ocean. I mean, not I think the big ocean they got a geographical factor rered all. But yes, imagine that if Ben Franklin's plan, Americans in the Westminster Parliament, Iperial Parliament fifty two hundred fifty years later Gary, you and I part of one great happy transatlantic family and none us are be in this mess.. And all the problems of America and Britain, obviously would be solved. Everything would be perfect. That's right. No question. Everything would have been fine Okay, so tell me about the date. so we get Congress unanimously agree to this. Tell me about the day itself. There's a censeer here. They can feel the hand of history on their shoulders. They don't know what's going on tellell me how how this at this this debate This acclission, this vote is then transmitted onto the paper and beyond Well, july fourth is the day where they claim to have unanimous support for the Declaration of Independence They do and they don't July fourth is the day that sticks. That is the anniversary of American independence, which for which America will be selling the celebrating, perhaps celebrating, perhaps mourning two hundred fiftieth anniversary of this extraordinary document But New York asented only in theory because in New York the colony that was probably Closest to wanting to mimic London In terms of its aristocracy, the centralization of power, even a kind of kingsship. In the North, they were the colony's slowest to get on board and the delegates from New York I thought they had the support of the colonial government back in New York but did not want to act. until they received explicit approval of this document That was approved on july fourth. from the colonial government back in New York. and That comes on july fifteenth. And that is the moment of true unanimity And they there are various And that's when this document receives its formal name Declaration of Iependence and is first committed to parchment And then it's committed to parchment again on august second by a master printer And it's the document printed on august second and distributed to the colonies that now sits in the National Archives in Washington, DC. So the the official final document is august second, seventeen seventy six. It's fascinating because the ones that are the printed document that people will be familiar with were printed on the night of the fourth of July and spread al os. But those had no that's so fascinating. those did not have to carry the sort of official a stamp of officialm, I suppose. But they were sent all over the colonies, weren't they? Well now independent states. I've got the final paragraph here. I love that simple declaration, that one of the last lines U It's very verb very wordy as you say, but there's one clause that these united colonies are and of rights ought to be free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown And so it goes on and I'm intric is on the fourth of July those printed copies One of them goes to New York straightway and ends up George Washington's headquarters. He then reads it or he has it read out to his assembled forces the following day, I think it is It has a very what is the effect of this document on normal people because there's a sort of riotous party in New York when when it's read out, isn't it? And the effect has on the men. these are words that really matter even on the battlefield Well, you can imagine Imagine ourselves as ordinary people in the military, farmers, artisans, peopleeople with some security, some land but without great resources and We are reading a document that we probably never expected to see in our lifetimes and that many of us probably couldn't imagine. this was a profoundly unequal world uh, People had access to life, liberty pursuit of happiness, it was because of the graciousness of their Lord or king. It was not by God given rights that no one could take away. h and u, you know, a less cited part of that first incredible sentence of the decclaration that you know, people have Um They have to give their assent to a government that governs them. and if They haven't given their assense then they have the right to withdraw from that government and establish something different more to their liking We were beginning, you know, we as ordinary people Again, this is the importance of the Thomas Payne pamphlet Imagine a declaration of this sort without the ballast provided by Tom Payne and Common Sense So this the George Washington's military, the crowds in New York and Boston and and Richmond, Virginia They've been reading common sense. for half a year at this point. and everybody's reading it or if they're not reading it, they're hearing about it. They're talking about it. they're talking about it and u in tea shops in saloons and gathering places and their churches They're talking about it everywhere. and so this sense of of freedom and independence People have begun to glimpse this possibility, but to see it in writing And certainly after that, it being committed to parchment with the Bld signatures of of all the people who were there at the Continental Congress I'm not surprised that it inspired inspiration. Now it should be said that not all Americans wanted independence There's never a There's never a society where No matter how popular a politics or how popular a revolution and never commands the loyalty of all the people Right? There there are always dissenters And there were people in the American colonies estimated as many as twenty percent who did not want independence from Britain. they are the so called Tories Some of them went to Canada and others of them themselves became vulnerable if they made their Tory sympathies Publer So as much enthusiasm as there was An Radical event is going to generate a radical counterreaction. That's just in the nature of these events. So there is going to be resistance among some sectors of American society So there is great jubilation among a large majority but it does not encompass All all the British subjects living in North America Gary, let's talk about fin what it means what it meant at the time, what it still but it still means On one level, we talk about the soldiers who are about to face the British onslaught at New York They now They were fighting for each other. They' fight for their mates, they fighting for their f They fight for all things soldiers usually fight for, but now they've got that top order motivation sort as. well, they are fighting for this astonishing. Exciting almost unprecedented idea of how they wish to organize themselves going forward as a society. That makes a difference, doesn't it? Yes, yes. The It's not clear at this point What kind of government This new nation has got to create There's a lot of support for establishing a republic U, model on ancient Rome or the early modern Italian city states. But there are also segments of the society that begin to contemplate America having its own king We're queen and establishing a kind of society that mimics European society. Those sentiments are are there U But and it's going to take, well, from seventeen seventy six to seventeen ninety one, a period of fifteen years for a new government to take shape and the first government that is established as a result of the revolution, the so called Continental Congress manages to get America through the war, but it does not everyone by the end of the wars is saying this is not a satisfactory form of government. And so it's going to take another intense period of political thinking Political contemplation, political innovation Jen yielding the Constitution seventeen eighty nine ratified in seventeen ninety one for America to become a republic and for America to decide to put as the first three words of that document, we, the people which ratifies one of the most important components of the Declaration of Independence that we the people are deciding on the government that we're going to create. And they are they create a republic with no kings with by the standards of the time quite liberal access to the franchise and to the vote, system of representation, system of divided government so that the So called tyranny of George III can never be reproduced on American shores And this process of political thinking, what you indicated and what you noticed in the beginning of our conversation This is still just beginning and and There's a fifteen year period that the u a well known historian of the Revolution, Gordon Wood, who died tragically just this past week At the age of ninety two, he was hit in a parking lot in Providence, Rhode Island But one of his seminal works is called the Creation of the American Republic. and it's a deep study of all the ideas and all the streams of thought flowing into the creation of the American Republic And again, because of Thomas Paying and his contribution This becomes not just a conversation among elites who have had access to the best education that the ancients can provide, this becomes a process that involves Ordinary people in their institutions, in their houses of Congress and their various States. experimenting, innovating, claiming rights for themselves, expanding the rights of ordinary people versus the rights of elites This institutes a Great period of experimentation That is good lead to a republic that unlike most repepublics, survived its first two hundred and thirty. years One needs to call attention to you know, the tragic contradiction of this moment, which is the perpetuation of slavery and the the feeling among peopleeople of color, especially African Americans in the United States, they had to live with another seventy years from the Declaration, another eighty seven years of slavery before the Civil War breaks out. But it's very significant in this regard that Abraham Lincoln in his greatest speech at Gettysburg in eighteen sixty three invokes the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and his two hundred and eighty seven word speech, which is regarded as the greatest speech in American history and it begins with four score and seven years ago which is a reference to the moment of ' seventeen seventy six And he goes on to call in those two hundred and eighty seven words while he is marking the horrific death that ocurred on the. Battlefields of Gettysburg He calls for a new birth of freedom to complete the work of freedom and the work of extending inalienable rights to everyone living on American soil And then a hundred years after that, Martin Luther King, exactly one hundred years after that, Martin Luther King in nineteen sixty three when he gives his famous speech, I have a dream on the Mall in Washington a great civil rightights March which launches the Civil rightights Revolution into its its highest phase. He talks about a promisory note delivered by the founders and is referred to he's referring to the Declaration of Independence. and it illustrates the degree to which