Reflecting on Compromise and History

June seventeen seventy six All these different things had been brewing to make a bad tea joke One year into the Revolutionary War, things were not looking good for the newly formed continontinental Army A guy named George Washington had been put in charge of it, and he was kind of on a losing streak You have all these people fighting and dying. Things are beginning to come to a head Washington was stationed in New York, where the British were closing in fast ships were coming in from England and it was looking as though New York was going to fall On a certain point, I suspect They sort say, Okay, remind me again, what are we fighting for They needed a rally cry to commit people to see the fight through, comeome what may So in the face of mounting odds and setbacks, some in the Continental Congress decided they needed a declaration of independence. This is who we are. This is a laundry list of what you've done. And I can't be in this relationship anymore Over the next month, a declaration was drafted and then announced to the world As John Hancock, the president of the Continental Congress, whose signature has become iconic said at the signing. We must all hang together Benjamin Franklin, who needs no introduction responded, Yes, indeed, we must all hang together because otherwise, most assuredly will all hang separately Joe becausecause the truth was If the revolution failed, every single person who signed on could be tried and hanged for treason Thake at that point You're saying, hey We just reached the point of no return It means you don't get to turn back. You got to keep marching ahead The dececlaration begins. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people Disssolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them But it's the second sentence that everyone knows. The second sentence is a mission statement for our nation, a nation in which Governance comes not from the divine right of kings or the sword of conquerors but by a social contract, That's signaled in the very first word of the sentence We, 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 It's a sentence that actually sets a new type of nation on this planet that to secure these rights Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the government This's not the way the world worked two hundred and fifty years ago more than half the nations on Earth now are pretty much guided by the principles of that sentence 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 governments laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness. A Ad Fat and this july fourth on throughline from NPR We're doing a kind of document exploder Looking at the story of the Declaration of Independence, the messy drama that surrounded it, and what it all can tell us about how to find our way forward as a country in twenty twenty six Devastating compromises, midnight rides, a nail biter vote, statue toppling riots That's all coming up Lawns veryer the land and you are listening throughline PR. partart one Committee of five the Continental Congress In June of seventeen seventy six, finally decided they had to declare indndependence And so they created a committee to explain and declare why They were doing it This is Walter Isaacson, professor at Tulaine University, an author of The Greatest Sentence Ever Written. They were nominated by their fellow out And this is Denise Kiirnan. She's written several books about the revolutionary period Her latest is called Ostinate Daughters, the Rebels, writers, and renegade women who ignited the American Revolution Okay, so this committee that Congress put together consisted of five people. John Adams of Massachusetts. Robert Livingston of New York, you have one slave owner, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia a working class runaway Ben Franklin, who had started a print shop, even becomes the president of the society in Pennsylvania for the abolition of slavery And the last guy, Roger Sherman, who started life as a cobbler in Connecticut. And so you had a committee of diverse views and talents even though they were all white men but they shared a love of science. and they were readers of history They'd all read John Locke's second treatise on government. People like John Locke come up with the notion of a social contract as the source of our rights, as the source of our governance. And Thomas Hobbs. They knew about the state of nature, nasty, brrutish, and short. Jefferson kicks things off and starts writing a first draft. Jefferson basically locks himself away in a place he rented. He's rented a room on Market Street in Philadelphia And Ben Franklin's house is closer to the river on Market Street So he sends it by hand. his hand He's not going to walk it over himself but someone's hand We can even imagine maybe Robert Hemings seeing slave valet has to bring it down two blocks to Franklin's home Robert Hemings, by the way, is the older brother of Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman who was widely believed to have given birth to several of Jefferson's children children who would also be enslaved by him The draft is delivered to Benjamin Franklin. And there's a note attached to it. something along the lines, I'm paraphrasing with the good Dr. Franklin with his great wisdom Please do what he can to improve this draft because he is much more familiar, etcetera. This first draft begins. We hold these truths to be. sacred You go sacred But then you see the black printer's pen, Ben Franklin's printer's pens with backslashes. Crossing out Sacred and written in next to it in the word self evident He's saying we're trying to create a new type of nation where our rights come from the rationality And for reason, not from the dictat or dogma of a particular religion Sacred does automatically take you to a religious connotation Yeah, it takes a religious connotation, but they were deists. They did not believe in a particular dogma or a particular religion They left it so that everybody could worship Even the notion of creation, if you didn't want to believe in a creator Over the next couple of weeks, they made a bunch of these kinds of edits. And There were lots of different versions that went back and forth And while the first part of the declaration reads like a mission statement, We hold these truths to be self evident. The rest of it is basically a list of everything the king has done wrong He has refused his assent to laws. He has forbidden his government. H dissolved represent He hasused. He has forbidd. He has obstructedm obstructed cutting off our trade with all parts of the world. He has endeavored to prevent from imposing taxes on us without our consent. Taking away charters. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us One of the ones that we hear often has plundered our seas, raaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people I'm curious who their audience was. Were they writing this so that King George III would read it? Were they writing it for all the you know people they were representing in the colonies to sort of feel like They were unifying as a country. Yeah, there were three or four audiences. in the American colonies. You have to remember at the beginning of seventeen seventy six, most Americans did not want to break from England They wanted representation But they were not trying to overthrow the control of the king England's enemies. Our revolution against England was actually a part of a much larger war which was a war basically between France and England then we're going to make it part of this larger war in France will support us. colleagues in Congress. This would have to go on to be approved by Congress itself, right? They need votes from representatives from the thirteen colonies, north to south By early July, their draft was ready And they took it to Congress Before the language could be finalized, a vote was set for july second, seventeen seventy six. The vote on july second is are we going to declare independence from England If the answer was no The Declaration of Independence would be stopped in its tracks. There was an incredible amount of debate. The evening before the vote, they took an informal poll And it did not appear it was going to pass Coming up. Midnight ride that saves the Declaration of Independence Hi there. this is Francesca Villich Kennedy. I'm calling in from Brooklyn, New York You're listening to through Line from NPR two The midnight ride On the night of july first, seventeen seventy six, Caesar Rodney received an urgent message, You have to get up here. He was in Delaware, his home state, overseeing some military plans The message said a vote was set to happen in Congress the following day in Philadelphia to decide whether they would declare independence from England And at that moment The two other Delaware delegates were divided on that question. One for, one against Without Caesar Rodney's vote Delaware would be counted as a stalemate. and the vote might fail And Rodney was not a physically, particularly well man. He was described as, quote the oddest looking man in the world tall, thin, and slender as a reed ale. His face is not bigger than a large apple. Severe asthma and a long battle with facial cancer. had left him disfigured and frail But he rides through the night, eighty miles on horseback, Thunder echoing above him, rain pouring down on him Mud everywhere. And he makes it just in the nick of time to vote on july second Still in his riding clothes, Rodney arrives, a scarf wrapped around his scarred face And he cast the deciding vote for independence Legend has it, he said, quote. As I believe the voice of my constituents and of all sensible and honest men is in favor of independence and my own judgment concurs with them I vote for independence So then If the vote happened on july second, why do we commemorate july fourth? What we feel about july fourth? So basically between cond and the fourth, now you have Congress has to approve this language that the Committee of F came up with The vote on the second established yes, they are declaring independence They needed to have the language in that declaration approved by Congress, which wouldn't happen until the fourth after more tweaking And in some cases, a lot more than tweaking. A lot of the language around slavery was taken out The Committee of Fives version had a whole section condemning the King for his role in the slave trade He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him capivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere. or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither For radical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain, determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execribrible commerce, referencing a promise of freedom that was made to enslaved individuals if they were willing leave their enslavers and join up with the British, which did have a very significant impact on how the war played out in certain parts of the colonies That whole thing was did not make up They were not mincing words But many Americans in the colonies were profiting from the slave trade and the industry it propped up So before the Delaration could be approved by enough members of Congress That passage was cut. Now Everybody can debate whether or not You should have made those compromises You can have historans say that was evil. In some ways it was You could also have a story and say, if you didn't do it, you would never have the colonies creating a union Jefferson himself was a slave owner. They knew that the the gap between the words that they were writing and the reality that they were living and that the country was going to be living for the foreseeable future, we're going to be at odds. Jefferson himself wrote that sentence while he's enslaving people Around this time, Jefferson was enslaving close to two hundred people. So yeah, you got a lot of contradictions in there The tellilling incredibly important moral issue But it wasn't the main issue that they had to contend with. Probably the main issue was were we a federation of states or were we one nation Should Congress have equal Book for state should It'd be proportional representation A lot of the thorniest questions remained unanswered problem for another day But on that day, july fourth, seventeen seventy six A revised version of the Committee of Five's Declaration of Independence was approved Now they needed to let the world know about it So july fourth, it goes to printer John Dunlap who prints up two hundred copies. And this is not one of the things about the Declaration of Independence is we think there's that one really pretty copy with the great handwriting that everybody signed That's not the case. the pretty fancy. Nothing fancy. straight up types it The day they write the decclaration, parchment copies go out And they ride from Philadelphia to the southern tip of Manhattan and New York Continental Army headquarters is in New York City at this time. That's where George Washington and his troops are George Washington says, I want the Declaration of Independence to be read aloud to the troops. They're still trying to convince people in the colonies Estimates range, but it's believed that at no time did more than forty five percent of colonists support the war. And around a third of colonists fought for the British. So you got to unify the country, You got to get Europe on our side. And maybe you have to explain to yourselves This isn't just about taxes on tea or a Boston tea party or a problem we're having with pargument over stamp acts or something We now are in a larger mission. We're creating a new type of nation. And this document is telling the troops and the world that new nation is going to be. Everybody has to show up as Washington's colournels begin reading the Declaration out loud The soldiers are taking it in calmly. And then it starts getting into, hey, we're really mad about X, Y and Z which really riles them up A massive riot erupts in lower Manhattan, what is now lower Manhattan that becomes very focused on this huge statue of King George III in Bowling Green In this little tiny park in lower Manhattan. They've got ropes People manag to topple it and tear it down It was guilt over lead, so it wasn't solid goal. And in those days, people weren't interested in the lead because that was used to make ammunition. One of the eventual signers of the Declaration of Independence, Oliver Walcott of Connecticut, who was also serving in the military as an officer. He's like, we need to get this to Connecticut So they get as many chunks of the statue as they can They get it out of Manhattan, they get it across the sound, they get it overland in Connecticut to his backyard in Litchfield And behind Walcott's house Walcott's wife, Laura and his daughter Marianne And people they gathered from the community begin melting down King George's statue into bullets. Wow and Oliver Walcott keeps meticulous records of who did what. and in the end, there were more than forty thousand bullets made from this statue that was toppled in bowling green because George Washington said we need to read this document aloud to the troops and to the people A chunk of those bullets ended up being used And They later referred to those bullets as melted Majesty because they had melted down King George. I mean, talk about talk about heavy handed symbolism, right? The Declaration of Independence leads to This statue being melted down into bullets that would return back That would go right the king's army. Yeah And It's interesting because it gets at something, right that The Dclaration, even then, even within a couple of weeks of it being drafted and approved by Congress begins to take on a life of its own and have an impact. I mean, we were already fighting, right? We already had a standing army. There had already been battles. there had already been death. Yeah. We'd already had naval ships from Britain ravaging our seac coast, as they say It is something else to put in writing, hey, this is who we are, this is what we stand for, and this is what we're not going to stand for anymore By the end of seventeen seventy six, the tide was slowly beginning to turn. Washington and his troops were having more luck on the battlefield But most people in the colonies still had no real sense of who had signed on to this declaration cies that had been passed around were unsigned And in some ways, the anonymity was an obstacle to unity Because how could a farmer in South Carolina or a cobbler in Massachusetts know for sure if their colony was a part of this vision of a new nation coming up. Congress decides to let their constituents and the British crown know exactly who is behind those words Hi, this is Rob from Arlington, Virginia. You're listening to through Line from NPR Three Commments In january seventeen seventy seven, a printer in Baltimore named Mary Catherine Goddard was tasked with printing a new version of the Declaration that features individual colonies and the names of the people who signed on fifty five names in total. if you include Mary's name at the bottom. The first female, postmaster of the United colonies and the only woman to have her name on the Declaration of Independence, Mary Katherine Goddard it's heightened risk for everyone. including her, right. Anyone whose name is public at that point suddenly as potentially a target on their backs if the war goes Frong? Oh yeah. Yeah, if it goes if it goes terribly wrong, that's that's not a name you would want out in the public When you're talking about unity as a concept Like if I'm someone sitting in South Carolina or in Virginia, and I'm just like a regular person seeing my representative there is different than a kind of vague like we're all unified now. Absolutely. So that does seem really significant in terms of selling the idea to the people that we are actually one united That's right, absolutely, one hundred percent. It's not just a handful of guys in Philadelphia who are making this decision. It is representatives from throughout all thirteen colonies including Georgia, including South Carolina. they can look and say, Ohh, Edward Rutlledge is on board with this, you know or, you know, Richard Henry Lee or George Walton from Georgia, you know, who who's off fighting and gets you know, injured in the in the Battle of Savannah. These were guys out there leading troops and representing their colonies melting bullets in their backyard. I mean, they had a real sake in what was going on. They had a personal stake. They were not detached from the ills and the struggles of what was happening The revolutionary war would continue for another six years There were countless battles and moments before and after the Declaration was announced that helped shape the course of the country And yet, it was july fourth that stood out as the pivotal moment when the nation became a nation. We celebrate july fourth. And we started celebrating it pretty soon after the founding. within ten, fifteen years The fourth becomes a holiday. It's a touchstone for what the signers aspired for America to be in a sense. I really particular fans of People who say we were totally conceived and evil and demonizing all the founders or people who are sugarcoating and to canonizing the founders We were humans when we started this country and we are humans now. We can decry the founders from making a compromise that allows South Carolina to sign the Declaration But we can also say as Franklin did, you know, when we were young tradesmen in Philadelphia We had a joint that didn't hold together. You'd take from one side and take from the other And he had a joint that would hold together in centuries. And so too we he plus each part with some of our demands His point was that compromises may not make great heroes But they do make great democracies. It feels like we live in a time where compomromise is a It's a losts It's a lost art and it's partly due to people like you and me in the media. I'm not throwing NPR undero the bus here. But once you get cable news networks where people have to demonize or canonize somebody in a quick soundbite or one hundred and forty character posts You're not encouraging people to say Oh, I kind of see their point and I'm going to change my opinion a little bit And you just get tagged as a waffler or somebody who changes their minds and We're not good at compromise, We're not good at humility But Walter says throughout American history People have returned to the Declaration of Independence and the seconde sentence in particular to find a way through the problems of their time. 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. People die on battlefields in Gettysburg fighting to get closer to a country in which all men All people are equal Four score and seven years ago Our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation. And as Lincoln will say, when he's consecrating their graves, they died trying to make that sentence a little bit more true. We hold these truths to be self evident that all men and women are created equal Whether it's a Seneca Falls Declaration of Women in which they invoke the sentence to say it really should be all men and women A created equal. This nation will rise up Live out the true meaning of its creed Whether it's Dr. Martin Luther King invoking that sentence in his speeches, We hold these chs to be self evident That all men app created it Times and faith meeet at a single time. in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unendnding search. for freedom Whether it's Lyndon Johnson invoking the sentence when he signs a civil rights bill, So it was at Lexington and Concord So it was a century ago at Appleet. So it was last week and sell my Alabama In the late nineteen sixties, you had the assassinations of Kennedys and Kings. And then you had the Vietnam War. You had Watergate, you had the urban riots You had the resignation of a president two hundredth anniversary We rang the liberty bell. The tall ships came into our ports We put aside some of our differences We kind of healed During the bicentennial We all watch the same fireworks. We all ate soggy hot dogs. Um, This is not happening this time around which is a shame Because I started writing this book a year ago And John Meachram started writing American strruggle. and Ken Barnes was doing his documentary Rick Atkins, we're all doing books that maybe if they come out the year of our two hundred fifteth causeed people to rally together Appreciate the spirit of what you're saying, right B it. when you think about the wars that the U. S is waging directly in the case of Iran in the case of Gaza indirectly with weapons. When you think about the state of the economy and The fact that so many people are struggling. When you think about all these layers of very real issues what some might say is a kind of imperial identity that the U.S has taken on Is it enough? to heal through something like the Declaration But do you think our challenges now Are that much worse than the late sixties? I think things are very bad now I'm just saying we've been through this before We went through it in the McCarthy era. We certainly went through it in the Civil War We went through it in the late sixties Can America come together and heal is a good question. As a historian, you say We've certainly done it before somewhat optimistic At some point, a group of political leaders is going to emerge who are going to run on the idea That were're not a red nation or a blue nation that We share more values that we disagree on and that We should all heal and come together Heel and come together feeles like a far cry from where we are right now as a nation And it's hard not to ask a different question What would the founders think of the system in place today where corporations are king and where many feel a sense of injustice about how they fit into that equation Hollowed out a middle class in America. So it's not just the extremes of the politics, it's also people got left behind by an era of globalization. And so we have to be sensitive of why are they picking up their pitchforks Why are they voting for Everybody from Donald Trump to Mom Donny Well, because they're feeling the system didn't work very well and they have some Truth to that. When should you choose to create a new system versus try to reform the old one How do you compromise on matters of life and death There's no easy answers But Walter says for starters, we have to find more ways to connect with each other So one of the things that has held our country together is's a notion of common ground And that's physical at times. You build Boston Con. so people who don't have land, there's a place where they can graze their herds and bury their dead and plant their gardens And John Locke in the second treatise teaches us and he's a Big supportor of private property He says you only can do that if you're enough left in common for others You have to Build a common ground. where everybody feels they become part of the process and that their kids will do better than they did We all go to different entrances in the stadiums now. We have VIP entrances We have divided ourselves far too much And as u John Hancock would tell us Let's see if we can try to hang together instead That's it for this week's show. I'm Randa D Fata throughrough line was created by me and Ramin Aa Blui This episode was produced by me and Casey Minor Devin Katiama Sarah Wyman, Amy Padulla, Kianna Mochateem, Julia Redpath, Skylar Swensen. Lanna Semstrom. Irene Nagucci, Jasmine Romero Thank you to Johannna Sturkey, Matthew Pollock, Cheyne Butler, Yolana Sangwueny, and Tommy Evans Thanks also to Dan O'Neill for his voiceover work Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vokel This episode was mixed by Maggie Luthar Music for this episode was composed by Romin and his band Drop Electric Which includes Navid Marvy, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani And finally, if you have an idea or liked something you heard on the show Please write us at throughline at npr. org. And if you're open to us giving you a call back Leave your number two We might feature your idea in an upcoming episode Also, make sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify or the NPR app. That way, you'll never miss an episode. And while you're there, feel free to leave us a review. Thanks for listening