National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America

0:00 Many of you know me, and I know many of you,

0:02 but for those who don't, my name is Alan Price.

0:04 I am the director of the John F.

0:06 Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

0:10 And on behalf of all my library and foundation colleagues,

0:13 I'm delighted to welcome you all to this evening's forum,

0:16 both in person and online.

0:20 To open, I humbly begin with a land acknowledgement to recognize that the land

0:24 on which we stand and sit was once stewarded by indigenous peoples.

0:29 And this is an institution that preserves history, makes history accessible,

0:33 and challenges all Americans to engage in the civic opportunity and struggle

0:39 of helping the nation grow ever closer to the noblest ideals of its founding.

0:44 And in accordance with that mission,

0:46 I invite all of us to learn more about and learn more from our nation's history,

0:51 including indigenous history,

0:54 and contemplate how to honor and steward the land that each of us inhabits.

0:59 This evening's program is presented as part of the Kennedy Library Forum series,

1:04 and I'd like to acknowledge the generous support

1:07 of our underwriters for the Kennedy Library Forums,

1:10 lead sponsors Bank of America and the Lowell Institute,

1:14 as well as the Mass Cultural Council.

1:16 We thank all of you for silencing

1:19 any electronic devices that like to make noises.

1:23 And we look forward to a robust question and answer period this evening.

1:27 If you are joining us online,

1:29 you'll see full instructions on screen for submitting your questions

1:33 via email or comments on the YouTube page during the program,

1:39 and when Q&A begins,

1:40 we will invite those of you who are here in person

1:43 to proceed to the microphones in the aisles uh to ask your questions.

1:49 And please actually make them questions.

1:52 It works so much better.

1:54 Uh Michael Auslin has kindly agreed to sign

1:56 copies of his book following tonight's program.

1:59 Our bookstore has copies available for sale if you are interested.

2:05 As America's 250th anniversary approaches,

2:07 we are thrilled to have this opportunity to explore the remarkable

2:11 story of the Declaration of Independence with our distinguished guests.

2:16 I'm so glad to welcome Michael Auslin to the Kennedy Library this evening.

2:20 He is the Payson J.

2:21 Treat Distinguished Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

2:27 Prior to that, he was an associate professor of history at Yale.

2:31 He wrote his new book, National Treasure:

2:34 How the Declaration of Independence Made America,

2:37 as a distinguished visiting scholar at the Library of Congress's John W.

2:42 Kluge Center and an American Heritage Partners Fellow

2:45 at the Society of the Cincinnati's American Revolution Institute.

2:50 He writes a Substack, The Potomac Packet, on Washington D.C.

2:55 past and present.

2:57 I'm also delighted to welcome Arun Rath, our moderator for this evening.

3:01 He has worked and produced for a variety

3:03 of programs for GBH for more than 20 years.

3:07 In a career that has spanned public radio

3:09 and television and national work for NPR and PBS,

3:14 Rath currently hosts the local broadcast of GBH's All Things Considered and was

3:19 named Best Radio Personality in Boston for his work hosting In It Together,

3:25 a radio show and podcast that broadcast

3:28 nightly during the height of the pandemic.

3:31 Please join me in welcoming our special guests.

3:36 [applause] Thank you.

3:41 [applause] Thank you.

3:45 I am so delighted to uh to be here.

3:48 I love this book.

3:50 Thank you.

3:51 Uh it was just a delight to read.

3:54 Um Um, just in in in every aspect.

3:57 Um, I one of the things that that's so

4:00 fascinating and makes this such a a page turner

4:03 is that it it's both a a physical history

4:06 of this document going down to the the printing,

4:09 the distribution, how it physically came together,

4:12 but also I would call it kind of a metaphysical history as well.

4:15 The the the ideas and concepts that went

4:17 into its creation and its continuing and evolving

4:20 life in in the world of ideas in the world of ideas of of our nation.

4:24 So, in this conversation,

4:26 I'd like to toggle back and forth between the physics and the metaphysics of it

4:30 all and start with the metaphysics because it was a concept first and talk

4:35 about the ideas that were percolating at the time

4:37 when Jefferson put pen to to paper

4:40 because uh this was not uh the Declaration was not full of original ideas,

4:47 but from reading your book, I understand that was very much it was intended

4:51 not to be an original document in that way.

4:54 Right.

4:54 Arun, first thank you for for joining me here.

4:58 Alan and Liz and the the team at at the JFK Library.

5:02 It's it's such an honor to be here to to launch the book here.

5:06 Uh I worked a lot with National Archives and so

5:09 to come to a a NARA facility and NARA group,

5:13 uh but of course also the cradle of the revolution, right?

5:15 If you're going to write a book

5:16 on the Declaration and its its impact on American history,

5:20 where else do you want to launch it uh but in Boston?

5:23 So, it's it's a great honor to be here and thank you to all

5:26 of you for coming uh this evening to to join me uh to talk about this.

5:30 Um, one word that I never thought about while writing the book was metaphysics.

5:35 Uh, but that says more about me than than it does about the question.

5:40 Uh, but but it you're right in in that sense.

5:44 Um, what I found most interesting was actually the idea

5:48 of the idea of the Declaration was almost not at all what we

5:52 think of today in the sense of of and and why I

5:55 wanted to write the book that this to me was a treasure

5:58 and it was an icon and it was a a guiding

6:01 light or as as I I really think it's a beautiful way

6:04 of putting it as President Ford put it 50 years ago

6:07 at the bicentennial he called it the Polaris of our political system.

6:11 Um it's unchanging.

6:13 Um to Jefferson and the Committee of Five that foisted upon him the job

6:19 of writing the Declaration this was an administrative task that had to be done.

6:24 The really important thing had happened two days before on July

6:28 2nd which is when the Continental Congress voted for independence.

6:32 Now nobody outside of the Continental Congress

6:35 really knew that that had happened and hence

6:37 you needed to tell these Americans who were losing the war at that point

6:42 in time in the summer of '76 they were losing the war you needed

6:46 to tell them that they were part of a new country whatever that meant.

6:50 No one had made a country.

6:51 Countries were or were not but no one had made one.

6:54 So you had to tell them they were part of a new country.

6:57 Uh you had as John Adams later much later

6:59 in life said maybe only a third of American British

7:04 Americans supported independence a third were opposed and in good

7:07 American fashion a third had no opinion whatsoever right?

7:11 So you had to now try to get them on board get them on side.

7:15 You needed to them what was happening.

7:19 And very critically and crucially you had to tell the world because without

7:24 the support particularly France and Spain um we were going to lose this war.

7:29 We needed material support.

7:30 So the Declaration it wasn't an afterthought but they

7:33 were doing lots of other things and there were

7:35 other committees that were trying to come up

7:37 with model treaties and come up with articles of Confederation.

7:40 And so when Jefferson sits down in June,

7:43 the the probably did it over about 10 days in June of 1776,

7:48 Congress goes on recess because they they want to get unanimity in the vote.

7:53 They know John Adams, who's the real force behind this.

7:56 Again, John Adams happy to talk about him here in Boston.

7:59 John Adams, the Atlas of Independence.

8:02 Uh he knows and they know that they're going to get a majority vote.

8:06 But they need a unanimous vote of the 13 colonies.

8:10 And so you had to go on a recess for 3 weeks and in that period to prepare,

8:15 they task the Committee of Five,

8:17 which John Adams is on along with Franklin, uh Ben Franklin, Robert Livingston,

8:21 and Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and they give the pen to Jefferson.

8:27 So he has to come up with this statement.

8:28 Now he had been thinking about things like

8:30 this because he had started drafting a constitution for Virginia,

8:34 uh which had what are the charges in the middle that nobody reads today.

8:38 He had started with those.

8:39 So he puts those in.

8:41 Um he had read George Mason's Virginia Bill of Rights,

8:44 uh which had just come out.

8:46 And he reworked some of it and puts that in in the beginning,

8:49 all men are created equal with life,

8:51 liberty, and and property {slash} pursuit of happiness.

8:54 Um he comes up with a few references to God,

8:56 not as many as Congress ultimately puts in.

8:59 Um but as you indicate, he very clearly uh later expresses,

9:04 we don't know exactly what he thought at the time,

9:07 he didn't want to say anything new.

9:09 If you said something new, you could have thrown a, you know,

9:12 a a wrench into the whole plans.

9:15 People would have started debating what was new.

9:17 Rather, what he tried to do, as he put it later,

9:20 was was making an expression of the American mind.

9:23 That these were things that colonists had been arguing for a decade.

9:27 Comes from things like the the Boston 1772 pamphlet here,

9:32 uh which expresses again life, liberty,

9:34 uh the pursuit of happiness {slash} property, and rights.

9:38 It comes from his own writings on the rights of British North America.

9:43 Um it obviously is coming from enlightenment thought, John Locke,

9:47 which itself is interpreting biblical concepts of natural right.

9:52 These were things that Americans had been debating for a long time,

9:54 and Pauline Maier, in her wonderful 1997 book American Scripture,

10:00 finds about 90 American declarations of independence of one

10:05 sort or another in the lead-up to July.

10:08 So, the metaphysics are something that were they were not abstract.

10:13 They were in fact the the the very

10:16 things that Americans had been debating and talking about.

10:20 And now that they were in the war and losing that war,

10:24 they became operative, so to speak.

10:26 And and that I think is is where that bridge

10:28 comes from, the experience uh really again from here in Boston,

10:32 from uh the uh the Intolerable Acts, the Tea Party,

10:36 the responses, the shutting down of the colony to 1776.

10:41 It it was wild it hit me when I was reading this that uh

10:43 Thomas Jefferson and at this time is unlike the other bigger figures,

10:48 Benjamin Franklin, the Adamses, he's not yet not yet Thomas Jefferson, really.

10:54 And uh the way he gets assigned this is basically well,

10:57 he's got time to and Jefferson likes to write.

11:00 Yeah, very much.

11:01 I mean, he was it was rumored that he never spoken in Congress.

11:04 He he'd come there.

11:06 The truth is, he didn't want to be in Congress.

11:08 He wanted to be back home in Williamsburg,

11:10 and he wanted to be writing a constitution for Virginia.

11:13 That's what he really wanted to do.

11:14 He missed two constitutions.

11:16 He missed the Virginia constitution, which back then, don't forget,

11:19 everyone knew that these were going to be

11:21 13 sovereign states in some sort of umbrella.

11:26 So, what really was important was not a federal

11:28 government that no one had any real concept of.

11:30 It was going to be the states with their constitutions running their societies.

11:35 He wanted to be there.

11:36 And then of course the second constitution he missed

11:38 was the US Constitution because he was in France.

11:41 So he was disappointed in not being able to be a constitution writer.

11:45 But of course by the end of his life one of the three things

11:48 he asked to be put on his tombstone

11:50 is author of the Declaration of Independence.

11:53 He knew by the end that it was the Declaration

11:56 that had really you know that really would be his legacy.

11:59 And fascinating thing also watching the life of a document

12:02 as the nation grew and and all of them looking back

12:06 on it in in retrospect where there I mean there's sort

12:08 of a Rashomon quality to all of their their retellings of it.

12:12 There there there's some areas where it's fascinating we don't know anything

12:15 other areas where there are multiple

12:18 conflicting tellings even by the same person.

12:21 Exactly and I'm really embarrassed you know having done 30

12:23 years of Asia studies US and Asia with a specialty

12:27 in Japan I never thought of the Rashomon explanation

12:30 for this would have been perfect in the book.

12:32 Second edition.

12:34 Um Yes, so when you get to the arguments that happened

12:39 later in life everyone's retired they now have time to argue.

12:43 Um they are all remembering things slightly differently

12:46 and and one of the the big ones is that Jefferson this is one where they

12:51 agree upon actually Jefferson Adams Franklin and a few

12:54 others Benjamin Rush and others all write later that we we adopted and wrote out

13:01 and signed the document on July 4th

13:03 the one that you see in the National Archives.

13:05 And clearly that's not the case.

13:07 It it it didn't happen until much later in the summer

13:09 until August and then it took months to get the signatures on.

13:13 Uh but they all they all misremember things that had happened

13:17 and then of course in a I guess today we would

13:21 call it sort of wonderful way probably wasn't wonderful back then

13:23 for them but Adams and Jefferson get into a real indirect hustle.

13:27 They don't they don't directly communicate,

13:29 but they're each communicating with partisans on their side

13:32 over who really is responsible for the declaration.

13:35 And Adams, in his somewhat acerbic way, you know,

13:39 dismisses Jefferson and says there's nothing

13:41 in this that's new that hadn't been hackneyed about.

13:44 But Jefferson responds in a letter to James Madison saying he's right.

13:47 And again, that goes back to that original it wasn't meant to be new.

13:52 But what I find interesting about this is this is happening in the 1820s.

13:57 So the Federalist era is over.

13:59 Jefferson's presidency is over.

14:01 The Federalist Party is gone.

14:02 You know, we're in a we're in a new generation.

14:04 We're past 1812, the war and the the second American Revolution.

14:10 And it's after that war that the declaration really reemerges.

14:14 It had largely been forgotten for 50 years.

14:17 And it now takes on a new and and somewhat totemic importance both because

14:23 the physical document survives the burning of Washington

14:26 just by the by the, you know, the skin of its teeth.

14:29 Less than 24 hours it escapes Washington being burned.

14:33 And as that story gets out, it just attracts attention,

14:35 by the way, to a document that most Americans didn't know existed.

14:39 They'd never seen the engrossed parchment,

14:42 you know, the one that everyone signed.

14:44 That that was a state paper kept rolled up in the State Department library.

14:47 They didn't even know it existed until they found out that it had survived.

14:51 And then they said, "What survived?" Oh, there's this document.

14:54 So it becomes an object of interest.

14:56 And then secondly, it's the idea that America,

14:58 for the second time in a generation or so,

15:01 had defeated the greatest power on earth and really was a going concern.

15:05 It was viable country now, right?

15:07 And so that gives to the founding document a new life.

15:11 And so when Jefferson and Adams are arguing it all over it in the 1820s,

15:16 it might be an argument from 1776, but the resonance is because this is becoming

15:23 the national treasure in the minds of Americans.

15:26 Well, it's fascinating during that same 50 years as as you

15:29 you write about while it's maybe forgotten in America,

15:32 it's already having a massive influence in other places.

15:35 There's this amazing point in in the book where you list out all the former

15:39 colonies across the Americas that have their own

15:42 declarations that are inspired directly by this.

15:45 Yeah, I hope you won't ask me to list them cuz I can't I can't remember.

15:48 It's like, you know, what are the what are the the amendments?

15:50 Um But yes, so the first one of course that that's influenced is

15:54 the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789.

15:59 Uh again, Jefferson is in Paris.

16:01 He is communicating with uh the Marquis de Lafayette

16:05 who is in in essentially in charge of the process

16:07 of coming up with the declaration trying to bridge

16:10 uh the king and the nobles and and the people.

16:14 Um and he does actually doesn't like what Lafayette comes up with.

16:18 There are parts of it that he thinks get away from, quite frankly,

16:21 the metaphysics, the the the the more uh defendable concepts of uh property,

16:28 uh of actually happiness, and and what shouldn't be in there certain

16:31 things like what are what is actually inalienable.

16:33 And he says, "No, property is alienable.

16:36 I mean, you know, I can give property to someone,

16:38 but I can't give my rights to someone." And so

16:39 if you put property in, you're you're muddying the waters.

16:43 And it's very funny because um I think it was Dumas Malone,

16:46 uh the great Jefferson biographer,

16:47 noted his great biography in the in the the '40s that in America,

16:52 Jefferson's considered a radical, and in Europe, he's considered a conservative.

16:56 You know, he sort of falls between the stools because he's telling Lafayette,

16:59 "Don't go so far." And in fact,

17:01 when you look at a lot of these other declarations,

17:04 uh the ones in Europe and and the ones in Latin America,

17:07 they are declarations of independence.

17:08 They they they reson- they have a resonance with ours,

17:12 but a lot of them are more radical.

17:14 They they do follow more the French model than the American model,

17:17 but there is no question that especially the early

17:21 Latin American declarations are are looking to America.

17:26 They are looking How do you make clear that you are now independent?

17:30 What very few of them have, again, is the philosophy that our declaration has.

17:36 It doesn't They They don't have

17:38 the preamble and they don't have the conclusions.

17:41 But of course when Jefferson wrote that, those were

17:43 not the parts of people paid attention to, right?

17:45 They paid attention to the to the charges.

17:47 These were all lawyers and legal thinking and the charges explain

17:51 why this is the right thing to do at the time.

17:54 Um the preamble only becomes powerful much

17:57 later on, in particular with Abraham Lincoln.

18:01 The In terms of the physical object,

18:03 I mean there were there were multiple physical objects,

18:05 but the the the big one that we we talk about uh there

18:10 was a a kind of a mythologizing almost from the beginning of it,

18:12 but also uh a secrecy which I was not aware

18:16 of that that um the document didn't really wasn't really made public.

18:21 That physical document.

18:22 Yeah.

18:22 The printings of it obviously were out uh and until decades later.

18:27 Uh but but could you explain that a little bit because there's

18:29 a context of secrecy in revolutionary document keeping that I was not aware of?

18:35 Well, I mean from one perspective it's treason.

18:38 And so everything that Congress was doing was secret.

18:40 In fact, they had to sign secrecy pledges.

18:42 And you go if the National Archives,

18:44 the one in Washington, has just opened a wonderful exhibit.

18:47 Uh it's called Free and Independent.

18:49 I highly encourage you to be able to go and see it.

18:52 They have an original Dunlap printing.

18:53 Those were the printings done on July 4th

18:56 in Philadelphia and then spread throughout the colonies.

18:58 They have a wonderful set of documents and uh lives of the signers

19:03 and then how Americans have thought about the Declaration uh you know,

19:06 for the the past 250 years.

19:08 It's just a wonderful collection.

19:10 One of those is the secrecy document that that members of Congress had to sign,

19:14 which is why there were different journals kept.

19:17 There was a a sort of an open public journal.

19:20 There was a secret journal.

19:22 The public journals were published starting in 1777.

19:26 The secret journals were not published until 1823.

19:29 And even in the secret journals, what was not kept were the debates themselves.

19:34 And for a historian, it's it's you know, it's heartbreaking.

19:37 We don't really know what people were arguing at the time.

19:41 We know what they did because they would write

19:43 we did X and Y and we kept it secret.

19:46 But we don't know who said what.

19:47 So, for example, probably the biggest one, the actual vote for independence,

19:51 the only record we have is Thomas Jefferson's

19:54 private contemporary notes from the from the time.

19:58 And he we assume he was a faithful note-taker,

20:01 but it's the only thing we have to go on.

20:03 So, we really don't know who said what.

20:05 Similarly, we have absolutely no documentation

20:09 over any debates over the declaration itself.

20:13 Who was in favor, who was opposed, or even more crucially for those who want

20:17 to go through how the document evolved, the editing.

20:20 And it it was very heavily edited.

20:22 We know what was taken out because Thomas Jefferson wrote his draft

20:27 and then because he was so upset at what Congress did,

20:29 wrote multiple copies of his draft to send to people.

20:32 And then one of the most important documents we have,

20:35 in fact, is here in the Massachusetts Historical Society.

20:38 It's John Adams' handwritten copy of Jefferson's draft

20:42 that was done at a very early stage, probably the earliest stage.

20:46 So, when you read John Adams' copy,

20:48 it is as close as we can get to what Jefferson originally wrote.

20:53 And all of that was kept secret.

20:54 As you note, the document was kept secret and really something I didn't

20:58 know or certainly didn't think of until I got into doing the book,

21:02 until January of 1777, Americans did not know who had signed the document

21:08 except for John Hancock because what was printed what are

21:11 called broadsides these Dunlap broadsides had only the names

21:16 of John Hancock and Charles Thompson who was the secretary

21:19 of Congress and so when they were picked up

21:22 by local presses a lot of them by the way

21:24 printed here in Massachusetts Salem Essex other places were

21:27 were printing them um they would print the same thing.

21:32 Only in January 1777 after we had

21:35 won a few crucial victories Trenton and Princeton

21:38 George Washington did Congress decide it was time to let Americans and the world

21:43 know who had signed the document so Congress then is in Baltimore and they

21:48 give it to Mary Katherine Goddard who is the postmaster of the city.

21:52 She's also a printer from a very well-known printing family

21:56 and she prints out what's known as the Goddard broadside that has

21:59 all of the names and this is the first time

22:02 that Americans and the world knows who actually signed the document.

22:05 You know people may have known who was in Congress but not

22:07 everyone in Congress signed the document so that's the first time.

22:11 As I mentioned the secret journal isn't released until the 1820s

22:16 and so it's piece by piece that Americans are learning about the history

22:20 of the fundamental document in many cases they just took for granted it

22:25 was just sort of there and over time it becomes a more complicated story.

22:29 And and especially interesting in that first 100 150

22:32 years that that afterwards because what you're talking about is

22:37 really tracing modern mass media the the the the as uh

22:42 be called like you know art in the age

22:44 of mechanical reproduction and and and the the the printing

22:48 and engraving America was just lousy with printers and engravers

22:52 at at that time producing these are actual works

22:54 of art like the stone engraving they're genuine works of art.

22:59 Yeah that was one of my favorite parts of the book to do was to look

23:03 at the material culture of of the uh

23:07 well first of the the parchment, why it survived.

23:09 And that was really where I wanted to start the book with.

23:11 I just wanted to do a quick book on why is the parchment still there?

23:14 Why can I, you know, take my son to go see it?

23:16 But it it quickly expanded and I talk about three declarations in the book.

23:20 The first is the relic that sits in the National Archives and the incredible

23:23 adventure story of its survival and the incredible

23:26 story of trying to preserve it, keep it from the hand of time.

23:29 That's the first one.

23:30 The second one is is where you started, the metaphysics.

23:33 I call it that the but the symbol, should have called it that, but the symbol,

23:37 uh how it became the great expression of Americanism,

23:41 of the American ideal that all groups could

23:44 now become part of it and appeal to it.

23:45 That to me is the greatness and the capaciousness of the document.

23:49 And then the third declaration is what you've just talked about.

23:51 It's this it's this cultural object and starting in the late teens,

23:57 uh you get these these reprodu- these artistic reproductions

24:00 and these facsimiles that um begin spreading the document around to Americans.

24:06 And it is to me a a perfect marriage of civics and commerce.

24:10 That the the ones who did it explicitly were out to make money,

24:15 but they also explicitly said, "This is your charter of liberty.

24:19 You should have this on the wall to remind you and your children

24:23 of where your freedoms come from." Uh and they they um initially these were

24:29 not What they did is they copied

24:31 the signatures initially and everyone got really

24:33 fascinated with the signatures and then got

24:35 fascinated with the lives of the signers.

24:37 But the text itself, that iconic text, they they just sort of did artistically.

24:42 And you mentioned the Stone and that again,

24:45 uh another crucial Bostonian and Massachusettsian,

24:48 John Quincy Adams, when Secretary of State and his father's still alive,

24:53 commissions a faithful, exact reproduction facsimile, not an artistic one,

24:59 because less than 50 years after the signing,

25:02 the document is already decaying and degrading and falling apart.

25:06 And he knows there's no way to save it,

25:08 but what you can do is in essence take a snapshot of it.

25:12 And so it's engraved over a period of 3 years, and whenever you go and you see

25:15 one of those beautiful engravings of the Declaration,

25:19 or you buy it for your children, the crinkly ones, remember?

25:21 Well, I got the crinkly ones on the wall.

25:23 Um I usually have one in my talks.

25:25 Pull it out at this point.

25:25 I I showed it.

25:27 I forgot it back at home.

25:28 I'm sorry, but the crinkly ones, um those all come from the stone.

25:33 Without the stone, we really would not have

25:35 a good sense of what the document really looked like.

25:38 We'd have, you know, sort of a phantom-esque document,

25:41 because even by the time they hung it

25:42 up in the patent office in Washington in 1841,

25:46 it was already fairly well degraded, not as much as today.

25:50 Um and and so it is circulated as a commoditized, um part of American culture,

25:58 uh but it is it a when you see some of these, they are faithful and artistic.

26:02 Um John Adams, I have to mention the the the the second one to come out,

26:07 but the first one to be conceived of is called the Binns facsimile, John Binns.

26:12 And he came up with one that was really complicated and complex

26:15 with with cartouches of of of signers and and other uh famous Americans.

26:21 I'll get to that in a second.

26:22 manuscript kind of like

26:23 it it it it Yeah, it was it was incredibly complex,

26:25 and he got beaten to market by someone else cuz he made it so complex.

26:28 But, he um he finishes his, and he sends it off.

26:32 This is 1819, and he sends it off to famous Americans,

26:36 uh Thomas Jefferson's one and some others.

26:39 He sends it to John Adams.

26:40 John Adams wonderfully returns it to him saying, "Thank you, but uh don't worry,

26:45 I don't need it, and please don't bother sending

26:47 another." And the reason is because at the top,

26:51 in the three central cartouches are Washington

26:55 who had nothing to do with the declaration,

26:56 George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Hancock.

27:00 And so Adams is rightfully a bit peeved

27:04 that he's not included and sends this thing back,

27:06 but it also shows the level to which

27:09 the document was becoming this icon in the minds

27:13 of Americans and and Adams was rightfully

27:16 upset that you can understand why Washington's there, but he's out fighting.

27:20 He had nothing to do with, you know, passing independence the way Adams did.

27:24 Um and so these these are um continuously reproduced throughout

27:29 the 19th century and I trace a lot of them.

27:31 Uh there is one recent book that came out, but nothing else on these.

27:35 Um and by the turn of the 20th century there were something like well over 100,

27:40 I think 110 or so different artistic envisionings of the declaration.

27:46 And I have some of them in the book and and some uh pictures of a few of them.

27:50 One it's just so fascinating how inventive they were.

27:53 They varied the script of the declaration between very thin writing and thick

27:57 writing and did it so that it is a picture of George Washington.

28:01 When you look at it, it's like a pointillist, right?

28:03 You look at it and it's George Washington from afar and if you get really close,

28:07 it's the declaration.

28:08 So this was very very much part of our artistic

28:12 heritage um and and our civics heritage going through

28:16 the 19th century and into the 20th century when

28:19 finally the Stone becomes the sort of iconic accepted reproduction.

28:25 You write about how there are so many gaps in in in what

28:28 we don't know about the the drafting of the declaration,

28:32 uh but also the this one that we we have a rough draft.

28:36 Uh which is it's like having a rough draft of the Nicene Creed

28:39 or like having a rough draft of the Nicene Creed which condemns slavery

28:44 [laughter] and it at the it's Can you talk about

28:45 that and how the afterlife of the rough draft?

28:50 Yes.

28:50 Um so the rough draft, uh Jefferson gets the pen.

28:55 He writes this up in probably about 10 days.

28:58 I was just looking at his his journal books.

29:00 Uh he doesn't keep a diary, but he keeps a journal book.

29:02 Tells what he does every day.

29:04 You know, he's buying socks and knives and going out and dining.

29:07 And then there's this silent period uh right when we know

29:11 he gets the commission and and then he picks up again.

29:13 So I think we've pretty well identified

29:15 the period in which he's he's writing this.

29:17 Um and he gives it to the committee of five.

29:21 Um Ben Franklin has the gout, so he's not really involved,

29:24 but he then sends him a separate copy and says,

29:25 "Tell me what you think." The committee does stuff to it.

29:29 We don't really know what happens, but late again cuz nobody's keeping notes,

29:33 but later in life Jefferson, he's tracking the changes on his rough draft.

29:39 And later in life he annotates it.

29:41 And he says, "Ah, this was Dr.

29:42 Franklin." So for example, in the first line,

29:45 he originally writes, "When in the course of human events,

29:48 it becomes necessary for a people to so and so forth." Franklin,

29:53 he indicates changes that to one people, which I think is a critical change.

29:57 That's that to me is the beginning

29:59 of the document becoming our great statement of unity.

30:03 It's the unity document.

30:04 Um but he goes through others.

30:05 He says, you know, Adams, Franklin, Adams.

30:07 He doesn't really mention the other two members

30:08 of the committee don't seem to be very well involved.

30:11 Then uh around June 28th, he writes out what he calls the fair copy.

30:16 That means just a clean copy.

30:18 And he brings that to Congress.

30:20 That's what Congress debates.

30:22 As far as we know, they didn't make any other copies.

30:25 Um there's been some arguments as that we've never found evidence.

30:27 So there's one copy, clean copy, that Congress debates.

30:32 Then they vote Independence July 2nd, July 3rd and 4th they edit it.

30:36 And they edit it a lot.

30:37 Now, shockingly, as most commentators have noted,

30:41 this was one of the few times that a massive committee did a good editing job.

30:47 That they actually made it better.

30:48 What we read today is better than what Jefferson wrote.

30:52 Um, but it also is very different.

30:54 And the you you referenced it.

30:57 To him, the really he called

30:58 these mutilations and depredations against the document,

31:01 but the one that really uh,

31:04 got his goat was the taking out of the condemnation of the slave trade.

31:08 Uh, and it was a it was the longest paragraph.

31:10 It was a passionate paragraph that condemned the slave trade,

31:14 and that was the first compromise.

31:16 It was the first deal with the devil to get the new nation started.

31:20 And it was both southern interests and northern interests that really it

31:25 was sort of the middle states that, you know, were happy with it.

31:29 But the northern mercantile interests were less happy,

31:31 and of course the southern slaveholding interests.

31:33 Now, this isn't the plantation economy yet.

31:35 That's, you know, that's later.

31:36 That's 19th century.

31:37 We think of you know, you think of the full sort of terrace style plantation.

31:41 You know, this is Tidewater, Virginia.

31:42 This is tobacco.

31:43 It's rice.

31:44 It's indigo.

31:45 It's a little bit of cotton,

31:46 but it that that is still a a mainstay of the southern economy.

31:51 Um, so for Jefferson, this taking out,

31:53 and he ruminates on this even as he is, of course, a slaveholder.

31:57 He is ruminating on this the rest of his life talking about uh,

32:01 the the fact that they cannot square this circle.

32:05 And this is the sleeping serpent that he fears for the future of the country.

32:09 Um, and that that this was, you know,

32:12 in many ways in terms of what the document was, it was his great regret.

32:17 Um, and then of course there's the infamous

32:19 compromise with the Constitution that that allows

32:22 the slave trade to be prohibited after 1808

32:25 should Congress decide to do that, which it does.

32:28 Uh, but this is the first compromise.

32:29 So, he keeps this this uh, rough draft.

32:33 Uh, and as I said, he's very upset with what Congress did.

32:35 So, he writes out about five to six other copies, spreads them around.

32:38 But, if you're in Washington this summer,

32:41 his rough draft with his edits will be going on display

32:45 at the Library of Congress starting in July, maybe June, July.

32:49 First time as far as I know it's been seen in 50 years.

32:53 Um and it was the one thing, by the way,

32:54 I had a wonderful fellowship at the library to do the book, finish the book.

32:58 They showed me everything I wanted except that.

33:01 That's the number That's That's the number one of all things.

33:04 They just said, "That one getting ready." So, you will have a very rare chance

33:07 to go down to Washington and see Jefferson's handwritten,

33:12 hand-edited rough draft.

33:14 Um and and it is interesting.

33:16 I mean, if you really get into it,

33:17 tracing the way that some of the charges were condensed and softened.

33:21 Um there's an ad hominem attack on the British people that's also taken out.

33:25 Um it it it is a better document.

33:28 Um but, in some ways it lacks the passion.

33:31 Hm?

33:32 Not as mean to the king.

33:34 I No, you know, the king still comes off pretty badly in the document.

33:37 Uh I would say.

33:38 And And it's interesting cuz John Adams himself

33:40 says he never thought of George as a tyrant.

33:43 He said he he thought that the term was too much.

33:46 And again, it's Jefferson's, you know,

33:47 he's emotional and he's he's he it is expressed emotionally.

33:51 And these two committees,

33:52 the five and then the Congress as a whole, really do him credit.

33:57 Uh you know, again, and by the end of his life he wants it on his tombstone.

33:59 I think he recognizes that the editing was the right thing to do.

34:06 It It's interesting you talk about that that one

34:08 crucial edit turning this from a into a unity

34:11 document as opposed to a separation that were

34:13 separate from We're all separate from England.

34:17 Uh And how again, the course of the evolution of the ideas

34:21 and people approaching this um going through to the Civil War where where

34:26 it it's easy to understand how it's to see how Abraham Lincoln

34:29 would would turn to the Declaration

34:30 for inspiration about keeping the union together,

34:34 but the Confederate leaders turned to it

34:36 for inspiration because the because of that separation part,

34:40 because you need the consent of the governed.

34:43 Yeah, it's it's which I again did not wasn't aware

34:46 of and and I find it part of the power of the document.

34:52 That it could appeal in in so many different ways.

34:56 Um to back up for just just a second.

34:59 Normally I would say normally the way

35:02 that the document is is interpreted or parsed,

35:06 you know, by scholars is there are two competing claims.

35:10 One is the equality claim, all men are created equal,

35:14 and then there's the liberty claim,

35:15 partly consent of the governed and partly we have a right

35:17 to to do all these things as an independent nation.

35:20 Um I think for Jefferson and the signers they were

35:23 both sides of the same coin and they would have said,

35:26 you can't have liberty if some are unequal, then it's not really liberty.

35:30 Um and for them they didn't really see a contradiction,

35:34 but they've they've sort of gone through periods,

35:36 you know, the the equality and liberty claims.

35:40 And I think especially Lincoln casts it in in a he's casting it in both,

35:46 but the rhetoric he uses is really about the equality claim,

35:49 you know, and he's saying, we can't we're not Americans,

35:52 we're not America if we're not living up to the equality claim.

35:55 But I think particularly for us since the civil rights movement,

35:58 we've thought of it in terms of the equality argument probably

36:01 a little bit more than the liberty argument, but you're right,

36:03 at other points in time this liberty argument was

36:08 was really and I think for the first 50

36:10 years it was probably more of a liberty argument

36:12 when if people referenced it they would just say,

36:13 well, this is what made us free.

36:16 It's a liberty argument.

36:17 Um when the crisis comes, the Confederate the Confederate leaders do pull

36:26 up the consent of the governed claim.

36:28 Uh and they are not wrong to do so

36:31 in the sense of what had been the understanding of the document.

36:35 Uh and in fact northern newspapers,

36:36 and I quote at least one of them in the book, also agree with this.

36:39 And they say, "Well, the South is right.

36:41 If it's not consent of the governed,

36:43 which is one of the core maybe the core claim in the declaration,

36:48 what else can it be?

36:49 So, they have a right to leave, but they must do it peacefully." Right?

36:52 So, there's the nub is it's not a peaceful

36:54 It's not a peaceful separation and and and so,

36:57 you know, Lincoln is obviously able to um deny those claims.

37:02 Um and by the end of the war, you know,

37:05 and it is it is a tragedy from from that perspective.

37:08 Their understanding of the document had been refuted.

37:12 Uh and they would have the in the South would have

37:14 to come to a new understanding of the document because the one

37:19 that they had based their rebellion on and their their understanding

37:24 of their rights as Americans had been denied in in bloody conflict.

37:29 For Lincoln, of course, he is championing the idea of unity, right?

37:35 It's union, you know, you go back to Daniel Webster's famous liberty

37:39 and union now and forever one and indivisible.

37:43 Um to to paraphrase.

37:45 But it's really Lincoln who brings this into the mainstream

37:49 as a political philosophy and a political movement.

37:52 Um and forever since is how we have understood the what he

37:57 makes them and calls them eternal and universal claims of the document.

38:02 Now, he's building on abolitionists, black and white.

38:05 He's building on David Walker.

38:06 He's building on Frederick Douglass.

38:09 Um he's building on others.

38:11 Uh but he is the one who actually makes it the political philosophy.

38:16 And he's doing this in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of of 1854,

38:21 which basically said, "Well, if the people vote for slavery,

38:23 then slavery's okay." That's Stephen Douglas.

38:25 I'm from Illinois, so we've got two Illinoisans fighting it out.

38:28 And Stephen Douglas is saying, "Well, that's fine,

38:30 you know, then that's consent of the governed.

38:32 If they want slavery, they can have it." And of course,

38:34 the Dred Scott case in the Supreme Court,

38:37 uh which which for the first time essentially said,

38:41 "Black Americans are not have no rights,

38:44 are not Americans." So, um and and Lincoln says,

38:48 "These are mutilations of our declaration and the Constitution." But for him,

38:54 it's the spirit, what he calls the apple of gold,

38:57 that is the declaration, that animates everything.

39:00 And it's it's you know, it's starting back it's it's starting in the 1830s,

39:03 but really energized with those two decisions in the 18 1850s.

39:08 And as he says in Philadelphia on the way to Washington for his inauguration,

39:12 he stops at Independence Hall.

39:14 He's talking about the declaration, says,

39:15 "I've never had a thought that didn't emanate from the declaration." He says,

39:18 "And I would rather be assassinated than

39:21 give up those principles." And then he was.

39:25 It's uh interesting how uh during the Civil War and and you you

39:30 tell this part of the story as as well that this the debate over,

39:34 you know, who owns the Declaration of Independence

39:37 is literal as well as a figure figurative debate where where there's concern

39:41 about the the Confederates stealing it, right?

39:44 Yeah, well, Washington's a front-row city, a front-line city.

39:48 All right, across the river is Virginia.

39:49 And as soon as Virginia goes over,

39:51 it doesn't go over with the first six to secede,

39:54 but as soon as Virginia goes over, um Washington becomes a front-line city,

39:58 and it is paralyzed with fear that it will be invaded.

40:03 And the newspapers, many of which I quote, over and over are are you know,

40:08 repeating Confederate news stories and repeating stories about spies.

40:12 It's a sympathizer city.

40:13 It is a southern city.

40:15 And it's in between two southern states, one in the Union,

40:18 basically forced to stay in the Union, Maryland, and Virginia.

40:22 It is filled with sympathizers.

40:24 Uh it's filled with spies.

40:26 And the declaration's just hanging up in the uh

40:28 in in the uh old uh the old patent office,

40:32 uh you know, as the part of what was basically what's the Smithsonian today,

40:35 it's the National Museum.

40:37 And uh it would have been either just like in 1814,

40:40 it would have been great war booty or it would have been destroyed,

40:44 and it would have been a great blow.

40:45 Um and for Lincoln, again,

40:48 the the fight to save the Union is a fight to preserve

40:51 the principles of the declaration and the rule of law of the Constitution.

40:56 You know, and again, he sees them he sees them seamlessly together.

40:59 But this argument over ownership is actually

41:01 one that that goes up into the 1950s, and I I loved that part of it, too.

41:06 I think it gives a very human scale to the declaration.

41:09 You know, we think of it as this static document,

41:11 and it's had this fascinating life, and and people didn't want to give it up.

41:15 So, in 1876, it goes to Philadelphia for the Centennial.

41:20 And I have a whole chapter on that, and it's it's a it's a To me,

41:23 it was a very fun chapter.

41:25 So, the Centennial Exposition, millions of people,

41:27 9 million go to the exposition, and millions go see They don't have turnstiles,

41:31 but millions go see the declaration.

41:33 It closes down, and the Philadelphians don't want to give the declaration up.

41:37 It was sent up specifically for this, and they start passing these resolutions.

41:42 I'm going to go speak in Philadelphia in a couple weeks,

41:44 and sort of nervous about how to talk about this.

41:47 Uh cuz they tried it in 1976, too, by the way.

41:49 Um 1876, they pass these resolutions saying, "Keep it here.

41:54 It's going to be in the independent Independence Hall.

41:56 Everyone will see it." Um meanwhile,

41:58 in Washington, it's like three-dimensional chess.

42:00 In In Washington, the Interior Depart- Department,

42:04 which has been having custody of it for for decades,

42:07 is fighting State Department, which is the official custodian who wants it back,

42:13 has to go all the way up to the president.

42:14 The president is Ulysses S.

42:16 Grant.

42:16 So, he's having none of this.

42:18 And he just says, "Give it to State." And immediately,

42:21 Philadelphia, very nervous, sends it right back.

42:24 Interior sends it to State with this very groveling note,

42:27 like it's not our fault, blame the Philadelphians.

42:30 Uh and State Department has it.

42:31 Then, when the Library of Congress has it, and the National Archives wants it,

42:35 starting in the 1930s cuz they've built the Archives building,

42:39 Library won't give it up.

42:41 So, it's like, who owns the Declaration, right?

42:42 We do, but who who owns it?

42:44 And even Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

42:48 probably the most powerful president of the 20th century,

42:50 would not cross the Librarian of Congress,

42:52 Herbert Putnam, who was this force of nature

42:55 to try to get the Declaration where it belongs.

42:58 And it takes until after World War II to actually get it into the Archives.

43:02 And uh there's still a there's still a bit of raw feelings there.

43:07 My bad.

43:08 Uh Are we on time?

43:11 Great.

43:11 Well, we have we're going to have questions from from the audience.

43:13 I'm going to be be disciplined and and uh give up some of the time here.

43:18 Please.

43:18 Um but uh well, you're you're talking

43:20 about the 1876 the the Centennial uh celebration.

43:24 And um that was also a a time uh I

43:28 know this from the book where where uh the suffragists,

43:32 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B.

43:34 Anthony, that was when they were coming around to, "Hey,

43:37 can we have the Declaration live up to its billing?" And writing their own.

43:43 I mean, that actually starts in 1848

43:45 with the Seneca Falls um Declaration of Sentiments.

43:48 Um but in 1876, when the dec-

43:51 the the actual original Declaration, as I mentioned,

43:53 is brought up to Philadelphia, it's read in front of a massive crowd.

43:57 And at the end of that ceremony, Susan B.

43:58 Anthony gets up with a few Confederates,

44:01 and they walk among the crowd passing out

44:03 their own Declaration of Independence of the Rights of women.

44:08 And and this is that moment and I would it obviously doesn't come

44:12 to fruition for decades more not until

44:15 the 19th Amendment and it it's long after,

44:18 you know, the lifetimes of most of them.

44:20 But that I think again is is what marks to me

44:23 the greatness of the document as well as it's unifying aspect.

44:27 When Frederick Douglass is referencing the document in 1852,

44:31 What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

44:34 Or David Walker is doing it as well

44:36 and and saying you are not living up to the Declaration.

44:39 Or Elizabeth Cady Stanton and and Susan B.

44:42 Anthony they are making a claim to be full Americans for unity,

44:48 to be unified with the rest of the country,

44:50 to have their rightful place as Americans and with those full sets of rights.

44:56 It's not separatism.

44:58 That is what I think the power of the Declaration

45:00 is is that through our history it's 18th century silences

45:06 were filled because of the greatness of the document that all

45:10 could see in it their path to becoming full Americans.

45:15 Um another chapter and and one of my favorite chapters cuz it relates to my own

45:19 family history is the great wave of immigration that came in the 1880s to 1920s.

45:25 Now of course after that we we cut

45:26 off immigration for a period 1924 on until 1965.

45:31 But in that period the immigrant communities

45:34 and and what you might want to call the Mayflower

45:36 communities both are thinking how do we turn

45:40 these millions of newcomers who don't speak English,

45:43 who aren't coming from liberal nations,

45:44 meaning nations with a liberal political system, democratic system.

45:49 How do we turn them into Americans?

45:51 And the immigrants themselves are saying that and one

45:52 of the key things they use is the Declaration.

45:55 So I go through the translations that are done by immigrant communities.

45:59 It's not forced on them.

46:00 They want this to be the expression

46:03 within their own communities of becoming American.

46:06 And then it's paired with civics handbooks and citizen handbooks and the like.

46:10 Um but at the at the center of it is the declaration

46:12 in the way that it was for someone like David Walker who says,

46:17 again, you your fathers are not living up to what they had proclaimed.

46:22 You you must do that now.

46:23 And what uh Susan B.

46:25 Anthony is claiming and now what immigrants are becoming becoming part of.

46:29 And so that's why with this liberty claim

46:32 and this equality claim I talked about, I see over it,

46:35 as I've gone through the book,

46:37 I see over it an umbrella, and that's an umbrella of unity.

46:40 And it's a message that uh I I think is still there.

46:44 And I and I think it's one that we uh should try to recover and recapture.

46:51 Brilliant.

46:51 We'll go to the audience uh now for for a question.

46:54 I I I have a comment on that.

46:55 That was one of the things that I actually found

46:56 deeply moving about the book personally uh is um well,

47:01 the the declaration's really important to immigrants.

47:04 And uh you you you write about the the bicentennial in 1976.

47:09 I'll just share a quick story.

47:10 I I was six years old, and uh we held a big party at my house.

47:15 We lived outside of Washington, D.C.,

47:16 because my father had just become a citizen just a few years earlier.

47:21 And um yeah.

47:23 Yeah, I know.

47:24 I'm with you.

47:24 I was I was nine.

47:25 I'm with you.

47:26 It it was it made you think about history.

47:29 It got you excited about history.

47:31 Um plus tall ships and fireworks and all that stuff.

47:34 Um but it it it it made you feel there was there was something of true value.

47:40 And why families, your family newer,

47:43 my family had been in for a generation or so.

47:45 But I remember, you know, I remember them talking about about,

47:49 you know, the first time they would see certain things, you know,

47:52 the first time they saw a declaration or the first time they

47:54 they went to Mount Vernon or if they had done these trips.

47:57 Um and of course, the idea that uh the the parents who

48:01 had come sent their sons off to fight in World War II.

48:06 Uh all of my father was too young,

48:07 but all of his brothers went, and his brothers-in-law all went.

48:11 Uh so, I grew up on those stories.

48:13 Um and and thank God all of them came back.

48:15 But, um uh I grew up on those stories.

48:18 Uh and and you know, and it was expressed that they you know,

48:21 their parents still spoke with the accent, but they had sent their sons off

48:25 to fight for freedom and liberty as full Americans.

48:29 You know, and and that that was a source of enormous pride

48:33 as I'm sure it was for your family being part of the bicentennial,

48:36 right when you had when your father had become an American citizen.

48:39 I I loved I loved that chapter.

48:41 I really did.

48:45 Questions?

48:46 Yeah, uh would you mind stepping up to the microphone?

48:47 Thank you.

48:55 Um you mentioned um metaphysics.

48:58 You didn't mention that it was Christian metaphysics.

49:03 The second thing I would like to mention,

49:05 um if you look at the names of the people who signed the document,

49:11 a lot of them are um a majority are Christian saints.

49:16 And the other thing, did you ever consider the people who didn't sign,

49:20 the names that aren't there?

49:22 And it's amazing when you look at the names that aren't there,

49:25 [clears throat] it's very informative, also.

49:27 So, uh Christian metaphysics,

49:31 and then the cultures that are not in the document.

49:37 I I do I do talk about that in the book, so I'm I'm glad you you brought it up.

49:42 I mean, it is it Look, the for the signers,

49:47 their world view was inseparable from the Bible.

49:50 The the most references to rights, freedom, liberty,

49:55 and the like during the the revolutionary period

49:57 in the in the later colonial period are in pulpit sermons.

50:01 But that's how most people were exposed to these ideas.

50:05 Uh the the the the pulpit preachers would be out there

50:08 talking about what we today would call natural rights, rights from God.

50:13 And it was these were Judeo-Christian values that were interpreted through

50:17 a broadly Protestant frame and then

50:22 inserted into into the larger political community.

50:26 Jefferson, you know, he wasn't an atheist.

50:28 He was a deist.

50:29 You know, he wrote his own Bible, right?

50:30 He took out all the stuff he thought was wrong

50:32 with the New Testament and left what he thought was the core.

50:34 I mean, he was as informed.

50:35 And Congress puts in a few more references to God, which makes sense given how,

50:40 you know, at well as as the divine power as um uh the divine judge,

50:46 the supreme being, nature's God, which is, you know,

50:49 this this concept that's an enlightenment an enlightenment concept.

50:52 It's a rational God.

50:54 Uh it may it may not in in the view of what

50:57 they were writing in the document have been uh you know,

50:59 the Old Testament wrathful God,

51:01 but it is it is a rational God who orders the universe,

51:05 which is why Jefferson uses concepts, you know,

51:07 the self-evidence and and propositions and the like.

51:09 They they thought within this within this framework.

51:12 Um but there's no question that the Judeo-Christian values that that were

51:18 central to the worldview of colonial Americans instilled this document

51:22 along with English common law and along with the Enlightenment conceptions

51:28 through John Locke of of what rights of what rights are.

51:31 And so, um there's only one there's one Catholic signer,

51:36 uh which is Charles Carroll of Carrollton in Maryland,

51:39 uh and um one Quaker signer.

51:43 I'm I'm right in um German, I think.

51:45 I'm now I'm just blanking, but I'll I'll go back.

51:47 after I have to I have to keep a copy of the book with me.

51:49 It's 250 years, so can't remember everything, unfortunately, every day, but um

51:54 And are there other names that uh are not

51:56 on the document that that are surprising or conspicuous in their absence?

52:00 The most important is um uh I I'm When you know the story,

52:04 it's not surprising, but the most the most conspicuous is is,

52:07 of course, John Dickinson.

52:08 Uh the famous uh Pennsylvania um farmer philosopher,

52:12 Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.

52:14 Um who does not sign it.

52:17 Also, uh Robert Morris does not sign it.

52:19 And, in fact, Robert Livingston,

52:20 who's on the committee that drafts it, does not sign it.

52:23 And everybody has their own reasons.

52:24 Uh by the time that the document is signed, by the way, which is not July 4th,

52:29 it's later in in the the summer,

52:31 um Livingston's back home doing New York politics.

52:34 Um but but Dickinson felt it wasn't time.

52:38 The time was not right, and that was really the debate on July 2nd.

52:42 And and the final battle that I mentioned,

52:44 that the marathon 9-hour debate over independence on July 2nd

52:48 was between John Adams and John Dickinson on either side.

52:53 But what does Dickinson do?

52:54 He does two things that I think are

52:56 heroic and and are a model for all Americans.

53:00 Um first, he, along with Robert Morris,

53:04 decides to absent themselves, to abstain on July 4th.

53:09 The votes were done by colony, they weren't done by person, right?

53:13 So that within the colonial delegation,

53:16 let's say there were four people, they'd vote.

53:19 Or three people or five, probably better have an odd number, right?

53:22 So they'd vote, and the majority would then carry,

53:25 and the colony would vote as one.

53:27 That's why they needed to get unanimity.

53:29 So Pennsylvania split.

53:31 Ben Franklin and a few others are on one side,

53:34 and Dickinson and Morris are on the other side.

53:36 And they decide, after the uh the marathon uh debates on July

53:43 on I said July 4th and July 2nd so the debate on July 1st

53:46 they're going to absent themselves from the July 2nd vote so that Pennsylvania

53:52 can vote in the affirmative and vote with the colonies for unanimity sake.

53:56 South Carolina does the same thing.

53:58 So number one I think it's a wonderful lesson of compromise.

54:01 It's political compromise.

54:02 It's not what he believed in.

54:03 He thought it was wrong at the moment but he

54:05 also understood that a non-unanimous vote or potentially a failed

54:10 vote even though he thought it wasn't the right time

54:12 could be fatal to the movement certainly a non-unanimous vote.

54:15 They needed unanimity.

54:16 So he put aside his own personal feelings.

54:18 That was number one.

54:19 Number two what did he do right after that?

54:22 He went and he enlisted in the army.

54:24 So even though he said this isn't the time I mean you're

54:27 in the war but he said it's not the time for independence.

54:29 He goes and he fights.

54:30 So I think he's the most conspicuous name that's not on it.

54:34 All told there were something like

54:36 80 plus delegates to the Continental Congress.

54:38 They weren't all there the for the whole time.

54:41 They came in they came out.

54:42 Some were there for long periods like like

54:45 John Adams he was there almost the whole time.

54:47 Others like Thomas Jefferson were going and coming

54:49 and then then staying near the end point.

54:52 Um so we don't know a everyone who who might have signed or those who had

54:59 been there and then just you know they happened not to be there so they didn't.

55:02 What we do know though are those who were involved in this process

55:05 like most notably Dickinson or a few others who didn't sign.

55:12 Hi.

55:13 I am here as a representative for your online audience and we had

55:16 the question if Thomas Jefferson was not

55:19 selected as the author who was the backup.

55:21 Who would have been chosen instead?

55:23 It's a wonderful question.

55:26 Um you know he was also really young so it was a little

55:28 easier to foist it on the young guy and just say you

55:31 know do your duty for well it would have been king and country

55:34 up to then but after that it's no longer king and country.

55:37 Um So, we don't know.

55:39 I mean, you know, John Adams could have written it,

55:40 but there's this wonderful um again,

55:42 recollection that I There's a couple of different versions.

55:45 I pick one and I put it in the book where um Jefferson says,

55:49 "I don't want to do it.

55:50 And why Why are you asking me to do it?" And Adams says, "Three reasons." Says,

55:54 "First, you're a Virginian and a Virginian

55:56 should be at the head of this business.

55:58 Second, I'm hated.

56:01 So, it's not going to be really good if I do it.

56:03 And third, you can write 10 times better than I can." Um Ben Franklin

56:08 said he would never write anything that a committee would get its hands on.

56:11 So, he was out.

56:13 Um Roger Sherman was actually heading up the committee

56:17 or on the committee to come up with Articles of Confederation.

56:20 So, he was busy.

56:21 Livingston seemed Livingston also, by the way,

56:23 was was against independence at this point.

56:26 Uh he just felt it also was too early.

56:28 And he was probably put on the committee as sort of a minority view.

56:31 Um so, it either would have been Adams or or Jefferson.

56:33 And you can imagine Adams writing it.

56:35 It would have been philosophically, you know,

56:39 in terms of legal arguments and history, the most extraordinarily tight,

56:44 compact writing ever, but it may not have had the the passion

56:48 that a Thomas Jefferson uh could bring to it.

56:51 And so, we're we're pretty lucky that the young guy

56:54 just sort of felt he had He had no choice.

56:55 And by the way, he was on four other committees [snorts] at the same time.

56:59 We you know, we sort of think and we have these wonderful pictures.

57:02 One of them I'm pretty sure is in the book

57:04 where he's standing at a table in the candlelight.

57:06 It's heroic.

57:07 And it's you know, it's a obviously a 20th century picture.

57:09 It's this you know, this rewriting of of history.

57:12 And we have others where he and Adams and Franklin

57:15 are at a table and they're all working over the decoration.

57:17 I mean, he just He's scribbling it out pretty quickly.

57:20 He's trying to get it done.

57:21 He's on four other committees.

57:23 Um They're busy men doing a lot of different things.

57:25 And so, our mythology, which I love the mythology.

57:28 Mythology is important and it gives us stories and it gives us shared ideas.

57:32 but we also have to understand what the reality was

57:34 and the reality was is this was an administrative task.

57:40 Do we have uh time for one more?

57:50 I was I was just a little curious about you

57:52 and uh the Declaration references God a few times, right?

57:57 Our higher being.

57:58 And then I believe Jefferson is the one that wrote

58:01 the letter clearly wanting a wall of church and state.

58:08 And then I believe in the Constitution it was not not mentioned at all.

58:15 So, did he like did he start off like his well,

58:18 God is in the Declaration as inspiration and then when it came to perspiration,

58:27 you just got to Do you know what I mean?

58:29 Where did that shift or where did where did he say, "Okay, we got to stop."

58:34 Well, I think um Or separate.

58:36 Yeah.

58:36 Thank you.

58:37 Well, he writes what he one of the other two things he puts on his tombstone

58:41 along with founding the University of Virginia is

58:44 author of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom.

58:47 And so for Jefferson,

58:50 um though he really had little truck with organized religion,

58:55 he understood that an impingement on one's freedom to worship God

59:01 as they felt uh was was antithetical to what liberty actually meant.

59:08 And in his letters he writes this.

59:09 He says it doesn't matter if you're a Jew or what

59:12 he at the time in terms of the word a Mahometan, Muslim,

59:16 a Christian, um and and don't forget within Christianity with all the sects

59:20 Catholics are are very much discriminated against at the time as well.

59:25 Um he said it doesn't matter.

59:27 Everyone should have the right uh to worship their own God.

59:30 Now, in the Declaration, the Declaration is not meant as a governing document.

59:35 Uh it couldn't be.

59:36 Um you know, again, this was a a statement.

59:38 It was an announcement.

59:39 It was a press release, really.

59:42 Um but it also had to very

59:43 carefully balance these these different sets of interests.

59:47 The real tug-of-war will come with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

59:52 And of course, Constitution, you know,

59:53 Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of religion.

59:57 Um but for Jefferson, um it's only natural to to reference God as he understood

1:00:03 this very rational God that organizes a universe that has principles,

1:00:08 it has laws, these these metaphysical uh approaches.

1:00:12 It's

1:00:13 And the nature of God is is also a That's a distinct thing from the Christian.

1:00:17 Yeah, the nature's God, right.

1:00:18 The Enlightenment natural law, that that that whole law.

1:00:20 Exactly.

1:00:21 And so, it's Congress that puts in the the divine providence and supreme judge,

1:00:25 which, you know, if those weren't in the document,

1:00:27 it would actually it it would it would have

1:00:29 sounded off to us probably in 18th century ear.

1:00:33 The Declaration to me, I I I hope this isn't controversial,

1:00:37 I don't think it is, is a covenant.

1:00:39 Um Dan Elazar, a wonderful uh scholar,

1:00:41 wrote a lot about this back in the the '80s, '90s.

1:00:45 Um but it's a covenant.

1:00:47 It is a covenant among Americans, right?

1:00:50 That's why the That's why the founders, again, with this unity idea,

1:00:52 the founders pledged to each other their lives,

1:00:55 their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

1:00:57 They didn't pledge that to the new country,

1:01:00 and they didn't pledge it to their states, they pledged it to each other.

1:01:03 Um so, that that to me is part of this covenant.

1:01:07 It was a covenant among Americans that they

1:01:10 were in launching off into this brave new world.

1:01:13 They thought they were conserving their traditional liberties,

1:01:16 but it was a brave new world to do so.

1:01:18 And secondly, in what was utterly understandable and expected at the time.

1:01:23 It was a covenant between them and God.

1:01:25 And that's why God is in is in the document.

1:01:27 And had he not been in and Congress was Yeah, again,

1:01:30 we don't know who debated and we don't know who made those edits.

1:01:32 We don't know who said put in divine judge.

1:01:36 Um but without it it it probably would

1:01:38 have sounded a little bit off and and again,

1:01:40 mostly because these arguments had been made from the pulpit

1:01:43 above all for for decades by this point.

1:01:48 Michael and Misha, this has been fantastic.

1:01:50 Thank you so much.

1:01:51 Thank you for this for this work.

1:01:52 It's brilliant.

1:01:53 Congratulations on it.

1:01:55 Uh thank you to our audience here and and the library and museum.

1:02:01 Thank you.

1:02:02 Thank you.

1:02:04 [applause] Great.