Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Western Sieve. Today's bonus author Interview,
Speaker 1: I sit down with author and renowned historian Tom McMillan
Speaker 1: to talk about his most recent book, The Year That
Speaker 1: Made America From Rebellion to Independence seventeen seventy five to
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy six. In the preface, Tom writes quotes less
Speaker 1: than a year after American colonists declared their independence from England,
Speaker 1: John Adams, the brilliant but cantankerous congressional Sage, sent a
Speaker 1: message for future generations that was equal parts heartfelt and skeptical.
Speaker 1: In a letter to his wife, Abigail on April twenty sixth,
Speaker 1: seventeen seventeen seven, Adams wrote, quote, Posterity, you will never
Speaker 1: know how much it costs the present generation to preserve
Speaker 1: your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.
Speaker 1: If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that
Speaker 1: I ever took half the pains to preserve it.
Speaker 2: End quote.
Speaker 1: It's those sorts of quotations that make me feel a
Speaker 1: little pang of I guess, disappointment in today's society. But
Speaker 1: at the same time it echoes the importance of this
Speaker 1: year back through the centuries. Now, I will tell you
Speaker 1: I have read this excellent book, my mister McMillan, and
Speaker 1: it is a perfect encapsulation of the importance of studying
Speaker 1: American history. Lest we forget it. His book goes into
Speaker 1: great detail to explain why July fourth shouldn't be the holiday,
Speaker 1: the entire year should be the holiday. Just like the
Speaker 1: old saying. Goes the works on cracking the stone for years,
Speaker 1: and one day, as he lands the final blow, striking
Speaker 1: it in half, a person walks by and remarks, wow,
Speaker 1: the strong man. That is because he didn't see all
Speaker 1: the thousands and thousands of strikes that came before. You
Speaker 1: could think the same way about the American independence movement.
Speaker 1: It was the result of thousands of tiny actions, not
Speaker 1: the decisions of a couple of men over a handful
Speaker 1: of hours. But this was the culmination of a year
Speaker 1: that truly did make America. I highly recommend the book.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this podcast, it's available right now.
Speaker 1: You could click the link in the show notes and
Speaker 1: pick up a copy, or you could pick a copy
Speaker 1: wherever you want. And so, after these messages, without further ado,
Speaker 1: here's my interview Historian Tom McMillan, The Year that Made America.
Speaker 1: All Right, welcome back. As I mentioned moments ago, I'm
Speaker 1: sitting down here with historian Tom McMillan talking about his
Speaker 1: most recent book, The Year that Made America From Rebellion
Speaker 1: to Independence seventeen seventy five to seventeen seventy six. Well,
Speaker 1: these are years that I think we're all familiar with
Speaker 1: from our yearly Fourth of July celebrations, but I think
Speaker 1: that there's a lot more to it that we can
Speaker 1: get into today to explain all the important events that
Speaker 1: make this not just one day, not just the fourth
Speaker 1: of July, and as we can talk about that's not
Speaker 1: the right date necessarily, but why it's so much more
Speaker 1: than just a day for celebrating parades and fireworks and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. But so let me ask
Speaker 1: you that initial question, why is learning about the year
Speaker 1: seveneen seventy five to seventeen seventy six just so important
Speaker 1: for Americans in general, let alone American scholars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Adam, and thanks for having me on. I really
Speaker 2: appreciate it. I was one of them. I was surprised
Speaker 2: when I got into this how little I knew. And
Speaker 2: I'm a pretty good student of history. I thought, Wow,
Speaker 2: I didn't know any of this. There's so much focus
Speaker 2: on the fourth of July. As you said, we think
Speaker 2: everything happened on that date, and well, I detail a
Speaker 2: lot of things that happened in the revolution during this period.
Speaker 2: I focus on the first seven or eight months of
Speaker 2: seventeen seventy six and the political struggle really to get
Speaker 2: to the declaration. It was a battle. I mean in
Speaker 2: mid June six colonies still were not there to vote
Speaker 2: for independence. So this whole process, which I know it
Speaker 2: started much earlier, but I take it from January of
Speaker 2: seventeen seventy six through about August of the debates and
Speaker 2: the struggles and getting there, and it was, it was,
Speaker 2: It always would have happened, but it came close to
Speaker 2: not happening when it did. And I was just fascinated
Speaker 2: at the circumstances that led to that, And I thought
Speaker 2: people would be interested because these are things that we
Speaker 2: are not taught. We skim right over the Fourth of
Speaker 2: July and get into the rest of the revolutionary where
Speaker 2: and don't get these things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think sometimes, especially the way it's presented in
Speaker 1: a lot of sources and textbooks, is just that you know,
Speaker 1: the fourth of July was a foregone conclusion. You know,
Speaker 1: the colonies have been treated, you know, so overwhelmingly poorly,
Speaker 1: and you know, we could debate whether or not they
Speaker 1: had been and what the British could have done differently.
Speaker 1: Of course, these these gentlemen would have considered themselves British
Speaker 1: citizens at this point in history, and we should be
Speaker 1: well to remember that. But I think it's always a
Speaker 1: mistake to look at history as though there were not
Speaker 1: alternatives that could have happened, because of course there weren't.
Speaker 1: In this case is no exception. But I wanted to
Speaker 1: start by asking you the question about some of our
Speaker 1: sources for that year, because you bring this up in
Speaker 1: the book, and I think it's important anytime that we're
Speaker 1: talking about history to ask a question about what are
Speaker 1: our sources, like, how reliable are they? What do we
Speaker 1: need to think about when we're considering them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was surprised at how little was written about
Speaker 2: this in seventeen seventy six. And you know, they record
Speaker 2: the journals of the Continental Congress are there and they
Speaker 2: have facts, but they're pretty scant, and I think it
Speaker 2: realizes these guys were committing treason, and they knew that.
Speaker 2: They didn't want to leave a lot of the record
Speaker 2: right there, So it's frustrating for historians. Now they did,
Speaker 2: some of them did write, We're more expansive in private letters,
Speaker 2: which of course were not known at the time. They
Speaker 2: were written to their wives or brothers or someone you know,
Speaker 2: back home in their colonies. They've come out since then
Speaker 2: to give us a little more context, but we would
Speaker 2: never have the full picture because they weren't necessarily all
Speaker 2: writing everything that was happening on those days. And in fact,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of the stories that I had
Speaker 2: heard about the Declaration era were actually written by John
Speaker 2: Adams and Thomas Jefferson in the eighteen twenties. Now they
Speaker 2: were primary sources. They obviously were there, they knew what happened,
Speaker 2: but they were very old men at that time. Jefferson
Speaker 2: was in his late seventies, Adams was in his eighties,
Speaker 2: and so while they were there, you know, it is
Speaker 2: my memory, your memory already at our age, is you
Speaker 2: forget it. You can tell that by reading that they've misremembered.
Speaker 2: They contradict one another, even though they both were there.
Speaker 2: That happens all the times. You hear that, So as
Speaker 2: a historian you kind of have to piece it together
Speaker 2: the best that we can. There's a fair amount out there,
Speaker 2: but it's a process of piecing it all together and
Speaker 2: comparing what someone said in eighteen twenty with what they
Speaker 2: may have said in a letter in seventeen seventy seven. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was really blown away by that in your book,
Speaker 1: because I think it's such an astute point. But you
Speaker 1: don't think about it. You know, we thought, you know,
Speaker 1: we think of these men today as the ultimate patriots.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, of course you'd want to take
Speaker 1: notes of everything that happened. Of course you'd keep minutes
Speaker 1: because you'd want that remembered forever. But if you are
Speaker 1: willfully in the act of committing treason, that might not
Speaker 1: be something that everybody wants to write sentence down. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course, these gentlemen, you know that would have been
Speaker 1: they would have had been told about the English Civil War,
Speaker 1: you know, that would have happened, you know, the century prior.
Speaker 1: You know, they might not have had direct connect no
Speaker 1: one would have had direct connection to it at that point.
Speaker 1: But you know, a lot of people lost their lives,
Speaker 1: and people do lose their lives in the Civil War
Speaker 1: and in these sorts of conflicts, which is what this
Speaker 1: is going to ultimately amount to. So I find that
Speaker 1: really interesting and important that had this gone the other way,
Speaker 1: you know, we would have seen something very differently. Well,
Speaker 1: let's start to talk about some of our cast of
Speaker 1: characters here, if you will, you know one of them,
Speaker 1: and this I'm going to take a quick quotation here
Speaker 1: from the book because I think it's such so interesting
Speaker 1: in the beginning, You're right about John Adams. That quote,
Speaker 1: anxious but resolute after a night of fitful sleep, Congressional
Speaker 1: Delegate John Adams, a brain treat Massachusetts, felt the daunting
Speaker 1: weight of history as he slid out of bed in
Speaker 1: his rented room on the Second Street in Philadelphia. Calendar
Speaker 1: date was July the first, seventeen seventy six, And that's
Speaker 1: a portion of the quotation. John Adams is someone who
Speaker 1: I think, alongside James Madison, gets forgotten a little bit
Speaker 1: in our cast of characters here. You know, he's the
Speaker 1: relatively unsuccessful, you know, relatively speaking, successor to George Washington.
Speaker 1: I mean, who's going to stand in the wake of
Speaker 1: George Washington? But you know what do we know about
Speaker 1: John Adams coming into this because he's so important. Were
Speaker 1: his motivations? Why was he chosen? What can we say
Speaker 1: about this man?
Speaker 2: Adams is to me the most fascinating founder. I agor
Speaker 2: he is forgotten, probably because of his presidency and also
Speaker 2: much to his chagrin, he decided not to write the
Speaker 2: Declaration of Independence. I think he always regretted later, because
Speaker 2: Adams really was the driving force in Congress for Independence.
Speaker 2: Jefferson and the others admitted that he led the way,
Speaker 2: but he was so busy when they were writing this
Speaker 2: document that they didn't think was going to be that important.
Speaker 2: Adams always thought the vote was the most important thing.
Speaker 2: They gave it the young Jefferson and he ends up
Speaker 2: getting the credit. But Adams was an attorney from Braintree, Massachusetts.
Speaker 2: He moved to Boston. Always very much believed in the
Speaker 2: rule of law. He was the guy who defended the
Speaker 2: British soldiers from the Boston Massacre and actually got them
Speaker 2: off and became very unpopular at the time and obviously
Speaker 2: lost some clients. But he just believed that everyone in
Speaker 2: America before it was a country, deserved a defense like that,
Speaker 2: and he defended those men I mean, he stands up
Speaker 2: in history. You hear in legal stories. People hold him
Speaker 2: up because of what he did. He was a little
Speaker 2: bit slow to come to the revolution. He wasn't a
Speaker 2: key factor, and that must be a key factor in
Speaker 2: the first Continent of Congress. But as he gets here,
Speaker 2: he builds momentum. And the other thing that helps helps
Speaker 2: us with John Adams helps historians is he did understand
Speaker 2: that it was historic, and he did write a lot.
Speaker 2: Now most of them were in private letters or in
Speaker 2: a diary, so people didn't read his writing right at
Speaker 2: the time except his family. But he gave us probably
Speaker 2: the best record of what happened that day in the
Speaker 2: passage you read. I was writing about, you know, a
Speaker 2: letter that he wrote on the morning of July the first,
Speaker 2: when he's walked, which is a day the debate started
Speaker 2: in the Continent of Congress, and he wrote to a
Speaker 2: friend in Georgia about how important this day was going
Speaker 2: to be. So he felt the weight, the weight on
Speaker 2: his shoulders what was going to happen, and he knew
Speaker 2: he was going to have to lead the way, and
Speaker 2: thankfully he did, and he did so much. And again
Speaker 2: he doesn't he doesn't get the credit that he deserves,
Speaker 2: because Jefferson wrote most of the document. And I do
Speaker 2: think that Adams always regarded and he some of the
Speaker 2: things he said later in life. What I mentioned, he
Speaker 2: was always trying to get himself a little more credit
Speaker 2: because he thought he would. I love him, but he
Speaker 2: was quite vain, quite an ego, and he wanted more
Speaker 2: credit than he.
Speaker 1: Got I think. I mean, but it's interesting because if
Speaker 1: you think about it from obviously a lawyer's perspective, like
Speaker 1: what good is the deck the written declaration of independence
Speaker 1: if you don't have the votes? So you know, from
Speaker 1: his perspective, it makes a lot of sense. Why why
Speaker 1: focus on something that's just going to be thrown in
Speaker 1: the trash if ultimately it gets rejected, you know, and
Speaker 1: some maybe a niche thing for someone to study in
Speaker 1: British history down the years, like oh, isn't it funny
Speaker 1: they almost declared independence? But you know, I want to
Speaker 1: then talk a little bit about the Continental Congress, because
Speaker 1: you know, you're such an expert in it, and I'm
Speaker 1: just kind of interested to find out a little bit
Speaker 1: how did how did it open? Like what did they
Speaker 1: I mean, because they didn't come in I would assume
Speaker 1: knowing what the procedure was going to be, or even
Speaker 1: necessarily knowing what they were going to do. So you know,
Speaker 1: everybody gathers, and I mean, what happens. Does someone naturally
Speaker 1: sort of take charge or is everyone just taking turns?
Speaker 1: Like what does it look like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the fact that something happened of it all is
Speaker 2: incredible when you when you think of that. They you know,
Speaker 2: we Americans had been agitating since seventeen seventeen sixties to
Speaker 2: restore our rights as British subjects. They thought they weren't
Speaker 2: being treated as British subjects should be treated. That the
Speaker 2: Stamp backed protest and the Townsend Acts and taxation without representation,
Speaker 2: and you know, the Continental Congress comes together for the
Speaker 2: first time. They didn't call it the first Continental Congress
Speaker 2: because they thought it might be the only one. You know,
Speaker 2: they meet in Philadelphia, and they come up with some resolutions.
Speaker 2: They didn't do all that much. Most of these men
Speaker 2: have never met each other again. You didn't even even
Speaker 2: wealthy people didn't travel that far back then. And people
Speaker 2: in South Carolina had never been to Pennsylvania. People in
Speaker 2: New Hampshire had never been to Pennsylvania. So it was
Speaker 2: an eye opening experience just to get there. But there,
Speaker 2: with the exception of maybe a couple of firebrands from Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: their purpose from the very beginning was not independence at all.
Speaker 2: That word wasn't spoken. It was to restore their rights
Speaker 2: and they believed that if they if they did this
Speaker 2: properly and wrote enough petitions and got them to the king,
Speaker 2: they their battle was with Parliament. They they thought maybe
Speaker 2: the King, who they really held up in esteem, wasn't
Speaker 2: wasn't hearing what they said. So they even wrote some
Speaker 2: petitions directly to the king. They were incorrect about that,
Speaker 2: but so it developed over time. And the one thing
Speaker 2: that Adams does that really helped me in the study
Speaker 2: of the First Continental Congress, which again before this I
Speaker 2: didn't know that much about. Uh. He wrote a lot
Speaker 2: of descriptions of what what guys look like, and what
Speaker 2: their personalities were, and who the friends were, and so
Speaker 2: you can see at the beginning some of the real
Speaker 2: British you know, as with any group today, clicks certainly
Speaker 2: started at the beginning. They were British loyalists who hung
Speaker 2: out together and maybe a little more radical guys hung
Speaker 2: out together, and they would they would meet similar thinkers,
Speaker 2: the way when we go to college, you meet people
Speaker 2: who kind of think like you and you become friends.
Speaker 2: This happened there and for them especially. It was also
Speaker 2: the northern or Southerners, so it was a it was
Speaker 2: a it was an eye open experience for all those
Speaker 2: But even at the end of the First Continental Congress
Speaker 2: they wrote about six documents, they only tentatively agreed that
Speaker 2: there would be a second one only if the king
Speaker 2: did not respond to what they had said, So they
Speaker 2: weren't even sure they were going to be back in
Speaker 2: Philadelphia for another meeting at all. It was very tentative
Speaker 2: from the beginning. They made up their own rules. How
Speaker 2: with all these a plus personalities who were appointed, not elected,
Speaker 2: you know, the little the assemblies back home and in whatever
Speaker 2: colony it was, would appoint certain people to go. Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: you know, had you know, had the Adams cousins and
Speaker 2: some other names we've heard. Virginia obviously was the biggest
Speaker 2: colony back then. So it was these men coming together.
Speaker 2: The fact that they figured this all out is really
Speaker 2: one of the quirks of fate of American history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really interesting. You mentioned what they wanted at
Speaker 1: this point when we're talking about the first Continental Congress,
Speaker 1: and much like the First World War, I mean, they
Speaker 1: didn't call it the first because they didn't know there
Speaker 1: was going to be another one at the time. But
Speaker 1: you know, you read this a lot in histories that
Speaker 1: the American colonists wanted their rights, they wanted their rights.
Speaker 1: What did they mean when they said that, Like, what
Speaker 1: were they looking for? Were they looking were they talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, the English Bill of Rights? Were they referencing
Speaker 1: the Magna Carta at this point? What was it that
Speaker 1: would have satisfied the colonies at this portion so that
Speaker 1: we don't have a second Continental Congress?
Speaker 2: They weren't all that clear. And British critics ever said
Speaker 2: will say that, and you know, maybe the folks from
Speaker 2: Massachusetts had different views in the folks from South Carolina
Speaker 2: on it. They believed that that they were under the
Speaker 2: thumb of parliament without any represent representation in parliament. That
Speaker 2: basically is what it comes down to now thinking of it,
Speaker 2: that probably would have been impractical because it took so
Speaker 2: long for word to get across the ocean back then
Speaker 2: that even if you had representation, and you know, if
Speaker 2: someone from Pennsylvania was in Parliament, it would take so
Speaker 2: long to see what the Pennsylvanians really thought, it wouldn't
Speaker 2: have worked, and the British didn't want to do that.
Speaker 2: And you know, the British also were a little condescend
Speaker 2: and that here you should be glad you're part of
Speaker 2: the British Empire. Why are you causing these problems? Why
Speaker 2: are you making us send our troops? And clearly also
Speaker 2: some of it was over the British had come over
Speaker 2: here in the in the French and Indian War as
Speaker 2: we call it, to defend this part of the part
Speaker 2: of their empire, and it cost him a lot of money,
Speaker 2: and they wanted the colonists to pay their fair share
Speaker 2: of that, and the colonists weren't sure that should happen.
Speaker 2: So we have a lot of these these side issues
Speaker 2: when we get to the Declaration of Independence. And most
Speaker 2: of it really what Jefferson wrote his in his original
Speaker 2: document was complaints about the king, and a lot of them,
Speaker 2: British critics will say, now, some of them makes sense,
Speaker 2: some of them don't make sense. Some of that's just
Speaker 2: over time, and some of them he just seemed to
Speaker 2: be saying anything. There's not a lot of there there
Speaker 2: in some of those some of those complaints.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have sort of a fundamental disagreement I think
Speaker 1: between the two sides over well, what is the role
Speaker 1: of a colony at some point, because you know, the
Speaker 1: original purpose for all these European nations, for found that
Speaker 1: the colonies were founded to support the mother country, the
Speaker 1: home country. That was the purpose. You know, The idea
Speaker 1: was never, well, you guys will be on equal footing
Speaker 1: with us in some way, shape or.
Speaker 2: Form like that.
Speaker 1: That had never necessarily crossed anyone's mind. The other question
Speaker 1: that I always have about the debate over independence was,
Speaker 1: you know what what was the British response? And I
Speaker 1: think this has been written about someone to the idea
Speaker 1: of American shadow slavery, you know, because you know Jefferson's
Speaker 1: going to write, you know, we hold these truths to
Speaker 1: be self evident, that all men are created equal. And
Speaker 1: he's writing this at a time when he knows perfectly
Speaker 1: well that the there's a large portion of Virginia's population
Speaker 1: that is not equal under the law. And I know that,
Speaker 1: you know, the British are going to emancipate slaves throughout
Speaker 1: the empire much earlier than the Americans are going to
Speaker 1: what did the British make of that? As these complaints
Speaker 1: start to come forward, That's one that's always kind of
Speaker 1: peaked me at my interests.
Speaker 2: Hustam of being highly hypocritical, highly hypocritical. What are you
Speaker 2: what are you talking about? You know, the drivers of
Speaker 2: of of African Americans are now owners and drivers are
Speaker 2: not complaining about freedom. What's your where's your moral standing
Speaker 2: on that? And a lot of critics, even after the
Speaker 2: declaration came out, would criticize the Americans, the colonists for
Speaker 2: saying that, almost laugh at them and mock them, and
Speaker 2: the British, British governor, you know, local colonial governors would
Speaker 2: try to enlist some of the slaves, the enslaved people
Speaker 2: to join the British armories, to offer them freedom in
Speaker 2: exchange for fighting against their former masters, as they also
Speaker 2: did in the War of eighteen twelve. So they it
Speaker 2: didn't work all that well for them, but they were
Speaker 2: trying to drive a wedge between the America and they knew,
Speaker 2: you know, that there was a clearly it was a
Speaker 2: line of demarcation here north and south, not totally but generally,
Speaker 2: and they thought they could they could drive a wedge
Speaker 2: among the colonies to try to split them up. Part
Speaker 2: of the British policy was, or should have been, to
Speaker 2: create fissures between the colonies because there was no natural
Speaker 2: amalgamation of these thirteen colonies before seventeen seventy six. You know,
Speaker 2: people didn't think of it back then as being a country.
Speaker 2: These were individual colonies on more like the European Union
Speaker 2: kind of thing. I think that's a lot of people
Speaker 2: thought it might have eventually become. And the other thing
Speaker 2: is just it's I think we have to we were
Speaker 2: so used today to immediate communication, immediate information. The fact
Speaker 2: that it took so long for information to get across
Speaker 2: the ocean and then get an answer back that could
Speaker 2: be six months the total of getting a question and
Speaker 2: getting an answer by that point. Things have changed dramatically
Speaker 2: on the ground. And we've seen that through American history
Speaker 2: during this period.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really interesting, And I'm going to ask a question.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know the answer to it.
Speaker 1: But did the British sources at any point point out
Speaker 1: to the Americans how impractical it would be to have
Speaker 1: a seat in Parliament?
Speaker 2: Well, and almost it was like, what are you doing
Speaker 2: don't you realize how proud you should be to be
Speaker 2: part of the British empire. They couldn't imagine that people
Speaker 2: didn't want to take pride and mean They thought they
Speaker 2: had granted them this incredible status to be part of
Speaker 2: our empire and be colonizing a new world. But I
Speaker 2: think they probably started to look warily at the size
Speaker 2: of the North American continent and the size of Little England.
Speaker 2: As we may get to this, but as Thomas Paine
Speaker 2: wrote in common Sense, one of the most common sense
Speaker 2: things he wrote is an island can't rule a continent.
Speaker 2: What are we doing? An island can't rule a continent.
Speaker 2: So in the back of their minds it might have
Speaker 2: been a little bit uh oh, this could if we
Speaker 2: don't tamp this down immediately, this could get out of control.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the debate over independence. Then, is there
Speaker 1: a point at which we can say that the debate
Speaker 1: starts to shift from an insistence upon our rights to no,
Speaker 1: we need to have full independence. And what did that
Speaker 1: look like and were there still holdouts and how long
Speaker 1: were there still holdout saying no, we're not going to
Speaker 1: declare independence. We need to simply continue to trust the
Speaker 1: King and insist on our rights, because I'm always interested
Speaker 1: as to when we start to hit that. I'll call
Speaker 1: it a tipping point in the room where the discussion
Speaker 1: starts to lean and then becomes I guess at some
Speaker 1: point inevitable that that is that independence is going to
Speaker 1: be the direction these colonies are going to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was fascinated to find that out, and it
Speaker 2: happened really gradually over a period of about six months,
Speaker 2: in the first six seven months of seventeen seventy six.
Speaker 2: I use a bunch of dates as chapter titles in
Speaker 2: my book, one of which is not the fourth of July,
Speaker 2: but the first one in seventeen seventy six is the
Speaker 2: ninth of January, which a date that meant nothing to me.
Speaker 2: But among the things that happened that day were a loyalist.
Speaker 2: There were a number of loyalists in the Continental Congress,
Speaker 2: and loyalists that they proposed, they were concerned about the
Speaker 2: King being upset with them, proposed at Congress disavow any
Speaker 2: interest in independence. Now, it didn't pass. Sam Adams and
Speaker 2: a couple of guys blocked it. But I think it's
Speaker 2: important note that in January of seventeen seventy six, there
Speaker 2: was a significant portion of the Congress that would have
Speaker 2: disavowed independence six months before we declared it. It starts
Speaker 2: to go gradually. Pain rites his book Book That Electricies
Speaker 2: the Countryside. We see it picking up in May in Congress,
Speaker 2: and we see the battle lines start to be drawn,
Speaker 2: because remember, you know, now we've been fighting for more
Speaker 2: than a year. What are you fighting for? We weren't
Speaker 2: fighting for independence. The declaries of Independence gave those soldiers
Speaker 2: something specifically to fight for. But you see this even
Speaker 2: at Richard Henry Lee, who should be more famous in
Speaker 2: history than he is. He's the guy who proposes independence
Speaker 2: in the countinam of Congress on June seventh. As soon
Speaker 2: as he did that these United Colonies should be free
Speaker 2: and independent states. They started a debate that day June seventh,
Speaker 2: June eighth, and Jefferson said if they had taken a
Speaker 2: vote right then they would have passed. It was squeaked
Speaker 2: by probably by seven to six. There were still six
Speaker 2: colonies in relatively early June that weren't there. They either
Speaker 2: weren't for independence or they weren't. The thing that I
Speaker 2: had to learn about this they weren't permitted by their
Speaker 2: assemblies back home to make that radical of vote. These
Speaker 2: the delegations could not act in depend they were appointed
Speaker 2: but back on by New Hampshire or wherever, Delaware, South Carolina,
Speaker 2: and you had to do what they said, and they
Speaker 2: weren't quite ready at that point to do something that radical. Again,
Speaker 2: things are moving really quickly in the countryside, but it
Speaker 2: took a while for some of those assemblies to approve it.
Speaker 2: So we're you know, we're till mid June and they're
Speaker 2: still not there yet. They start to that's when just
Speaker 2: in case we do vote for independence, let's have a document.
Speaker 2: They form a five man committee to write it. As
Speaker 2: you mentioned that it if it didn't work, they would
Speaker 2: have just ripped it up. Nobody would have known it
Speaker 2: ever happened. But what really struck me was on the
Speaker 2: big day of the debate, John Adams walking that day
Speaker 2: to the Pennsylvania State House that we now call Independence Hall.
Speaker 2: That first date, they had a nine hour debate and
Speaker 2: that night they took a straw pole the way Jewry's
Speaker 2: doing court cases. Now, there were four colonies that still
Speaker 2: weren't there. On the night of July first, it was
Speaker 2: nine or four, two were against, one was deadlocked, and
Speaker 2: York still hadn't gotten permission from the assembly back home
Speaker 2: to abstained. So nine two one one that vote that
Speaker 2: would have been comfortably passed, but they knew they needed unanimity.
Speaker 2: So all the way up until the night of July first,
Speaker 2: there's still a third of the colonies that weren't there yet.
Speaker 2: I wish. One of the things that really frustrated me
Speaker 2: as a historian. There was obviously some incredible conversations in
Speaker 2: Philadelphia the night of July first, especially a city tavern
Speaker 2: where they gathered. None of them ever wrote anything about
Speaker 2: what was said that night. It changed minds. We don't
Speaker 2: know what was said. We'll never know.
Speaker 1: That's the fun thing about history is we only get,
Speaker 1: especially the older you get, we only have the tip
Speaker 1: of the iceberg, and the less of the tip that
Speaker 1: you see why I love some of the older stuff there.
Speaker 1: I'm curious to ask that as a follow up question
Speaker 1: on that. As the vote for independence comes, did everyone
Speaker 1: who was present have the clearance or the approval from
Speaker 1: their assemblies back home to vote for or did someone decide, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, this has to be unanimous, So I'm
Speaker 1: going to vote yes and try to, you know, ex
Speaker 1: post facto, go back and get it, because I don't
Speaker 1: have time to send a guide a horse back to
Speaker 1: South Carolina right now to get this. I'm kind of curious.
Speaker 1: Did everybody have a letter at hand saying that they
Speaker 1: could do this?
Speaker 2: By early July, twelve of the colonies did either they
Speaker 2: were told to vote for it or you can vote
Speaker 2: for it again. The assemblies back home knew they weren't
Speaker 2: part of the debate. They didn't they weren't fully informed.
Speaker 2: But you at least have permission to do this if
Speaker 2: you think it's the right thing to do. Only in
Speaker 2: New York. New York was the final holdout the ORB standing,
Speaker 2: and obviously the war was going on. They ceased to
Speaker 2: their assembly ceased to meet for a while there so
Speaker 2: they but the pro independence folks led by John Adams,
Speaker 2: weren't concerned about that. It wasn't a negative vote, so
Speaker 2: the others did have the right. But the other thing
Speaker 2: that they had to figure out is each colony had
Speaker 2: one vote voted in turn, and they decided that early
Speaker 2: in the first Continent of Congress, you voted internally among
Speaker 2: your delegation. Now the delegations were of different sizes, and
Speaker 2: they sometimes changed week to week. The one reason that
Speaker 2: Delaware was the colony that was deadlocked in the night
Speaker 2: of July first. They only had two delegates there that day.
Speaker 2: One was four one was against. So they had to
Speaker 2: send the writer back to Delaware, and Caesar Rodney rode
Speaker 2: through the night eighty miles and got there on the
Speaker 2: morning of July second, said, with mud still splattered on
Speaker 2: his boots to break the tie. So in Pennsylvania, you know,
Speaker 2: was one of the negative votes. On the night of
Speaker 2: July first, the internal vote was five to four against.
Speaker 2: The way they got beyond that was two of the
Speaker 2: moderate voters, John Dickinson and Robert Morris. They didn't feel
Speaker 2: they could vote for independence, but they saw the way
Speaker 2: the wind was blowing, so they just decided they weren't
Speaker 2: going to show up on July second. That's how they
Speaker 2: would make their statement. They wouldn't have to vote for it.
Speaker 2: But what that meant was a five to four vote
Speaker 2: on Life first became a four to three vote for
Speaker 2: independence on the warning of July seven. So that's how
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania changed in mine. So these guys are battling with
Speaker 2: their conscience sometimes right until the very end. Dickinson, you know,
Speaker 2: he was the lead moderate voice. He argued with Adams
Speaker 2: on the floor. They were the big combatants in the
Speaker 2: debates of July first, And he left extensive notes of
Speaker 2: what he wrote. And it wasn't that he was against independence.
Speaker 2: He just didn't think this was the time. He thought
Speaker 2: it was a great danger for his colony and in
Speaker 2: America to do that, and he knew that he was
Speaker 2: it was going to make him unpopular, but to his credit,
Speaker 2: he's stuck by his morals. And he also then, despite that,
Speaker 2: he was a militia member and took part in the
Speaker 2: Revolutionary War. So I think some politicians today could get
Speaker 2: some lessons from John Dickinson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's to say something. But I'm curious why
Speaker 1: why New York Why why didn't they want to vote
Speaker 1: in favor. I mean, you're always kind of taught in
Speaker 1: the textbooks that all the loyalists are in the South, right,
Speaker 1: So you know, wouldn't have surprised me if you said
Speaker 1: in Georgia, South Carolina something like that. But what they
Speaker 1: said that we know was the rationale for New Yorkers
Speaker 1: not to support this.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of loyalists there, especially in New
Speaker 2: York City. We knew that, and also the army was close,
Speaker 2: so if you were on the fence. It really opened
Speaker 2: my eyes. I kind of knew this in the back
Speaker 2: of my mind, but I'd never really thought of it
Speaker 2: to this level until I started doing the book. You're
Speaker 2: doing this while there are British troops in your country,
Speaker 2: and your own army is not that powerful. It's basically
Speaker 2: a bunch of militias thrown together. So these were tense times,
Speaker 2: and there were a lot of people who may have
Speaker 2: been a little on the fence who weren't ready to
Speaker 2: do that because of what they thought they were risking.
Speaker 2: And John Adams did say at one point whether he
Speaker 2: was true on this or not, but he wrote his
Speaker 2: opinion that the country was split up in thirds. A
Speaker 2: third was loyalist, a third was very much pro independence,
Speaker 2: he called them true blue, and a third was in
Speaker 2: the middle. They could have been made either way. So
Speaker 2: we you know, we also get this sense that it
Speaker 2: was this mad rush of patriotism that got us to independence.
Speaker 2: It was not the case even during the war, you know.
Speaker 2: So this this I try to write just history and
Speaker 2: not bring too much modern into it. But a few
Speaker 2: pages in the book, I had to say, you know,
Speaker 2: we've always had chaos back to the beginning. Before the beginning,
Speaker 2: it was always like this, our system of government leads
Speaker 2: to that, and these folks, you know, went through that,
Speaker 2: and there were there were tough times, and you know,
Speaker 2: the New York folks, they finally came around. They met
Speaker 2: on July ninth and they said we better get on
Speaker 2: board here and they sent word to Congress. So it
Speaker 2: then became a third in retrospect to thirteen to zero vote.
Speaker 2: But a few years ago I saw a quote from
Speaker 2: someone from the New York Historical Society who said, we're
Speaker 2: not part of the July fourth group. We're part of
Speaker 2: the July ninth group. That's when that's when New York
Speaker 2: vote for independence.
Speaker 1: Which is hilarious because you know there are so many
Speaker 1: celebrations in New York on the fourth them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, so I could tell you, as I said,
Speaker 2: I'm the story. I considered myself pretty a pretty good
Speaker 2: student of history. I was astounded by how little I
Speaker 2: knew about this period. That's what made doing the book fascinating.
Speaker 2: It was a it was a research project for me.
Speaker 2: And that made it, That made it fun and eye opening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the details what makes it great. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that I actually love about this book.
Speaker 1: But so you point it out in the beginning, and
Speaker 1: just to remind listeners, you know, so we have the
Speaker 1: battles of Lexington and Concuerd in you know, April of
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy five, so there is there's fighting in fact,
Speaker 1: I think the nineteenth actually, and it's the twenty first
Speaker 1: of April today, so we're not too far off from
Speaker 1: a decent anniversary now that I think about it. But
Speaker 1: the so we've had fighting going on all this time,
Speaker 1: and we still have people sitting on the fence. So
Speaker 1: I think now is a good time to talk about
Speaker 1: Thomas Paine and bring his work onto our dust board
Speaker 1: here because it is important. I think it's a lot
Speaker 1: more important than a lot of people realize in terms
Speaker 1: of foundational documents in the United States. I want to
Speaker 1: start out by asking who was Thomas Payne, And of
Speaker 1: course we all know common sense, why did he write it?
Speaker 1: Why did he decide to write it, and why did
Speaker 1: it inflame passions as much as it did?
Speaker 2: A fascinating character he wasn't a congressman. He hadn't been
Speaker 2: an American for that long. He'd been here barely a year.
Speaker 2: Born and raised in England. A failure at pretty much
Speaker 2: everything he tried in life, failure in business, failure in marriage.
Speaker 2: He did befriend Benjamin Franklin in England when Franklin was
Speaker 2: posted there. So when he comes to America, I almost
Speaker 2: say the US. He just make them interchangeable. It wasn't
Speaker 2: the US yet. He comes to Philadelphia, he looks up Franklin,
Speaker 2: and Franklin helps him get a job at a local magazine.
Speaker 2: And then on the side Payne started writing. And what
Speaker 2: we would call today superpower is he had the ability
Speaker 2: to write in a way the common man could understand it.
Speaker 2: Most of the writing back then, not a lot of
Speaker 2: people were educated, was done by lawyers like John Adams,
Speaker 2: and it went over a lot of people's heads. Payne
Speaker 2: had a knack for writing in ways that the cobblers
Speaker 2: and the farmers and the blacksmiths could understand. He wrote
Speaker 2: on their language and the again, and things like an
Speaker 2: island can't rule a continent. This look up, we could do.
Speaker 2: We could start a new We could start our own country.
Speaker 2: He fired them up that way. He had his ideas
Speaker 2: of government, which probably weren't all that great. John Adams,
Speaker 2: who was again Thomas Main back then, got too much
Speaker 2: crediting city was great for tearing down. I'm not so
Speaker 2: great at building up. But Pain really did electrify the
Speaker 2: common man. I think it's the kind of thing that
Speaker 2: you know, we again the way we get information today.
Speaker 2: Most of the people in the countryside did not know
Speaker 2: a lot of this was going on. There wasn't daily media.
Speaker 2: There weren't reporters from South Carolina and Virginia covering the
Speaker 2: Continental Congress. There wasn't much written. So Pain I think
Speaker 2: opened a lot of people's eyes to the possibilities. And
Speaker 2: he also went after King George in a very personal
Speaker 2: way in ways that the Continental congressman could not because
Speaker 2: they showed the corps. So Pain would have been great
Speaker 2: on social media that the people loved that that he
Speaker 2: went out of him that way. It was kind of
Speaker 2: barroom talk, and it really did. I think it changed
Speaker 2: a lot of paintings in the countryside sold tens of
Speaker 2: thousands of copies, probably more than one hundred thousand, and
Speaker 2: there weren't that many people in America back then. If
Speaker 2: all of our we authors could all get Thomas Paine sales,
Speaker 2: we would love that. So he really had. You know,
Speaker 2: this guy who came from England, wasn't really an American,
Speaker 2: hadn't been here that long, wasn't in Congress. But because
Speaker 2: he wrote that book, and obviously it helped that he
Speaker 2: was in Philadelphia where the congressman could read it and
Speaker 2: then send it back to their colonies, which also happened.
Speaker 2: That was a great assistance to pain in his work.
Speaker 2: But I think really was he wrote in ways that
Speaker 2: the people in the country side could understand it, and
Speaker 2: that really lit the spark of independence among those books.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, you know, I have students read a lot
Speaker 1: of primary sources, and the one that they struggle the
Speaker 1: least with is always common sense, because it is written
Speaker 1: in a way that even today, and you know, people
Speaker 1: don't write the same today as they did several hundred
Speaker 1: years ago. That's understandable, but honestly, it's understandable in a
Speaker 1: way that even some documents written in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: aren't comprehensible. And that's a testament to the clarity of
Speaker 1: his pros and his ability to construct his argument in
Speaker 1: a way that's so irresistibly logical that you can't read
Speaker 1: that and not think anything other than, yeah, this is dumb.
Speaker 1: These colonies should be independent. But I'm always interested in,
Speaker 1: as this is unfolding in seventeen seventy five and the
Speaker 1: calendar is turning to seventeen seventy six, what's the reaction
Speaker 1: like inning in and around King George in Parliament? Are
Speaker 1: they befuddled?
Speaker 2: What either?
Speaker 1: Do they see this as a big deal or is
Speaker 1: this something that they still think is a minor inconvenience
Speaker 1: that that they're going to deal with in due course.
Speaker 2: I think obviously there was a diversity of opinions, but
Speaker 2: I think most of them thought the army is going
Speaker 2: to put that. The British Army is going to put
Speaker 2: down these people. What are they doing? We will quickly
Speaker 2: seize control of it. Certainly, what what the king thought?
Speaker 2: And of course people tell the King what he wants
Speaker 2: to hear. There were pro American voices, though there were
Speaker 2: there were there were voices over there who thought that
Speaker 2: the colonists had a good point and and that we
Speaker 2: should treat them a little more gingerly and take advantage
Speaker 2: of this. I mean The British really could have fended
Speaker 2: this off much earlier by just pulling back on some
Speaker 2: of their some of their edicts, some of their taxes.
Speaker 2: They could have done that had they had they seen
Speaker 2: what was coming. They totally misread the play. The King
Speaker 2: totally misread the play. But again it's it's from not
Speaker 2: being here. They didn't have a sense on the ground,
Speaker 2: and it took so long for the information to get back.
Speaker 2: Most of the people in England who were commenting had
Speaker 2: never been to America. The King certainly hadn't. They didn't
Speaker 2: understand what these people were thinking. So it was it
Speaker 2: was certainly was a misread of a play. They could
Speaker 2: have come up with a solution that would have appeased
Speaker 2: the colonists. I think if they had done it early enough,
Speaker 2: for years and decades, I do think we eventually would
Speaker 2: have been independent. But I think they could have. They
Speaker 2: misread the play. I think it was, you know, arrogance, condescension.
Speaker 2: They were the greatest power in the world. Who were
Speaker 2: these who are these rabble? They were calling the rabble,
Speaker 2: These guys with muskets running around, They're gonna they're gonna
Speaker 2: fight The British Army are you kidding me? Do you
Speaker 2: realize how much power we have? And you know we've
Speaker 2: seen that with empires throughout history.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is just rinse and repeat to a
Speaker 1: large extent. Arrogance, you know, spans centuries, millennia. Even then
Speaker 1: it doesn't work out well. In the end you write
Speaker 1: in chapter six and the getting quote the match that
Speaker 1: lit the American Revolution became a blow torch in the
Speaker 1: second week of seventeen seventy six end quote. What happened?
Speaker 1: What are we talking about here? I thought that was
Speaker 1: really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The date, the first date of the chapters, I
Speaker 2: have six or seven or eight dates that I named
Speaker 2: chapters after. It's the ninth of January. And I was
Speaker 2: struck by the dichotomy of what was happening. There was
Speaker 2: a James Wilson of Pennsylvania who was at that point
Speaker 2: a loyalist ap pro British leading member of the Continent
Speaker 2: of Congress was he and Spellow delegates. Spellow loyalist delegates
Speaker 2: were mortified that the king appeared to be angry at them.
Speaker 2: You know. The King responded in late seventeen seventy five
Speaker 2: that you know, you folks say you want your rights,
Speaker 2: but I'm seeing through this. You want to break away
Speaker 2: from us, you want independence, you're fighting us, and he
Speaker 2: threatened them militarily and a loyalists were mortified, so that
Speaker 2: he put forth a resolution that we would disallow independence.
Speaker 2: So it just said, well, there were that many people
Speaker 2: in the Continental Commerce who would have done that, not
Speaker 2: enough to pass it through. There were the delegate the
Speaker 2: radicals stopped it, but it's striking that they were thinking
Speaker 2: of doing it, that this was proposed, And that was
Speaker 2: the same date that Thomas Paine's book COmON Sense came out.
Speaker 2: So these two things happening on the same date. In
Speaker 2: a way, it really struck me that some ways, in
Speaker 2: seventeen seventy six, that was really when the spark was lit,
Speaker 2: that Sam Adams and those standing up to the loyalists
Speaker 2: and Thomas pain coming out with his book, and everything
Speaker 2: kind of built from there. And you know, a couple
Speaker 2: of these things things happened on on these dates that
Speaker 2: we don't know that were really important in American history,
Speaker 2: and to me, many of them were just as important
Speaker 2: as the fourth of July. And that's why what with
Speaker 2: the chapter titles with the dates of the ninth of January,
Speaker 2: the fifteenth of May, the seventh of June, and so on.
Speaker 1: And that's the fun part about history is seeing that
Speaker 1: chain unfold and looking at each individual link and understanding
Speaker 1: that nothing happens in the vacuum. Well, we're close to
Speaker 1: the end of time here. But I always add by
Speaker 1: asking like, is it we've talked about fraction of the book?
Speaker 1: Of course, just a bear bear fraction of it. But
Speaker 1: is there anything else that you think that that people
Speaker 1: should really know about the book or something or a
Speaker 1: particular event or anything that you think is really important
Speaker 1: for the listeners to hear.
Speaker 2: I think there's a there's a fun part of history too,
Speaker 2: and I think this is this is part of it.
Speaker 2: There will be a good trivia question answer here. Is
Speaker 2: there actually is a passage of the declaration that etched
Speaker 2: that's etched on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. That was not written by Thomas Jefferson. We
Speaker 2: tend to believe that he wrote everything we have. Jefferson
Speaker 2: he wrote the original draft. He wrote most of it
Speaker 2: we have, but we have his original draft, and there
Speaker 2: were eighty six editorial changes made to that by first
Speaker 2: committee that Jefferson was part of and then the full Congress.
Speaker 2: The Congress cut out a third of what Jefferson wrote.
Speaker 2: They rewrote the final paragraph because the final paragraph is
Speaker 2: when they declared independence. We think of that second paragraph
Speaker 2: today as the one that's most important, you know, the
Speaker 2: self evident truths and all men are created equal. They
Speaker 2: breezed over that back then. If you read the final paragraph,
Speaker 2: that's when they declared independence. When they were doing the
Speaker 2: memorial in the nineteen forties, the president was fdr. He
Speaker 2: wanted a final crack, and he was a Jefferson fan,
Speaker 2: and he knew the final paragraph was important. He didn't
Speaker 2: think they had enough of that in there. They only
Speaker 2: had a couple hundred words, and he put that in.
Speaker 2: And he thought, as most of us think that Thomas
Speaker 2: Jefferson wrote the whole thing. Does it matter? No, everything's edited.
Speaker 2: My book was edited. But I do think we think
Speaker 2: that there were other there were congressmen who made some
Speaker 2: important changes in that. Did they identify themselves? No, Again,
Speaker 2: in this part of history, there were eighty six changes.
Speaker 2: Jefferson identified seven of them by day, So we don't
Speaker 2: know who may some of these changes. Some of these,
Speaker 2: you know, arguably the most important document in American history.
Speaker 2: So those little there were so many little quirks of
Speaker 2: fate that I found fascinating. Does it matter, No, But
Speaker 2: it's fascinating to learn that this was, in some in
Speaker 2: many ways a group effort document that was primarily authored
Speaker 2: by Jefferson, but others made others made contributions. I just
Speaker 2: kind of found to find that fun.
Speaker 1: I had an English literature professor in college who told
Speaker 1: me once a thing of complexity is a joy for
Speaker 1: all time. I believe him. If you do, you're going
Speaker 1: to love this book. It really unravels what is an
Speaker 1: unbelievably important year, and you'll walk away from it having
Speaker 1: as I did, a much greater appreciation for the people
Speaker 1: who were involved for the Declaration of Independence, and it
Speaker 1: was a much more difficult feat than we think that
Speaker 1: it was today. It can't boil it down to one
Speaker 1: day in July. That's just not realistic. So but thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on the show. I
Speaker 1: really hope that people pick up the book. And because
Speaker 1: I loved it, I thought it was great.
Speaker 2: And thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. Best
Speaker 2: questions to you