WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.279 You know, when you sit down as a student to study 00:00:02.279 --> 00:00:05.639 government or when you look at the foundations 00:00:05.639 --> 00:00:09.419 of modern democracy, it is so incredibly easy 00:00:09.419 --> 00:00:11.740 to look at the final product like it's some kind 00:00:11.740 --> 00:00:14.939 of I don't know, pristine architectural blueprint. 00:00:15.300 --> 00:00:17.579 Right, right. It looks completely inevitable 00:00:17.579 --> 00:00:20.100 in retrospect. Exactly. Like every single line 00:00:20.100 --> 00:00:22.760 was perfectly planned. Every check and balance 00:00:22.760 --> 00:00:26.600 just perfectly calculated by these absolute geniuses 00:00:26.600 --> 00:00:28.559 who knew exactly what they were building from 00:00:28.559 --> 00:00:31.379 day one. As if they just sat in the sterile, 00:00:31.420 --> 00:00:34.579 quiet room, sip some tea and, you know, mathematically 00:00:34.579 --> 00:00:37.359 deduce the perfect republic from thin air. Yeah, 00:00:37.619 --> 00:00:39.880 we look at the finished document, the United 00:00:39.880 --> 00:00:41.560 States Declaration of Independence, and it's 00:00:41.560 --> 00:00:45.020 just so clean, so elegantly written. But then 00:00:45.020 --> 00:00:47.200 you actually step into the historical sources 00:00:47.200 --> 00:00:49.560 we have for this deep dive. And it's a completely 00:00:49.560 --> 00:00:51.640 different story. It really is. You start digging 00:00:51.640 --> 00:00:54.420 into the letters, the journals, the rough drafts, 00:00:54.500 --> 00:00:56.659 with words just aggressively crossed out, the 00:00:56.659 --> 00:00:59.359 angry debates in these humid rooms. And you realize 00:00:59.359 --> 00:01:02.409 it wasn't a pristine blueprint at all. What we're 00:01:02.409 --> 00:01:04.750 actually looking at is a historical landscape 00:01:04.750 --> 00:01:08.469 that is a muddy, chaotic, incredibly dangerous 00:01:08.469 --> 00:01:11.250 construction site. It is the absolute definition 00:01:11.250 --> 00:01:13.689 of a political and ideological pressure cooker. 00:01:14.469 --> 00:01:17.569 And we have to remember the stakes here because 00:01:17.569 --> 00:01:20.030 the stakes could not have been higher. So welcome 00:01:20.030 --> 00:01:22.430 to the deep dive. Today, our mission is to take 00:01:22.430 --> 00:01:24.909 a massive stack of source material, comprehensive 00:01:24.909 --> 00:01:27.510 historical documentation on the drafting, the 00:01:27.510 --> 00:01:29.230 context, and the legacy of the Declaration of 00:01:29.230 --> 00:01:31.689 Independence and walk chronologically through 00:01:31.689 --> 00:01:34.750 the intense, high stakes events that led to America's 00:01:34.750 --> 00:01:36.840 break from Great Britain. Yeah. And if you're 00:01:36.840 --> 00:01:38.739 a student trying to understand the bedrock of 00:01:38.739 --> 00:01:41.060 American democracy, we are going to show you 00:01:41.060 --> 00:01:44.060 exactly how these chaotic, messy, profoundly 00:01:44.060 --> 00:01:47.840 human events forged the very democratic principles 00:01:47.840 --> 00:01:50.120 you study today. Because we have to set the stage 00:01:50.120 --> 00:01:53.340 properly for you here. When these delegates were 00:01:53.340 --> 00:01:55.920 arguing over commas and clauses in Philadelphia, 00:01:56.019 --> 00:01:58.620 they weren't just writing a philosophical essay 00:01:58.620 --> 00:02:01.000 for a university grade. No, no, they weren't 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:04.140 just publishing an op -ed. They were quite literally 00:02:04.140 --> 00:02:06.939 preparing to sign their own death warrants. Right. 00:02:07.079 --> 00:02:09.419 They were committing high treason against the 00:02:09.419 --> 00:02:12.639 British Crown. And in the 18th century, high 00:02:12.639 --> 00:02:15.580 treason wasn't just a, you know, a prison sentence. 00:02:15.620 --> 00:02:18.419 That's brutal. It was an offense punishable by 00:02:18.419 --> 00:02:21.319 the most gruesome methods imaginable hanged. 00:02:21.129 --> 00:02:24.349 drawn and quartered. They were staring down the 00:02:24.349 --> 00:02:27.150 barrel of the greatest military and naval empire 00:02:27.150 --> 00:02:29.650 on the face of the earth. And while under that 00:02:29.650 --> 00:02:32.050 immense existential threat, they were trying 00:02:32.050 --> 00:02:34.530 to invent a completely new kind of government 00:02:34.530 --> 00:02:38.310 based on an incredibly radical idea, the consent 00:02:38.310 --> 00:02:40.310 of the governed. Okay, so let's unpack this from 00:02:40.310 --> 00:02:42.090 the start, because before there could be a physical 00:02:42.090 --> 00:02:44.110 revolution like, before the muskets were fired 00:02:44.110 --> 00:02:46.389 and the cannons were loaded, there had to be 00:02:46.389 --> 00:02:48.490 a revolution in the mind, right? Absolutely. 00:02:48.780 --> 00:02:50.699 The way people thought about their relationship 00:02:50.699 --> 00:02:53.860 to power, to authority, to the law itself, it 00:02:53.860 --> 00:02:55.900 all had to completely shatter and be rebuilt. 00:02:56.300 --> 00:02:58.400 And our sources point out that this ideological 00:02:58.400 --> 00:03:01.379 rift really started to open up between 1763 and 00:03:01.379 --> 00:03:05.500 1774. What was the absolute core of this disagreement? 00:03:05.939 --> 00:03:07.909 Because it wasn't just about tea. Not at all. 00:03:07.990 --> 00:03:10.090 It all comes down to the shifting definitions 00:03:10.090 --> 00:03:13.710 of rights, specifically who has the authority 00:03:13.710 --> 00:03:15.889 to grant rights and who has the authority to 00:03:15.889 --> 00:03:18.990 restrict them. Relations between the 13 colonies 00:03:18.990 --> 00:03:21.389 in Great Britain really started deteriorating 00:03:21.389 --> 00:03:24.430 after 1763, right at the end of the French and 00:03:24.430 --> 00:03:27.169 Indian War. The British Empire had just fought 00:03:27.169 --> 00:03:30.330 this massive global conflict and they had incurred 00:03:30.330 --> 00:03:32.349 astronomical debts. Mostly to defend the North 00:03:32.349 --> 00:03:34.250 American colonies, right, from the French and 00:03:34.250 --> 00:03:37.250 their indigenous allies. Exactly. Naturally, 00:03:37.550 --> 00:03:39.110 Parliament looks at the ledger and says, well, 00:03:39.270 --> 00:03:42.210 we protected you. We went into debt for you. 00:03:42.430 --> 00:03:45.150 Now you need to pay your fair share of the empire's 00:03:45.150 --> 00:03:48.009 operating costs. Which, I mean, makes logical 00:03:48.009 --> 00:03:50.110 sense on paper. If you live in an empire, you 00:03:50.110 --> 00:03:52.969 pay for the empire. OK. On paper, sure. So Parliament 00:03:52.969 --> 00:03:56.930 passes the Stamp Act in 1765, which taxed printed 00:03:56.930 --> 00:04:00.409 materials, and then the Townsend Act in 1767, 00:04:00.530 --> 00:04:03.629 which taxed goods like glass, lead, paint, and 00:04:03.629 --> 00:04:06.710 tea. Just standard revenue measures. Right. Measures 00:04:06.710 --> 00:04:08.969 designed strictly to extract revenue from the 00:04:08.969 --> 00:04:11.689 colonies to pay down that imperial debt. But 00:04:11.689 --> 00:04:13.909 for the colonists, this wasn't just an accounting 00:04:13.909 --> 00:04:16.709 dispute over a few pennies on a newspaper. It 00:04:16.709 --> 00:04:20.149 was a profound existential constitutional crisis. 00:04:20.610 --> 00:04:22.670 But why? I mean, if it's just a small tax, why 00:04:22.670 --> 00:04:25.290 does it trigger a constitutional crisis? To understand 00:04:25.290 --> 00:04:27.649 that, you have to understand the orthodox British 00:04:27.649 --> 00:04:29.750 view of the world at the time, which dated all 00:04:29.750 --> 00:04:32.269 the way back to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. 00:04:32.529 --> 00:04:34.949 OK, take us back there. So in 1688, the English 00:04:34.949 --> 00:04:38.110 parliament overthrew King James II and established 00:04:38.110 --> 00:04:40.490 that parliament, not the crown, was the ultimate 00:04:40.519 --> 00:04:43.439 supreme authority in the land. So by the 1760s, 00:04:43.500 --> 00:04:45.600 the British political mindset was that Parliament 00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:48.439 is sovereign throughout the entire empire. In 00:04:48.439 --> 00:04:51.180 their eyes, whatever Parliament did was, by definition, 00:04:51.839 --> 00:04:53.779 constitutional. Oh, so Parliament basically was 00:04:53.779 --> 00:04:56.139 the Constitution. Yes. There was no higher law 00:04:56.139 --> 00:04:58.699 than a parliamentary act. But the colonists across 00:04:58.699 --> 00:05:01.160 the Atlantic are operating on a completely different 00:05:01.160 --> 00:05:03.839 system. Like, they missed that memo. or rather 00:05:03.839 --> 00:05:06.160 they violently disagreed with it. They absolutely 00:05:06.160 --> 00:05:08.800 disagreed. Over the decades of living relatively 00:05:08.800 --> 00:05:11.939 autonomously, this new idea had taken root in 00:05:11.939 --> 00:05:14.660 the colonies. They believed that the British 00:05:14.660 --> 00:05:17.379 Constitution, which remember wasn't a single 00:05:17.379 --> 00:05:19.699 written document, but a collection of traditions, 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:22.839 charters, and laws like the Magna Carta, they 00:05:22.839 --> 00:05:25.420 believed it recognized certain fundamental rights 00:05:25.420 --> 00:05:28.480 that no government could violate. Not the king 00:05:28.480 --> 00:05:31.740 and certainly not parliament. Exactly. Thinkers 00:05:31.740 --> 00:05:34.800 like Samuel Adams, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson 00:05:34.800 --> 00:05:37.540 began writing essays arguing that Parliament 00:05:37.540 --> 00:05:40.040 was a legislature for Great Britain only. Wait, 00:05:40.120 --> 00:05:42.160 really? So they believed the politicians in London 00:05:42.160 --> 00:05:44.920 had literally no jurisdiction over them whatsoever? 00:05:45.079 --> 00:05:47.180 That is exactly what they argued. They claimed 00:05:47.180 --> 00:05:49.379 the colonies had their own legislatures, the 00:05:49.379 --> 00:05:51.839 Virginia House of Burgesses, the Massachusetts 00:05:51.839 --> 00:05:55.660 General Court, and so on. Their only legal connection 00:05:55.660 --> 00:05:58.180 to the British Empire was their allegiance to 00:05:58.180 --> 00:06:01.300 the Crown, the King. They argued they owed no 00:06:01.300 --> 00:06:03.959 allegiance to the politicians in parliament because 00:06:03.959 --> 00:06:06.740 the colonists had no direct representation in 00:06:06.740 --> 00:06:10.319 that body. Hence the famous rallying crino taxation 00:06:10.319 --> 00:06:12.879 without representation. I love looking at it 00:06:12.879 --> 00:06:14.579 this way and tell me if this analogy works for 00:06:14.579 --> 00:06:18.079 you. It's like comparing the British view of 00:06:18.079 --> 00:06:21.189 parliament. to a modern software terms of service 00:06:21.189 --> 00:06:23.009 agreement. Oh, that's interesting. You know, 00:06:23.050 --> 00:06:25.009 you sign up for an app, you just click agree, 00:06:25.350 --> 00:06:27.430 and the tech company can unilaterally change 00:06:27.430 --> 00:06:29.870 the rules on you at any time. They can update 00:06:29.870 --> 00:06:32.110 the terms, charge you new fees, restrict your 00:06:32.110 --> 00:06:34.410 access, and you just have to live with it because 00:06:34.410 --> 00:06:36.529 they own the platform. Mm -hmm. Parlin viewed 00:06:36.529 --> 00:06:39.329 the colonies as users on their platform. Right. 00:06:39.709 --> 00:06:42.629 But the colonists believed they had a non -negotiable 00:06:42.629 --> 00:06:46.149 VIP contract. The core features of their liberty, 00:06:46.350 --> 00:06:49.399 like their property, Their local courts could 00:06:49.399 --> 00:06:52.519 not be updated, taxed or deleted without their 00:06:52.519 --> 00:06:55.180 explicit local permission. That is a brilliant 00:06:55.180 --> 00:06:57.759 way to frame it for a student of history. The 00:06:57.759 --> 00:06:59.300 British government is saying we can update the 00:06:59.300 --> 00:07:01.480 terms of service whenever we want. We are parliament. 00:07:01.660 --> 00:07:03.980 The colonists are saying, no, we have foundational, 00:07:04.139 --> 00:07:06.600 unalterable rights. What you're witnessing in 00:07:06.600 --> 00:07:09.980 the 1760s and 70s is the intellectual birth of 00:07:09.980 --> 00:07:13.000 the concept that rights are inherent. They're 00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:15.660 baked into the human condition. They are not 00:07:15.660 --> 00:07:18.290 merely privileges granted by a legislative body 00:07:18.290 --> 00:07:20.350 that can be revoked when the government needs 00:07:20.350 --> 00:07:22.810 to, say, balance its budget. But I have to push 00:07:22.810 --> 00:07:24.569 back a little here just to play devil's advocate 00:07:24.569 --> 00:07:26.629 for the British. I'm trying to put myself in 00:07:26.629 --> 00:07:29.310 the shoes of a politician in London. Weren't 00:07:29.310 --> 00:07:31.790 the British kind of justified? I mean, they literally 00:07:31.790 --> 00:07:35.069 fought a war on American soil to protect American 00:07:35.069 --> 00:07:38.290 colonists. Why did a relatively standard tax 00:07:38.290 --> 00:07:41.189 dispute, a demand to just pitch in turn into 00:07:41.189 --> 00:07:43.170 an existential crisis that burned down the whole 00:07:43.170 --> 00:07:45.509 house, weren't the colonists just being cheap? 00:07:45.839 --> 00:07:48.139 It's a totally fair question, and Parliament 00:07:48.139 --> 00:07:49.620 certainly thought they were just being cheap. 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:52.100 But for the colonists, it was never about the 00:07:52.100 --> 00:07:54.420 amount of the tax. It was about the precedent, 00:07:54.500 --> 00:07:56.680 it said. It was about the mechanism of power. 00:07:56.819 --> 00:07:59.339 How so? If Parliament could levy an internal 00:07:59.339 --> 00:08:02.160 tax on the colonies without their consent, even 00:08:02.160 --> 00:08:05.160 a tax of a single penny, it meant Parliament 00:08:05.160 --> 00:08:09.139 had absolute unchecked power over colonial property. 00:08:09.439 --> 00:08:11.240 Because if they can take a penny without asking, 00:08:11.360 --> 00:08:13.000 they can take the whole farm without asking. 00:08:13.379 --> 00:08:16.060 Precisely. And in the 18th century English mind, 00:08:16.220 --> 00:08:18.839 property and liberty were inextricably linked. 00:08:19.279 --> 00:08:21.199 If you don't have a secure right to your property, 00:08:21.360 --> 00:08:24.540 you don't have liberty. You are entirely dependent 00:08:24.540 --> 00:08:26.500 on the goodwill of the state, which essentially 00:08:26.500 --> 00:08:29.839 makes you a slave to the state. So for the colonists, 00:08:30.040 --> 00:08:32.360 accepting a small tax today meant accepting total 00:08:32.360 --> 00:08:34.899 subjugation tomorrow. It was a slippery slope 00:08:34.899 --> 00:08:38.399 that ended in tyranny. And this ideological stalemate 00:08:38.399 --> 00:08:41.539 over taxes in terms of service inevitably erupts 00:08:41.539 --> 00:08:44.539 into physical defiance, which forces the British 00:08:44.539 --> 00:08:46.799 crown to eventually bring the hammer down, taking 00:08:46.799 --> 00:08:49.139 us to the point of no return. We are looking 00:08:49.139 --> 00:08:53.580 at the period from roughly 1774 to late 1775. 00:08:54.220 --> 00:08:56.840 How do we escalate from angry philosophical essays 00:08:56.840 --> 00:09:00.200 and local newspapers to actual Bloody warfare. 00:09:00.519 --> 00:09:02.480 The escalation happens because the colonists 00:09:02.480 --> 00:09:04.580 realize that essays aren't stopping the taxes. 00:09:04.980 --> 00:09:07.080 Protests begin to turn into the physical destruction 00:09:07.080 --> 00:09:09.100 of British property. Right. It moves from the 00:09:09.100 --> 00:09:11.980 page to the streets. Yes. For example, look at 00:09:11.980 --> 00:09:16.299 the Gatsby affair in 1772. The HMS Gatsby was 00:09:16.299 --> 00:09:19.399 a British custom schooner that had been aggressively 00:09:19.399 --> 00:09:22.600 enforcing unpopular trade regulations and harassing 00:09:22.600 --> 00:09:24.460 local ships off the coast of Rhode Island. OK. 00:09:24.700 --> 00:09:26.759 So a group of Rhode Islanders rode out in the 00:09:26.759 --> 00:09:29.200 middle of the night. boarded the ship, shot the 00:09:29.200 --> 00:09:31.620 captain, and burned the vessel to the waterline. 00:09:31.840 --> 00:09:34.320 That is a massive escalation. You can't just 00:09:34.320 --> 00:09:36.700 burn a British military custom ship and expect 00:09:36.700 --> 00:09:38.799 them to write an essay back. You certainly cannot. 00:09:39.139 --> 00:09:42.139 The British were furious. But what really terrified 00:09:42.139 --> 00:09:44.340 the other colonies wasn't just the British anger. 00:09:44.500 --> 00:09:47.039 It was the British legal response. The British 00:09:47.039 --> 00:09:49.299 government threatened to bypass the local colonial 00:09:49.299 --> 00:09:52.320 courts entirely, find the suspects, and ship 00:09:52.320 --> 00:09:54.720 them across the Atlantic to England to stand 00:09:54.720 --> 00:09:57.769 trial for treason. Oh wow, so they are completely 00:09:57.769 --> 00:10:00.889 stripping away the right to a trial by a local 00:10:00.889 --> 00:10:03.129 jury of your peers. Exactly, which is one of 00:10:03.129 --> 00:10:05.509 the most ancient sacred rights in English common 00:10:05.509 --> 00:10:08.350 law. And then the following year, you have the 00:10:08.350 --> 00:10:12.470 famous Boston Tea Party in 1773, where millions 00:10:12.470 --> 00:10:14.909 of dollars worth of British East India Company 00:10:14.909 --> 00:10:17.009 tea is dumped into the harbor. The famous one. 00:10:17.159 --> 00:10:19.740 Right. And at this point, Parliament decides 00:10:19.740 --> 00:10:22.019 it has had enough of the philosophical debates 00:10:22.019 --> 00:10:24.799 and the property destruction. They decide to 00:10:24.799 --> 00:10:28.299 make an example of Massachusetts. In 1774, they 00:10:28.299 --> 00:10:30.779 pass what they call the Coercive Acts, which 00:10:30.779 --> 00:10:33.320 the colonists immediately brand the Intolerable 00:10:33.320 --> 00:10:35.789 Act. And what did these acts actually do? They 00:10:35.789 --> 00:10:38.230 were brutally punitive. They closed the port 00:10:38.230 --> 00:10:41.049 of Boston entirely until the tea was paid for, 00:10:41.250 --> 00:10:44.230 economically starving the city. They unilaterally 00:10:44.230 --> 00:10:46.570 altered the Massachusetts charter, bringing the 00:10:46.570 --> 00:10:48.769 colonial government directly under British control 00:10:48.769 --> 00:10:51.330 and severely restricting town meetings. They 00:10:51.330 --> 00:10:53.389 essentially put Massachusetts under military 00:10:53.389 --> 00:10:56.009 occupation. Which totally backfires on the British, 00:10:56.070 --> 00:10:58.169 doesn't it? Because instead of isolating Massachusetts, 00:10:58.509 --> 00:11:01.129 it terrifies the rest of the colonies. It proves 00:11:01.129 --> 00:11:03.909 the colonists' worst fears. Like, if Parliament 00:11:03.909 --> 00:11:06.590 can unilaterally destroy the government of Massachusetts, 00:11:06.909 --> 00:11:08.750 they can do it to Virginia. They can do it to 00:11:08.750 --> 00:11:11.129 Pennsylvania. It's the realization that an attack 00:11:11.129 --> 00:11:14.389 on one is an attack on all. That is the exact 00:11:14.389 --> 00:11:16.690 psychological shift. The British thought the 00:11:16.690 --> 00:11:19.389 other colonies would abandon Massachusetts. Instead, 00:11:19.570 --> 00:11:23.809 it unified them. In September 1774, the colonies 00:11:23.809 --> 00:11:26.450 convened the first Continental Congress in Philadelphia 00:11:26.450 --> 00:11:29.929 to coordinate a unified response. But even now 00:11:29.929 --> 00:11:31.570 they aren't talking about independence, are they? 00:11:31.669 --> 00:11:33.690 No, independence is not on the table. The First 00:11:33.690 --> 00:11:35.990 Continental Congress coordinates a widespread 00:11:35.990 --> 00:11:39.129 boycott of British goods to put economic pressure 00:11:39.129 --> 00:11:41.610 on London, and they send a formal respectful 00:11:41.610 --> 00:11:44.710 petition directly to the King asking him to intervene 00:11:44.710 --> 00:11:47.750 and repeal the coercive acts. They are trying 00:11:47.750 --> 00:11:50.409 to use the system to fix the system. But the 00:11:50.409 --> 00:11:53.169 system is completely unresponsive. It fails completely. 00:11:53.320 --> 00:11:55.639 King George III and his prime minister, Lord 00:11:55.639 --> 00:11:58.440 North, are absolutely determined to enforce parliamentary 00:11:58.440 --> 00:12:01.179 supremacy. They view any compromise as a sign 00:12:01.179 --> 00:12:03.639 of weakness that will shatter the empire. In 00:12:03.639 --> 00:12:06.820 fact, in November 1774, King George writes a 00:12:06.820 --> 00:12:09.240 private letter to Lord North with a chillingly 00:12:09.240 --> 00:12:11.840 clear message. He says of the New England colonies, 00:12:12.279 --> 00:12:14.059 blows must decide whether they are to be subject 00:12:14.059 --> 00:12:17.019 to this country or independent. Blows must decide. 00:12:17.500 --> 00:12:20.039 That is incredible. So it's actually the king 00:12:20.039 --> 00:12:23.000 who is drawing the line in the sand first. The 00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:24.879 colonists are asking for a political compromise 00:12:24.879 --> 00:12:26.899 and the king is saying, no, we are going to fight. 00:12:26.960 --> 00:12:30.019 He is. And those blows arrive just a few months 00:12:30.019 --> 00:12:33.480 later, in April 1775, when British troops march 00:12:33.480 --> 00:12:36.059 out of Boston to seize colonial gunpowder and 00:12:36.059 --> 00:12:38.259 fighting breaks out at Lexington and Concord. 00:12:38.740 --> 00:12:41.519 The Revolutionary War has officially begun. Wow. 00:12:41.980 --> 00:12:45.100 By May of 1775, the Second Continental Congress 00:12:45.100 --> 00:12:47.519 convenes at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia. 00:12:48.019 --> 00:12:49.940 But here's the fascinating part that students 00:12:49.940 --> 00:12:52.600 often miss. Even with blood physically spilled 00:12:52.600 --> 00:12:55.159 on the battlefield, declaring independence is 00:12:55.159 --> 00:12:57.799 still considered a fringe, highly radical and 00:12:57.799 --> 00:13:00.100 treasonous idea. Which is wild to think about. 00:13:00.279 --> 00:13:02.340 I mean, people are shooting at each other. American 00:13:02.340 --> 00:13:05.620 colonists are dying. The British are firing volleys 00:13:05.620 --> 00:13:08.519 into crowds of militia. But the politicians in 00:13:08.519 --> 00:13:10.399 Philadelphia are still thinking we can fix this. 00:13:10.440 --> 00:13:12.639 We can stay in the empire. I have to push back 00:13:12.639 --> 00:13:15.500 on the colonists mindset here. Why were they 00:13:15.500 --> 00:13:17.639 clinging so desperately to a king whose army 00:13:17.639 --> 00:13:20.019 was currently killing them? It feels almost like 00:13:20.019 --> 00:13:22.440 political Stockholm syndrome. It does look like 00:13:22.440 --> 00:13:24.559 that to modernize, but you have to understand 00:13:24.559 --> 00:13:26.899 the centuries of cultural conditioning at play. 00:13:27.580 --> 00:13:29.720 For generations, the colonists had been taught, 00:13:29.960 --> 00:13:32.159 culturally and religiously, that the king was 00:13:32.159 --> 00:13:35.379 their ultimate benevolent protector. They directed 00:13:35.379 --> 00:13:37.580 all their anger at parliament and the king's 00:13:37.580 --> 00:13:40.139 evil ministers. Oh, I see. They genuinely believed 00:13:40.139 --> 00:13:42.679 that King George III was being lied to by his 00:13:42.679 --> 00:13:45.220 advisors. They thought, if his majesty only knew 00:13:45.220 --> 00:13:47.720 the truth of our suffering, he would surely intercede 00:13:47.720 --> 00:13:51.309 on our behalf. So, even after Lexington and conquered, 00:13:51.870 --> 00:13:53.809 Congress sends a second petition to him, the 00:13:53.809 --> 00:13:56.490 Olive Branch petition, begging for reconciliation. 00:13:56.809 --> 00:13:58.909 They're holding out for the heroic king to save 00:13:58.909 --> 00:14:02.309 them from the evil parliament. But the king completely 00:14:02.309 --> 00:14:04.950 shatters that illusion. He shatters it irreparably. 00:14:05.490 --> 00:14:07.690 When the Olive Branch petition arrives in London 00:14:07.690 --> 00:14:11.350 in late 1775, King George refuses to even look 00:14:11.350 --> 00:14:14.379 at it. Instead, he issues a formal proclamation 00:14:14.379 --> 00:14:16.840 of rebellion, officially declaring the colonies 00:14:16.840 --> 00:14:20.179 to be in a state of open armed revolt. And then 00:14:20.179 --> 00:14:22.419 he goes before parliament and announces that 00:14:22.419 --> 00:14:24.299 he is considering friendly offers of foreign 00:14:24.299 --> 00:14:26.500 assistance to suppress the rebellion. Foreign 00:14:26.500 --> 00:14:29.879 assistance, meaning mercenaries. Exactly. He 00:14:29.879 --> 00:14:33.379 is hiring German soldiers, the Hessians, to cross 00:14:33.379 --> 00:14:36.600 the Atlantic and kill his own subjects. Stop 00:14:36.600 --> 00:14:39.129 right there. Because for a student studying the 00:14:39.129 --> 00:14:42.149 foundational principles of democracy, this specific 00:14:42.149 --> 00:14:45.230 period is an incredibly stark lesson. What we 00:14:45.230 --> 00:14:47.909 are seeing here is the complete catastrophic 00:14:47.909 --> 00:14:50.789 breakdown of the right to petition the government 00:14:50.789 --> 00:14:53.129 for a redress of grievances, which of course 00:14:53.129 --> 00:14:55.690 becomes a core First Amendment right in the modern 00:14:55.690 --> 00:14:58.830 U .S. Constitution. Yes. The founders enshrined 00:14:58.830 --> 00:15:01.549 that right because of this exact moment. The 00:15:01.549 --> 00:15:04.429 colonists tried every legal, peaceful route available. 00:15:04.750 --> 00:15:06.990 They wrote essays. They organized boy - They 00:15:06.990 --> 00:15:09.629 filed lawsuits. They petitioned the king directly, 00:15:09.750 --> 00:15:12.649 twice. And the response to their legal petitions 00:15:12.649 --> 00:15:15.590 was military occupation, naval blockades, and 00:15:15.590 --> 00:15:17.769 foreign mercenaries. That is the crucial takeaway. 00:15:18.210 --> 00:15:20.549 If we connect this to the bigger picture of democratic 00:15:20.549 --> 00:15:22.970 theory, it shows that a functional democracy 00:15:22.970 --> 00:15:25.690 requires a responsive government. When a government 00:15:25.690 --> 00:15:28.110 completely closes off all avenues for peaceful 00:15:28.110 --> 00:15:30.509 redress, when it criminalizes the very act of 00:15:30.509 --> 00:15:32.750 complaining, revolution becomes the only remaining 00:15:32.750 --> 00:15:34.889 mechanism for change. They were backed into a 00:15:34.889 --> 00:15:37.470 corner. The colonists didn't choose revolution 00:15:37.470 --> 00:15:39.409 as their first option. They were pushed into 00:15:39.409 --> 00:15:41.950 it because the legal system was weaponized against 00:15:41.950 --> 00:15:46.029 them. So by early 1776, the illusion is dead. 00:15:46.350 --> 00:15:49.490 The King has rejected peace. He's sending Hessians. 00:15:50.190 --> 00:15:52.090 The Congress in Philadelphia knows they're in 00:15:52.090 --> 00:15:54.669 a literal war for their survival. But they have 00:15:54.669 --> 00:15:57.870 a massive, massive problem. The general public 00:15:57.870 --> 00:16:01.269 is still largely terrified of the idea of independence. 00:16:01.750 --> 00:16:04.230 It's illegal, it's unprecedented, and it means 00:16:04.230 --> 00:16:06.830 tearing down everything they've ever known. How 00:16:06.830 --> 00:16:08.830 do you convince two and a half million people 00:16:08.830 --> 00:16:10.750 to commit treason against the greatest empire 00:16:10.750 --> 00:16:14.480 in the world? You need a masterpiece of public 00:16:14.480 --> 00:16:17.340 relations. You need to change the cultural narrative 00:16:17.340 --> 00:16:20.779 overnight. And that arrives in January 1776 in 00:16:20.779 --> 00:16:23.000 the form of a short pamphlet called Common Sense 00:16:23.000 --> 00:16:25.139 written by Thomas Paine. I have been waiting 00:16:25.139 --> 00:16:26.700 to talk about this. Here's where it gets really 00:16:26.700 --> 00:16:28.559 interesting, because I look at Thomas Paine's 00:16:28.559 --> 00:16:31.899 Common Sense as essentially the first viral social 00:16:31.899 --> 00:16:34.159 media campaign in American history. Oh, absolutely. 00:16:34.399 --> 00:16:36.720 Up to this point, the debate over rights and 00:16:36.720 --> 00:16:39.320 parliaments was happening in elevated academic 00:16:39.320 --> 00:16:42.320 language among wealthy lawyers. Payne takes this 00:16:42.320 --> 00:16:45.720 incredibly dense taboo, dangerous topic of political 00:16:45.720 --> 00:16:47.879 philosophy, and he distills it into something 00:16:47.879 --> 00:16:51.100 so potent, so aggressive, and so accessible that 00:16:51.100 --> 00:16:53.840 it goes viral in literally every tavern in the 00:16:53.840 --> 00:16:56.919 colonies. That analogy is perfect. Before Payne 00:16:56.919 --> 00:16:59.179 independence was whispered about behind closed 00:16:59.179 --> 00:17:02.000 doors, Payne grabs a megaphone and shouts it 00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:04.640 in the town square. What made common sense so 00:17:04.640 --> 00:17:07.059 revolutionary was its style and its audacity. 00:17:07.279 --> 00:17:09.839 He didn't just argue against parliamentary taxes, 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:12.940 he attacked the very concept of hereditary monarchy. 00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:14.759 You know, King George, a royal brute, right? 00:17:14.759 --> 00:17:17.599 Yes, a royal brute. He framed independence not 00:17:17.599 --> 00:17:19.819 just as a desperate, terrifying last resort, 00:17:19.960 --> 00:17:22.519 but as something achievable, scientifically necessary, 00:17:22.640 --> 00:17:25.420 and glorious. He used plain English and linked 00:17:25.420 --> 00:17:28.019 the idea of independence with deeply held Protestant 00:17:28.019 --> 00:17:30.980 beliefs, forging a distinctly American political 00:17:30.980 --> 00:17:33.640 identity that anyone could understand. The numbers 00:17:33.640 --> 00:17:36.809 on this are staggering in the sources. In proportion 00:17:36.809 --> 00:17:38.950 to the population of the colonies at the time, 00:17:39.150 --> 00:17:41.009 which was only about two and a half million people, 00:17:41.869 --> 00:17:44.190 common sense had the largest sale and circulation 00:17:44.190 --> 00:17:46.829 of any book published in American history. It 00:17:46.829 --> 00:17:49.690 was everywhere. General George Washington even 00:17:49.690 --> 00:17:52.789 ordered it read aloud to his demoralized troops 00:17:52.789 --> 00:17:55.220 in the field. Think about the power of that for 00:17:55.220 --> 00:17:58.500 a moment. Washington, a military commander, recognized 00:17:58.500 --> 00:18:01.640 that abstract political theory had direct physical 00:18:01.640 --> 00:18:05.180 battlefield application. Ideas motivate armies. 00:18:05.660 --> 00:18:07.640 When you are asking a starving, freezing farmer 00:18:07.640 --> 00:18:10.079 to stand in a field and get shot at by professional 00:18:10.079 --> 00:18:12.440 British soldiers, you have to give him a reason 00:18:12.440 --> 00:18:15.549 why. Pain gave them the why. If we bring back 00:18:15.549 --> 00:18:18.309 the open source software analogy, common sense 00:18:18.309 --> 00:18:20.369 is the first major patch submitted to the public 00:18:20.369 --> 00:18:23.109 consciousness. It completely rewrote the operating 00:18:23.109 --> 00:18:25.750 system of the average colonial citizen. Yes. 00:18:26.130 --> 00:18:27.809 But it wasn't just pain writing brilliant essays, 00:18:27.990 --> 00:18:30.750 right? The British also played a huge role in 00:18:30.750 --> 00:18:33.529 shifting the public mind in early 1776, perhaps 00:18:33.529 --> 00:18:35.930 unintentionally, with something called the Prohibitory 00:18:35.930 --> 00:18:39.210 Act. What was that? The Prohibitory Act was Parliament's 00:18:39.210 --> 00:18:43.640 ultimate economic weapon. In February 1776, word 00:18:43.640 --> 00:18:45.900 reached the colonies that Parliament had passed 00:18:45.900 --> 00:18:49.180 an act establishing a total naval blockade of 00:18:49.180 --> 00:18:52.680 all American ports. It declared that all American 00:18:52.680 --> 00:18:55.599 ships were now enemy vessels, subject to capture. 00:18:55.700 --> 00:18:57.859 So they just cut them off completely? Entirely. 00:18:58.160 --> 00:19:01.480 John Adams, who was the leading bulldog for independence 00:19:01.480 --> 00:19:04.400 in the Continental Congress, saw this act for 00:19:04.400 --> 00:19:06.359 exactly what it was. He didn't call it a tragedy, 00:19:06.480 --> 00:19:08.779 he called it the Act of Independence. Why did 00:19:08.779 --> 00:19:11.369 he call it that? Adams argued that Britain had 00:19:11.369 --> 00:19:13.710 actually declared them independent first. By 00:19:13.710 --> 00:19:16.049 kicking the colonies out of the empire's economic 00:19:16.049 --> 00:19:18.549 protection, blockading their ports, and declaring 00:19:18.549 --> 00:19:21.109 war on their trade, the king and parliament had 00:19:21.109 --> 00:19:23.410 effectively severed the relationship themselves. 00:19:24.390 --> 00:19:26.670 Adams argued, you can't be guilty of treason 00:19:26.670 --> 00:19:28.470 against a king who has already thrown you out 00:19:28.470 --> 00:19:30.670 of his kingdom and declared you a foreign enemy. 00:19:31.089 --> 00:19:34.029 It gave the colonists a legal and moral justification 00:19:34.029 --> 00:19:41.210 to fight back. hiring of foreign Hessian mercenaries 00:19:41.210 --> 00:19:44.190 and the British Navy blockading the ports, destroying 00:19:44.190 --> 00:19:47.750 the economy. Suddenly, the public mood shifts 00:19:47.750 --> 00:19:51.880 violently. Between April and July of 1776, a 00:19:51.880 --> 00:19:54.700 massive ground swell happens. The sources say 00:19:54.700 --> 00:19:57.539 over 90 local declarations of independence flood 00:19:57.539 --> 00:20:00.279 in from all over the colonies. Yes, and this 00:20:00.279 --> 00:20:03.039 is a crucial, often overlooked part of the story. 00:20:03.599 --> 00:20:06.099 Students often think independence came top down, 00:20:06.420 --> 00:20:08.640 that a few wealthy men in Congress decided it, 00:20:08.640 --> 00:20:11.400 and the people followed. The reality is the exact 00:20:11.400 --> 00:20:13.779 opposite. It surged bottom up. Bottom up from 00:20:13.779 --> 00:20:17.240 the people, exactly. Local municipalities, counties, 00:20:17.460 --> 00:20:19.750 and colonies assembly started formally authorizing 00:20:19.750 --> 00:20:22.410 separation. For example, on April 12th, North 00:20:22.410 --> 00:20:25.029 Carolina issues the Halifax Resolves. This was 00:20:25.029 --> 00:20:27.750 the first official action by a colony explicitly 00:20:27.750 --> 00:20:29.829 authorizing its delegates in Philadelphia to 00:20:29.829 --> 00:20:32.529 vote for independence. They are essentially sending 00:20:32.529 --> 00:20:34.890 new software instructions to their representatives, 00:20:35.130 --> 00:20:37.210 like you are now authorized to execute the independence 00:20:37.210 --> 00:20:41.009 protocol. Exactly. Then on May 4th, the legislature 00:20:41.009 --> 00:20:43.470 of Rhode Island officially renounces its allegiance 00:20:43.470 --> 00:20:45.809 to Great Britain. You have town meetings across 00:20:45.809 --> 00:20:48.569 Massachusetts, county meetings in Virginia. all 00:20:48.569 --> 00:20:50.910 issuing local resolutions demanding a split. 00:20:51.269 --> 00:20:53.410 I love the example the sources provide from South 00:20:53.410 --> 00:20:55.789 Carolina. Chief Justice William Henry Drayton 00:20:55.789 --> 00:20:58.390 is sitting in a courtroom and he issues jury 00:20:58.390 --> 00:21:00.630 instructions, literally telling a jury before 00:21:00.630 --> 00:21:04.190 trial that King George III has no legal authority 00:21:04.190 --> 00:21:06.490 over them anymore and they owe him no obedience. 00:21:06.609 --> 00:21:08.869 Can you imagine a judge doing that today? Just 00:21:08.869 --> 00:21:11.009 casually declaring the overthrow of the sovereign 00:21:11.009 --> 00:21:13.470 government during jury duty? It sounds absurd 00:21:13.470 --> 00:21:15.789 to us, but it highlights just how pervasive and 00:21:15.789 --> 00:21:17.710 normalized the sentiment had become at the local 00:21:17.710 --> 00:21:20.230 level. The people were ready. But this brings 00:21:20.230 --> 00:21:23.230 us to a massive structural democratic problem 00:21:23.230 --> 00:21:25.769 because we have to look at the complex political 00:21:25.769 --> 00:21:27.869 war happening inside the Continental Congress 00:21:27.869 --> 00:21:30.930 in Philadelphia during May and June of 1776. 00:21:31.490 --> 00:21:34.269 Right. Because public desire in the taverns of 00:21:34.269 --> 00:21:37.089 Boston or the courtrooms of South Carolina means 00:21:37.089 --> 00:21:40.230 absolutely nothing if the delegates sitting in 00:21:40.230 --> 00:21:43.099 Philadelphia don't have the legal authority from 00:21:43.099 --> 00:21:45.440 their home colonies to actually vote for it. 00:21:45.680 --> 00:21:47.940 They are trapped by their old instructions. This 00:21:47.940 --> 00:21:50.460 is the heart of the political drama. The Continental 00:21:50.460 --> 00:21:52.980 Congress was not a national parliament. It was 00:21:52.980 --> 00:21:56.779 an advisory body of delegates sent by 13 completely 00:21:56.779 --> 00:22:00.380 separate sovereign colonial governments. Each 00:22:00.380 --> 00:22:03.240 delegate was legally bound by the specific instructions 00:22:03.240 --> 00:22:05.900 given to them by their home legislature. So they 00:22:05.900 --> 00:22:08.640 couldn't just vote their conscience? No. Regardless 00:22:08.640 --> 00:22:11.059 of how much John Adams or Thomas Jefferson personally 00:22:11.059 --> 00:22:13.799 wanted independence, they could not legally vote 00:22:13.799 --> 00:22:16.640 for it unless their home colony explicitly permitted 00:22:16.640 --> 00:22:19.000 it. It's like a corporate board meeting where 00:22:19.000 --> 00:22:21.799 the proxy voters can only vote the way the shareholders 00:22:21.799 --> 00:22:24.339 instructed them, no matter what new information 00:22:24.339 --> 00:22:26.900 comes to light. Precisely. And in the spring 00:22:26.900 --> 00:22:29.960 of 1776, several colonies, especially the middle 00:22:29.960 --> 00:22:32.420 colonies like New York, New Jersey, Maryland, 00:22:32.579 --> 00:22:35.380 Pennsylvania, and Delaware, still had strict 00:22:35.380 --> 00:22:38.099 instructions explicitly prohibiting their delegates 00:22:38.099 --> 00:22:40.480 from voting for separation. They were still holding 00:22:40.480 --> 00:22:43.059 out hope for a peace treaty. So how do you break 00:22:43.059 --> 00:22:45.880 that deadlock? Here begins the parliamentary 00:22:45.880 --> 00:22:49.079 chess match. John Adams and Richard Henry Lee 00:22:49.079 --> 00:22:52.140 of Virginia are trying to force the issue without 00:22:52.140 --> 00:22:55.059 breaking the fragile alliance. And on May 10 00:22:55.059 --> 00:22:58.059 and May 15, they pushed through a seemingly administrative 00:22:58.059 --> 00:23:00.960 resolution calling on all the colonies to adopt 00:23:00.960 --> 00:23:04.049 new permanent governments. Yes, and this is where 00:23:04.049 --> 00:23:06.289 John Adams pulls off a brilliant political maneuver. 00:23:06.690 --> 00:23:08.910 He drafts a preamble to this mayor resolution 00:23:08.910 --> 00:23:11.750 that is absolute dynamite. He writes that because 00:23:11.750 --> 00:23:14.269 the king has rejected reconciliation and because 00:23:14.269 --> 00:23:16.809 the crown is hiring foreign mercenaries to destroy 00:23:16.809 --> 00:23:19.650 them, it is necessary that the exercise of every 00:23:19.650 --> 00:23:21.549 kind of authority under the said crown should 00:23:21.549 --> 00:23:23.910 be totally suppressed. Totally suppressed. That 00:23:23.910 --> 00:23:26.349 is not asking for a lower tax rate on tea. That 00:23:26.349 --> 00:23:28.650 is a call for the total overthrow of the existing 00:23:28.650 --> 00:23:31.829 political order. It was. Adams was essentially 00:23:31.829 --> 00:23:34.150 telling the colonies, tear down your royal governments, 00:23:34.349 --> 00:23:36.529 kick out your royal governors, and build new 00:23:36.529 --> 00:23:38.490 governments based on the authority of the people. 00:23:39.450 --> 00:23:42.369 Adams actually viewed this May 15 preamble as 00:23:42.369 --> 00:23:45.269 the de facto declaration of independence. He 00:23:45.269 --> 00:23:47.609 thought the deed was done right then and there. 00:23:47.910 --> 00:23:50.230 But wait, I have a question here. If John Adams, 00:23:50.410 --> 00:23:52.710 the most vocal advocate for independence, thought 00:23:52.710 --> 00:23:55.250 the May 15 preamble was already a declaration 00:23:55.250 --> 00:23:58.630 of independence, why bother writing another fancier 00:23:58.630 --> 00:24:01.349 document a month later, why do we have the July 00:24:01.349 --> 00:24:03.349 4th declaration if Adams thought they already 00:24:03.349 --> 00:24:06.829 did it in May? This raises a profoundly important 00:24:06.829 --> 00:24:09.190 concept about the nature of international law 00:24:09.190 --> 00:24:12.710 and diplomacy in the 18th century. The May 15 00:24:12.710 --> 00:24:15.089 preamble was essentially internal housekeeping. 00:24:15.769 --> 00:24:17.970 It was Congress telling the 13 colonies to get 00:24:17.970 --> 00:24:20.410 their own domestic affairs in order. But the 00:24:20.410 --> 00:24:22.210 United States was fighting a war against the 00:24:22.210 --> 00:24:24.670 greatest military power on earth. They had no 00:24:24.670 --> 00:24:27.529 money, no navy, and barely any gunpowder. They 00:24:27.529 --> 00:24:29.650 needed help. They desperately needed foreign 00:24:29.650 --> 00:24:32.470 alliances, specifically military and financial 00:24:32.470 --> 00:24:34.589 aid from France and Spain. And France isn't going 00:24:34.589 --> 00:24:37.470 to give money to a colony. Exactly. Under the 00:24:37.470 --> 00:24:40.049 recognized international rules of the time, heavily 00:24:40.049 --> 00:24:43.089 influenced by legal scholars like Ymer de Vattel 00:24:43.089 --> 00:24:45.509 and his book, The Law of Nations Foreign Powers, 00:24:45.670 --> 00:24:48.029 will not intervene in another empire's internal 00:24:48.029 --> 00:24:51.480 civil war. If America is just a group of rebellious 00:24:51.480 --> 00:24:53.920 British subjects, France cannot sign a treaty 00:24:53.920 --> 00:24:56.660 with them without declaring war on Britain unprovoked. 00:24:56.720 --> 00:24:59.380 That makes sense. But if America issues a formal, 00:24:59.759 --> 00:25:02.819 unified, highly visible public statement proving 00:25:02.819 --> 00:25:04.579 to the world that they are a sovereign nation, 00:25:04.980 --> 00:25:07.700 a peer among nations, then France can legally 00:25:07.700 --> 00:25:11.109 recognize them and sign treaties. So the Declaration 00:25:11.109 --> 00:25:12.789 of Independence isn't just a breakup letter. 00:25:12.869 --> 00:25:15.529 It's a legal application for international sovereignty. 00:25:15.730 --> 00:25:18.509 That is exactly what it is. So recognizing this 00:25:18.509 --> 00:25:21.509 need, on June 7, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia 00:25:21.509 --> 00:25:24.049 presents the famous Lee Resolution to Congress. 00:25:24.569 --> 00:25:26.930 It's a three -part motion. First, to declare 00:25:26.930 --> 00:25:29.589 independence. Second, to form foreign alliances. 00:25:30.269 --> 00:25:32.450 And third, to prepare a plan of confederation 00:25:32.450 --> 00:25:34.849 to bind the colonies together. But even with 00:25:34.849 --> 00:25:37.460 the war raging, Congress still pushes back. They 00:25:37.460 --> 00:25:40.039 do. The opponents of immediate independence, 00:25:40.200 --> 00:25:42.980 led by brilliant men like John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, 00:25:43.500 --> 00:25:46.200 argued that the timing was premature. Dickinson 00:25:46.200 --> 00:25:48.259 argued that they shouldn't declare independence 00:25:48.259 --> 00:25:50.900 until they had secured a foreign alliance first. 00:25:51.420 --> 00:25:53.640 It's too dangerous to jump without a net. But 00:25:53.640 --> 00:25:56.119 the pro -independence faction argues you can't 00:25:56.119 --> 00:25:58.720 get the net until you jump. You can't get the 00:25:58.720 --> 00:26:00.579 alliance until you declare independence. It was 00:26:00.579 --> 00:26:03.670 a terrifying catch -22. And because several delegates 00:26:03.670 --> 00:26:06.109 from the middle colonies still lacked the legal 00:26:06.109 --> 00:26:09.029 authority to vote yes, Congress makes a critical 00:26:09.029 --> 00:26:12.190 democratic decision. They postpone the final 00:26:12.190 --> 00:26:15.369 vote on the Lee resolution for three weeks. They 00:26:15.369 --> 00:26:17.670 send the delegates back to their home colonies 00:26:17.670 --> 00:26:20.130 to get new instructions from their constituents. 00:26:20.450 --> 00:26:22.690 What stands out to me here is the sheer restraint 00:26:22.690 --> 00:26:25.490 of the democratic process. John Adams wanted 00:26:25.490 --> 00:26:27.960 independence immediately. He was chomping at 00:26:27.960 --> 00:26:31.240 the bit, absolutely furious at the delay. But 00:26:31.240 --> 00:26:33.640 he had to respect the system of representative 00:26:33.640 --> 00:26:35.940 government. He couldn't act like a dictator and 00:26:35.940 --> 00:26:37.960 force it through. He had to wait for the delegates 00:26:37.960 --> 00:26:40.680 to receive the explicit consent of their constituents. 00:26:41.420 --> 00:26:43.259 The political leaders could not outrun the people. 00:26:43.450 --> 00:26:45.650 They had to wait for the legal authorization 00:26:45.650 --> 00:26:48.210 to catch up with the revolutionary reality. It 00:26:48.210 --> 00:26:51.349 is a profound lesson in the mechanics of a republic. 00:26:51.829 --> 00:26:54.789 You can't just have the right idea. You must 00:26:54.789 --> 00:26:58.190 have the legal consensus to execute it. So, to 00:26:58.190 --> 00:26:59.769 prepare for the vote that is coming in three 00:26:59.769 --> 00:27:02.809 weeks, Congress realizes they need a draft of 00:27:02.809 --> 00:27:05.789 this formal declaration ready to go, just in 00:27:05.789 --> 00:27:08.029 case the vote passes. They appoint a committee 00:27:08.029 --> 00:27:11.630 of five. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas 00:27:11.630 --> 00:27:14.950 Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman. 00:27:15.670 --> 00:27:17.750 But ultimately, despite all these brilliant minds, 00:27:18.230 --> 00:27:20.730 one man is left alone in a rented room to do 00:27:20.730 --> 00:27:22.630 the heavy lifting of actually writing it. The 00:27:22.630 --> 00:27:24.789 physical drafting of the document is a story 00:27:24.789 --> 00:27:27.130 of immense pressure and surprising humility. 00:27:27.470 --> 00:27:29.490 The committee meets to discuss the general outline 00:27:29.490 --> 00:27:31.490 and the arguments they want to make. But when 00:27:31.490 --> 00:27:33.670 it comes to putting pen to paper, John Adams 00:27:33.670 --> 00:27:36.190 persuades a 33 year old Thomas Jefferson to write 00:27:36.190 --> 00:27:37.950 the first draft. And how did that conversation 00:27:37.950 --> 00:27:40.519 go? Well, according to Adams's later recollections, 00:27:40.660 --> 00:27:43.000 the conversation was quite blunt. Adams told 00:27:43.000 --> 00:27:45.900 Jefferson, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian 00:27:45.900 --> 00:27:47.599 ought to appear at the head of this business. 00:27:48.000 --> 00:27:51.200 I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You 00:27:51.200 --> 00:27:53.619 are very much otherwise. And you can write 10 00:27:53.619 --> 00:27:55.839 times better than I can. I love the self -awareness 00:27:55.839 --> 00:27:57.839 from John Adams. I am obnoxious. No one wants 00:27:57.839 --> 00:28:00.839 to read a document written by me. So Jefferson 00:28:00.839 --> 00:28:03.059 rents a room on the second floor of a three -story 00:28:03.059 --> 00:28:06.519 house in Philadelphia, and over 17 incredibly 00:28:06.519 --> 00:28:08.759 busy days while also attending congressional 00:28:08.759 --> 00:28:12.259 sessions and buying supplies, he drafts it. But 00:28:12.259 --> 00:28:15.299 let's dig into the intellectual DNA here. Where 00:28:15.299 --> 00:28:17.700 does Jefferson get these ideas? He didn't just 00:28:17.700 --> 00:28:19.700 invent the concept of human rights out of thin 00:28:19.700 --> 00:28:22.279 air in a rented room, did he? Not at all, and 00:28:22.279 --> 00:28:24.180 Jefferson himself freely admitted this years 00:28:24.180 --> 00:28:26.180 later. When he was accused of copying others, 00:28:26.420 --> 00:28:28.599 he responded that he aimed for no originality 00:28:28.599 --> 00:28:31.599 of principle or sentiment. His goal wasn't to 00:28:31.599 --> 00:28:34.000 invent new philosophy. His goal was to provide 00:28:34.000 --> 00:28:36.519 an expression of the American mind. He leaned 00:28:36.519 --> 00:28:39.019 heavily on documents and theories that were already 00:28:39.019 --> 00:28:41.119 swirling around the intellectual atmosphere of 00:28:41.119 --> 00:28:43.339 the colonies. What were the main sources he pulled 00:28:43.339 --> 00:28:46.380 from? He drew significantly from his fellow Virginian, 00:28:46.460 --> 00:28:48.900 George Mason, who had just drafted the Virginia 00:28:48.900 --> 00:28:51.440 Declaration of Rights, which stated that all 00:28:51.440 --> 00:28:54.099 men are by nature equally free and independent. 00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:57.240 Jefferson also drew heavily on the theories of 00:28:57.240 --> 00:28:59.579 the English philosopher John Locke from the previous 00:28:59.579 --> 00:29:02.099 century. Locke is a huge influence, yeah. Definitely. 00:29:02.460 --> 00:29:04.579 Locke had famously argued that in a state of 00:29:04.579 --> 00:29:07.119 nature, all people are equal and that governments 00:29:07.119 --> 00:29:09.599 are instituted solely to protect the natural 00:29:09.599 --> 00:29:12.299 rights of life, liberty and property. Though 00:29:12.299 --> 00:29:14.880 Jefferson makes a fascinating edit there, famously 00:29:14.880 --> 00:29:17.220 changing property to the pursuit of happiness. 00:29:17.440 --> 00:29:19.539 Which broadens the concept of liberty beyond 00:29:19.539 --> 00:29:22.299 just material wealth to encompass human flourishing. 00:29:22.759 --> 00:29:25.640 The sources also note the influence of the 1689 00:29:25.640 --> 00:29:28.099 English Declaration of Rights, which provided 00:29:28.099 --> 00:29:30.859 a historical model for how to legitimately end 00:29:30.859 --> 00:29:33.980 the reign of an unjust king by listing his abuses 00:29:33.980 --> 00:29:36.299 of power. It's like Jefferson was the ultimate 00:29:36.299 --> 00:29:39.559 synthesizer. He pulled the best legal, philosophical 00:29:39.559 --> 00:29:42.680 and diplomatic code of the 18th century, translated 00:29:42.680 --> 00:29:46.039 it into soaring poetic prose and combined it 00:29:46.039 --> 00:29:48.759 into one document. Synthesizer is the perfect 00:29:48.759 --> 00:29:51.680 word. He presents his rough draft to the committee. 00:29:51.880 --> 00:29:55.500 Franklin and Adams make a few minor but profound 00:29:55.500 --> 00:29:59.059 tweaks. Like what? For example, Jefferson originally 00:29:59.059 --> 00:30:01.539 wrote, we hold these truths to be sacred and 00:30:01.539 --> 00:30:04.920 undeniable. Franklin, bringing a more scientific 00:30:04.920 --> 00:30:07.700 enlightenment mindset, reportedly crossed that 00:30:07.700 --> 00:30:10.779 out and changed it to self -evident. Self -evident? 00:30:10.900 --> 00:30:13.420 That's so powerful. Meaning, it doesn't require 00:30:13.420 --> 00:30:16.079 a religious mandate. It is a fact of nature. 00:30:16.660 --> 00:30:18.940 Then... The committee presents the draft to the 00:30:18.940 --> 00:30:21.880 full Continental Congress. And this is where 00:30:21.880 --> 00:30:24.359 the brutality of editing by committee comes in. 00:30:24.440 --> 00:30:26.920 Oh, anyone who has ever written anything for 00:30:26.920 --> 00:30:28.960 a group project is going to cringe at this part. 00:30:29.570 --> 00:30:33.109 Congress spends two agonizing days tearing Jefferson's 00:30:33.109 --> 00:30:35.509 beautiful draft apart. They cross out words. 00:30:35.829 --> 00:30:38.190 They rewrite sentences. They cut the overall 00:30:38.190 --> 00:30:40.730 length by a fourth. They methodically remove 00:30:40.730 --> 00:30:43.009 unnecessary wording to improve the punchiness 00:30:43.009 --> 00:30:45.710 and the pace. But crucially, they remove one 00:30:45.710 --> 00:30:48.529 massive, deeply significant paragraph. They strike 00:30:48.529 --> 00:30:50.730 out a passage where Jefferson vehemently condemned 00:30:50.730 --> 00:30:53.029 King George III for the transatlantic slave trade. 00:30:53.569 --> 00:30:56.150 Yes. This is perhaps the most heavily debated 00:30:56.150 --> 00:30:59.150 edit in American history. In his original draft, 00:30:59.490 --> 00:31:02.089 Jefferson included a scathing grievance, accusing 00:31:02.089 --> 00:31:04.609 the king of waging cruel war against human nature 00:31:04.609 --> 00:31:07.230 itself, violating its most sacred rights of life 00:31:07.230 --> 00:31:09.049 and liberty in the persons of a distant people 00:31:09.049 --> 00:31:11.309 who never offended him, captivating and carrying 00:31:11.309 --> 00:31:14.150 them into slavery. Jefferson wanted to make the 00:31:14.150 --> 00:31:16.650 horrors of the slave trade one of the core justifications 00:31:16.650 --> 00:31:19.170 for American independence. Okay, I have to stop 00:31:19.170 --> 00:31:21.450 the narrative here and press you on this, because 00:31:21.450 --> 00:31:23.849 it is the most glowing contradiction of the entire 00:31:23.849 --> 00:31:27.519 era. How could Thomas Jefferson write, all men 00:31:27.519 --> 00:31:30.059 are created equal, and condemn the slave trade 00:31:30.059 --> 00:31:32.759 as a cruel war against human nature while he 00:31:32.759 --> 00:31:35.599 himself owned around 600 enslaved human beings 00:31:35.599 --> 00:31:37.779 at Monticello over the course of his lifetime? 00:31:38.400 --> 00:31:40.740 Was this a genuine moral conflict for him? Was 00:31:40.740 --> 00:31:43.559 he trapped by the system? Or was this just cynical 00:31:43.559 --> 00:31:45.960 political window dressing to make the British 00:31:45.960 --> 00:31:48.160 King look like a monster to the international 00:31:48.160 --> 00:31:50.990 community? It is the great foundational paradox 00:31:50.990 --> 00:31:53.309 of the American founding and historians have 00:31:53.309 --> 00:31:56.049 debated Jefferson's internal mindset endlessly. 00:31:57.009 --> 00:31:59.109 The most accurate assessment from the historical 00:31:59.109 --> 00:32:02.190 consensus is that Jefferson understood intellectually 00:32:02.190 --> 00:32:05.049 and morally that slavery was an abhorrent evil. 00:32:05.650 --> 00:32:08.390 He knew it was entirely incompatible with the 00:32:08.390 --> 00:32:10.769 natural rights he was writing about. Right. Yet 00:32:10.769 --> 00:32:13.859 he was a wealthy planter. entirely economically 00:32:13.859 --> 00:32:16.920 dependent on enslaved labor to maintain his lifestyle, 00:32:17.359 --> 00:32:20.279 his debts, and his social standing. And despite 00:32:20.279 --> 00:32:23.140 his soaring words, he lacked the personal courage 00:32:23.140 --> 00:32:25.859 to free his own enslaved people, with only a 00:32:25.859 --> 00:32:28.160 few exceptions. So he knew it was wrong. He wrote 00:32:28.160 --> 00:32:30.059 that it was wrong, but he couldn't bring himself 00:32:30.059 --> 00:32:32.400 to change his own life. Exactly. And when Congress 00:32:32.400 --> 00:32:35.000 began striking the slavery clause from the declaration, 00:32:35.420 --> 00:32:38.299 Jefferson sat there in silence, seething. He 00:32:38.299 --> 00:32:40.220 later noted in his journal that the clause was 00:32:40.220 --> 00:32:42.549 struck out out of complacence to Carolina and 00:32:42.549 --> 00:32:44.690 Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain 00:32:44.690 --> 00:32:46.750 the importation of slaves and desperately wanted 00:32:46.750 --> 00:32:49.289 to keep it. But the North wasn't innocent either. 00:32:49.769 --> 00:32:52.309 No, Jefferson was intellectually honest enough 00:32:52.309 --> 00:32:54.490 to note that the northern states were complicit 00:32:54.490 --> 00:32:57.210 too. He wrote that our northern brethren also 00:32:57.210 --> 00:32:59.910 felt a little tender under those censures, for 00:32:59.910 --> 00:33:02.250 though their people had very few slaves themselves, 00:33:02.690 --> 00:33:04.670 yet they had been pretty considerable carriers 00:33:04.670 --> 00:33:07.529 of them. The northern shipping industry profited 00:33:07.529 --> 00:33:10.029 immensely from the slave trade. The hypocrisy 00:33:10.029 --> 00:33:11.869 was not lost on the rest of the world at the 00:33:11.869 --> 00:33:15.289 time either. The sources give a searing, unforgettable 00:33:15.289 --> 00:33:17.690 quote from an English abolitionist named Thomas 00:33:17.690 --> 00:33:21.410 Day, who wrote a letter in 1776 looking at the 00:33:21.410 --> 00:33:24.990 American rebellion, he said. if there be an object 00:33:24.990 --> 00:33:27.579 truly ridiculous in nature. It is an American 00:33:27.579 --> 00:33:30.180 patriot signing resolutions of independency with 00:33:30.180 --> 00:33:32.180 the one hand and with the other brandishing a 00:33:32.180 --> 00:33:35.079 whip over his affrighted slaves. That is a devastating 00:33:35.079 --> 00:33:37.279 pinpoint critique. It is devastating because 00:33:37.279 --> 00:33:39.759 it is entirely true and it proves that the founders 00:33:39.759 --> 00:33:41.779 knew exactly what they were doing. They were 00:33:41.779 --> 00:33:44.140 fully aware of the moral contradiction. No one 00:33:44.140 --> 00:33:46.140 in that room thought slavery was a completely 00:33:46.140 --> 00:33:49.519 benign institution. But in the Pennsylvania State 00:33:49.519 --> 00:33:53.720 House in July 1776, the absolute overriding priority 00:33:53.720 --> 00:33:56.480 was political unity. They needed to survive the 00:33:56.480 --> 00:33:58.839 war. They genuinely believed that if they pushed 00:33:58.839 --> 00:34:00.900 the issue of slavery, the southern colonies would 00:34:00.900 --> 00:34:03.039 walk out, the union would shatter, the revolution 00:34:03.039 --> 00:34:04.900 would fail, and the British would hang them all. 00:34:05.559 --> 00:34:08.219 So they made a calculated tragic compromise. 00:34:08.760 --> 00:34:10.960 They compromised on the lives of millions of 00:34:10.960 --> 00:34:13.179 enslaved people to secure the political union 00:34:13.179 --> 00:34:16.400 of the states. Which cast a heavy, dark shadow 00:34:16.400 --> 00:34:19.420 over the birth of the nation. It's a flaw in 00:34:19.420 --> 00:34:21.300 the foundation that will eventually tear the 00:34:21.300 --> 00:34:23.829 country apart in the Civil War. But with the 00:34:23.829 --> 00:34:26.409 draft heavily edited and the slavery clause struck 00:34:26.409 --> 00:34:29.050 out, the deadline finally arrives. The three 00:34:29.050 --> 00:34:31.550 -week postponement is over. The new instructions 00:34:31.550 --> 00:34:33.750 have arrived from the middle colonies. It is 00:34:33.750 --> 00:34:36.500 time to vote. We are moving into the dramatic 00:34:36.500 --> 00:34:41.559 climax, July 1st to August 2nd, 1776. The tension 00:34:41.559 --> 00:34:44.099 in the room on July 1st is palpable. The weather 00:34:44.099 --> 00:34:46.500 is sweltering. They resume debate on Richard 00:34:46.500 --> 00:34:48.719 Henry Lee's original resolution for independence. 00:34:49.460 --> 00:34:51.440 Congress decides to take a preliminary test vote, 00:34:51.699 --> 00:34:53.519 sitting as a committee of the whole. And the 00:34:53.519 --> 00:34:56.239 results are terrifying for John Adams. Pennsylvania 00:34:56.239 --> 00:34:58.829 and South Carolina vote no. New York abstains 00:34:58.829 --> 00:35:00.989 entirely because their delegates still haven't 00:35:00.989 --> 00:35:04.130 received updated instructions. And Delaware is 00:35:04.130 --> 00:35:06.329 deadlocked. They are tied one to one because 00:35:06.329 --> 00:35:08.989 their third delegate is not in the room. So on 00:35:08.989 --> 00:35:11.849 July 1st, the day before the official vote, they 00:35:11.849 --> 00:35:15.050 do not have unanimity. If they go forward and 00:35:15.050 --> 00:35:17.610 vote for real the next morning, the whole coalition 00:35:17.610 --> 00:35:20.510 might fall apart. They cannot declare independence 00:35:20.510 --> 00:35:23.639 with a divided continent. What changes overnight? 00:35:23.880 --> 00:35:26.139 Cure behind the scenes political maneuvering 00:35:26.139 --> 00:35:28.599 and personal sacrifice. On the morning of July 00:35:28.599 --> 00:35:31.719 2, the delegation from South Carolina miraculously 00:35:31.719 --> 00:35:34.119 reverses its position. They vote yes for the 00:35:34.119 --> 00:35:36.800 sake of continental unity. Meanwhile, in the 00:35:36.800 --> 00:35:38.980 Pennsylvania delegation, the two leading opponents 00:35:38.980 --> 00:35:41.179 of independence, John Dickinson and Robert Morris, 00:35:41.519 --> 00:35:43.800 make an incredible personal decision. What do 00:35:43.800 --> 00:35:45.659 they do? They still believe independence is a 00:35:45.659 --> 00:35:47.659 mistake, but they know they are outvoted by the 00:35:47.659 --> 00:35:50.099 public. So rather than vote no and block it, 00:35:50.400 --> 00:35:52.619 they voluntarily abstain. They walk out of the 00:35:52.619 --> 00:35:54.880 room. By removing their no votes, the remaining 00:35:54.880 --> 00:35:57.360 Pennsylvania delegates are able to cast the state's 00:35:57.360 --> 00:36:00.019 vote as a yes. That is an amazing example of 00:36:00.019 --> 00:36:02.619 putting the Democratic outcome above personal 00:36:02.619 --> 00:36:05.210 ego. They walked away to let it happen. But what 00:36:05.210 --> 00:36:08.409 about Delaware? They were tied. That brings us 00:36:08.409 --> 00:36:10.489 to one of the most cinematic moments of the entire 00:36:10.489 --> 00:36:13.570 revolution. Caesar Rodney, the third Delaware 00:36:13.570 --> 00:36:16.650 delegate, was 80 miles away. He receives a dispatch 00:36:16.650 --> 00:36:19.429 that his vote is needed to break the tie. Rodney 00:36:19.429 --> 00:36:21.849 is suffering from severe asthma and a painful 00:36:21.849 --> 00:36:24.949 facial cancer. Despite this, he mounts his horse 00:36:24.949 --> 00:36:27.429 and rides through a violent torrential thunderstorm 00:36:27.429 --> 00:36:30.550 all night long. 80 miles in a thunderstorm. He 00:36:30.550 --> 00:36:33.369 arrives at the State House on July 2. Covered 00:36:33.369 --> 00:36:36.650 in mud, exhausted, walks onto the floor and casts 00:36:36.650 --> 00:36:39.190 Delaware's deciding vote for independence. That 00:36:39.190 --> 00:36:41.349 needs to be a movie scene. So because of those 00:36:41.349 --> 00:36:45.409 maneuvers and that ride on July 1776, 12 colonies 00:36:45.409 --> 00:36:48.349 vote yes, with New York still abstaining. The 00:36:48.349 --> 00:36:51.150 Lee resolution officially passes. The 13 colonies 00:36:51.150 --> 00:36:53.050 have legally severed political ties with Great 00:36:53.050 --> 00:36:55.730 Britain. John Adams is so ecstatic he goes back 00:36:55.730 --> 00:36:57.349 to his room and writes a letter to his wife, 00:36:57.570 --> 00:37:00.670 Abigail. Right, the famous letter. He predicts 00:37:00.670 --> 00:37:03.550 that July 2 will go down in history as the Great 00:37:03.550 --> 00:37:06.139 American Holiday. He says it will be celebrated 00:37:06.139 --> 00:37:09.360 by succeeding generations with pomp, parade, 00:37:09.820 --> 00:37:14.239 shows, games, sports, bells, bonfires, and illuminations 00:37:14.239 --> 00:37:16.199 from one end of the continent to the other. And 00:37:16.199 --> 00:37:18.340 if you read that letter, it's almost funny because 00:37:18.340 --> 00:37:21.179 he had the celebration exactly right. He predicted 00:37:21.179 --> 00:37:23.699 the fireworks and the parades perfectly. He just 00:37:23.699 --> 00:37:25.619 got the date wrong. Right. I always think of 00:37:25.619 --> 00:37:28.099 this like a movie director throwing a huge wrap 00:37:28.099 --> 00:37:31.000 party the day they finish filming. To the director, 00:37:31.159 --> 00:37:33.460 in this case, John Adams, that's the day the 00:37:33.460 --> 00:37:35.699 monumental work was actually accomplished. The 00:37:35.699 --> 00:37:38.199 vote was passed. But the general public, they 00:37:38.199 --> 00:37:40.199 only celebrate the day the movie actually gets 00:37:40.199 --> 00:37:42.719 released to theaters. And for the Declaration 00:37:42.719 --> 00:37:45.059 of Independence, that release date was July 4. 00:37:45.280 --> 00:37:48.059 Yes, July 2 was the vote to declare independence. 00:37:48.440 --> 00:37:50.500 July 4 was the day Congress officially approved 00:37:50.500 --> 00:37:53.260 the final edited text of Jefferson's document, 00:37:53.380 --> 00:37:55.500 the press release, so to speak, explaining why 00:37:55.500 --> 00:37:57.869 they had voted for it. Once approved, they sent 00:37:57.869 --> 00:37:59.969 the manuscript to a local printer named John 00:37:59.969 --> 00:38:02.329 Dunlap. And Dunlap works through the night. He 00:38:02.329 --> 00:38:05.289 does. He prints about 200 broadsides, these large 00:38:05.289 --> 00:38:08.289 single -sheet posters overnight. By July 8, these 00:38:08.289 --> 00:38:10.349 broadsides are being distributed, and they hold 00:38:10.349 --> 00:38:12.670 the first public readings in town squares in 00:38:12.670 --> 00:38:16.110 Philadelphia, Trenton, and Easton. And the public 00:38:16.110 --> 00:38:18.550 reaction is exactly what Thomas Paine had hoped 00:38:18.550 --> 00:38:21.900 for. It's explosive. It is explosive. In New 00:38:21.900 --> 00:38:24.420 York, crowds listened to the reading and immediately 00:38:24.420 --> 00:38:26.280 marched down to the Bowling Green where they 00:38:26.280 --> 00:38:28.880 literally tear down a massive lead equestrian 00:38:28.880 --> 00:38:31.820 statue of King George III. They chop the king 00:38:31.820 --> 00:38:34.800 into pieces, melt the lead down, and turn it 00:38:34.800 --> 00:38:37.619 into tens of thousands of musket balls to fire 00:38:37.619 --> 00:38:40.260 at the British army. Talk about a symbolic repudiation 00:38:40.260 --> 00:38:43.000 of the king. But wait, we need to clarify something 00:38:43.000 --> 00:38:44.960 for the visual learners out there. The physical 00:38:44.960 --> 00:38:47.699 document we all picture in our heads, the beautiful, 00:38:48.019 --> 00:38:50.179 large handwritten parchment with the massive 00:38:50.179 --> 00:38:52.579 calligraphy at the top and the 56 signatures 00:38:52.579 --> 00:38:54.900 at the bottom that wasn't signed on July 4th 00:38:54.900 --> 00:38:57.559 amidst fireworks, was it? No, that is a very 00:38:57.559 --> 00:39:00.380 common historical myth. Historians generally 00:39:00.380 --> 00:39:03.079 agree that the engrossed copy, which is the beautiful 00:39:03.079 --> 00:39:05.619 handwritten version, carefully penned by a clerk 00:39:05.619 --> 00:39:09.300 named Timothy Matlack, wasn't ready and wasn't 00:39:09.300 --> 00:39:11.780 signed by most delegates until a month later 00:39:11.780 --> 00:39:14.519 on August 2. And we have to dispel the myth that 00:39:14.519 --> 00:39:16.980 this was a joyous, triumphant celebration with 00:39:16.980 --> 00:39:19.019 people cheering in the room. Right, because the 00:39:19.019 --> 00:39:20.940 British Army is landing thousands of troops in 00:39:20.940 --> 00:39:23.949 New York right at this moment. Exactly. Benjamin 00:39:23.949 --> 00:39:26.190 Rush, who was a physician from Pennsylvania and 00:39:26.190 --> 00:39:28.690 one of the signers, later wrote a letter to John 00:39:28.690 --> 00:39:30.849 Adams recalling the atmosphere in the room on 00:39:30.849 --> 00:39:34.090 August 2. He described it as a scene of pensive 00:39:34.090 --> 00:39:37.170 and awful silence. He said as they were called 00:39:37.170 --> 00:39:39.610 up one by one to put their names on the parchment, 00:39:40.030 --> 00:39:42.010 they felt like they were filing forward to sign 00:39:42.010 --> 00:39:45.070 their own death warrants. They knew that if Washington's 00:39:45.070 --> 00:39:48.170 army failed, this document was Exhibit A in their 00:39:48.170 --> 00:39:50.780 treason trial. The source has mentioned some 00:39:50.780 --> 00:39:53.280 incredibly grim gallows humor during the signing 00:39:53.280 --> 00:39:55.960 to cut the tension. Yes, there's a famous anecdote 00:39:55.960 --> 00:39:58.579 about Benjamin Harrison of Virginia. Harrison 00:39:58.579 --> 00:40:01.940 was a very large, heavily built man. He turns 00:40:01.940 --> 00:40:04.400 to Elbridge Jerry of Massachusetts, who is a 00:40:04.400 --> 00:40:07.380 very small, thin, frail man. And as they were 00:40:07.380 --> 00:40:09.539 signing, Harrison jokes that when the British 00:40:09.539 --> 00:40:11.460 inevitably catch them and hang them, he will 00:40:11.460 --> 00:40:13.380 have a great advantage. Because of his heavy 00:40:13.380 --> 00:40:15.760 weight, his neck will snap and he will die instantly. 00:40:16.280 --> 00:40:18.139 But the lightweight Jerry, he said, will dance 00:40:18.139 --> 00:40:19.860 in the air an hour or two before you were dead. 00:40:19.960 --> 00:40:22.860 Dance in the air. That is so incredibly dark. 00:40:23.630 --> 00:40:26.110 brings home the terror of the moment. They were 00:40:26.110 --> 00:40:28.670 joking to keep from shaking. But the doculet 00:40:28.670 --> 00:40:32.210 is signed. The die is cast. The statues are melted. 00:40:32.590 --> 00:40:35.309 So what exactly did they sign? What are the actual 00:40:35.309 --> 00:40:37.590 words on this parchment? I want to spend some 00:40:37.590 --> 00:40:39.829 time breaking down the actual text because we 00:40:39.829 --> 00:40:42.409 need to show the student listener how these specific 00:40:42.409 --> 00:40:44.550 words form the blueprint for modern American 00:40:44.550 --> 00:40:46.769 government. If you look closely at the text of 00:40:46.769 --> 00:40:49.949 the declaration, it is not just one long angry 00:40:49.949 --> 00:40:52.650 rant against the king. It is highly structured, 00:40:52.869 --> 00:40:55.829 very logical and broken into five distinct parts. 00:40:56.230 --> 00:40:58.829 The introduction, the preamble, the indictment 00:40:58.829 --> 00:41:01.070 of the king, the failed warnings to the British 00:41:01.070 --> 00:41:04.050 people, and the conclusion. The introduction 00:41:04.050 --> 00:41:06.110 and the preamble are the parts everyone knows 00:41:06.110 --> 00:41:08.610 by heart when in the course of human events. 00:41:09.010 --> 00:41:11.809 And of course, we hold these truths to be self 00:41:11.809 --> 00:41:14.719 -evident that all men are created equal. This 00:41:14.719 --> 00:41:17.159 preamble asserts the philosophy of natural law. 00:41:17.619 --> 00:41:20.440 It states, beautifully and concisely that human 00:41:20.440 --> 00:41:23.119 beings have unalienable rights and that governments 00:41:23.119 --> 00:41:25.820 are instituted among men deriving their just 00:41:25.820 --> 00:41:27.860 powers from the consent of the governed. The 00:41:27.860 --> 00:41:30.059 consent of the governed. Crucially, yes. And 00:41:30.059 --> 00:41:32.360 it outlines the right of revolution. It says 00:41:32.360 --> 00:41:34.599 that when a long train of abuses proves that 00:41:34.599 --> 00:41:36.519 a government has become destructive to the rights 00:41:36.519 --> 00:41:39.099 of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, 00:41:39.500 --> 00:41:42.159 the people have the right and the duty to alter 00:41:42.159 --> 00:41:45.440 or abolish it. So what does this all mean? It's 00:41:45.440 --> 00:41:47.619 the philosophical soul of the document. It's 00:41:47.619 --> 00:41:49.780 the mission statement. But if you actually look 00:41:49.780 --> 00:41:52.360 at the word count, the bulk of the text is the 00:41:52.360 --> 00:41:55.739 indictment. It's a massive list of 27 specific 00:41:55.739 --> 00:41:59.039 grievances against King George III. I want to 00:41:59.039 --> 00:42:01.460 pause here and dig into these because this is 00:42:01.460 --> 00:42:04.900 vital for understanding democracy. These grievances 00:42:04.900 --> 00:42:07.159 aren't just a list of historical complaints from 00:42:07.159 --> 00:42:10.739 the 1700s. They are the negative space that defines 00:42:10.739 --> 00:42:13.829 the future U .S. Constitution. That is a profound 00:42:13.829 --> 00:42:16.110 way to look at it. The Constitution tells the 00:42:16.110 --> 00:42:18.150 government what it can do. The Declaration's 00:42:18.150 --> 00:42:20.090 grievances show us exactly what the founders 00:42:20.090 --> 00:42:22.070 intended to forbid the government from ever doing 00:42:22.070 --> 00:42:24.630 again. Let's look at a few examples to show how 00:42:24.630 --> 00:42:27.550 direct the connection is. The Declaration indicts 00:42:27.550 --> 00:42:29.610 the king for making colonial judges dependent 00:42:29.610 --> 00:42:31.730 on his will alone for their tenure in office 00:42:31.730 --> 00:42:34.150 and the payment of their salaries. Right. Because 00:42:34.150 --> 00:42:36.730 if the king controls the judge's paycheck, the 00:42:36.730 --> 00:42:38.750 judge is always going to rule in favor of the 00:42:38.750 --> 00:42:42.349 king. There is no justice. Exactly. And to fix 00:42:42.349 --> 00:42:45.250 that specific abuse, a decade later, the U .S. 00:42:45.630 --> 00:42:48.289 Constitution creates an independent federal judiciary 00:42:48.289 --> 00:42:51.050 in Article 3. It mandates that federal judges 00:42:51.050 --> 00:42:53.409 have lifetime appointments and that their salaries 00:42:53.409 --> 00:42:56.289 cannot be reduced while they are in office, ensuring 00:42:56.289 --> 00:42:58.769 they never have to fear political retaliation 00:42:58.769 --> 00:43:00.730 for ruling against the president or Congress. 00:43:01.010 --> 00:43:03.289 That's a direct line. Here's another grievance. 00:43:03.670 --> 00:43:06.210 The king dissolved representative houses repeatedly 00:43:06.210 --> 00:43:08.630 for opposing his invasions on the rights of the 00:43:08.630 --> 00:43:11.840 people. legislature disagreed with him, he just 00:43:11.840 --> 00:43:13.840 locked the doors and sent them home. And that 00:43:13.840 --> 00:43:16.559 abuse leads directly to our constitutional system 00:43:16.559 --> 00:43:18.780 of checks and balances in Article 1 and Article 00:43:18.780 --> 00:43:21.789 2. The modern executive branch, the president, 00:43:22.210 --> 00:43:24.389 cannot simply dissolve Congress when they disagree 00:43:24.389 --> 00:43:26.929 on a piece of legislation. The legislature has 00:43:26.929 --> 00:43:29.969 an independent right to exist. The declaration 00:43:29.969 --> 00:43:32.469 also complains heavily that the king kept standing 00:43:32.469 --> 00:43:34.929 armies among them in times of peace without the 00:43:34.929 --> 00:43:37.309 consent of the local legislatures and that he 00:43:37.309 --> 00:43:39.489 protected soldiers from trial by jury when they 00:43:39.489 --> 00:43:42.190 committed crimes. Which connects perfectly to 00:43:42.190 --> 00:43:45.130 the Bill of Rights. That grievance leads directly 00:43:45.130 --> 00:43:47.309 to the Second Amendment regarding local militias. 00:43:47.710 --> 00:43:49.599 The Third Amendment prohibits the quartering 00:43:49.599 --> 00:43:52.039 of troops in private homes, and the overarching 00:43:52.039 --> 00:43:54.579 principle of strict civilian control over the 00:43:54.579 --> 00:43:57.519 military. Precisely. The indictment is essentially 00:43:57.519 --> 00:44:00.280 the practical blueprint for what a free government 00:44:00.280 --> 00:44:04.079 must never do. It is a catalog of tyranny. So 00:44:04.079 --> 00:44:06.440 we have the philosophical preamble and the practical 00:44:06.440 --> 00:44:08.460 indictment, but I have to ask a legal question 00:44:08.460 --> 00:44:12.199 here. Was this document legally binding at the 00:44:12.199 --> 00:44:14.710 time? Was the Declaration of Independence domestic 00:44:14.710 --> 00:44:17.409 law, or is it just a glorified press release 00:44:17.409 --> 00:44:19.750 to hype up the rebellion? Because you can't go 00:44:19.750 --> 00:44:22.030 to court today and sue someone based on the Declaration. 00:44:22.210 --> 00:44:24.760 That is a great distinction. Domestically, it 00:44:24.760 --> 00:44:27.900 did not have the force of statutory law. It didn't 00:44:27.900 --> 00:44:30.780 create a government framework, establish a currency, 00:44:31.039 --> 00:44:33.860 or outline how elections would work. The Articles 00:44:33.860 --> 00:44:36.320 of Confederation and the later Constitution did 00:44:36.320 --> 00:44:39.139 that. However, internationally, it was a supreme, 00:44:39.539 --> 00:44:41.599 legally operative document. Oh, because of the 00:44:41.599 --> 00:44:44.099 foreign alliances we talked about earlier. Exactly. 00:44:44.500 --> 00:44:46.960 It was a document of international legal sovereignty. 00:44:47.179 --> 00:44:50.719 By listing the legal races that justified dissolving 00:44:50.719 --> 00:44:53.239 the political bans with Britain, the United States 00:44:53.239 --> 00:44:55.920 was formally asserting its status as an equal 00:44:55.920 --> 00:44:58.639 peer among the nations of the earth. It was legally 00:44:58.639 --> 00:45:01.500 telling France, Spain, and the Netherlands, we 00:45:01.500 --> 00:45:04.500 are a real sovereign country now. You can legally 00:45:04.500 --> 00:45:06.860 sign trade agreements and military treaties with 00:45:06.860 --> 00:45:09.139 us. That makes perfect sense. It was outward 00:45:09.139 --> 00:45:12.559 facing. But here is where the story takes a fascinating 00:45:12.559 --> 00:45:16.130 turn. While the 27 grievances were meant to solve 00:45:16.130 --> 00:45:19.789 the immediate political problems of 1776, the 00:45:19.789 --> 00:45:22.550 philosophical preamble that all men are created 00:45:22.550 --> 00:45:25.010 equal took on a completely different life over 00:45:25.010 --> 00:45:27.650 the next two centuries, taking us into the final 00:45:27.650 --> 00:45:30.190 phase of our deep dive, the living legacy of 00:45:30.190 --> 00:45:32.449 the document. What's truly fascinating and what 00:45:32.449 --> 00:45:34.530 surprises most people is that immediately after 00:45:34.530 --> 00:45:36.889 the Revolutionary War ended, the Declaration 00:45:36.889 --> 00:45:39.469 of Independence was largely ignored. Wait, really? 00:45:39.730 --> 00:45:42.519 Ignored? Completely. It had served its purpose. 00:45:42.920 --> 00:45:44.860 It announced independence. The war was won. The 00:45:44.860 --> 00:45:47.260 treaty was signed. And politicians focused their 00:45:47.260 --> 00:45:49.420 energy on the future writing state constitutions 00:45:49.420 --> 00:45:52.099 and debating the new federal constitution. The 00:45:52.099 --> 00:45:54.239 act of declaring independence on the 4th of July 00:45:54.239 --> 00:45:56.900 was celebrated with fireworks. But the text of 00:45:56.900 --> 00:45:59.019 the document itself was essentially put in a 00:45:59.019 --> 00:46:02.139 drawer. But then in the early 19th century, it 00:46:02.139 --> 00:46:04.239 gets resurrected. How does it come back into 00:46:04.239 --> 00:46:07.019 the public consciousness? Initially, it was revived 00:46:07.019 --> 00:46:09.599 by partisan politics. In the 1790s and early 00:46:09.599 --> 00:46:12.739 1800s, the Jeffersonian Republicans wanted to 00:46:12.739 --> 00:46:14.659 score political points against their federalist 00:46:14.659 --> 00:46:17.719 rivals. So they started elevating Thomas Jefferson 00:46:17.719 --> 00:46:21.599 as the singular hero of 1776, putting a massive 00:46:21.599 --> 00:46:24.280 spotlight on the document he drafted. But very 00:46:24.280 --> 00:46:26.960 quickly, the text transcended partisan politics 00:46:26.960 --> 00:46:29.880 and became a sacred nationalist symbol. And more 00:46:29.880 --> 00:46:32.619 importantly, as the decades passed, advocates 00:46:32.619 --> 00:46:35.349 for marginalized groups started using it. They 00:46:35.349 --> 00:46:37.969 looked at the U .S. Constitution and saw that 00:46:37.969 --> 00:46:40.409 it lacked sweeping statements about inherent 00:46:40.409 --> 00:46:42.920 equality. But they look at the Declaration of 00:46:42.920 --> 00:46:45.539 Independence and they realize they had a powerful, 00:46:46.139 --> 00:46:49.199 undeniable moral weapon right there in the foundational 00:46:49.199 --> 00:46:51.820 code. And this is where the abolitionist movement 00:46:51.820 --> 00:46:54.760 steps in and changes the course of American history. 00:46:55.059 --> 00:46:57.340 Leaders like William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick 00:46:57.340 --> 00:47:00.840 Douglass utilized the Declaration to hold America's 00:47:00.840 --> 00:47:03.460 feet to the fire. Yes. Frederick Douglass's famous 00:47:03.460 --> 00:47:06.599 1852 speech, What to the Slave is the Fourth 00:47:06.599 --> 00:47:10.199 of July? is a master class in this. He brilliantly 00:47:10.199 --> 00:47:12.480 uses the soaring principles of the Declaration 00:47:12.480 --> 00:47:15.420 to highlight the catastrophic bloody hypocrisy 00:47:15.420 --> 00:47:17.860 of American slavery. He basically says, you celebrate 00:47:17.860 --> 00:47:20.139 these words of liberty, but you deny them to 00:47:20.139 --> 00:47:22.579 millions. Exactly. The abolitionists interpreted 00:47:22.579 --> 00:47:24.659 the Declaration not just as a secession document, 00:47:24.699 --> 00:47:27.079 but as a theological and political mandate for 00:47:27.079 --> 00:47:29.639 universal freedom. And this tension over what 00:47:29.639 --> 00:47:32.679 the document actually means reaches its absolute 00:47:32.679 --> 00:47:36.059 peak with Abraham Lincoln in the 1850s. We have 00:47:36.059 --> 00:47:38.420 the famous Lincoln Douglass. debates, Stephen 00:47:38.420 --> 00:47:40.739 Douglas Lincoln's political rival argued that 00:47:40.739 --> 00:47:43.559 the phrase, all men are created equal, only applied 00:47:43.559 --> 00:47:46.139 to white men, and that the declaration was purely 00:47:46.139 --> 00:47:48.659 a historical tool used to break away from Britain, 00:47:49.119 --> 00:47:52.039 nothing more. But Lincoln rejects that interpretation 00:47:52.039 --> 00:47:54.960 entirely. Lincoln was obsessed with the Declaration. 00:47:55.400 --> 00:47:57.679 He argued that the Founders were not fools. They 00:47:57.679 --> 00:47:59.820 did not mean to say everyone was instantly equal 00:47:59.820 --> 00:48:02.880 in all respects in 1776 because they obviously 00:48:02.880 --> 00:48:04.800 didn't have the power to instantly confer that 00:48:04.800 --> 00:48:07.380 equality, nor did they abolish slavery at the 00:48:07.380 --> 00:48:10.619 time. But, Lincoln said, they meant to set up 00:48:10.619 --> 00:48:13.599 a standard maxim for a free society. A moral 00:48:13.599 --> 00:48:16.199 North Star. A moral North Star to constantly 00:48:16.199 --> 00:48:18.559 strive toward even if it was difficult. Lincoln 00:48:18.559 --> 00:48:20.510 believed the Declaration was the moral compass 00:48:20.510 --> 00:48:22.789 that must be used to interpret the Constitution 00:48:22.789 --> 00:48:25.969 itself. And he makes this the absolute centerpiece 00:48:25.969 --> 00:48:28.769 of the Gettysburg Address in 1863. He stands 00:48:28.769 --> 00:48:31.690 on a battlefield and says, four score and seven 00:48:31.690 --> 00:48:34.030 years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent 00:48:34.030 --> 00:48:37.670 a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated 00:48:37.670 --> 00:48:40.110 to the proposition that all men are created equal. 00:48:40.809 --> 00:48:43.929 By doing that, Lincoln essentially reframes the 00:48:43.929 --> 00:48:45.869 entire purpose of the United States around that 00:48:45.869 --> 00:48:49.050 one single sentence from 1776. It wasn't just 00:48:49.050 --> 00:48:51.170 about taxes anymore, it was about human equality. 00:48:52.800 --> 00:48:54.980 objectively based on the source material we are 00:48:54.980 --> 00:48:57.619 covering, that the format and the power of the 00:48:57.619 --> 00:48:59.960 Declaration was so universally recognized that 00:48:59.960 --> 00:49:02.079 it was even utilized by the Confederate States 00:49:02.079 --> 00:49:03.860 of America when they declared their secession 00:49:03.860 --> 00:49:07.340 from the Union in 1860. They used the same structural 00:49:07.340 --> 00:49:09.519 arguments of consent and the right to abolish 00:49:09.519 --> 00:49:12.579 a government. But, highly revealingly, the Confederate 00:49:12.579 --> 00:49:15.139 Declarations notably and intentionally omitted 00:49:15.139 --> 00:49:17.699 the phrases all men are created equal and the 00:49:17.699 --> 00:49:19.739 consent of the governed, replacing them with 00:49:19.739 --> 00:49:22.440 arguments for racial inequality. That intentional 00:49:22.440 --> 00:49:24.760 omission speaks volumes about what the war was 00:49:24.760 --> 00:49:27.960 really about. But Lincoln's interpretation that 00:49:27.960 --> 00:49:30.659 the declaration is a promise of equality prevailed. 00:49:31.079 --> 00:49:33.059 And it wasn't just utilized regarding slavery. 00:49:33.659 --> 00:49:36.219 In 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention for Women's 00:49:36.219 --> 00:49:39.079 Rights drafted a declaration of sentiments patterned 00:49:39.079 --> 00:49:43.199 exactly on the 1776 document, famously and powerfully 00:49:43.199 --> 00:49:45.599 adding two words, declaring that all men and 00:49:45.599 --> 00:49:48.480 women are created equal. We see this legacy continue 00:49:48.480 --> 00:49:50.989 straight into the 20th century. Martin Luther 00:49:50.989 --> 00:49:53.110 King Jr. standing on the steps of the Lincoln 00:49:53.110 --> 00:49:56.750 Memorial in his 1963 I Have a Dream speech referred 00:49:56.750 --> 00:49:59.050 to the Declaration of Independence as a promissory 00:49:59.050 --> 00:50:01.409 note to which every American was to fall error. 00:50:01.630 --> 00:50:03.289 He was coming to cash the check that was written 00:50:03.289 --> 00:50:07.190 in 1776. Harvey Milk quoted it in 1978 during 00:50:07.190 --> 00:50:10.150 his impassioned speeches for LGBTQ plus rights, 00:50:10.409 --> 00:50:12.170 stating that no matter how hard people might 00:50:12.170 --> 00:50:14.510 try, you cannot erase those foundational words 00:50:14.510 --> 00:50:16.670 from the Declaration of Independence. They belong 00:50:16.670 --> 00:50:18.670 to everyone. I want to bring back our analogy 00:50:18.670 --> 00:50:20.769 of the open source software code because I think 00:50:20.769 --> 00:50:24.469 it fits perfectly here. The founders, deeply 00:50:24.469 --> 00:50:26.809 flawed as they were, trapped in the prejudices 00:50:26.809 --> 00:50:29.469 and economics of their time, managed to write 00:50:29.469 --> 00:50:32.590 a brilliant base code for human rights in 1776. 00:50:33.280 --> 00:50:36.780 That base code had massive bugs. It had catastrophic 00:50:36.780 --> 00:50:39.840 exclusions. It left out enslaved people. It left 00:50:39.840 --> 00:50:41.820 out women and left out indigenous populations. 00:50:41.840 --> 00:50:43.960 Huge exclusions, yeah. But the core mathematical 00:50:43.960 --> 00:50:46.079 philosophy of the code consent of the governed 00:50:46.079 --> 00:50:49.500 inherent equality was so structurally sound that 00:50:49.500 --> 00:50:51.639 every marginalized group in every generation 00:50:51.639 --> 00:50:54.280 since has been able to submit updates and patches. 00:50:54.800 --> 00:50:56.760 They've demanded access to the system. holding 00:50:56.760 --> 00:50:58.619 the nation accountable to its own base code, 00:50:58.699 --> 00:51:00.840 making the system run better, broader, and more 00:51:00.840 --> 00:51:02.840 equitably for everyone. That is a wonderful way 00:51:02.840 --> 00:51:05.820 to encapsulate it. The document is not a relic 00:51:05.820 --> 00:51:08.880 in a museum. It is an active, ongoing argument. 00:51:09.340 --> 00:51:11.179 And its influence didn't stop at the American 00:51:11.179 --> 00:51:14.000 borders either. It almost immediately inspired 00:51:14.000 --> 00:51:15.960 the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights 00:51:15.960 --> 00:51:19.539 of Man in 1789. It heavily inspired the Haitian 00:51:19.539 --> 00:51:22.760 Revolution in 1804. Countless nations globally 00:51:22.760 --> 00:51:24.880 have modeled their own declarations of statehood 00:51:24.880 --> 00:51:27.860 on Jefferson's text. Now, as the sources note, 00:51:28.340 --> 00:51:30.320 many of those countries just copied the legal 00:51:30.320 --> 00:51:32.800 assertion of national sovereignty without actually 00:51:32.800 --> 00:51:34.940 adopting the underlying philosophy of natural 00:51:34.940 --> 00:51:38.500 rights or democracy. But its global impact as 00:51:38.500 --> 00:51:41.599 a template for liberation is undeniable. So let's 00:51:41.599 --> 00:51:43.539 step back and recap the incredible journey we've 00:51:43.539 --> 00:51:45.739 taken today. For the student listening, trying 00:51:45.739 --> 00:51:47.659 to mack out the foundation of American democracy, 00:51:48.079 --> 00:51:50.280 we started with what seemed like a stubborn disagreement 00:51:50.280 --> 00:51:53.260 over a minor tax on tea and paper. But we explored 00:51:53.260 --> 00:51:55.539 why that ideological rift over parliamentary 00:51:55.539 --> 00:51:58.539 power and unalterable rights escalated into a 00:51:58.539 --> 00:52:00.900 military crisis, fundamentally breaking the First 00:52:00.900 --> 00:52:03.000 Amendment -style right to petition for redress. 00:52:03.199 --> 00:52:05.440 From there, we saw how public opinion had to 00:52:05.440 --> 00:52:07.980 be violently shifted by the viral spread of Thomas 00:52:07.980 --> 00:52:11.280 Paine's common sense. We explored how that groundswell 00:52:11.280 --> 00:52:13.860 forced politicians in Congress to wage a complex 00:52:13.739 --> 00:52:16.579 war of instructions and parliamentary maneuvers 00:52:16.579 --> 00:52:19.440 just to get the legal democratic authority to 00:52:19.440 --> 00:52:22.380 vote for separation. And finally, a young Thomas 00:52:22.380 --> 00:52:25.019 Jefferson sat in a rented room and synthesized 00:52:25.019 --> 00:52:27.800 the philosophy of his era into a draft that was 00:52:27.800 --> 00:52:30.719 brutally edited, tragically stripped of its condemnation 00:52:30.719 --> 00:52:33.199 of the slave trade to appease southern delegates 00:52:33.199 --> 00:52:36.079 and signed by men who fully expected to be hanged 00:52:36.079 --> 00:52:39.210 for treason. Yet, in doing so, they accidentally 00:52:39.210 --> 00:52:41.289 birthed the universal language of human rights 00:52:41.289 --> 00:52:43.710 that would be used by generations of marginalized 00:52:43.710 --> 00:52:46.409 people, from abolitionists to suffragists to 00:52:46.409 --> 00:52:48.889 civil rights leaders, to demand true equality. 00:52:49.190 --> 00:52:52.389 It is a profound, messy, and ongoing legacy. 00:52:53.110 --> 00:52:55.050 And to leave you with a final provocative thought 00:52:55.050 --> 00:52:57.489 directly from the source material, there is actually 00:52:57.489 --> 00:52:59.889 a modern historical mystery surrounding the Declaration 00:52:59.889 --> 00:53:02.110 that challenges how we view the founding itself. 00:53:02.349 --> 00:53:06.110 In 2017, researchers discovered a second engrossed 00:53:06.110 --> 00:53:08.110 handwritten parchment copy of the Declaration 00:53:08.110 --> 00:53:10.909 of Independence rolled up in a local archive 00:53:10.909 --> 00:53:14.530 in Sussex, England. They call it the Sussex Declaration. 00:53:14.650 --> 00:53:17.210 Wait, a second handwritten parchment copy? I 00:53:17.210 --> 00:53:18.510 thought there was only the one in the National 00:53:18.510 --> 00:53:20.650 Archives in Washington. There was only one known, 00:53:20.969 --> 00:53:24.670 but the second one dates to the 1780s. But here 00:53:24.670 --> 00:53:27.090 is what makes it so fascinating and so politically 00:53:27.090 --> 00:53:30.150 explosive. On the official National Archives 00:53:30.150 --> 00:53:32.570 copy, we all know the signatures at the bottom 00:53:32.570 --> 00:53:35.090 are grouped together by state. The Massachusetts 00:53:35.090 --> 00:53:37.469 delegates signed together, the Virginia delegates 00:53:37.469 --> 00:53:39.989 signed together, emphasizing that this was a 00:53:39.989 --> 00:53:42.969 treaty among 13 independent sovereign states. 00:53:43.590 --> 00:53:45.889 But on this newly discovered Sussex document, 00:53:46.269 --> 00:53:48.590 the signatures are completely randomized. Really 00:53:48.590 --> 00:53:51.610 randomized. They are not grouped by states. The 00:53:51.610 --> 00:53:53.690 finders believe this document was commissioned 00:53:53.690 --> 00:53:56.769 by and belonged to James Wilson, a signer from 00:53:56.769 --> 00:53:59.210 Pennsylvania and a future Supreme Court Justice, 00:53:59.949 --> 00:54:02.269 Wilson fiercely argued that the Declaration of 00:54:02.269 --> 00:54:04.730 Independence was made by the whole unified people 00:54:04.730 --> 00:54:08.389 of America together, not by a coalition of separate 00:54:08.389 --> 00:54:11.150 independent states. Oh, wow. So if the signatures 00:54:11.150 --> 00:54:13.210 aren't grouped by state, it implies the nation 00:54:13.210 --> 00:54:17.019 was founded fundamentally as one single. national 00:54:17.019 --> 00:54:20.119 entity of people rather than a loose league of 00:54:20.119 --> 00:54:23.000 13 separate nations? Precisely. It is a visual 00:54:23.000 --> 00:54:25.659 argument for national unity over state sovereignty. 00:54:26.139 --> 00:54:28.039 And that raises a brilliant question for you 00:54:28.039 --> 00:54:30.199 to mull over as you continue to study history 00:54:30.199 --> 00:54:32.420 and government. If the founders themselves were 00:54:32.420 --> 00:54:34.659 secretly arguing behind the scenes, using the 00:54:34.659 --> 00:54:36.860 very placement of their signatures on parchment 00:54:36.860 --> 00:54:38.699 to debate whether this was a document signed 00:54:38.699 --> 00:54:41.320 by unified individuals or by separate sovereign 00:54:41.320 --> 00:54:43.769 states, How does that change the way we view 00:54:43.769 --> 00:54:46.210 the ongoing debate over states' rights versus 00:54:46.210 --> 00:54:48.869 federal power in modern democracy today? It's 00:54:48.869 --> 00:54:51.130 something to seriously mull over. That completely 00:54:51.130 --> 00:54:53.809 changes the paradigm. We started this deep dive 00:54:53.809 --> 00:54:57.179 talking about pristine blueprints versus chaotic 00:54:57.179 --> 00:54:59.539 construction sites. And I think what the Sussex 00:54:59.539 --> 00:55:01.880 Declaration shows us is that even the architects 00:55:01.880 --> 00:55:04.659 themselves were arguing over the basic foundation 00:55:04.659 --> 00:55:06.179 of the building as they were laying the bricks. 00:55:06.500 --> 00:55:08.719 The blueprint was never settled. It was always 00:55:08.719 --> 00:55:11.619 an active, living argument. And the health of 00:55:11.619 --> 00:55:14.059 a democracy depends on that argument continuing. 00:55:14.679 --> 00:55:16.340 Thank you so much for joining us on this deep 00:55:16.340 --> 00:55:19.119 dive into the historical sources, the messy origins, 00:55:19.119 --> 00:55:21.340 and the enduring legacy of the Declaration of 00:55:21.340 --> 00:55:23.559 Independence. Remember, the history that shapes 00:55:23.559 --> 00:55:26.179 your world isn't written in stone. It's written 00:55:26.179 --> 00:55:28.980 in messy, heavily edited ink by people who are 00:55:28.980 --> 00:55:31.239 figuring it out as they went. Keep exploring, 00:55:31.639 --> 00:55:33.440 keep questioning, and keep diving deep.