You know, when you sit down as a student to study
government or when you look at the foundations
of modern democracy, it is so incredibly easy
to look at the final product like it's some kind
of I don't know, pristine architectural blueprint.
Right, right. It looks completely inevitable
in retrospect. Exactly. Like every single line
was perfectly planned. Every check and balance
just perfectly calculated by these absolute geniuses
who knew exactly what they were building from
day one. As if they just sat in the sterile,
quiet room, sip some tea and, you know, mathematically
deduce the perfect republic from thin air. Yeah,
we look at the finished document, the United
States Declaration of Independence, and it's
just so clean, so elegantly written. But then
you actually step into the historical sources
we have for this deep dive. And it's a completely
different story. It really is. You start digging
into the letters, the journals, the rough drafts,
with words just aggressively crossed out, the
angry debates in these humid rooms. And you realize
it wasn't a pristine blueprint at all. What we're
actually looking at is a historical landscape
that is a muddy, chaotic, incredibly dangerous
construction site. It is the absolute definition
of a political and ideological pressure cooker.
And we have to remember the stakes here because
the stakes could not have been higher. So welcome
to the deep dive. Today, our mission is to take
a massive stack of source material, comprehensive
historical documentation on the drafting, the
context, and the legacy of the Declaration of
Independence and walk chronologically through
the intense, high stakes events that led to America's
break from Great Britain. Yeah. And if you're
a student trying to understand the bedrock of
American democracy, we are going to show you
exactly how these chaotic, messy, profoundly
human events forged the very democratic principles
you study today. Because we have to set the stage
properly for you here. When these delegates were
arguing over commas and clauses in Philadelphia,
they weren't just writing a philosophical essay
for a university grade. No, no, they weren't
just publishing an op -ed. They were quite literally
preparing to sign their own death warrants. Right.
They were committing high treason against the
British Crown. And in the 18th century, high
treason wasn't just a, you know, a prison sentence.
That's brutal. It was an offense punishable by
the most gruesome methods imaginable hanged.
drawn and quartered. They were staring down the
barrel of the greatest military and naval empire
on the face of the earth. And while under that
immense existential threat, they were trying
to invent a completely new kind of government
based on an incredibly radical idea, the consent
of the governed. Okay, so let's unpack this from
the start, because before there could be a physical
revolution like, before the muskets were fired
and the cannons were loaded, there had to be
a revolution in the mind, right? Absolutely.
The way people thought about their relationship
to power, to authority, to the law itself, it
all had to completely shatter and be rebuilt.
And our sources point out that this ideological
rift really started to open up between 1763 and
1774. What was the absolute core of this disagreement?
Because it wasn't just about tea. Not at all.
It all comes down to the shifting definitions
of rights, specifically who has the authority
to grant rights and who has the authority to
restrict them. Relations between the 13 colonies
in Great Britain really started deteriorating
after 1763, right at the end of the French and
Indian War. The British Empire had just fought
this massive global conflict and they had incurred
astronomical debts. Mostly to defend the North
American colonies, right, from the French and
their indigenous allies. Exactly. Naturally,
Parliament looks at the ledger and says, well,
we protected you. We went into debt for you.
Now you need to pay your fair share of the empire's
operating costs. Which, I mean, makes logical
sense on paper. If you live in an empire, you
pay for the empire. OK. On paper, sure. So Parliament
passes the Stamp Act in 1765, which taxed printed
materials, and then the Townsend Act in 1767,
which taxed goods like glass, lead, paint, and
tea. Just standard revenue measures. Right. Measures
designed strictly to extract revenue from the
colonies to pay down that imperial debt. But
for the colonists, this wasn't just an accounting
dispute over a few pennies on a newspaper. It
was a profound existential constitutional crisis.
But why? I mean, if it's just a small tax, why
does it trigger a constitutional crisis? To understand
that, you have to understand the orthodox British
view of the world at the time, which dated all
the way back to the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
OK, take us back there. So in 1688, the English
parliament overthrew King James II and established
that parliament, not the crown, was the ultimate
supreme authority in the land. So by the 1760s,
the British political mindset was that Parliament
is sovereign throughout the entire empire. In
their eyes, whatever Parliament did was, by definition,
constitutional. Oh, so Parliament basically was
the Constitution. Yes. There was no higher law
than a parliamentary act. But the colonists across
the Atlantic are operating on a completely different
system. Like, they missed that memo. or rather
they violently disagreed with it. They absolutely
disagreed. Over the decades of living relatively
autonomously, this new idea had taken root in
the colonies. They believed that the British
Constitution, which remember wasn't a single
written document, but a collection of traditions,
charters, and laws like the Magna Carta, they
believed it recognized certain fundamental rights
that no government could violate. Not the king
and certainly not parliament. Exactly. Thinkers
like Samuel Adams, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson
began writing essays arguing that Parliament
was a legislature for Great Britain only. Wait,
really? So they believed the politicians in London
had literally no jurisdiction over them whatsoever?
That is exactly what they argued. They claimed
the colonies had their own legislatures, the
Virginia House of Burgesses, the Massachusetts
General Court, and so on. Their only legal connection
to the British Empire was their allegiance to
the Crown, the King. They argued they owed no
allegiance to the politicians in parliament because
the colonists had no direct representation in
that body. Hence the famous rallying crino taxation
without representation. I love looking at it
this way and tell me if this analogy works for
you. It's like comparing the British view of
parliament. to a modern software terms of service
agreement. Oh, that's interesting. You know,
you sign up for an app, you just click agree,
and the tech company can unilaterally change
the rules on you at any time. They can update
the terms, charge you new fees, restrict your
access, and you just have to live with it because
they own the platform. Mm -hmm. Parlin viewed
the colonies as users on their platform. Right.
But the colonists believed they had a non -negotiable
VIP contract. The core features of their liberty,
like their property, Their local courts could
not be updated, taxed or deleted without their
explicit local permission. That is a brilliant
way to frame it for a student of history. The
British government is saying we can update the
terms of service whenever we want. We are parliament.
The colonists are saying, no, we have foundational,
unalterable rights. What you're witnessing in
the 1760s and 70s is the intellectual birth of
the concept that rights are inherent. They're
baked into the human condition. They are not
merely privileges granted by a legislative body
that can be revoked when the government needs
to, say, balance its budget. But I have to push
back a little here just to play devil's advocate
for the British. I'm trying to put myself in
the shoes of a politician in London. Weren't
the British kind of justified? I mean, they literally
fought a war on American soil to protect American
colonists. Why did a relatively standard tax
dispute, a demand to just pitch in turn into
an existential crisis that burned down the whole
house, weren't the colonists just being cheap?
It's a totally fair question, and Parliament
certainly thought they were just being cheap.
But for the colonists, it was never about the
amount of the tax. It was about the precedent,
it said. It was about the mechanism of power.
How so? If Parliament could levy an internal
tax on the colonies without their consent, even
a tax of a single penny, it meant Parliament
had absolute unchecked power over colonial property.
Because if they can take a penny without asking,
they can take the whole farm without asking.
Precisely. And in the 18th century English mind,
property and liberty were inextricably linked.
If you don't have a secure right to your property,
you don't have liberty. You are entirely dependent
on the goodwill of the state, which essentially
makes you a slave to the state. So for the colonists,
accepting a small tax today meant accepting total
subjugation tomorrow. It was a slippery slope
that ended in tyranny. And this ideological stalemate
over taxes in terms of service inevitably erupts
into physical defiance, which forces the British
crown to eventually bring the hammer down, taking
us to the point of no return. We are looking
at the period from roughly 1774 to late 1775.
How do we escalate from angry philosophical essays
and local newspapers to actual Bloody warfare.
The escalation happens because the colonists
realize that essays aren't stopping the taxes.
Protests begin to turn into the physical destruction
of British property. Right. It moves from the
page to the streets. Yes. For example, look at
the Gatsby affair in 1772. The HMS Gatsby was
a British custom schooner that had been aggressively
enforcing unpopular trade regulations and harassing
local ships off the coast of Rhode Island. OK.
So a group of Rhode Islanders rode out in the
middle of the night. boarded the ship, shot the
captain, and burned the vessel to the waterline.
That is a massive escalation. You can't just
burn a British military custom ship and expect
them to write an essay back. You certainly cannot.
The British were furious. But what really terrified
the other colonies wasn't just the British anger.
It was the British legal response. The British
government threatened to bypass the local colonial
courts entirely, find the suspects, and ship
them across the Atlantic to England to stand
trial for treason. Oh wow, so they are completely
stripping away the right to a trial by a local
jury of your peers. Exactly, which is one of
the most ancient sacred rights in English common
law. And then the following year, you have the
famous Boston Tea Party in 1773, where millions
of dollars worth of British East India Company
tea is dumped into the harbor. The famous one.
Right. And at this point, Parliament decides
it has had enough of the philosophical debates
and the property destruction. They decide to
make an example of Massachusetts. In 1774, they
pass what they call the Coercive Acts, which
the colonists immediately brand the Intolerable
Act. And what did these acts actually do? They
were brutally punitive. They closed the port
of Boston entirely until the tea was paid for,
economically starving the city. They unilaterally
altered the Massachusetts charter, bringing the
colonial government directly under British control
and severely restricting town meetings. They
essentially put Massachusetts under military
occupation. Which totally backfires on the British,
doesn't it? Because instead of isolating Massachusetts,
it terrifies the rest of the colonies. It proves
the colonists' worst fears. Like, if Parliament
can unilaterally destroy the government of Massachusetts,
they can do it to Virginia. They can do it to
Pennsylvania. It's the realization that an attack
on one is an attack on all. That is the exact
psychological shift. The British thought the
other colonies would abandon Massachusetts. Instead,
it unified them. In September 1774, the colonies
convened the first Continental Congress in Philadelphia
to coordinate a unified response. But even now
they aren't talking about independence, are they?
No, independence is not on the table. The First
Continental Congress coordinates a widespread
boycott of British goods to put economic pressure
on London, and they send a formal respectful
petition directly to the King asking him to intervene
and repeal the coercive acts. They are trying
to use the system to fix the system. But the
system is completely unresponsive. It fails completely.
King George III and his prime minister, Lord
North, are absolutely determined to enforce parliamentary
supremacy. They view any compromise as a sign
of weakness that will shatter the empire. In
fact, in November 1774, King George writes a
private letter to Lord North with a chillingly
clear message. He says of the New England colonies,
blows must decide whether they are to be subject
to this country or independent. Blows must decide.
That is incredible. So it's actually the king
who is drawing the line in the sand first. The
colonists are asking for a political compromise
and the king is saying, no, we are going to fight.
He is. And those blows arrive just a few months
later, in April 1775, when British troops march
out of Boston to seize colonial gunpowder and
fighting breaks out at Lexington and Concord.
The Revolutionary War has officially begun. Wow.
By May of 1775, the Second Continental Congress
convenes at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia.
But here's the fascinating part that students
often miss. Even with blood physically spilled
on the battlefield, declaring independence is
still considered a fringe, highly radical and
treasonous idea. Which is wild to think about.
I mean, people are shooting at each other. American
colonists are dying. The British are firing volleys
into crowds of militia. But the politicians in
Philadelphia are still thinking we can fix this.
We can stay in the empire. I have to push back
on the colonists mindset here. Why were they
clinging so desperately to a king whose army
was currently killing them? It feels almost like
political Stockholm syndrome. It does look like
that to modernize, but you have to understand
the centuries of cultural conditioning at play.
For generations, the colonists had been taught,
culturally and religiously, that the king was
their ultimate benevolent protector. They directed
all their anger at parliament and the king's
evil ministers. Oh, I see. They genuinely believed
that King George III was being lied to by his
advisors. They thought, if his majesty only knew
the truth of our suffering, he would surely intercede
on our behalf. So, even after Lexington and conquered,
Congress sends a second petition to him, the
Olive Branch petition, begging for reconciliation.
They're holding out for the heroic king to save
them from the evil parliament. But the king completely
shatters that illusion. He shatters it irreparably.
When the Olive Branch petition arrives in London
in late 1775, King George refuses to even look
at it. Instead, he issues a formal proclamation
of rebellion, officially declaring the colonies
to be in a state of open armed revolt. And then
he goes before parliament and announces that
he is considering friendly offers of foreign
assistance to suppress the rebellion. Foreign
assistance, meaning mercenaries. Exactly. He
is hiring German soldiers, the Hessians, to cross
the Atlantic and kill his own subjects. Stop
right there. Because for a student studying the
foundational principles of democracy, this specific
period is an incredibly stark lesson. What we
are seeing here is the complete catastrophic
breakdown of the right to petition the government
for a redress of grievances, which of course
becomes a core First Amendment right in the modern
U .S. Constitution. Yes. The founders enshrined
that right because of this exact moment. The
colonists tried every legal, peaceful route available.
They wrote essays. They organized boy - They
filed lawsuits. They petitioned the king directly,
twice. And the response to their legal petitions
was military occupation, naval blockades, and
foreign mercenaries. That is the crucial takeaway.
If we connect this to the bigger picture of democratic
theory, it shows that a functional democracy
requires a responsive government. When a government
completely closes off all avenues for peaceful
redress, when it criminalizes the very act of
complaining, revolution becomes the only remaining
mechanism for change. They were backed into a
corner. The colonists didn't choose revolution
as their first option. They were pushed into
it because the legal system was weaponized against
them. So by early 1776, the illusion is dead.
The King has rejected peace. He's sending Hessians.
The Congress in Philadelphia knows they're in
a literal war for their survival. But they have
a massive, massive problem. The general public
is still largely terrified of the idea of independence.
It's illegal, it's unprecedented, and it means
tearing down everything they've ever known. How
do you convince two and a half million people
to commit treason against the greatest empire
in the world? You need a masterpiece of public
relations. You need to change the cultural narrative
overnight. And that arrives in January 1776 in
the form of a short pamphlet called Common Sense
written by Thomas Paine. I have been waiting
to talk about this. Here's where it gets really
interesting, because I look at Thomas Paine's
Common Sense as essentially the first viral social
media campaign in American history. Oh, absolutely.
Up to this point, the debate over rights and
parliaments was happening in elevated academic
language among wealthy lawyers. Payne takes this
incredibly dense taboo, dangerous topic of political
philosophy, and he distills it into something
so potent, so aggressive, and so accessible that
it goes viral in literally every tavern in the
colonies. That analogy is perfect. Before Payne
independence was whispered about behind closed
doors, Payne grabs a megaphone and shouts it
in the town square. What made common sense so
revolutionary was its style and its audacity.
He didn't just argue against parliamentary taxes,
he attacked the very concept of hereditary monarchy.
You know, King George, a royal brute, right?
Yes, a royal brute. He framed independence not
just as a desperate, terrifying last resort,
but as something achievable, scientifically necessary,
and glorious. He used plain English and linked
the idea of independence with deeply held Protestant
beliefs, forging a distinctly American political
identity that anyone could understand. The numbers
on this are staggering in the sources. In proportion
to the population of the colonies at the time,
which was only about two and a half million people,
common sense had the largest sale and circulation
of any book published in American history. It
was everywhere. General George Washington even
ordered it read aloud to his demoralized troops
in the field. Think about the power of that for
a moment. Washington, a military commander, recognized
that abstract political theory had direct physical
battlefield application. Ideas motivate armies.
When you are asking a starving, freezing farmer
to stand in a field and get shot at by professional
British soldiers, you have to give him a reason
why. Pain gave them the why. If we bring back
the open source software analogy, common sense
is the first major patch submitted to the public
consciousness. It completely rewrote the operating
system of the average colonial citizen. Yes.
But it wasn't just pain writing brilliant essays,
right? The British also played a huge role in
shifting the public mind in early 1776, perhaps
unintentionally, with something called the Prohibitory
Act. What was that? The Prohibitory Act was Parliament's
ultimate economic weapon. In February 1776, word
reached the colonies that Parliament had passed
an act establishing a total naval blockade of
all American ports. It declared that all American
ships were now enemy vessels, subject to capture.
So they just cut them off completely? Entirely.
John Adams, who was the leading bulldog for independence
in the Continental Congress, saw this act for
exactly what it was. He didn't call it a tragedy,
he called it the Act of Independence. Why did
he call it that? Adams argued that Britain had
actually declared them independent first. By
kicking the colonies out of the empire's economic
protection, blockading their ports, and declaring
war on their trade, the king and parliament had
effectively severed the relationship themselves.
Adams argued, you can't be guilty of treason
against a king who has already thrown you out
of his kingdom and declared you a foreign enemy.
It gave the colonists a legal and moral justification
to fight back. hiring of foreign Hessian mercenaries
and the British Navy blockading the ports, destroying
the economy. Suddenly, the public mood shifts
violently. Between April and July of 1776, a
massive ground swell happens. The sources say
over 90 local declarations of independence flood
in from all over the colonies. Yes, and this
is a crucial, often overlooked part of the story.
Students often think independence came top down,
that a few wealthy men in Congress decided it,
and the people followed. The reality is the exact
opposite. It surged bottom up. Bottom up from
the people, exactly. Local municipalities, counties,
and colonies assembly started formally authorizing
separation. For example, on April 12th, North
Carolina issues the Halifax Resolves. This was
the first official action by a colony explicitly
authorizing its delegates in Philadelphia to
vote for independence. They are essentially sending
new software instructions to their representatives,
like you are now authorized to execute the independence
protocol. Exactly. Then on May 4th, the legislature
of Rhode Island officially renounces its allegiance
to Great Britain. You have town meetings across
Massachusetts, county meetings in Virginia. all
issuing local resolutions demanding a split.
I love the example the sources provide from South
Carolina. Chief Justice William Henry Drayton
is sitting in a courtroom and he issues jury
instructions, literally telling a jury before
trial that King George III has no legal authority
over them anymore and they owe him no obedience.
Can you imagine a judge doing that today? Just
casually declaring the overthrow of the sovereign
government during jury duty? It sounds absurd
to us, but it highlights just how pervasive and
normalized the sentiment had become at the local
level. The people were ready. But this brings
us to a massive structural democratic problem
because we have to look at the complex political
war happening inside the Continental Congress
in Philadelphia during May and June of 1776.
Right. Because public desire in the taverns of
Boston or the courtrooms of South Carolina means
absolutely nothing if the delegates sitting in
Philadelphia don't have the legal authority from
their home colonies to actually vote for it.
They are trapped by their old instructions. This
is the heart of the political drama. The Continental
Congress was not a national parliament. It was
an advisory body of delegates sent by 13 completely
separate sovereign colonial governments. Each
delegate was legally bound by the specific instructions
given to them by their home legislature. So they
couldn't just vote their conscience? No. Regardless
of how much John Adams or Thomas Jefferson personally
wanted independence, they could not legally vote
for it unless their home colony explicitly permitted
it. It's like a corporate board meeting where
the proxy voters can only vote the way the shareholders
instructed them, no matter what new information
comes to light. Precisely. And in the spring
of 1776, several colonies, especially the middle
colonies like New York, New Jersey, Maryland,
Pennsylvania, and Delaware, still had strict
instructions explicitly prohibiting their delegates
from voting for separation. They were still holding
out hope for a peace treaty. So how do you break
that deadlock? Here begins the parliamentary
chess match. John Adams and Richard Henry Lee
of Virginia are trying to force the issue without
breaking the fragile alliance. And on May 10
and May 15, they pushed through a seemingly administrative
resolution calling on all the colonies to adopt
new permanent governments. Yes, and this is where
John Adams pulls off a brilliant political maneuver.
He drafts a preamble to this mayor resolution
that is absolute dynamite. He writes that because
the king has rejected reconciliation and because
the crown is hiring foreign mercenaries to destroy
them, it is necessary that the exercise of every
kind of authority under the said crown should
be totally suppressed. Totally suppressed. That
is not asking for a lower tax rate on tea. That
is a call for the total overthrow of the existing
political order. It was. Adams was essentially
telling the colonies, tear down your royal governments,
kick out your royal governors, and build new
governments based on the authority of the people.
Adams actually viewed this May 15 preamble as
the de facto declaration of independence. He
thought the deed was done right then and there.
But wait, I have a question here. If John Adams,
the most vocal advocate for independence, thought
the May 15 preamble was already a declaration
of independence, why bother writing another fancier
document a month later, why do we have the July
4th declaration if Adams thought they already
did it in May? This raises a profoundly important
concept about the nature of international law
and diplomacy in the 18th century. The May 15
preamble was essentially internal housekeeping.
It was Congress telling the 13 colonies to get
their own domestic affairs in order. But the
United States was fighting a war against the
greatest military power on earth. They had no
money, no navy, and barely any gunpowder. They
needed help. They desperately needed foreign
alliances, specifically military and financial
aid from France and Spain. And France isn't going
to give money to a colony. Exactly. Under the
recognized international rules of the time, heavily
influenced by legal scholars like Ymer de Vattel
and his book, The Law of Nations Foreign Powers,
will not intervene in another empire's internal
civil war. If America is just a group of rebellious
British subjects, France cannot sign a treaty
with them without declaring war on Britain unprovoked.
That makes sense. But if America issues a formal,
unified, highly visible public statement proving
to the world that they are a sovereign nation,
a peer among nations, then France can legally
recognize them and sign treaties. So the Declaration
of Independence isn't just a breakup letter.
It's a legal application for international sovereignty.
That is exactly what it is. So recognizing this
need, on June 7, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia
presents the famous Lee Resolution to Congress.
It's a three -part motion. First, to declare
independence. Second, to form foreign alliances.
And third, to prepare a plan of confederation
to bind the colonies together. But even with
the war raging, Congress still pushes back. They
do. The opponents of immediate independence,
led by brilliant men like John Dickinson of Pennsylvania,
argued that the timing was premature. Dickinson
argued that they shouldn't declare independence
until they had secured a foreign alliance first.
It's too dangerous to jump without a net. But
the pro -independence faction argues you can't
get the net until you jump. You can't get the
alliance until you declare independence. It was
a terrifying catch -22. And because several delegates
from the middle colonies still lacked the legal
authority to vote yes, Congress makes a critical
democratic decision. They postpone the final
vote on the Lee resolution for three weeks. They
send the delegates back to their home colonies
to get new instructions from their constituents.
What stands out to me here is the sheer restraint
of the democratic process. John Adams wanted
independence immediately. He was chomping at
the bit, absolutely furious at the delay. But
he had to respect the system of representative
government. He couldn't act like a dictator and
force it through. He had to wait for the delegates
to receive the explicit consent of their constituents.
The political leaders could not outrun the people.
They had to wait for the legal authorization
to catch up with the revolutionary reality. It
is a profound lesson in the mechanics of a republic.
You can't just have the right idea. You must
have the legal consensus to execute it. So, to
prepare for the vote that is coming in three
weeks, Congress realizes they need a draft of
this formal declaration ready to go, just in
case the vote passes. They appoint a committee
of five. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas
Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman.
But ultimately, despite all these brilliant minds,
one man is left alone in a rented room to do
the heavy lifting of actually writing it. The
physical drafting of the document is a story
of immense pressure and surprising humility.
The committee meets to discuss the general outline
and the arguments they want to make. But when
it comes to putting pen to paper, John Adams
persuades a 33 year old Thomas Jefferson to write
the first draft. And how did that conversation
go? Well, according to Adams's later recollections,
the conversation was quite blunt. Adams told
Jefferson, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian
ought to appear at the head of this business.
I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You
are very much otherwise. And you can write 10
times better than I can. I love the self -awareness
from John Adams. I am obnoxious. No one wants
to read a document written by me. So Jefferson
rents a room on the second floor of a three -story
house in Philadelphia, and over 17 incredibly
busy days while also attending congressional
sessions and buying supplies, he drafts it. But
let's dig into the intellectual DNA here. Where
does Jefferson get these ideas? He didn't just
invent the concept of human rights out of thin
air in a rented room, did he? Not at all, and
Jefferson himself freely admitted this years
later. When he was accused of copying others,
he responded that he aimed for no originality
of principle or sentiment. His goal wasn't to
invent new philosophy. His goal was to provide
an expression of the American mind. He leaned
heavily on documents and theories that were already
swirling around the intellectual atmosphere of
the colonies. What were the main sources he pulled
from? He drew significantly from his fellow Virginian,
George Mason, who had just drafted the Virginia
Declaration of Rights, which stated that all
men are by nature equally free and independent.
Jefferson also drew heavily on the theories of
the English philosopher John Locke from the previous
century. Locke is a huge influence, yeah. Definitely.
Locke had famously argued that in a state of
nature, all people are equal and that governments
are instituted solely to protect the natural
rights of life, liberty and property. Though
Jefferson makes a fascinating edit there, famously
changing property to the pursuit of happiness.
Which broadens the concept of liberty beyond
just material wealth to encompass human flourishing.
The sources also note the influence of the 1689
English Declaration of Rights, which provided
a historical model for how to legitimately end
the reign of an unjust king by listing his abuses
of power. It's like Jefferson was the ultimate
synthesizer. He pulled the best legal, philosophical
and diplomatic code of the 18th century, translated
it into soaring poetic prose and combined it
into one document. Synthesizer is the perfect
word. He presents his rough draft to the committee.
Franklin and Adams make a few minor but profound
tweaks. Like what? For example, Jefferson originally
wrote, we hold these truths to be sacred and
undeniable. Franklin, bringing a more scientific
enlightenment mindset, reportedly crossed that
out and changed it to self -evident. Self -evident?
That's so powerful. Meaning, it doesn't require
a religious mandate. It is a fact of nature.
Then... The committee presents the draft to the
full Continental Congress. And this is where
the brutality of editing by committee comes in.
Oh, anyone who has ever written anything for
a group project is going to cringe at this part.
Congress spends two agonizing days tearing Jefferson's
beautiful draft apart. They cross out words.
They rewrite sentences. They cut the overall
length by a fourth. They methodically remove
unnecessary wording to improve the punchiness
and the pace. But crucially, they remove one
massive, deeply significant paragraph. They strike
out a passage where Jefferson vehemently condemned
King George III for the transatlantic slave trade.
Yes. This is perhaps the most heavily debated
edit in American history. In his original draft,
Jefferson included a scathing grievance, accusing
the king of waging cruel war against human nature
itself, violating its most sacred rights of life
and liberty in the persons of a distant people
who never offended him, captivating and carrying
them into slavery. Jefferson wanted to make the
horrors of the slave trade one of the core justifications
for American independence. Okay, I have to stop
the narrative here and press you on this, because
it is the most glowing contradiction of the entire
era. How could Thomas Jefferson write, all men
are created equal, and condemn the slave trade
as a cruel war against human nature while he
himself owned around 600 enslaved human beings
at Monticello over the course of his lifetime?
Was this a genuine moral conflict for him? Was
he trapped by the system? Or was this just cynical
political window dressing to make the British
King look like a monster to the international
community? It is the great foundational paradox
of the American founding and historians have
debated Jefferson's internal mindset endlessly.
The most accurate assessment from the historical
consensus is that Jefferson understood intellectually
and morally that slavery was an abhorrent evil.
He knew it was entirely incompatible with the
natural rights he was writing about. Right. Yet
he was a wealthy planter. entirely economically
dependent on enslaved labor to maintain his lifestyle,
his debts, and his social standing. And despite
his soaring words, he lacked the personal courage
to free his own enslaved people, with only a
few exceptions. So he knew it was wrong. He wrote
that it was wrong, but he couldn't bring himself
to change his own life. Exactly. And when Congress
began striking the slavery clause from the declaration,
Jefferson sat there in silence, seething. He
later noted in his journal that the clause was
struck out out of complacence to Carolina and
Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain
the importation of slaves and desperately wanted
to keep it. But the North wasn't innocent either.
No, Jefferson was intellectually honest enough
to note that the northern states were complicit
too. He wrote that our northern brethren also
felt a little tender under those censures, for
though their people had very few slaves themselves,
yet they had been pretty considerable carriers
of them. The northern shipping industry profited
immensely from the slave trade. The hypocrisy
was not lost on the rest of the world at the
time either. The sources give a searing, unforgettable
quote from an English abolitionist named Thomas
Day, who wrote a letter in 1776 looking at the
American rebellion, he said. if there be an object
truly ridiculous in nature. It is an American
patriot signing resolutions of independency with
the one hand and with the other brandishing a
whip over his affrighted slaves. That is a devastating
pinpoint critique. It is devastating because
it is entirely true and it proves that the founders
knew exactly what they were doing. They were
fully aware of the moral contradiction. No one
in that room thought slavery was a completely
benign institution. But in the Pennsylvania State
House in July 1776, the absolute overriding priority
was political unity. They needed to survive the
war. They genuinely believed that if they pushed
the issue of slavery, the southern colonies would
walk out, the union would shatter, the revolution
would fail, and the British would hang them all.
So they made a calculated tragic compromise.
They compromised on the lives of millions of
enslaved people to secure the political union
of the states. Which cast a heavy, dark shadow
over the birth of the nation. It's a flaw in
the foundation that will eventually tear the
country apart in the Civil War. But with the
draft heavily edited and the slavery clause struck
out, the deadline finally arrives. The three
-week postponement is over. The new instructions
have arrived from the middle colonies. It is
time to vote. We are moving into the dramatic
climax, July 1st to August 2nd, 1776. The tension
in the room on July 1st is palpable. The weather
is sweltering. They resume debate on Richard
Henry Lee's original resolution for independence.
Congress decides to take a preliminary test vote,
sitting as a committee of the whole. And the
results are terrifying for John Adams. Pennsylvania
and South Carolina vote no. New York abstains
entirely because their delegates still haven't
received updated instructions. And Delaware is
deadlocked. They are tied one to one because
their third delegate is not in the room. So on
July 1st, the day before the official vote, they
do not have unanimity. If they go forward and
vote for real the next morning, the whole coalition
might fall apart. They cannot declare independence
with a divided continent. What changes overnight?
Cure behind the scenes political maneuvering
and personal sacrifice. On the morning of July
2, the delegation from South Carolina miraculously
reverses its position. They vote yes for the
sake of continental unity. Meanwhile, in the
Pennsylvania delegation, the two leading opponents
of independence, John Dickinson and Robert Morris,
make an incredible personal decision. What do
they do? They still believe independence is a
mistake, but they know they are outvoted by the
public. So rather than vote no and block it,
they voluntarily abstain. They walk out of the
room. By removing their no votes, the remaining
Pennsylvania delegates are able to cast the state's
vote as a yes. That is an amazing example of
putting the Democratic outcome above personal
ego. They walked away to let it happen. But what
about Delaware? They were tied. That brings us
to one of the most cinematic moments of the entire
revolution. Caesar Rodney, the third Delaware
delegate, was 80 miles away. He receives a dispatch
that his vote is needed to break the tie. Rodney
is suffering from severe asthma and a painful
facial cancer. Despite this, he mounts his horse
and rides through a violent torrential thunderstorm
all night long. 80 miles in a thunderstorm. He
arrives at the State House on July 2. Covered
in mud, exhausted, walks onto the floor and casts
Delaware's deciding vote for independence. That
needs to be a movie scene. So because of those
maneuvers and that ride on July 1776, 12 colonies
vote yes, with New York still abstaining. The
Lee resolution officially passes. The 13 colonies
have legally severed political ties with Great
Britain. John Adams is so ecstatic he goes back
to his room and writes a letter to his wife,
Abigail. Right, the famous letter. He predicts
that July 2 will go down in history as the Great
American Holiday. He says it will be celebrated
by succeeding generations with pomp, parade,
shows, games, sports, bells, bonfires, and illuminations
from one end of the continent to the other. And
if you read that letter, it's almost funny because
he had the celebration exactly right. He predicted
the fireworks and the parades perfectly. He just
got the date wrong. Right. I always think of
this like a movie director throwing a huge wrap
party the day they finish filming. To the director,
in this case, John Adams, that's the day the
monumental work was actually accomplished. The
vote was passed. But the general public, they
only celebrate the day the movie actually gets
released to theaters. And for the Declaration
of Independence, that release date was July 4.
Yes, July 2 was the vote to declare independence.
July 4 was the day Congress officially approved
the final edited text of Jefferson's document,
the press release, so to speak, explaining why
they had voted for it. Once approved, they sent
the manuscript to a local printer named John
Dunlap. And Dunlap works through the night. He
does. He prints about 200 broadsides, these large
single -sheet posters overnight. By July 8, these
broadsides are being distributed, and they hold
the first public readings in town squares in
Philadelphia, Trenton, and Easton. And the public
reaction is exactly what Thomas Paine had hoped
for. It's explosive. It is explosive. In New
York, crowds listened to the reading and immediately
marched down to the Bowling Green where they
literally tear down a massive lead equestrian
statue of King George III. They chop the king
into pieces, melt the lead down, and turn it
into tens of thousands of musket balls to fire
at the British army. Talk about a symbolic repudiation
of the king. But wait, we need to clarify something
for the visual learners out there. The physical
document we all picture in our heads, the beautiful,
large handwritten parchment with the massive
calligraphy at the top and the 56 signatures
at the bottom that wasn't signed on July 4th
amidst fireworks, was it? No, that is a very
common historical myth. Historians generally
agree that the engrossed copy, which is the beautiful
handwritten version, carefully penned by a clerk
named Timothy Matlack, wasn't ready and wasn't
signed by most delegates until a month later
on August 2. And we have to dispel the myth that
this was a joyous, triumphant celebration with
people cheering in the room. Right, because the
British Army is landing thousands of troops in
New York right at this moment. Exactly. Benjamin
Rush, who was a physician from Pennsylvania and
one of the signers, later wrote a letter to John
Adams recalling the atmosphere in the room on
August 2. He described it as a scene of pensive
and awful silence. He said as they were called
up one by one to put their names on the parchment,
they felt like they were filing forward to sign
their own death warrants. They knew that if Washington's
army failed, this document was Exhibit A in their
treason trial. The source has mentioned some
incredibly grim gallows humor during the signing
to cut the tension. Yes, there's a famous anecdote
about Benjamin Harrison of Virginia. Harrison
was a very large, heavily built man. He turns
to Elbridge Jerry of Massachusetts, who is a
very small, thin, frail man. And as they were
signing, Harrison jokes that when the British
inevitably catch them and hang them, he will
have a great advantage. Because of his heavy
weight, his neck will snap and he will die instantly.
But the lightweight Jerry, he said, will dance
in the air an hour or two before you were dead.
Dance in the air. That is so incredibly dark.
brings home the terror of the moment. They were
joking to keep from shaking. But the doculet
is signed. The die is cast. The statues are melted.
So what exactly did they sign? What are the actual
words on this parchment? I want to spend some
time breaking down the actual text because we
need to show the student listener how these specific
words form the blueprint for modern American
government. If you look closely at the text of
the declaration, it is not just one long angry
rant against the king. It is highly structured,
very logical and broken into five distinct parts.
The introduction, the preamble, the indictment
of the king, the failed warnings to the British
people, and the conclusion. The introduction
and the preamble are the parts everyone knows
by heart when in the course of human events.
And of course, we hold these truths to be self
-evident that all men are created equal. This
preamble asserts the philosophy of natural law.
It states, beautifully and concisely that human
beings have unalienable rights and that governments
are instituted among men deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed. The
consent of the governed. Crucially, yes. And
it outlines the right of revolution. It says
that when a long train of abuses proves that
a government has become destructive to the rights
of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
the people have the right and the duty to alter
or abolish it. So what does this all mean? It's
the philosophical soul of the document. It's
the mission statement. But if you actually look
at the word count, the bulk of the text is the
indictment. It's a massive list of 27 specific
grievances against King George III. I want to
pause here and dig into these because this is
vital for understanding democracy. These grievances
aren't just a list of historical complaints from
the 1700s. They are the negative space that defines
the future U .S. Constitution. That is a profound
way to look at it. The Constitution tells the
government what it can do. The Declaration's
grievances show us exactly what the founders
intended to forbid the government from ever doing
again. Let's look at a few examples to show how
direct the connection is. The Declaration indicts
the king for making colonial judges dependent
on his will alone for their tenure in office
and the payment of their salaries. Right. Because
if the king controls the judge's paycheck, the
judge is always going to rule in favor of the
king. There is no justice. Exactly. And to fix
that specific abuse, a decade later, the U .S.
Constitution creates an independent federal judiciary
in Article 3. It mandates that federal judges
have lifetime appointments and that their salaries
cannot be reduced while they are in office, ensuring
they never have to fear political retaliation
for ruling against the president or Congress.
That's a direct line. Here's another grievance.
The king dissolved representative houses repeatedly
for opposing his invasions on the rights of the
people. legislature disagreed with him, he just
locked the doors and sent them home. And that
abuse leads directly to our constitutional system
of checks and balances in Article 1 and Article
2. The modern executive branch, the president,
cannot simply dissolve Congress when they disagree
on a piece of legislation. The legislature has
an independent right to exist. The declaration
also complains heavily that the king kept standing
armies among them in times of peace without the
consent of the local legislatures and that he
protected soldiers from trial by jury when they
committed crimes. Which connects perfectly to
the Bill of Rights. That grievance leads directly
to the Second Amendment regarding local militias.
The Third Amendment prohibits the quartering
of troops in private homes, and the overarching
principle of strict civilian control over the
military. Precisely. The indictment is essentially
the practical blueprint for what a free government
must never do. It is a catalog of tyranny. So
we have the philosophical preamble and the practical
indictment, but I have to ask a legal question
here. Was this document legally binding at the
time? Was the Declaration of Independence domestic
law, or is it just a glorified press release
to hype up the rebellion? Because you can't go
to court today and sue someone based on the Declaration.
That is a great distinction. Domestically, it
did not have the force of statutory law. It didn't
create a government framework, establish a currency,
or outline how elections would work. The Articles
of Confederation and the later Constitution did
that. However, internationally, it was a supreme,
legally operative document. Oh, because of the
foreign alliances we talked about earlier. Exactly.
It was a document of international legal sovereignty.
By listing the legal races that justified dissolving
the political bans with Britain, the United States
was formally asserting its status as an equal
peer among the nations of the earth. It was legally
telling France, Spain, and the Netherlands, we
are a real sovereign country now. You can legally
sign trade agreements and military treaties with
us. That makes perfect sense. It was outward
facing. But here is where the story takes a fascinating
turn. While the 27 grievances were meant to solve
the immediate political problems of 1776, the
philosophical preamble that all men are created
equal took on a completely different life over
the next two centuries, taking us into the final
phase of our deep dive, the living legacy of
the document. What's truly fascinating and what
surprises most people is that immediately after
the Revolutionary War ended, the Declaration
of Independence was largely ignored. Wait, really?
Ignored? Completely. It had served its purpose.
It announced independence. The war was won. The
treaty was signed. And politicians focused their
energy on the future writing state constitutions
and debating the new federal constitution. The
act of declaring independence on the 4th of July
was celebrated with fireworks. But the text of
the document itself was essentially put in a
drawer. But then in the early 19th century, it
gets resurrected. How does it come back into
the public consciousness? Initially, it was revived
by partisan politics. In the 1790s and early
1800s, the Jeffersonian Republicans wanted to
score political points against their federalist
rivals. So they started elevating Thomas Jefferson
as the singular hero of 1776, putting a massive
spotlight on the document he drafted. But very
quickly, the text transcended partisan politics
and became a sacred nationalist symbol. And more
importantly, as the decades passed, advocates
for marginalized groups started using it. They
looked at the U .S. Constitution and saw that
it lacked sweeping statements about inherent
equality. But they look at the Declaration of
Independence and they realize they had a powerful,
undeniable moral weapon right there in the foundational
code. And this is where the abolitionist movement
steps in and changes the course of American history.
Leaders like William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick
Douglass utilized the Declaration to hold America's
feet to the fire. Yes. Frederick Douglass's famous
1852 speech, What to the Slave is the Fourth
of July? is a master class in this. He brilliantly
uses the soaring principles of the Declaration
to highlight the catastrophic bloody hypocrisy
of American slavery. He basically says, you celebrate
these words of liberty, but you deny them to
millions. Exactly. The abolitionists interpreted
the Declaration not just as a secession document,
but as a theological and political mandate for
universal freedom. And this tension over what
the document actually means reaches its absolute
peak with Abraham Lincoln in the 1850s. We have
the famous Lincoln Douglass. debates, Stephen
Douglas Lincoln's political rival argued that
the phrase, all men are created equal, only applied
to white men, and that the declaration was purely
a historical tool used to break away from Britain,
nothing more. But Lincoln rejects that interpretation
entirely. Lincoln was obsessed with the Declaration.
He argued that the Founders were not fools. They
did not mean to say everyone was instantly equal
in all respects in 1776 because they obviously
didn't have the power to instantly confer that
equality, nor did they abolish slavery at the
time. But, Lincoln said, they meant to set up
a standard maxim for a free society. A moral
North Star. A moral North Star to constantly
strive toward even if it was difficult. Lincoln
believed the Declaration was the moral compass
that must be used to interpret the Constitution
itself. And he makes this the absolute centerpiece
of the Gettysburg Address in 1863. He stands
on a battlefield and says, four score and seven
years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent
a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated
to the proposition that all men are created equal.
By doing that, Lincoln essentially reframes the
entire purpose of the United States around that
one single sentence from 1776. It wasn't just
about taxes anymore, it was about human equality.
objectively based on the source material we are
covering, that the format and the power of the
Declaration was so universally recognized that
it was even utilized by the Confederate States
of America when they declared their secession
from the Union in 1860. They used the same structural
arguments of consent and the right to abolish
a government. But, highly revealingly, the Confederate
Declarations notably and intentionally omitted
the phrases all men are created equal and the
consent of the governed, replacing them with
arguments for racial inequality. That intentional
omission speaks volumes about what the war was
really about. But Lincoln's interpretation that
the declaration is a promise of equality prevailed.
And it wasn't just utilized regarding slavery.
In 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention for Women's
Rights drafted a declaration of sentiments patterned
exactly on the 1776 document, famously and powerfully
adding two words, declaring that all men and
women are created equal. We see this legacy continue
straight into the 20th century. Martin Luther
King Jr. standing on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial in his 1963 I Have a Dream speech referred
to the Declaration of Independence as a promissory
note to which every American was to fall error.
He was coming to cash the check that was written
in 1776. Harvey Milk quoted it in 1978 during
his impassioned speeches for LGBTQ plus rights,
stating that no matter how hard people might
try, you cannot erase those foundational words
from the Declaration of Independence. They belong
to everyone. I want to bring back our analogy
of the open source software code because I think
it fits perfectly here. The founders, deeply
flawed as they were, trapped in the prejudices
and economics of their time, managed to write
a brilliant base code for human rights in 1776.
That base code had massive bugs. It had catastrophic
exclusions. It left out enslaved people. It left
out women and left out indigenous populations.
Huge exclusions, yeah. But the core mathematical
philosophy of the code consent of the governed
inherent equality was so structurally sound that
every marginalized group in every generation
since has been able to submit updates and patches.
They've demanded access to the system. holding
the nation accountable to its own base code,
making the system run better, broader, and more
equitably for everyone. That is a wonderful way
to encapsulate it. The document is not a relic
in a museum. It is an active, ongoing argument.
And its influence didn't stop at the American
borders either. It almost immediately inspired
the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights
of Man in 1789. It heavily inspired the Haitian
Revolution in 1804. Countless nations globally
have modeled their own declarations of statehood
on Jefferson's text. Now, as the sources note,
many of those countries just copied the legal
assertion of national sovereignty without actually
adopting the underlying philosophy of natural
rights or democracy. But its global impact as
a template for liberation is undeniable. So let's
step back and recap the incredible journey we've
taken today. For the student listening, trying
to mack out the foundation of American democracy,
we started with what seemed like a stubborn disagreement
over a minor tax on tea and paper. But we explored
why that ideological rift over parliamentary
power and unalterable rights escalated into a
military crisis, fundamentally breaking the First
Amendment -style right to petition for redress.
From there, we saw how public opinion had to
be violently shifted by the viral spread of Thomas
Paine's common sense. We explored how that groundswell
forced politicians in Congress to wage a complex
war of instructions and parliamentary maneuvers
just to get the legal democratic authority to
vote for separation. And finally, a young Thomas
Jefferson sat in a rented room and synthesized
the philosophy of his era into a draft that was
brutally edited, tragically stripped of its condemnation
of the slave trade to appease southern delegates
and signed by men who fully expected to be hanged
for treason. Yet, in doing so, they accidentally
birthed the universal language of human rights
that would be used by generations of marginalized
people, from abolitionists to suffragists to
civil rights leaders, to demand true equality.
It is a profound, messy, and ongoing legacy.
And to leave you with a final provocative thought
directly from the source material, there is actually
a modern historical mystery surrounding the Declaration
that challenges how we view the founding itself.
In 2017, researchers discovered a second engrossed
handwritten parchment copy of the Declaration
of Independence rolled up in a local archive
in Sussex, England. They call it the Sussex Declaration.
Wait, a second handwritten parchment copy? I
thought there was only the one in the National
Archives in Washington. There was only one known,
but the second one dates to the 1780s. But here
is what makes it so fascinating and so politically
explosive. On the official National Archives
copy, we all know the signatures at the bottom
are grouped together by state. The Massachusetts
delegates signed together, the Virginia delegates
signed together, emphasizing that this was a
treaty among 13 independent sovereign states.
But on this newly discovered Sussex document,
the signatures are completely randomized. Really
randomized. They are not grouped by states. The
finders believe this document was commissioned
by and belonged to James Wilson, a signer from
Pennsylvania and a future Supreme Court Justice,
Wilson fiercely argued that the Declaration of
Independence was made by the whole unified people
of America together, not by a coalition of separate
independent states. Oh, wow. So if the signatures
aren't grouped by state, it implies the nation
was founded fundamentally as one single. national
entity of people rather than a loose league of
13 separate nations? Precisely. It is a visual
argument for national unity over state sovereignty.
And that raises a brilliant question for you
to mull over as you continue to study history
and government. If the founders themselves were
secretly arguing behind the scenes, using the
very placement of their signatures on parchment
to debate whether this was a document signed
by unified individuals or by separate sovereign
states, How does that change the way we view
the ongoing debate over states' rights versus
federal power in modern democracy today? It's
something to seriously mull over. That completely
changes the paradigm. We started this deep dive
talking about pristine blueprints versus chaotic
construction sites. And I think what the Sussex
Declaration shows us is that even the architects
themselves were arguing over the basic foundation
of the building as they were laying the bricks.
The blueprint was never settled. It was always
an active, living argument. And the health of
a democracy depends on that argument continuing.
Thank you so much for joining us on this deep
dive into the historical sources, the messy origins,
and the enduring legacy of the Declaration of
Independence. Remember, the history that shapes
your world isn't written in stone. It's written
in messy, heavily edited ink by people who are
figuring it out as they went. Keep exploring,
keep questioning, and keep diving deep.