Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Who’s Your Founding Father? with David Fleming

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Are you ready to question what you know about America’s founding? Today’s guest, David Fleming, shares all about a delicious slice of history in his new book, “Who’s Your Founding Father?” We dive into the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, a conspiracy theory, and possible plagiarism surrounding one of the most important documents in U.S. history. How do the ultimate frenemies, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, tie into this? Join us to find out.  Special thanks to our guest, David Fleming, for joining us today.  Host/ Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder  Production Coordinator: Andrea Champoux  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Buy from dysoncanada.ca. With ANC on, performance may vary based on environmental conditions and usage. Accessories sold separately. Hello, friends. Welcome. I have a treat for you today. I am chatting with David Fleming, and he has written a book that is probably going to upend everything you know about America's founding. And that is not an overstatement. His book is called Who's Your Founding Father? And if you've not heard of the Mecklenburg Declaration yet, stay tuned. There's a whole conspiracy. There is plagiarism. Let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. Well, I'm really excited to be chatting with Dave Fleming today. Your book title is super catchy.

Who's your founding father? You like that? I knew that I had found the right publisher when they were like, oh, we absolutely have to keep that title. So I knew it had found the right home when they were like, oh, we get it. We get it. Yeah, totally. Titling a book is actually no small feat. It's obviously about the founding fathers, but there's a sense of humor to it. And there's a question mark, like who really are your founding fathers? I just loved, yeah, I just, I love the title of the book because it really kind of, it says it all right there.

And you really do get the sense of humor aspect when you open the first page and the opening story is about Dunkin' Donuts and tourists from Minnesota and their hokas. Like, oh, which direction should we head now? I always love it when people can approach history, not with a sense of sort of a dry recitation of facts, but of a, you know, with a sense of humor. People at the time had senses of humor. There's no reason that we need to think that the past is all just stuffy formalities. Oh, yeah. First of all, the thing that you really realize studying history is we think we're in a certain place right now. It's all cyclical. It's all been done before. People argue the rhetoric is awful. There's no hope for the democracy. It's like,

but you know what? Oh my God, we've been going through this forever. We're going to be fine. It's as ugly as it gets. We're going to be fine. You almost think this is a part of having a healthy democracy, our sort of people going at each other. And I don't think I was capable of writing like a dry history text, and nor did I want to read one. And I learned about this story and just obsessed over how could I approach it. And an editor finally said, you know, just do it like a travelogue. Do it with your personality. And the light bulb went off and it just, it became easy after that when I realized, oh, I can do it in a way where, and the highest compliment I get at book events are people

going, you kind of tricked me into learning all this stuff. And I had so much fun. I didn't realize that I was sort of learning about U.S. history. I had so much fun, I didn't realize that I was sort of learning about U.S. history. So it's incredible when you can mix the first five pages of your book is a trip to the original Dunkin' Donuts and these incredible letters between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson arguing about the actual topic of the book. I mean, it's a writer's dream. Totally. Yeah, exactly. Who doesn't want that? Who doesn't want to observe the hoka wearing tourists drinking their iced lattes while also reading letters between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams? I mean, that sounds like a dream to me, frankly.

And they were great. And it was kind of embarrassing because there were all those empty Dunkin' Donuts bags in the back of my rental car. But you realize pretty quickly when you go to these sites, it's like we're all kind of in this together. It's all of a sudden it's like you're best friends with everybody on the tour because you're all it's like going to a rock concert. It's like you're all there because you love and are interested in the same thing. a rock concert. It was like, you're all there because you love and are interested in the same thing. So it was, I had fun and I, um, I poked fun of just about everybody, including myself, but yeah, that was kind of the point. I want you to tell everybody what the story is that they are in for. Okay, you don't have to give it all away. Obviously,

we want people to read Who's Your Founding Father? But this is not just about a biography of Jefferson. And here's some fun facts about Benjamin Franklin. Those books are great. And it's important to learn those kinds of facts. But when you uncover sort of like a delicious story from history, there's this sort of a singular glee that comes with it. So tell everybody what the premise of the book even is. Well, first of all, delicious slice of history is like I should have just used that on the book cover. That's perfect. on the book cover. That's perfect. But it is this incredible, unknown story about patriots, mostly Scots-Irish Presbyterians, on the Carolina frontier that 14 months before Thomas Jefferson wrote his Declaration of Independence, these men, through a perfect storm of religion,

tyranny from the king, their own background and their own education, created this perfect storm in Charlotte on May 20th, 1775, that actually makes Charlotte the cradle of American independence. These men were the first in America to formally write down and declare their independence from England. And there's also quite a bit of proof that Thomas Jefferson and his cronies, that number one, Thomas Jefferson may have borrowed or plagiarized from this document while he was writing the declaration, his declaration, and also that him and his cronies then spent a lot of time and effort trying to cover up his crime of plagiarism by discrediting the Meck Deck, which is what the document's called because it was in the county of

Mecklenburg in North Carolina. So it's called the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. In the book, we call it the Meck Deck. They had been suffering from the tyranny of the king and the crown for generations. And so the way I put it is, here they are, they got kicked out of two countries, went across an ocean, got driven out of Pennsylvania. They came to literally the colonial frontier of America to get away from all this crap. And when they realized, I think because of what them for generations they had been through, they were like, oh, this is not going to get better. Let's stop waiting around. We're not going to hem and haw. We're going to put it in writing that we are free and independent. And so that's what they did a full 14 months before

Thomas Jefferson did it. It's significant, first of all, because we love our firsts, right? We love first man on the moon. They did it at a time when they all would have been hung for treason if it had been discovered or uncovered. Whereas Thomas Jefferson, we were trying to declare independence before we lost the war. So Thomas Jefferson's declaration was almost the equivalent of just kind of like overdue homework or paperwork. I should have broken up with you a long time ago, George. Okay. It's been over for a while. Thomas Jefferson's declaration has long been called the ultimate Dear John letter of like, listen, it's not going to work out. I wish you the best. Yeah, it's not you, it's me.

Yeah, I wish you the best. But of course, Thomas Jefferson had the full faith and credit of all of the other sort of leaders of the time. He knew he had a military to back him up. Like his personal risks were quite low. So what was the precipitating event? What was it where they're like, we got to get together. We got to write this down. Doesn't matter what the risks are. What was the event that made them finally put quill to parchment? I think it was generational, like we just talked about. You know, their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had been suffering this way under the crown for centuries. So they knew this whole routine of taxation without representation and being minimalized

onto the fringes because of their religion, they sort of recognized it from the stories they had been told. They understood that this is sort of how it goes. It's not going to get better. But then, and if you study sort of the Scots-Irish Presbyterians, especially, 25 of the 27 signers of the MECDEC were of Scots-Irish Presbyterian background. And they were led by, again, sort of a fanatic Presbyterian minister who, same thing, his family had been driven out of Scotland, driven out of Ireland, driven out of Pennsylvania. And he basically indoctrinated the whole Carolina frontier about the idea of it's the highest

form of obedience to God to fight against tyranny on earth, and that only God can rule man, not kings or politicians or anyone else. So these people were, they were chomping at the bit. If you understand sort of the Scots-Irish personality, I should say, they couldn't wait to fight and they couldn't wait to get at it. And then also, I mean, you know, it was just when you study the Stamp Act, when you study the Marriage Investory Act, when you study how they were persecuted for being Presbyterians, it was just one thing after the other to the point where it would have been weird if these men hadn't declared independence. It would have been weird if they had just bitten their tongue and said, we'll let the people in Philadelphia figure this out. Because I think for them, the last straw was the Marriage Investory Act, which if you understand what they had been through to get to this place of freedom in Charlotte,

where they wouldn't be controlled or judged, then the Marriage Investor Act comes along that says, basically, if you're not married in the Anglican church, your kids are bastards and they cannot inherit anything that you managed to create through just sheer hard work. And number two, create through just sheer hard work. And number two, your kids then are condemned to hell once they die. And I think for these men, they were like, that's it. They're like, you know what? Yeah, that's it. Because there was no way for them to get married in the Anglican church because there were no Anglican priests around. So it was a catch 22 and they were just like, you know what, where do we sign? Okay. So for people who are not familiar with the history of, well, first of all, Scotch Irish immigrants or Scots Irish, people say different ways, a very unique group in US history.

Now we're like Presbyterian, who cares? That's a mainline Protestant church. Like, that's not weird. It's not weird to be Presbyterian in the United States now. So what was the big deal? Why would they care so much about their religious background that they were being persecuted for all of these years? Well, it wasn't just that they weren't part of the official Anglican church sanctioned by the crown. It was that they were powerfully and unapologetically against the crown and the tyranny and being forced to sort of believe or worship in a certain way. And you're right, they were complete outcasts for that, instead of just getting along and going along. And I think out of that really became this, it was almost this religious doctrine that was really the spiritual force of the American Revolution. Fighting against tyranny is the highest form of obedience to God. And those people were fanatical. They couldn't wait to prove how much they love God by sort of pushing back against the king or against anyone else who would try to control men who weren't a deity. So the idea that they went all the way to the Carolina frontier to get away from this, and they still couldn't get away from it, That out of frustration, they had no other options. So interesting. And it's also, I think from our vantage point in history, like I mentioned, who cares about being Presbyterian? Nobody, not anymore. But this idea that even within the

colonies, some religious groups faced oppression within the colonies, that you did not just arrive here and it was streets paved with gold and everybody was like, love who you love, you're free to be yourself, just worship however you please. Many of these colonies started with a specific religious bent. Obviously, everybody knows about the Puritans in New England and the Quakers in Pennsylvania, Catholics in Maryland, etc. But this idea that even within the colonies, people had to move around because of religious persecution is something that I think a lot of us don't spend a lot of time learning. Oh, one of the reasons why this group ended up in Carolina, in Charlotte, is that the government was eager to send them down the Great Wagon Trail as a buffer. They were using the Presbyterians as a human buffer between the Native Americans and the colonists that they really liked and wanted to protect on the coast.

the colonists that they really liked and wanted to protect on the coast. And so they were like, oh, well, Pennsylvania and Western Pennsylvania, Central Pennsylvania, it's getting crowded. We'll send these people as human shields down the Great Wagon Road to maybe distract the Native Americans from killing the people that we really like and want to support. So again, we talked about this earlier, but it was like, I think people that we really like and want to support. So again, we talked about this earlier, but it was like, I think people are kind of like some of the criticisms of the MECDEC or that people wonder about is, well, why would these people on the frontier, a bunch of farmers, well, why would they be concerned with concepts like freedom and independence and not being taxed without being represented? When you learn the story,

it's kind of like, well, they had no other choice by this point, but to declare independence and start fighting. Okay. So these dudes get together. They decide we need to write a document saying we are no longer part of your silly empire. We're not doing that anymore. What did they think was going to happen? Was it something that they just did on principle? Did they expect the rest of the colonies to be like, yeah, good idea. We're going to rise up. Did they just expect everybody else to just fall in line? What did they think was going to happen? Well, one of these things, I'd love that you refer to them as dudes too, because these guys were the ultimate like frontier dudes for sure.

And I think they didn't care. They, I mean, and I kind of love that. There's an aspect to these guys that they just didn't, they gave no Fs. They were the original Americans that just were so frustrated. They gave no Fs. They were the original Americans that just were so frustrated. They gave no Fs. They were going to do it. They didn't care if anybody else joined up, but they were no longer going to put up with this stuff from the crown. And the thing that I love is the Met Deck was actually conceived and crafted and debated and written by six Princeton scholars who, again, you talk about a perfect storm of American history.

They all just ended up in this area and they became the intellectual force behind creating the MechDeck. And they had been discussing it and debating different sections of it up until the point where they met in Charlotte on May 20th. And that is the same day that news about Lexington and Concord arrived in Charlotte. And that was the spark where they were just like, let's put it in writing and let's all sign it and get to work. So it was this perfect, perfect collection of intellectuals, of fighters, of frontiersmen, of dudes. It could not have happened anywhere else at any other place in time except for in Charlotte in May of 1775. And I think that's part of the beauty of it is they just didn't care. I love how you say this in the book. You say,

Adams, referring to John Adams, had always suspected Jefferson of being a lightweight, erudite poser who covertly cultivated far too much credit for authoring the Declaration of Independence, a project they had worked on together. Only now, with the discovery of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, Adams had the receipts. And the proof he found might just upend our understanding of one of humanity's most important documents, not to mention Jefferson's gilded legacy. In other words, the MechDe Deck was potentially earth shattering. So first of all, a lot of people do know that, you know, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were frenemies in many ways. They were on again, off again. So how did John Adams or anybody else even come to find out about this?

So Adams, yeah, we talked about this too a little bit earlier. If you read when they were in the enemy part of their frenemy relationship, what Adams' supporters and Jefferson's supporters said to each other and called each other, I mean, it's incredible. I mean, if you think that today's rhetoric is bad, you should read. I think at one point the Jeffersonians called Adams, they called him a hermaphroditical character. So possessing, he didn't have the strength of a man or the intelligence of a woman. And the Adams people replied that Jefferson, that the country would be in infinitely worse shape because of Thomas Jefferson. So they had sort of been butting heads for a long time. Once the Declaration of Independence became this sort of incredible document, again, the intention was always just overdue paperwork. And he was meant to

synthesize all the thoughts at the time and get something that people can sign so we could formally declare our independence. It wasn't until 30, 40 years later that it became this incredibly important document. And that's when Thomas Jefferson started taking all the credit for being the author of the Declaration. And obviously, there was a group that did it. It was heavily edited. And I think John Adams always kind of resented the fact that Jefferson would go down through history as the author of the Declaration. So I think during their on and off again relationship, I think Adams was sort of always looking for proof to back up his theories about Thomas Jefferson. Always trying to find the receipts. Yes.

So are you of the opinion that Jefferson never thought anyone would ever find out about this thing that the dudes in the, you know, clearly lower class areas of the country? clearly lower class areas of the country, because that is absolutely true. The Jefferson thought that Tidewater, Virginia was essentially the royal estate of America, for lack of a better term. You know, like, maybe you can give some credit to New York or the city of Philadelphia or whatever, but all these other places are literally the backwater. Just a bunch of uneducated backwater farmers. He would never want to say, well, I collaborated with Americans from all walks of life. He would never want to say something like that. He would want to go down in the annals of history as this great man. It's understandable. That's in keeping with Jefferson's character. But is your contention that he somehow got a hold of this document and thought to himself,

some good ideas in here. I'm going to just use this, make some changes, call it good. Oh yeah, that is my contention. And I think, remember, the task at the time in 1776 was, look, collect all the thoughts and all the sort of the ideas about declaring independence and synthesize those into one document that we can all sign and send to the king because people are already dying. We're actually at risk of losing the war and we haven't even formally declared independence. So Jefferson very quickly was told, put something together. So no one expected it to be original. And Jefferson took them at their word, because the scene that's painted when you study the creation of the Declaration of Independence is that he went to the outskirts of Philadelphia to sort of sequester himself.

And he placed all the important documents of the day, whether it was George Mason or the Virginia Constitution or John Locke's philosophies or the Mech Deck, which had been in Philadelphia for a year already. And he sort of laid them out on his desk. And it was a cut and paste job. And that's a direct quote from a Jeffersonian scholar. It was a cut and paste job. The problem becomes when Jefferson's personality gets in the way and when the declaration becomes one of the most famous documents in the world, that's all of a sudden he goes, oh no, I made this all

myself. These are all my words. If he had just at the time said, well, it is a great document, but it's to the credit of all these different authors that I borrowed from. We wouldn't be having this discussion today. But Jefferson was like, no, no, I thought it all up myself. I'm the author of the declaration. It was me, me, me, me, me. And that's where he gets in trouble. And that's where people like George Mason, who literally had written the words, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness before Jefferson stole them. And the people, the authors of the MEC deck raised their hand and said, hello.

Yeah, we all wrote this down a year before you, you thought of it. And so tell us more about how he then goes about trying to cover it up because the people who wrote it, many of them were still alive. Like why weren't they out front being like, you didn't write this. Here's the proof. You know what? Why wasn't this more known at the time? Well, now here's where we get into the national treasure aspect of the story and the book is that the original copy of the mech deck burned in a house fire in 1800. Well, that's suspicious. Oh, I know. I know.

So there were copies of the original and there were rough notes outlined from the meeting that survived the fire. But Jefferson immediately, not Jefferson so much, because remember he said, if you show me more proof, I am probably going to believe the mech Deck. It was the Jeffersonians who, you know,

Jefferson then began to get a lot of criticism for plagiarizing different parts of the Declaration. And so his cronies immediately sort of started pointing out the holes in the Mech Deck story and the possibility that it was the Mech Deck that was made up, that was a legend and not true. Burned in a house fire. How will you ever prove it? Oh, it's like the Loch Ness Monster. Some people saw it, but we don't have any real proof. Exactly. And, you know, the best, one of my favorite parts of the book is there was Josiah Martin, the final royal governor of North Carolina, when he was pleading with the king and with the British secretary of state, it would have been the Earl of Dartmouth, that he's like, I need troops. I need help. Like we are in full rebellion in North Carolina.

And the guy was so nervous and afraid that he wrote dozens and dozens of these kinds of letters. So in one of his final dispatches to the king pleading for help and support, military support, support. He includes the story of the mech deck and a newspaper that printed the mech deck in the late 1700s as proof to like, look, I'm not kidding. Like these crazy idiots in Charlotte, they've already put it in writing that they're independent. So please send me troops. So Josiah Martin's letter and the newspaper that contained the mech deck was in the British National Archives until the mid-19th century when one of Jefferson's cronies, who was the U.S. ambassador to England, used his credentials to get into the archives and destroyed the newspaper and the proof of the mech deck to try and help cover it up for Jefferson. Why? Why would he want to do that?

Like, what was it for him? Was he being paid off? He was part of a Jeffersonian, this sort of like mob of Jeffersonians that were trying to preserve Jefferson's reputation and his standing. And they knew that if the mech deck was ever officially discovered, quote unquote, that it would prove that he plagiarized from that too. I think his initial intent was to go into the archives, find the mech deck and be able to go, look, see, I found it. He did not plagiarize it. Look, it's very different. But I think he went in there,

found it and was like, oh crap. My boy Jefferson lifted it all lock, stock and barrel and I'll just take care of that. And that's what happened. He helped him find a place to bury the body. Exactly. You will love this. But I went all the way to London to look for this You will love this, but I went all the way to London to look for this newspaper in the archive. And on the back of the file, there is an archivist's handwritten note from probably 1840 that says, and I just love it. It's just a classic librarian, but it was like, this document was removed by a representative of Thomas Jefferson's and never returned. So it was like, there's proof in writing that the guy did destroy it. You mentioned in the book too, that many very prominent American historians absolutely agree

with your conclusion, like Cokie Roberts, David McCulloch, Ken Burns, George Will, who is a political commentator, et cetera. But nevertheless, he's like, Thomas Jefferson wrote a Declaration of Independence, but not the Declaration of Independence. And I feel like the tides have begun to turn against Thomas Jefferson. As we learn more via DNA about his relationship with Sally Hemings and the children that he fathered with the women he enslaved. Despite what he said, he never did what he said. He said he was opposed to enslavement, said that all men are created equal, but he never actually acted any of that out. Now these ideas are so morally reprehensible to us. And I think especially younger generations are like, I can't get on board with him anymore. It's too much. I can't be like, yeah, he did.

But yeah, he wrote the declaration. So he did do one good thing. Now you're telling me, now you're telling all of us, Dave, that we can't even be like, yeah, but he wrote the declaration. No, now he's a plagiarizer? And I'm sorry, I don't take any great pleasure in it. That's like, not your stench. It really, and so here's the thing that's been amazing, right? Just as somebody who studies history, 25 years ago, the defense against the Mech Deck was how dare you even suggest that Thomas Jefferson did something illegal or untoward. And that would be the end of it because he was held in such high esteem, almost like

a deity as a founding father. But the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction in the last 20 years as more and more is discovered about Thomas Jefferson's true and full sort of character that now the fact that he directly plagiarized the mech deck and tried to cover it up, it actually fits exactly perfectly into the pattern of behavior throughout his entire life of doing terrible things and then covering it up and then doing some more terrible things and covering it up. And originally I was just going to write in the book that the guy enslaved his own children. So he's probably capable of plagiarism. But the more I dug into Jefferson, the more appalled I was about how little I actually knew about somebody on Mount Rushmore. I should say how little I was taught about the true and full story of Thomas Jefferson.

And it's incredible. It's almost as incredible as the mech deck itself, the things that you uncover. And it's disconcerting. I say in there, I'm like, I kept worrying that the ghost of my sixth grade teacher, Miss Palazzolo was going to come haunt me because she loved Thomas Jefferson and told us he was like this incredible, perfect man and he was anything but. Mm-hmm. One of the things I think a lot of people who are continuing to deify Thomas Jefferson don't realize, and I've brought this part up a number of times and a lot of people are like, excuse me, is that Thomas Jefferson thought so much of himself that he wrote his own Bible, his own version of the Bible. You can still buy it on Amazon, the Jefferson Bible, in which he just razored out the parts that he didn't want. He didn't believe that Jesus was the son of God or that he was a deity.

And so like all the miracles and all that, you know what? We don't need the miracles. We can just like, just remove that part. We're going to nix that. Literally being like, you know what? I know better. I know better than thousands of years of venerated Holy Scripture. Oh, I'm just, you're killing me a little bit because it's such a smart insight.

And now I wish it was in the book that it was like, of course he edited and stole from the mech deck. The guy thought he could edit the Bible. The word of death. He's like, oh, Jesus. The word of God. He believed he could edit. Yeah. So I bet if he's going to edit the word of God, he's not going to worry too much about editing. The dude. Yeah, the little old mech deck. That is such a great point.

And, you know, for me, the absolute end for me with Jefferson, you keep trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, the benefit of the doubt, just because of the way we grew up holding him in such high esteem. But it's like the whole enslaving his own children and the hypocrisy when it comes to slavery and all men are created equal. It's mind-blowing. And then on top of that, you get to that he had a weird thing for married women, that the guy was a creep. But for me, the ultimate where it was like, okay, the gloves are off. I'm not going to, I'm all in, was the story about when

Cornwallis invaded Monticello, or Cornwallis' troops got to Monticello, and they were going to capture Jefferson as a birthday present for the king. Jefferson managed to escape just seconds ahead of the troops. So the troops come into Monticello. They find one of his slaves. They load a pistol and they point it at the slave and they say, tell us which direction he went or we're going to shoot. And the slave says, go ahead and shoot them because I won't tell you. Jefferson circles back eventually and learns that his life was literally saved by one of his slaves. And weeks later is when Jefferson wrote all that horrible crap about black people and slaves in notes on the state of Virginia. So for me, it was like, that's it. That's it.

I mean, it really doesn't end. You're right about the whole, he loved married women. He took Sally Hemming, who was his wife's half sister, by the way, took Sally Hemming with him to France and she could have been free and then wasn't. And she's like 15 years old tops while he's there. You know, he brings his daughters who he sends to school with the nuns and he takes up with married women and gets caught. And it never really ends. It really, it never ends. You know, what's funny is we, all of us, there's, it's not anger, but it's kind of like this, well, why didn't somebody teach me this full story

and then let me decide? Because I do agree, right? Some of these things, they have to be placed in historical context. But what you realize, studying Jefferson, nobody really much liked him during his time either. They knew he was a creep and they knew he was a hypocrite and they knew he was a bad guy. And I think it's a mistake. We're so much better if we learn the full story. It's a mistake to assume that people can't

handle the full truth. And I think Jefferson is the perfect example of that. I think that the enthusiasm in our voices, that's what John Adams experienced when he discovered the mech deck, because it was kind of like, aha, it's like, I finally, I've got proof to sort of burst this bubble. Some of it's not fair to Jefferson either, because it's like, we've made him out to be this perfect human being. It's like, and that's not fair. Nobody could live up to that expectation. But the idea that he was flawless, it's just, it doesn't help. Because when you do then learn the true story, it sort of takes away from the rest of it. And, you know, you talk about UVA and Monticello.

And one of the fascinating things that I discovered was, and this sort of perfectly fits with Jefferson's personality and the pattern of his life. Both of those structures were designed very precisely to hide things that Jefferson didn't want people to see. Monticello, the place where all the enslaved people worked, was below ground. So Monticello could go on its business and look like there wouldn't be any enslaved people around. They were all underground. And it's the same thing with UVA. Those crinkle, crinkle walls that everybody loves so much, with UVA, those crinkle, crinkle walls that everybody loves so much, Jefferson put those there to hide the slave quarters that he didn't want people to know were right there. And it's the exact same thing with the mech deck. It was like he worked so hard to build a story to cover

up his crimes against the mech deck and against the plagiarizing. Do you think there's any sense that he just didn't remember it? No, no. I think he makes references to the representatives from Charlotte or North Carolina that he knew. He references people by name. He tries to laugh it off as a hoax. I think 100% he knew about it. And the MECDEC, one of the great parts of the MECDEC is the South's Paul Revere was a guy named Captain James Jack. And he volunteered after the MECDEC was done and declared from the county courthouse. He volunteered to ride the 600 miles up to the Continental Congress to deliver the MECDEC in person to Philadelphia.

And the people that he delivered it to, the people who knew it was there, Ben Franklin was part of that group. So it would have been discussed and known about and sort of passed around for a year before Jefferson sat down to write. Oh my goodness. And there's like so much more to this story. There's like so many details that you included this book. And you know, I love getting into the stories of the people who

actually wrote it and signed it. And so if you're, if people who are listening to this are curious about like, well, who were these dudes? You know, how did we uncover this? And what is the actual evidence for everything that Dave is laying out? I would really encourage you to pick up Who's Your Founding Father? Because it's such an interesting story. And it really will kind of set your notion of what America's founding looked like. It'll turn that on its head. Exactly. And it's what's incredible. And I imagine your audience loves this part of it. This incredible history, it hides in plain sight all over North Carolina. The date of the Mech Deck is on the North Carolina state flag, and nobody knows the

story behind it that made North Carolina the actual cradle of American independence. So it's a fascinating and fun story, and as is all the history of the celebrations, too. That was one of the things we didn't touch on. Eleven U.S. presidents have acknowledged the Mech Deck, and six of them came to Charlotte to celebrate the Mech Deck with crowds as big as 100,000 people. So the story's been out there. It's just a matter of bringing it back to life.

Gathering all of these little pieces that have been sort of scattered as time has marched on and putting all these little puzzle pieces back together in one picture that people can look at and be like, look at this thing. I didn't even know it. And you can be like,

yeah, that actually was right over there and you drove past it every day and never noticed. I love putting things together like that. What a fun book and what a fun story and what a fun thing to know. So thanks for your work. Thanks for being here, Dave. It was great chatting with you. My pleasure. Thank you. You can buy David Fleming's book, Who's Your Founding Father, wherever you buy your books. And if you want to support independent bookstores,

you can visit bookshop.org. Thanks for being here. The show is hosted and executive produced by me, Sharon McMahon. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you could leave us a review or share this episode on social media, those things help podcasters out so much. Thanks for being here today.