History Daily - What Does the Declaration of Independence Mean, 250 Years Later?

Episode Date: July 4, 2026

Lindsay invites his friends and fellow history podcasters Professor Greg Jackson (History That Doesn't Suck) and Dr. Benjamin Sawyer (The Road to Now) to discuss what the Declaration of Independence means today, what it meant 250 years ago, and how it's been celebrated throughout the years. Link to Greg Jackson's podcast History That Doesn't Suck: https://www.htdspodcast.com/podcast Link to Benjamin Sawyer's podcast The Road to Now: https://theroadtonow.com/ Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more. History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.

Today is the 4th of July, and every American is aware, along with many others all across the globe, that 250 years ago, 13 British colonies declared their independence from the crown. But also, on this day, 200 years ago, 50 years after the Declaration of Independence, two men took their last breaths, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. It's a remarkable coincidence that these two giants, one who pushed hard for independence from the beginning, the other who penned the words, all men are created equal, died on the same day, coinciding with the semi-centennial of the document that made them both immortal. It's also remarkable that these two men,

rivals from the start, they ran against each other in two presidential elections, became close friends, overcoming differences and forgiving disagreements. And in their correspondence, as the years passed and the original spirit of 76 faded, they wrote of what will be remembered of the Revolution, Adams. As to the history of the revolution, what do we mean by the revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution. It was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was affected from 1760 to 1775 in the course of 15 years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington. Many years later, Jefferson agreed. May it be to the world what I believe it to be, to some part sooner, to others later, but finally to all,

the signal of arousing men to burst the chains and to assume the blessings and security of government. All eyes are opened or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of humankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred ready to ride them. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights and an undiminished devotion to them. In this spirit, I brought in two of my close friends and favorite historians.

Professor Greg Jackson, host of the podcast History That Doesn't Suck, and Dr. Benjamin Sawyer, hosts for the podcast The Wrote to Now. We had a great conversation about what the Declaration of Independence means, even 250 years later. So here we are at the 250th birthday of the American Republic, the semi-quincennial. I always forget that word. So 250 years, a big anniversary of an even bigger event. And we are here to discuss what it means now today. But that topic brings me back to the other centennials, because certainly we've been celebrating America, well, every July 4th,

but there have been certain July 4th that have been even bigger and better and more special than others. The first, of course, was the first centennial in 1876. And I suppose the centerpiece was the centennial exposition in Philadelphia, which was effectively America's first world fair. This drew over 8 million visitors in four months. And we have to remember that this was only 20 years after the end of the Civil War. But the tone was triumphalist. It was America showing itself to the world its industrial and manufacturing power.

But also this was a time in the very end of the period of Reconstruction, and the political discourse was not exactly triumphalist at the time. In 1876, Americans were really struggling with a lot of the inequities, I'm sure, that we will be discussing today. We had Susan B. Anthony ringing the bell of women's suffrage. We also had terrible events in the South as Reconstruction collapsed, leading to what will become a reign of terror in the South, a racial terror. And then also, this is the culmination of probably political corruption in the federal government. The Hayes-Tilden election is one of the most infamous in our history, and it was decided by fundamentally a backroom deal in the compromise of 1877. So as much as Americans wanted to celebrate being Americans, there weren't a lot

of really good things they could point to other than perhaps this rise of industrialism and economic and increasing military power. To be celebrating the centennial at a time when the country had recently fallen apart and is being stitched together with all types of threads, some of which is going through the hearts of many of our fellow Americans at the time, it's such an interesting moment. It's the transition from this inward focus moment that is the Civil War into a more expansionist worldview. A lot of times we think about the country is going expansionist in the 1890s with the Spanish-American War. But really, I think it's fair to see this moment as a push west and the West being the beginning of that wave of looking for new markets, looking for new materials, and with the

assistance of the rise of the corporations, the rise of mass transportation, the rise of mass marketing, mass production, just a completely transformative experience for the country. You're so right, Ben. This is on the heels of the Transcontinental Railroad, right, 1869, so we're not that far away from it. Refrigerated trains are about to really hit it big. We're not that far away from the quote unquote close of the frontier in 1890 as well. This is between the Civil War and the end of reconstruction. This is a redefining of of America. And there are so many things related to the war in that redefinition, but part of that is also the shrinking, if you will, amidst the expansion. Trains have just absolutely overhauled what

it means to be a state. Suddenly the states are so interconnected. That's where we get new legislation focused on, well, how do we handle interstate commerce? Suddenly we got to think about that on a new level because economies aren't just localized. Yeah, this is a wildly changing economy, which is a wildly changing America. Well, let's fast forward another hundred years to 1976, a centennial that I actually bore witness to, albeit in diapers. But this is also a troubling moment in American history, one that is interestingly situated for a patriotic look back, because Saigon had fallen only the year before. Nixon resigned in 1974. We were in the midst of horrible stagflation, and and just institutional trust across the board was at historic lows.

Now, the country still wanted to celebrate, and as I go through these facts, I'm not making any political commentary about today's situation. I am merely telling you what happened 50 years ago. But the original National Commission to celebrate the centennial was dissolved. The Nixon administration just punted, and they replaced it with an office that issued grants to local governments to run their own events. So there was no single national event, no star-studded concert. What many people do remember are the historical tall ships that sailed into New York Harbor. That was a grand event, but that was only New York City's local celebration. So the tone was

much more muted. It was not triumphalist. It was kind of restorative. We were at this moment a country trying to find out what we were, and can we get back to that place? you know, after Vietnam and Watergate, there was an open question about whether there was any American exceptionalism to be found. So, Lindsay, I want to point out that there are parallels right there and everything you just said with 1876. And there's a continuity here that I think is lost on some of us today. It's no great secret to say that across the political spectrum right now, a lot of Americans are nervous or have lost confidence, and they're questioning again, just as you're talking about Americans doing in 1976. And in 1876, we're talking about one of the most corrupt

presidential elections of all time. I think it's worth us realizing that there is a constant in the American experiment that we should expect if we really believe in the idea that it's government by the people for the people. And that is that it's always going to feel messy and scary. So whether it's Vietnam and Watergate or, you know, it's the end of reconstruction, or, you know, the various things that are on so many different minds today, we are constantly reaching for those original ideas of forming a society that really makes it a self-evident truth that we have certain unalienable rights. And, you know, if we talk about American exceptionalism and is it real or is it not? I'll tell you for me, this is very much a glass, half empty, half full, and

be it one side or the other. The fact is that our aspirations are so beautiful and incredible, and we should expect that we will constantly fall short, and yet we should also continue to strive constantly. That tension is part of the beauty and challenge of being an American that we have carried for 250 years. Yeah, I think with high expectations, comes the opportunity for disappointment. But we should remember that you only have setbacks when you've been moving forward. If you're going nowhere, you're never going to have a setback. You just be right where you are.

The high expectations and the promise that we founded this country on, it's easy to get disappointed because we've shot for the moon. And if you look and you think about this, let's do the 100-year things. 200 years in, we're in the middle of self-doubt. We've left Vietnam. We found out the president was lying. We found out the vice president was taking bribes inside the white. House. This comes on the heels of finding out that Lyndon Johnson had lied with Vietnam. Okay, you go

100 years before that. One of the most corrupt presidential elections there are, right? The return of Jim Crow, which had already begun a few years before this even as the federal government turns its size away. Heck, let's go to year zero, the year they wrote the Declaration of Independence. I mean, that year they had to formally abolish the government that they had previously been living under and create a new one. So I would say, like, historically, these 100-year marks are pretty rough ones. But in the end, my advice to everyone listening is this, if there's one lesson of the revolution that the founders passed down to us, be skeptical, but don't get cynical. Because at all the hardest moments in American history, you could have looked at anybody

going through what they're going through. Look at the Nazi war machine. Look at Jim Crow. Look at civil war. If someone said to you, ah, nothing is going to come out of this, you could see someone going, yeah, you're probably right, but they chose not to. And now it's your turn to choose not. to. Let's go back, not 50 years, not 100, not 200, but the whole 250 and start at this moment. Year zero has been coined it. Although there were some previous years, you know, the negative years are very interesting in the American story. That they are. Well, so let's talk about these negative years. And of course, what I mean are the years ahead of 1776. We are told, you know, from the time we start learning about history in school,

that the American Revolution was about no taxation without representation. And that's real, but fundamentally incomplete as an explanation. I'd like to dive into why that was perhaps a spark, a trigger, and what led up to that grievance to become so important, what were the intellectual underpinnings that made a complaint about money turn into what Ken Burns has described, the most consequential events since the birth of Christ. So let's talk about the deeper causes before we get to perhaps the more specific tactical ones. What was the relationship between Britain and America and what was the sort of political thought of the day? So a number of important things to recognize. One is that these colonials, they saw themselves 100% as British. So all the promises made to

the British people, they felt that those were theirs, that they had every single right guaranteed to someone living in London. Those same rights were guaranteed to those who lived in Boston or Williamsburg to go to Virginia. So that's an important piece. Another is that Britain had super overlooked and basically forgotten about those colonials. They did not really care much about them. There were a few tariffs, I guess you could say, in place. The larger British Empire basically did customs duties, but they were poorly enforced. You know, it was like, if I may, it's like jaywalking in Boston. I guess it's technically illegal, but no one would know any better from the way it's done. You know, John Hancock is a smuggler, and no one is stopping to think about what an

illegal act that really is. You've got the King's agents. Most of the time are bought off, don't care. And it's only after the French and Indian War slash seven years war that a economically devastated British Empire goes, ooh, we should really start enforcing financial policy with those colonies. So, you know, some colonies were less than 100 years old, but you've got these colonies that have over a hundred year precedent that Parliament does not touch them, that the king leaves them the hell alone.

And then finally, what I'd point out is that there's so much social mobility in these colonies compared to life in Britain. So you've got these immigrants. And of course, we're talking specifically about white European immigrants. But whether they come from Britain or they come from Europe, you know, they are seeing social mobility in a way that's utterly unfamiliar to them in Europe. They could come to the Americas and here they can acquire land. suddenly that means they can vote. So the idea that the head of a household, a white man, can

acquire the right to vote if he doesn't have it, that feels very attainable. And there is a far larger percentage of men participating in the electoral process for colonial legislatures in the Americas than there is over in Britain. And a lot of the corrupting practices, such as what they called quote unquote rotten burrows, where you'd have basically a precinct of voters, but it's literally just the backyard of a noble who simply elects himself to go to parliament. That stuff doesn't exist. So effectively, you kind of have a non-jerrymandered, if I might say, system. And what that does is even though the colonials, these Americans, are reading the same documents.

So they're looking to the English Bill of Rights, for instance, right? They're reading the same documents that someone in Britain would. Well, that vastly different context has them interpreting it in a very different way. So when Parliament does finally come out with these ideas after the Seven Years' War and go, you know what? Maybe a little enforcement of customs. And even a direct tax makes some sense. You've got generations of colonials who've come to not only latch on to their British identity

and the sense that they have rights as Britons, but they have a sense of social mobility and a far more potent, I would say, more ardent interpretation of how far those rights go than their counterparts across the Atlantic. Yeah, and from the perspective of the Patriots, or just the colonists in general, they were Englishmen, as Greg said,

and they came with an expectation that their rights would be respected. A lot of what happens here has to do with a couple of things. First of all, the colonies had nothing to do with, each other with one another in the colonial period. Their relationship was with England. It's mercantilism. They're not supposed to trade with each other. They're not supposed to trade with the other colonies. This is why the smuggling is so popular. And so what you ended up with in this situation is, I think a sense from England that like they're dealing with these different colonies, not one

united thing, really. And I think this surprises the British as much as it surprises us, that people from such different, you know, conditions as Massachusetts and, say, South Carolina, it. They had one thing in common, which was they were angry. So you've got that anger that builds up, but it's not necessary. Like they don't see this as irreconcilable. The Patriots don't. The first thing the first Continental Congress does, one of the first things is sent an olive branch petition to King George III, asking him to stop so that we can talk. The important thing to remember here is that this brings them together. But it's the tradition had been that if you ever wanted to raise taxes or had any issues, you went to the legislature of the colony and they, would figure out how to do it. From the perspective, looking back at it, it's kind of bonkers that

Parliament was like, no, we know how to do this. When if they had consulted the colonial legislatures, they probably would have had a better idea of how to raise revenue. And that gets at the point. They're not talking to them. They're not asking them. And the Boston Tea Party, it was a revolt against a corporate tax cut. It wasn't a revolt against a new tax. It was that that parliament had given special tax status to their own company to sell to you to lower price. Dude, it was too big to fail. Exactly. So I think a lot of the times we think it's just taxation.

And don't get me wrong, that is part of it. But there's a great book by Patricia S. Williamson about the history of taxation. She points out that when these patriots in New England stopped paying their taxes to the British crown, they continued to pay them to a local official to pull the money. they weren't trying to keep their tax dollars. They were trying to make sure their tax dollars were well spent. Well, and that it was about that representation piece. There's this idea in English thought, novice ordo cyclorum. This is a book on the intellectual origins of the Constitution by Forrest McDonald. And he details how there's this idea that taxation is a gift from the people to the king. And so that's why

representation so important because the people can't give that gift unless it comes from their representatives. So for parliament, where there are no American elected members to say the colonials in the Americas will give money to the king, that's the deal breaker. It's not the idea that they pay taxes, that they give money to the king. And Benjamin Franklin makes this point while he's in London representing so many colonies. The dude's the OG of diplomacy, right? And, And he says, look, just let us do our thing. If you just say, we need funds, please go figure it out. Americans are going to be far more chill about this.

It will happen. Of course, they don't listen to Ben. And, well, here we are. Historically, it's a good idea to listen to Ben Franklin. I'd like to introduce the concept or reinforce the concept that the American Revolution was actually an English revolution. That these Americans did not see themselves as Americans, Englishmen right up until the point where they decided they could no longer be Englishmen.

And this is kind of, I think, evidenced by the fact that not only were they calling themselves patriots versus loyalists, but they were calling themselves Whigs versus Tories. And this carries a connotation of an longstanding political divide, you know, political science divide in England, that the Tories represented the corrupt court interest, the arbitrary power and deference to the crown that the Whigs have been fighting for for a long time. What do you make of this continuation of an English political dispute? I mean, accurate 100% of it. They saw themselves not as asserting new rights, though the framing is brilliant and unique and new. I think there's nothing more radical than saying that it is a self-evident truth. Here you are in the

age of the Enlightenment, and you've got Ben Franklin tweaking Thomas Jefferson's sentence. say, we're not even doing proofs, guys, evident that there are unalienable rights. No need to prove it. But they see themselves as asserting their rights as Englishmen, that they're not coming up with something new. And even George Washington, as he goes to take command of the basically mess joke of soldiers that are the New England militia, but they're now calling it a continental army.

As George rides north to go take command up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he himself is convinced that he is going to lead an army in a civil war that is going to end in a matter of months, the original, you know, mistake of pretty much every general and leader, right? No, this will be a fast war, guys, really. But he's convinced he'll be over in a matter of months and that it will ultimately turn out with a diplomatic conversation in which the king's going to go, yeah, you know, my bad, we stepped on your rights as Englishmen, we will respect them now. It's only after Thomas Payne's common sense comes out in January of 1776.

So this is nearly half a year since George took command of the Continental Army in the summer 1775, that you really have a swelling of Patriots starting to go, crap, you know what? Maybe this isn't a civil war. Do we have to actually divorce? Is that what we have to do to maintain our rights as Englishmen? Do we have to stop being English? As to the continuity here, Jefferson insisted that. that there was nothing in the Declaration of Independence that was new or original.

Now, we can take issue with that. But he insisted that the ideas were laying around. And Ted Widmer just published a new book. It's called a biography of the Declaration of Independence. It's really a textual rundown of both the document itself and then documents that come afterwards. And for him, one of the important things to come back to is the word we. And I think he's right, because it is we over and over again. And that relationship between the thought of the Enlightenment and this idea that these rights aren't special, they aren't privileges anymore.

They aren't things that one of us has been tapped and made magical, you know, by the hand of God, that in fact the will of God is expressed in all of our freedoms. Whether that be God you think of, it's Christian God or, as the Declaration said, nature's God. Whatever it is, it's innate within us. And that transcends any political system, which is what's fantastic about it. Well, if the word we is so important, why was there so much us versus them even within the Americans? Well, I would say that's because the declaration has always been an aspirational statement. Yes. And I think also one of the catches is, you know, at a time of high partisan struggle, a time of high stress, there is going to be just going to be rupture.

And to a lot of Americans, this is one of the things that's left out. a lot of Americans stay loyal. You know, when the British pull their ships out of Boston after Henry Knox surprisingly drags those cannon back across Frozen New York, they leave. And when the troops there leave, they take a thousand loyalists with them who never see their homes again. And at the end of the war, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was a minimum of 80,000 loyalists flee the colonies.

Yep, including many black folks who had taken up, you know, Lord Dunmore's offer to, if they fight for the British calls, then they'll leave. And that, I think, complicates the entire thing. Because when we talk about it being a battle for freedom and you say, well, the enslaved people who had run away to join the British, maybe nobody they're fighting more for their freedom than them. They weren't on our side. Yeah, there's all kinds of ways that you can say, who is the we here. Again, you have to have faith that the idea is aspirational. And in spite of his deficiencies in terms of practice and principles, it's strong. The American Revolutionary period was an intense civil war with outrageous and criminal violence and persecution levied against the loyalists. Sometimes this was state-directed.

Confiscation of property and evictions were mandatory made by legal authority. But most often, it was just mob vigilante justice. And, you know, the loyalists were not a small population. You've already mentioned how many tens of thousands left after the revolution, many more tens of thousands stayed. It's estimated that 15 to 20 percent of the entire population of white colonists were actively loyalists, and yet they were extraordinarily persecuted, tarred and feathered, subjugated, executed. In my mind, because we know the American revolution inspired the French Revolution. But in this one aspect, it seems the inspiration was one violence too. Yes. I mean, this is a very famous letter of the Washington writes. It's later in

1776 after the retreat from New York on recruiting and maintaining an army. And he's writing to Congress saying, I can't do it with what you've given me. And he talks about the problems he has. To go back to this myth that Americans were like raw America from the very beginning, Washington had been appointed, one of the reasons they appoint him to be commander in chief, you know, a newly create a position for an army that had been created like the other day is because the focus is in Massachusetts and they want to send someone from Virginia to drive home the fact that this is truly a colonial army. It's a Patriot Army. It's not just New England. And he's riding on the way back and he's saying, you guys are undersupplying me. You're not paying the soldiers. And they don't listen to me.

He is talking about civil war amongst different factions. Even Washington is talking in 1776 about the fact that other militia leaders from the state refused to acknowledge his authority. So he's not only fighting the British and the Hessians, he's fighting his other officers and state militias. So there is this multi-layered thing that's going on there. And yeah, it is so complicated. I think Washington's leadership,

you guys know him as the guy on the dollar bill and from the paintings and stuff like that, as the victorious guy crossing the Delaware, you should look more into it, it is a long period of suffering in his life where he doesn't see his home. He only asked to have his bills paid for and he has to fight to get that later on. But if you look into the man's leadership in all of this and how he is able to use both experience, knowledge, posturing, but also a deep understanding of human beings into his leadership to hold this together and

make it last. It's insanely impressive. I'd like to add another element here. Lindsay, you brought up the French Revolution, which is notorious for its radicalism. It, no pun intended, but bleeds over into American politics in the 1790s as Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans, the two major political parties of the day, actually take sides on whether they support the French Revolution or not, with the Federalists saying, this is insane. These people are off their rocker. This is mobocracy. This is what happens when too much democracy is brought into representative of government. And then you've got Jefferson's crowd going, no, no, this is exactly what needs to happen. Now, how could Jefferson's crowd go there? Well, let's also point out that Jefferson's the

guy who at least said, and forgive me, I'm not trying to throw shade at Tommy Jay, but it's tall talk for a guy who is not a soldier in the war. But he's the one who says every generation, right, that freedom basically needs to be. The Tree of Liberty. Yes, the Tree of Liberty. It needs to be refreshed with the blood of patriots, right? So I'm going to go ahead and drop perhaps uncomfortable thought, and that is that the American political thought process, we do have an acceptable space for political violence, right? Because George Washington is a hero, the Continental Army, World War II,

fight in the Nazis, right? We have these righteous wars, if you will, where we know that America was the good guy, so to speak. You have to square that. And of course, we reject most violence. I want to be very clear on that. We absolutely reject most violence. It is a very narrow space.

I'd say that intellectually, we get it from John Locke's second treatise on government, where he defines tyranny as being an act in which the legislature puts itself in a state of war. Those are his words, in a state of war with the people. Now, what is tyranny, right? This is what opens a really difficult bag. And then you can think about so many events in American history, whether it is slave rebellions, right? Nat Turner cites Patrick Henry, give me liberty or give me death.

Is this righteous rebellion? I think a lot of us would say yes, but not at the time. A lot of white Americans did indeed reject that, right? Every act of rising up against government in the American process. You see them look back to the revolution. And whether we agree with that or not, right? And that's something, this is where history is so important. We have to be critical thinkers about it. But anyone who acts violently is looking to justify themselves through that lens. You know, I think we can't even say that if we look at the revolution, we look at this

rejection of Britain, that is what keeps genuine tyranny at bay is the threat that it will, in fact, the attacked, but oh my goodness, that's got to be such a slow to break glass thing. But it is a part of who we are. And it's something that we do have to acknowledge and carefully consider and think about throughout our history. There's never easy answers in history. And people get frustrated with that. But the thing is that the more you know, the better equipped you are to answer these

questions in your own world. And I think that's a call to action. If you're listening to right now and you haven't read the Declaration of Independence, You should. Read the whole thing. There's nothing better you could really do with America 250, right? Come on. Well, let's go into the document itself. It was addressed purely at this concept of tyranny, but the language is conspicuously universal. It does not talk about Americans or British subjects or all property owning white men. Well, there was a logic of universal rights.

Yes. This to me is the most brilliant thing about the declaration. If you take other documents, you could pull up that might be considered to be in the same kind of character for different countries, you know, the English Bill of Rights, for example, the Venezuelan Declaration of Rights. If you look at these documents and you think about this, the Declaration of Independence is addressing things that are happening in real time, but it is meant to singularly address the conflict therein. No other document I'm aware of starts off in these type of conditions with such a grand proclamation. If you look later on into the 20th, century, you will see other countries asserting their independence, either opening with direct

quotes from the Declaration of Independence, ours, or paraphrasing it changing the text. And this is what's brilliant. It's not a long document. Most of it is particular to the case, describing all of the things that Britain had done that warranted this. But it doesn't start like that. It starts off by declaring that all people have an alienable rights. In contrast to a monarchical system that proclaims that rights come from God through the king, right? That's what makes you a subject. This is an assertion that we're all in this together and that all people, not the Americans, not because of our situation, not because we come from England and we deserve this because we're from England. We deserve this because we're humans. And the radical statement in here is the monarchy would

have you believe that God picks somebody tags, that's our representative, or there's these kind of like, you know, established figures, and that rights then flow through them through the state. Our assertion is, no, not at all. In fact, the creator's rights are in us from the beginning, and this is for all people. This is a radical, radical statement. Think about how hard it would be. If you're a British citizen and you believe in the system of monarchy, and you believe that God has chosen the monarch, and that is God's will. to rebel against the king is to rebel against God. But when you can see the world and say, no, no, our rights come from our creator. Governments don't give us rights. Governments are created to ensure

the rights that we already have. No longer is rebelling against the king, rebelling against God's will. In fact, in this new worldview, the king himself is violating God's granting of rights to people by suggesting that he's the one who gives them out. This incredible turn in the way of conceptualizing, rebellion against the system, then becomes a problem for us later on when the Filipinos in 1898, 1899, when we're trying to suppress them, they say, don't we have these rights? Or when Ho Chi Men at the end of World War II comes out of the world and says, don't we have these rights? It's turned back against us over and over again. And you know what? That's the problem. It's so radical and so beautiful that it's bigger than us. That's the incredible, beautiful thing about our founding

documents about what we should be celebrating with America 250 is that we have aspirations that are indeed greater than ourselves. They're greater than the men who penned them, right? And so I believe that we can hold on to, yes, these aspirations are so great, we will never perfectly fulfill them. We can only more perfectly fulfill them, right? And we can and should continue to strive to do so more perfectly. So that describes the unalienable rights, those rights that cannot become alien to us. We cannot lose them.

That's one of the famous phrases in this document. Another one, and Greg, you touched on this, is self-evident. This is a bit of rhetorical shortcuts, but it's also a departure from previous intellectual tradition. Greg, why don't you talk to us about that phrase? Yeah, so this phrase, we have been Franklin, to think for.

Of course, Thomas Jefferson is the primary author of the Declaration. But Tom originally wrote these were sacred and undeniable rights. Now, let's again remember this is the Age of Enlightenment. In the Age of Enlightenment, we're about scientific proofs. So stepping away from the more religious viewpoint that had given the idea of the invested rights of kings, we're now going into an Enlightenment world. and Ben Franklin, he even sidesteps the idea that we're going to rely on some sort of proof. He's calling it a premise self-evident.

This is the premise upon which the American experiment is being built. There's another famous phrase, of course, that we are all due life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But this is one of Jefferson's edits. He was quoting Locke, John Locke, who said the triad was life, liberty, and property. Why did Jefferson replace property with the pursuit of happiness? Well, so now that's a really fun piece because the traditional interpretation is, yes, this is straight up John Locke with a little twist. But Jeffrey Rosen, who's just written a book titled The Pursuit of Happiness,

he makes an argument that this is actually coming from the Scottish Enlightenment. So if we agree with Jeffrey Rosen, then this is both a Lockean argument, right, the life, liberty and property, but we're now saying it's life liberty. But then the happiness component is a really fundamental shift in what is the purpose of essentially our social contract. And he's pointing to the Scots for that influence there, which this is where we could see Thomas Jefferson saying, look, I'm not saying anything original guys. I'm borrowing ideas. Maybe he isn't as much of a, you know, a plagiarizing writer as sometimes accuse him, because he's pretty quick to say I'm borrowing ideas.

But Ben and I both believe that there's a lot of originality. And it really speaks to Thomas Jefferson doing what you would hope any good thinker is doing. They're building on the ideas of others. They are well read. They are well researched. But they're also coming up with their own original stuff. Yeah. And the statement of life, liberty and property or some version of this, happiness or property,

I mean, this is not the first time it's evokes in the American Revolution. I think it's 1772. Samuel Adams publishes the rights of colonists. which he asserts the same triad there. And so, again, these ideas are floating around. And it's really the enlightenment itself that we have to thank for that and the spread of those ideas. So there are three famous portions of the declaration, but they made it in. What was cut out? Oh, Ben, I think we're going at the same spa, right? Yeah. Okay, so most famously was a, basically a paragraph. I mean, it was a huge denunciation in Thomas Jefferson's original draft decrying slavery.

And it was complicated on a number of levels because, yes, he denounced slavery and the evils of slavery, but he also skirted American responsibility for slavery as he blamed King George III for basically creating an institutionalized problem. And if I'm remembering the language right, he even then goes on to complain that the king has then used enslaved people to push back against the rebelling colonials. So he's very much trying to avoid any responsibility on the Americans part while also pointing the finger at the king not only for slavery but for slave rebellions. Am I recalling that all correctly? Yeah. I think it's interesting to point out there is that what he condemns is the slave trade. And so slavery is something bigger.

But it still is this idea that, like, you know, that this has been hoisted upon them, that this was a British thing. It's factually incorrect. But slavery, you know, I mean, the transatlant slavery predates, you know, British prominence, you know. But, you know, the thing to me, it gets into this deeper contradiction with Jefferson and slavery. And when I read this line, it always strikes me, you know, Jefferson's analogy was, you know, slavery in America is like having a wolf by the years. Yes. And the idea was like, you didn't want to. to be in that situation, but you didn't know how to let go either. And if you look at Jefferson's

life, he was born into that world. It's true. He doesn't emancipate his enslaved people like he said he was going through. True, he runs himself in a day. He makes a variety of mistakes, but he inherits the plantation and they inherits even more when his wife passes away. His first memory in life was riding on a horse while being held by an enslaved American belonging to his father or within his family. It's always struck me that something deep in Jefferson, with that conflict inside of him, the idea is that it was the British who created the system and perhaps there was a world in which he himself had not been born into a world where he was dependent upon slavery, or at least he felt he was. That conflict throughout his life goes on. I think Jefferson is one of the most complicated

figures when we consider his legacy with slavery, the man behind these most radical, beautiful words. But yeah, this was an original piece of the Declaration and it was cut out. You know, what's interesting, Ben, when you mentioned the curious way, Jefferson almost wished he was born into a different system, that if there was a fairer world, he wouldn't have to own slaves or participate in slavery. There was a portion of the Constitution that was cut that very much echoed those sorts of thoughts. He blamed the Declaration of Independence on the British, that they did this to him, that if there was a more fair world, that they might have been a free and great people together. It was a lament that put all the blame on the British

citizens, not just the monarchy or parliament. And it was taken out fundamentally, probably prudently, because there was some concern that, hey, after this war, we might really want to reconcile with Britain here. That makes sense. It's like, it's all your fault. It's all. I mean, it really is a breakup letter. Because we sent the Olive Branch petition like the previous, you know, in 1775.

And we were like, if only King George III knew about all this, he'd help us out. And King George III's like, I'm not even reading that. Also, we're not protecting you anymore. To be fair, Ben, we did the next day turn around and send the declaration of the causes and necessity of taking up arms. So we were a little schizophrenic in that moment, which I think also highlights just how terrifying and uncertain and ununified that members of the Continental Congress were as they're trying to feel their way forward. They don't know how this is going to turn out. So this document,

the Declaration of Independence, clearly is important to America's future. It is important to the world's future, as it is echoed in other documents throughout history. And as we've been talking about over and over again, it is an aspirational document. It is one that describes universal rights that uses pronouns like we and us and together. Ben, you told me you had a special affection for the last line of the declaration, one that probably not too many people are really familiar with. Yes, it says in the end that we are free and ought to be free to be independent. And then the question becomes, you know, when you're taking some type of a stance, you know, where do you claim your allegiance? Where do you fix the thing that you are fighting for? And this is where

the concluding line of this document to me is absolutely beautiful. It says, we mutually pledge to our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. Who do we pledge to? We pledge to each other. That oath right there. We're not pledging allegiance to a flag. We're not pledging allegiance to a crown. We pledge allegiance to each other. We're looking at each other in the eye and we're saying, we're in this together. And you have my honor and I have yours. And you have my fortune and I have yours and what happens to one of us is the fate of all of us. And to me, that is the America that I love. We talk about how different we are now. I would invite anyone to reflect upon the differences between Georgia and Massachusetts in 1776 and ask if they were more different than

than we are now. This idea right here that's laid out in this declaration has had 250 years in the soil to get deep roots. And whatever we see is different within us, we share this. And I would encourage everyone to reflect upon the fact that the liberties and freedoms we have, who protects them? We do. I protect yours. You protect mine. And we're best when we do this together.

And if a group of backwoodsmen on the cusp of a continent that were marginal and peripheral could make a pledge like this and create something as dynamic and brilliant as they create it, then just imagine what we could do now if we pledge our honor to each other. imagine what we can do now if we continue that. I'm not like you, you're not like me, but we have each other's backs and we're here for each other. And on this 250th anniversary of the country, I really wish everyone could hear that and remember, we're not each other's enemies. We're on this together. We inherited something beautiful.

And if we could have the courage and be willing to endure a little bit of uncomfortableness to continue pushing forward, I think that would be great for the future generations. who I think would enjoy the same things that we got now. Greg Ben and I continued talking for a little bit after this conversation. One of the things we thought was important was that American citizens reread or read for the first time the full text of the Declaration of Independence. Much of it is a list of grievances, stuck in the circumstance and language of the 18th century.

But much of it is also universal and outside of time. So we have collected a few of our friends, other history podcasters, and here is a recording of the American Declaration of Independence. Listen carefully, and you might just hear the meaning behind the words that started a revolution, not just here in America, but across the globe. In Congress, July 4, 1776, the unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America. When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth

the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them. A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government,

laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety, and happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate the government's long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. And accordingly, all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the form to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains

them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a can He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation, till his assent should be obtained, and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature,

a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has a dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise. The state remaining in the meantime, exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states for that purpose obstructing the laws for the naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the military independent of and superior

to the civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation. For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us. For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states. For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world. For imposing taxes on us without our consent.

For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury. for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses. For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies. For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments.

For suspending our own legislatures and declaring themselves, invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy, scarcely paralleled. in the most barbarous ages and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against

their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury, a prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislation, to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our immigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America in general Congress assembled, appealing to the supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare that these united countries,

colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states. That they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved, and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may have right due. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Happy birthday, America. You are an inspiring, infuriating, incredible, and improving place. May you and the world live up to your ideals. My guests in conversation today were Professor Greg Jackson hosted the podcast History That Doesn't Suck, and Dr. Benjamin Sawyer, co-host of the podcast The Road to Now. The Declaration of Independence was read by Bob Crawford, co-host of The Road to Now podcast, Lindsay Graham, Greg Jackson, Lindsay Cormack, co-host of Government That Doesn't Suck, Ben Sawyer, and Colleen Shogh, host of In-Pursuit. From Noisor and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham, audio editing by Mohamed Shazzy, sound designed by Molly Bach, managing producer Emily Byrne, executive producers on William Simpson for airship, and Pascal Hughes for. for noise.