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