The colonies argue over what should be done, pivotal votes decided by overnight travel, and politcal deals. Putting pen to paper and shaping the history of America this was the Declaration of Independence.
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[00:03:00] The lock.
[00:03:01] The lock.
[00:03:02] How kind of forget it?
[00:03:03] If you have not listened to the previous episodes, my point is you should go back and
[00:03:06] do that.
[00:03:07] This is America Stories. in the fourth July, but we kind of just glazed over it. It was just like the top layer. And most of the- Do we glazed like dokadonuts glaze that? Yeah. Those of you listening, by the way, this Sprite lemon legacy is delicious. It looks delicious. I'm not gonna lie. I look at this bottle water.
[00:04:20] Not a sponsor yet.
[00:04:22] We're a couple of 100,000 million listens away from that,
[00:04:26] but we're keeping it on our radar.
[00:04:27] Sorry, Luke. So he wanted to break free of Britain first.
[00:05:40] He was the first one to say, let's just do it.
[00:05:43] But this was also somebody that he was
[00:05:46] been doing this entire time. by putting stumbling blocks in front of them. And so, yeah, he was one of the first ones to join those committees and create the Virginia one. So because of that, he was an instrumental person in the early days of the war. And so when he was there, during the Continental Congress, he was like, I want to come up
[00:07:04] with a way of fighting going on up to this point. And, you know, what other possible resolution was there going to be? You know, I mean, obviously they could surrender, but it seemed like that was not something they wanted to kind of pass the point of that.
[00:08:21] Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm just kind of curious what they thought of beyond, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. Now, those first three, everyone knows those names. John Adams, of course, being the second president, our chair president being the third, Benjamin Franklin being like the all around intellectual of the founding fathers.
[00:09:40] Roger Sherman is actually a very interesting person though.
[00:09:43] He didn't really do a whole lot beyond the committee, Just the main tag. Yeah. Yeah, it was uh Definitely a lot of everyone had their own ideas of what needs to go on this These were the guys that were the best suited to come up with this dude John Adams was a Renowned lawyer had been since the days of the Boston Tea Party and everything else
[00:11:00] Bender Franklin no one doubted his intelligence and Thomas Jefferson being one of the greatest writers at the time
[00:12:01] That's actually not far off. A lot of ways.
[00:12:03] If you know a lot.
[00:12:04] There were, so if he was the Bill Clinton of his time,
[00:12:07] and who would we say that George Washington was?
[00:12:10] Mel Gibson?
[00:12:11] Yeah, I think we did say that.
[00:12:13] Mel Gibson of his time.
[00:12:15] So Benjamin Franklin, though, was like Mel Gibson
[00:12:17] and that what women want or whatever that movie is,
[00:12:20] where he had to read what people's minds.
[00:12:23] And we've actually got two Mel Gibson's, essentially.
[00:12:26] And this is crazy. being part of that committee and then being a scientist. The biggest thing to later did. Yeah. Well, sure. But he never, he never went further in political office after, after this, he ended up becoming mayor of Connecticut. And then that's about it. He's a well respected guy though, I assume, right? If he was core. Yeah, he was very well respected.
[00:13:41] He was very well meaning and he that. He was after he signed, you know, worked in the committee of five. He ended up becoming the chancellor of New York, which is their highest judge. And he kept that for so long that he was chancellor for 24 years.
[00:15:01] They just called him chancellor for risk of his life.
[00:15:03] That was his like name, basically chancellor lived in St.
[00:16:04] it because of these men. They all had their things. They brought it to the table. Like I said, there was a lot of contention on that first draft where they had to really reword it. One of the
[00:16:12] first things was Thomas Jefferson did, like I said, wrote a lot about how against slavery,
[00:16:19] Ben Franklin, y'all had to remove it because they wouldn't need to be there. And so all this is going on.
[00:17:43] John Adams and Ben Franklin are trying to he cast his vote for the declaration. So that on July 2nd, it was able to pass. Now it was not signed until I second.
[00:19:01] It actually wasn't even signed until August 2 that actually on July 2nd, when they passed this, New York wasn't aware of this, but the British troops landed on a stat, not preparing to attack New York and Washington's forces which had made their way north at this point.
[00:20:20] This eventually led to them changing their vote.
[00:20:23] Congress finally declared on July 2nd,
[00:21:43] John Adams wrote a letter to his wife saying was going on was my first question. Then the second part I was going to mention is how you just dropped the bomb on the July 2nd thing. My heads that cut out when you were asking that first question actually, but you say it was a British word. Were they aware of what was going on? Like, yeah, were they aware of something that was in the works here? Because you talked about the
[00:24:06] caused quite an uproar. That's actually something I definitely might go over on the next episode for sure is how the average person felt about this everywhere.
[00:24:11] If they knew, if the field commanders knew, and they were already landing in New York,
[00:24:17] and it's only been less than a month at this point since the first draft of the lead resolution, And I guess still looking, I just never used that with a boat. Yeah. Yeah. I don't really know. No, that's a good idea. I'm not entirely sure. No, that now that I've questioned it, I don't have any evidence. I mean, they're landing, I guess. They're going to land there. Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, the game plate is falling onto the land.
[00:25:42] Yeah. Yeah. But yeah.
[00:25:43] So July 2nd was supposed to be the official holiday.
[00:25:47] July 4th just happened to be when they if you were reading something. Well, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, Hancock? Yeah. I do have the, it was written in a letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams. The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable Epaca in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.
[00:28:23] It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance
[00:28:25] by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. Whipple and Whipple yeah, Whipple was so busy still he's he's still on the Still on his tirade Because there's another update for him for a little while But he's he's out there. He's out there on the sea Sherman. He signed those one documents at a binger of Franklin
[00:29:42] He was the only person to sign a declaration the Treaty of Alliance with France
[00:30:44] into considerably with the next episode, obviously.
[00:30:47] And then also want to go over, we're going to go over all the other signing members, because there are a 56 people who
[00:30:51] signed that the declaration.
[00:30:53] And yeah, it must feel good name like seven or eight.
[00:30:59] I can't, I can't name seven.
[00:31:00] You put me on the spot, I might struggle to get seven.
[00:31:03] Well, obviously there's the committee of five.
[00:31:07] Yeah, I was going to say, well, is that Richard Lee? country party is what it was called in Delaware. They were like advocates for separation for the British, but they were also for like a less restrictions. More of a country life, one would say. Yeah. The guy who was voting against joining the or sign of declaration,
[00:32:21] his name was George Reed, and he was from the St. name out there. So Paul Perfier is kind of interesting. He's kind of just like fades into the background a little bit. He's not a politician, he's not a soldier. He just handles his committees of correspondence there were like two million people or something like that in the world. Yeah. And I think the patriotism would probably bleed through generation to generation. And the anti-slavery feelings, because like, you know, to come see Sherman really wanted to wreck the style.
[00:35:01] And Roger Sherman wanted to remove slavery
[00:35:04] from the country at the start. that they would not be able to do it if they tried to remove slavery. But others like John Adams and Sherman and the others, they kind of felt like they could. And it was just this pushback before they were just like, you know what, let's stop fighting each other and let's just get this done now.
[00:36:22] And it's really hard to say if all together on this. But they couldn't get it without making some concessions here and there, at least as I guess the unique, everybody's unique and different coming together, I guess is what I'm gonna say. But it's just weird to think about, what extent did they actually literally need to go to? Right, how to get into the mind of them at the time?
[00:39:00] And I know next episode we're gonna dive deeper into things,
[00:39:03] but this is definitely something that's on my mind right now.
[00:39:05] I would like to, I definitely need to save them before we book in on the next one, for sure. Anything else on the topic guys or what are we
[00:40:24] thinking? I don't have anything else tonight myself time to do this thing. And that thing is plugging how to talk to us, how to find us, how to engage with us. Yeah, well, we're on Twitter and you can contact us through at or at America StoryPod on Twitter and actually X now.
[00:41:42] It's X now, that is correct.
[00:41:43] I haven't updated that.
[00:41:45] Okay, so yeah.
[00:41:47] And you can also email us I'm not sure like how it goes on like early domain days because I've only been into bet domain biz 15 years and really it's probably a 25 30 year Thing and it's most Starting point but man you got to think some of those demands are worth a lot of freaking money. Yeah. Yeah
[00:43:01] Even once you wouldn't think would be worth very much money. Well like google.com
[00:43:06] Yeah, well that one would, by the way. I already said that. It looks so refreshing. I'm super refreshed, and with that being said, I think I'm going to segue us out of here. We'll be back next week, and we will go into further details on the D of I. Can I call it the Declaration of Independence, the D of I?
[00:44:21] The D of I reaction from people all around the country.
[00:44:26] Even the British encounter parts around the world. Do the best we can Some of us do the best we can Run! Run! Everybody's been in the time of the day Run! Run! Run!
[00:45:40] Everybody's been in the time of the day