The signing of the Declaration of Independence - Part 1

What you gonna do, brother, when Jeff Townsend media runs wild on you America Stories. Alright, alright, alright, you history buffs you America History fans. Welcome to another episode of America Stories. Of course, this is Jeff Townsend. Luke and Jack are joining me for another story today. We are like twelve episodes in guys, this is the twelfth episode, I believe. Yeah, it's wild. We've been plugging in some Indiana Delfi stuff too, But nevertheless, this season we're calling it season two because the first season was Indiana Stories. We're twelve episodes and my gosh, well we're a very interesting point in the timeline. Now it's the time that everyone's been waiting for as the Declaration of Independence is coming up. Yeah, we've covered clear up from where did we actually start at? So I know the first episode was the history of the fourth of July. But what was the first thing we really picked up on on trying to remember as far as the ticonder roga or four before that was we actually did a video episode on Boston tea party and everything leading up to that. Oh yes, that's right, the lock. The lock. How kind of freak it out if you have not listened to the previous episodes. My point is you should go back and do that. This is America Stories a fun quick take on American history. Go back to the Boston Tea Party episode and you can hear these mavericks defend the absolute rogue actions of the Americans and they justified it all because one single lock was repaired. Millions of dollars, a team was poorn out, But none of that matter because they fix a five dollars lock they did. They go back and watch it and go back and fix the loss. That's all that matters. So you mess something up, you just got to fix one little thing involved with it. Getting into what we're talking about today that Luke touched up on a little bit, we're starting to dive into some of the surroundings and prerequisites of the Decoration of Independence. You said, yeah, uh so, we did touch on a few of these things back when we did do the history at for July, but we kind of just like glazed over. It was just like the top layer and most people do we glaze like Dunk and Donuts 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 only got this not a sponsor yet. We're a couple of one hundred thousand million, uh listens away from that, but we're keeping it on a radar. Sorry, look good. Oh yeah, we're getting there. So yeah. To start off, we should talk about some of the people that almost never get brought up when they talk about the decoration of Independence. And the first person to actually put something forward in the Congress was a man named Richard Henry Lee. And in his three first names, he does not something that I thought was a little clunky to say, because it's like bam, bam, bam his first names. He was a member of the second Continental Congress. He was from Virginia, and he was ep Ford. A resolution titled the Lee Resolution because it was not particularly you know, thought out what to call it, but this was what would eventually become the Declaration of Independence. He put forth the Lee Resolution in June of seventeen seventy six, I think it was June seventh actually, So he wanted to break free of Britain first. He was the first one to say, you know, let's just do it. But this was also something that he has been doing this entire time. He was one of the first to create called a Committee of Correspondence. This was something that him, Samuel Adams and a few others came up with during the Stamp Act years and stuff like that, where you would kind of set up people that you knew who were not pro British and you would keep in touch and pass information from one side of the country to the other correspond with them. Yeah, of course, it was kind of like a secret organization and they were like the early form of spy work being done before the war started. They would even try to get some of their people closer to the higher British officials so that they could slowly ship away at their ability to do things 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 with a way of breaking free. He said that you know, the colonies are in a right ought to be free and independent states, and they should be assolved of all allegiance to the British crown. Was a bold statement. No one in Congress was, you know, thought it was going to happen just so soon. In fact, New York was definitely trying to put force resolutions to bend the relationship with Britain, so they were not prepared for this. The rest of Congress decided to vote and put it towards committee to explore further and also to write a declaration for you what to vote. They called them the Exploration Committee, Am I correct? No, So it was actually called the Committee of five because there are five guys. That's how they came up with the restaurant name, right, I'm pretty sure, yeah, yeah, it's like five guys. Actually, I'm kind of interested in this this thought process right now. I mean, there's been a lot 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 do. Kind of pass the point of that, yeah, yeah, and so I'm just kind of curious what they thought of beyond you know, leaving, you know, kind of forming your own country at that point where they wanting to find some kind of other form of peace that was not going to have surrendering. I'm just really kind of curious what their thought process there was. And the other thing I wanted to point out was that, you know, this the Lee the Lee Resolution that was written up in June seventh, seventeen seventy six, So that's like a less than a month before you know, like the next set of events. So I'd just say this, they're obviously an active moved really quickly. So the Committee of Five was given three weeks to debate and figure out what was the best course of action and whether or not there would be a declaration put forward. They were, They were given a mandate to move quickly by the Congress so that they could vote before Congress let out in the late summer. Where the Committee of Five was composed of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. Now those first three everyone knows those names. John Siams of course being the second president, being the third, Benjam Franklin being like the all around intellectual of the founding fathers. Roger Sherman is actually a very interesting person, though he didn't really do a whole lot beyond the community, but he was very vocal about getting this pushed through. When he was he was one of the ones that was like, all right, we need to definitely do this. He was constantly pushing the others to go for and he also wanted to abolish slavery declarate independence, which the Carolina's ordinarily about. Then that's actually why South Carolina did not want to put on this at all, because they were worried that Sherman was going to put stuff in there. Along with Jefferson, was also slightly leaning towards abolishing and slavery as well, despite the fact that he owned a lot of slaves. So it's just like today, they try to pack more into these things than just the main text. Yeah, it was definitely the love. 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 us. Dude. John Adams was a renowned lawyer, had been since the days of the Boston Tea Party and everything else. Ben Franklin. No one doubted his intelligence, and Thomas Jefferson being one of the greatest writers at the time, was in charge of pinning the thing. One of the things that they did early on was Thomas Jefferson wrote that they should stand for the preservation of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Benjamin Franklin felt that that was too wordy, and he just said that it was just put just put life liberty into pursuit of happiness, stuff with like preservation of and it was just like small things. He kept like need laying him on. That really aggravated Thomas Jefferson during the writing of this is kind of funny. He's just trying to get him into more of a common folk mindset. Yeah, he was. And that was bender Franklin's like strong wise, he knew how to speak to like just the average person as well as people who are of a higher standing. He was like the Bill Clinton of his time. Yeah, you know, that's actually not far off in a lot of ways, if you know a lot there was a little bit. So if he was a Bill Clinton of his time, And would we say that George Washington was mel Gid Washington. Yeah, yeah, I think we did say that mel Gibson of his time, So so Benjamin Franklin. That was like mel Gibson in that What Women Want or whatever that movie is where yeah, read by people's minds, and we've actually got two mel Gibson's essentially, and this, uh, this is crazy we did Actually it's actually kind of we're talking about Thomas Jefferson. Now he was writing it getting a little bit he was getting nitpicked by Benjamin Franklin. Sorry I got this off topic. Yeah, noil Gibson. Sherman was the one that was really pushing to have the anti slavery stuff put in there. Oh but another thing I was going to say about Roger Sherman is he's the only person of all the Founding fathers to sign all four of the founding documentations. He signed. He signed the Continental Association, which was the formation of like the Congress, He signed the Declaration, and he signed the Articles of Confederation later and then finally he signed the Constitution. Wow, So why is he not? Why is he not as big of a deal? Then? Just that was about all he ever did was in terms of like big things, was being part of that committee and then being a part of the biggest thing until later did yeah, well assure me, but he never He never went further in political office after this. He ends up becoming mayor of in Connecticut, and then that's about it. He's a well respected guy, though, I assume right if yes, he was four. Yeah, he was very well respected. He was very well meaning, and he kept he was a Puritan and so he had, you know, religious views that kept him like he had a high standing society. But he just unlike Franklin. Yeah, yeah, he just did want to pursue any major office afterwards. He probably very well could have become president at one point, but he just never did. He was It was really one of those guys where if you're making a committee with five people, you make him one of the five. Yeah, I said something about somebody. I guess he actually died in seventeen ninety three, which I'm credittly wrong. I think that might be shortly after Washington's first term in office. So that was a problem. You know, he was an older man already, and so he just really wouldn't have made it that much further anyway, And that's kind of the reason why he drops off and his defense, they all looked really old, he did, they did. The other guy in the Committiat five Robert Livingston. He was a like a judge and stuff like that. He was after he signed, you know, worked in the committee at 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 twenty four years. They just called him Chancellor for restless life. That was his name, basically Chancellor instant he was. He ended up becoming US Minister to France later on in life. The Chancellor, yeah, the Chancellor, And but he was kind of, you know, just a lawyer more so than he was, probably even more a lawyer than John Adams. He was just like everything was like how strict the laws needed to be, and like how perfectly worded the legal writing of the declaration had to be. You have to have people like him around right when you're doing something like that, absolutely, absolutely, because you know, if you say something slightly wrong, you could end up in a lot more trouble than you will be. Now, technically this declaration was basically they were going to end up saying their own death warrants if they if they lost, but still even if they won, you still want things to be set in Stone in a certain way. So yeah, Robert Livitstain was definitely integral to making that all kosher. You know, it was all perfectly worded because of these men. They all had their things they brought 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 first things was Thomas Jefferson did, like I said, wrote a lot about how against slavery. Ben Franklin, y'all had to remove it because they're like, we got to have everyone involved this. So after a lot of arguing back and forth, they finally came up with a declaration that they felt would appease the most amount of people, and they needed it to be voted on, and they also needed it to pass without any opposition. And that was going to be a problem because South Carolina still was iffy on the whole situation. They didn't want to vote for this declaration. They were going to vote against it. Pennsylvania was going to vote against it because Pennsylvania was ran by the Quakers and they detested violence of any type. They wanted to just get a peace treaty signed as fast as possible. They didn't want any more war, and this would inevitably lead to more war. The other problem was Delaware. Delaware should have been a slam dung, but one of the delegates from Delaware did not want to vote for it. He wanted to vote against it, and the other one was voting for it. Now, there was a third delegate who was not there. His name was Caesar Rodney. He was in Dover at the time in Delaware, and he had no idea that the other guy wasn't going to vote for He assumed that those two are both going to vote for it, and that he wouldn't need to be there. And so all this is going on, John Adams and Ben Franklin are trying to make this pass with a flying color. So what they did was they spoke to South Carolina representatives and they said if no one else voted against it, they would vote for So they had to convince the Pennsylvania delegation to simply abstain. They said that you know, you won't be betraying your faith by abstaining. They also New York was also abstaining, but they let everyone know immediately that they were abstaining because the New York delegation was trying to get peace, but they weren't necessarily against the declaration. A lot of abstinence here, Yeah, so basically they had to get They finally did commence Pennsylvania to abstain, but they needed Delaware. Caesar Rodney found out about this and he rode throughout the night on July first, seventy miles in a thunderstorm to get there. The next day, he walked in completely soaking wet and his riding boots and everything, and he cast his vote for the declaration, so that on July second it was able to pass. Now, it was not signed on July second, and actually it wasn't even signed until August second, but July second it finally passed thanks to Caesar Rodney breaking that tie. Probably a lot of people still that just like didn't want to be involved with it. Yeah, like why would I get involved with something like that. They had to really be salesmen, I guess, is what I'm saying. Yeah, because like this was, like I said, they said it was their death or they were going to be executed. Once they signed this, there was no denying it was their signature. So they had to really sell the people like we're gonna pull through, you know, we have to do this. I actually wonder if it was well, they obviously got the soldiers right to, you know, like the everyday people to kind of like agree. I wonder what the I was curious about, Like specific citizens you know, obviously would have had to say in deciding who was going to be debating this. Were they like hopefully they sign it, you know, or hopefully they didn't sign it. Well, I mean, what happened if they didn't sign it? Right exactly? It was that Actually on July second, when they passed this, New York wasn't aware of this, but the British troops landed on a state not prepared to attack New York and Washington's forces, which had made their way north at this point. This eventually led to them change in their vote. Congress finally declared on July fourth that they needed to print the final draft and distribute it to all the colonial assemblies and divisions of the army. It was still unsigned at this moment, but they needed They believe that people would need to see this, and they wanted it to be distributed to different towns so that people could read it. The only person who had actually signed it at this point was John Hancock. He was signing on behalf of all of Congress, but the entire signing, like I say, wouldn't take place until August second, which is a whole bunch more to go there on that. But I wanted to point out that a few other things that are kind of interesting. When they printed this, there are two hundred copies from this one printer named John Dunlap, and he distributed them. Twenty five of those still exist today, probably worth a little bit of money. Yeah, I'm sure John Dunlap, he said, yeah, John Dunlap. John does a printer and in the air Master printer. It was stupid, and I mentioned this in the history for July. But because the the vote was done on July second, John Adams wrote a letter to his wife saying that July second would be celebrated for the rest of the country's history going forward. So those of you that are listening to you, probably it'll probably get edited out. But Jack's doing some research in the background right now. I think he also has a he has a mic for his for himself his mouth, but then he has another mic actually for his keyboard. It's uh he's very smiling, very mischievously. Right now, there's something going on right now. Yes, I was the master is a handsome man. Master, he's a master printer John Dunlap, Yeah, he is a He is a master pressure actually in some of the prints good quality. So let's not pass over what you just said that. There's a couple of different things that I was thinking of. So I don't know if you'd heard me or not, but I asked, were the British aware of what 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 second thing? Well, so the my my headset cut out when you were asking that first question. Actually, but was you saying we British? Were they aware of what was going on? Like? Yeah, the work? Were they aware of something was in the works here? Because you talked about the you talked about the spy work. You know, I assume it was going on both ways. Yes, it was so how uh in when when he had William how when he took attack New York? He they did know for what I gathered, they knew that they were voting on this and information was being sent back to England about it. But yes, like the field commanders, they knew almost immediately that this was being voted on, and so they they wanted to strike fear and everyone's hard to this point. It's why they launched that attack in New York and were prepared to try to wipe out Washington's men, which that that fighting will continue for the foreseeable future up there. So yeah, the ones that that were near didn't know, and shortly it would make its way to England, where it would cause quite an uproar. In fact, that's actually something I'm definitely want to go over on the next episode for sure, is how the average person felt about this everywhere, if they uh, if they knew, if the field commanders knew, and they were already landing in New York and it's only been like like I said, less less than a month at this point since the like first like drafting right the lead resolution, you would think that that must mean that someone told almost immediately in orders of that information to go back and then travel to the to the soldiers the joking matters. Yeah, well they were loyalists, uh. In Congress, like I said, the one Delaware represented there was Stonewall in Delaware. Uh, he was a loyalist. He wanted to join with the British, but he was part of the delegation and so yeah, these people were feeding information back as it was happening. So yeah, that was definitely an issue. Oh and you brought up the July second thing real quick though. When we say landing, is that to call when a boat arrives landing? Yeah? I think never never used a turn all through the boat, but just terrify because there are boats that were landing. Yeah, yeah, I guess you know, I've taken terms from World War Two now, I think, which would be like I just never used that with a boat. Yeah, I don't really know that there on the pier. I'm not entirely sure now that I've questioned any evidence. I mean, they're landing. I guess they're going to land there. Yeah all right, well well yeah, the game play is falling onto the land. Yeah yeah. But yeah, so July second was supposed to be the official holiday. July fourth just happened to be when they started getting unprinted and distributed, and that ended up becoming the holiday there was celebrated because that's what everyone found out about it right, and that's when there were celebrations in the streets and everything. He said, what was the quote again, this day will be Oh you know what I mean. It's actually a pretty intricate quote, because what this reminds me of is if you get like a tattoo that's misspelled. Right. Yeah. I actually have it written down here somewhere. He literally has a wrote down. Guys for listening, I'll uh, I'll list some research good the keys he said, this day will be. Note, I was trying to get the exact terminology of what he said. Well, it's gone. What the heck and it's gone. I swear I typed it up in money notes. You just read it. You just read it as if you were reading. Well, I raised it, but I was gonna do the full Okay, but yeah, yeah, he said something like, uh, something is super cool whatever. We will be celebrating with bonfires across the nation or something like that every year on July second. I don't know what happened. I swear I typed it up in my notes, but I don't see it. Well, he was a couple of days off in the end. I guess he was, like I said, everyone assumes it was all signed that day, but it wasn't and I think that was funny. Yeah, only at this point only John Hancock has signed it, and like the whole John Hancock thing out of this. Yeah, yeah, just signed for everybody. So he signature now is a John Hancock. Yeah. I mean it's something that we used to this day because he did that big. He also because he was he knew that the King of England had a hard time seeing He wanted him to be sure that he could recognize his signature. And that's why John Hancock wrote his signature so big. He actually drew a picture of a hand that never mind John Hancock. That's so what you're saying is if you want an autograph from let's say a sports star like Lebron James, you should say, Lebron, can I have your John Hancock? Yeah, I do have the It was written in a letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams. The second day of July seventeen seventy six will be the most memorable HIPOCA in the history of America. I am able to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the Great Anniversary Festival it ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. You got to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, spells, bonfires and eliminations from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore. John Adams, I really paraphrase the hell out, but he did. But point being, it was this huge I feel like I guess he was just writing it too, Abigail, But it feels like you wanted this lead for all to hear. Yeah, see, this is going to be the day. You had to assume that if you're writing something in that flowery that you were writing into a large group of people, not just one. And it's likely that she would have given that letter to like their local ministers, who then distribute it further as that was kind of the thing at the time. I feel like we're missing a couple people that should have been founding fathers here. Wibble and well, yeah, Weibble 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 seat, Sherman. He signed those one documents Beinger of Franklin. He was the only person to sign the Declaration, the Treaty of Alliance with France, a treaty with parents and the Constitution. That was well the members of the Five obviously, and it's he was definitely big about getting the French into the battle, and it was instrumental and that happening. They were off the very our success in the battle. I'm sure when you get that more in detail one day, Oh yeah, that's yeah, later on in the war, but it's pretty much the only race why we won. French navy was ready to fight and they were definitely happy to stick it to British. So the Spanish Tavie helped in the war, and that doesn't get brought up Verry Awson. Going forward to this next month, there's gonna be a lot of reaction from systems in both the US and England, which I would to go into considerably with the next episode obviously, and then I also want to go over We're gonna go over to all the other signing members, because there are enough fifty six people who signed that the declaration, and yeah, most people can name like seven or eight. Okay, I can't name seven. You put me on the spot, I might struggle to get seven. Well, obviously there's the Committee of five. Yeah. I was gonna say, well, is that Richard Lee. No, isn't it right? Yeah? Richard Henerley. Oh yeah, I got it, Richard. Then there's Sherman. Yeah, Roger Sherman. Roger Sherman. That's it. Caesar rod Nate, Caesar Rodney. Let's talk about this guy for a minute, because that is just a name that it's worth mentioning. I actually had to double check to make sure his name was pronounced Caesar, because you wouldn't think that was I don't know, it just doesn't seem like a name that would be used in the US at that time or on the column actually John. But yes, Caesar Rodney. And during the French and Indian War, he was an officer of the Delaware Militia, and then he would become an officer in the he said Robster Revolutionary War as well. So he was he was more of a fighter, and he did some political stuff. He was a part of the Country Party, is what it was called in Delaware. They were like advocates for you know, separations 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 signed declaration. His name was George Reid, and he was from the same county as Caesar, and he was a member of the opposition party, which was the City Party, the Court Party. So he was kind of always getting into arguments with George Reid, even just back home, and they didn't really care for each other. In the Continental Congress, he would lead Delaware Continentals, but they would get beat pretty badly, particularly in South Carolina later on. He was never like a grand leader. He was just like an average leader. This was his biggest moment actually, was this ride at midnight. It's funny, it's another midnight ride. I'll just say that. Yeah, sounds like a story I've heard of before. This one, though, is definitely just one guy, Paul Revere. There were several people riding by the end of it all, where's Paul Revere in all? This? Seems like he really would would really want his name out there. So Paul Revere's 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 handled his committees of correspondence and stuff like that. He maintains his network of informants and just kind of stands back unless everyone else do the dirty work. My only note on Caesar Rodney is that I like the name a lot. Good name. I mean, I thought it was like, you know, this just reminded me of like I don't even know, watch like a wrestler's name or something like that. I would a character, you know, But it just amazes me that it's like just everybody has two first names, except for the Rogers. Guess just very common. I guess to have two first names, Patrick Henry, Patrick Henry Henry, Richard Henry Lee. Richard Lee was best friends with Patrick Henry. Their cousins. I did. I forgot to bring that up. Oh, another interesting thing. Roger Sherman from the committee two first names. Yeah, yep. He's a distant relative of General William to come Stay Sherman from Civil War. Wow, so this is all in the family. I'm not actually, I'm not surprised, I say wow, yeah, because there were like two million people or something like that in the world. Yeah, and I think the patriotism would probably really bleed through generation to generation and the anti slavery feelings because like you know, to come to Sherman really wanted to wreck the style and Roger Sherman wanted to remove slavery from the country to start. Let me get on like a small rabbit hole here. Do you think and this is just completely your opinion, that if they would have tried to abolish slavery, then we would have had a similar pushback that we saw later the Civil War. They kind of probably would have like derailed this whole plan. Or do you think it would have been more receptive then? Just just an opinion. I think I think it would have been more receptive because they would probably have realized they can't split right now, like they have to not split in the middle of all this, I see. I don't know, maybe afterwards they who knows, as it could be there would have been pushed back like immediately afterwards, who knows it could have been still like in the fighting mood. Yeah, that is a really hard It just makes me wonder, you know. Yeah, Benjamin Franklin definitely believe that they would not be able to do it if they try to remove slavery, but others like John Adams and Sherman and the others, they they kind of felt like they could and it was just this pushback went forth. Wherefore they were just like, you know what, let's stop fighting each other and let's just get this done now. And it's really hard to say if it was out because Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, they were all instrumental in fighting the British and they were heavily slave states or colonies, and so it's hard, really hard to say if they would have so fallen in line or not. My question is, you know, if they hadn't gotten all the signatures, and let's say they had like just most of the signatures, well, well did they have like something in place where they'd be like, well, we didn't get them all, so we're just gonna stop. Like yeah, that's yeah, good question, Like, well, how would that change anything? So they didn't need everyone. They just wanted to have an unopposed signing, gotcha more of a political move. Yeah, they originally were playing, well, we could just do the vote. We got enough colonies, we don't even need Delaware. So you know, but they wanted to be a show of force and show of unity against the British to kind of make a statement. So it was more, like you said, as a political movie. It was a It was all more of like this is how it's our resolve. We're all together on us. But they couldn't get it without making some concessions here and there, at least as far as they believed. Whether or not they could have hashed it out some more in Congress and changed people's minds, that is her debate. I would actually I would actually wonder if potentially, especially the ones like say like Thomas Jefferson, who was probably not concerned with getting everyone signed it was more concerned about getting the the wording right in his mind. I don't know for sure, but I'm almost wondering that to some degree if he was like, well, yes, we could change it to get everyone to sign it, but is that the goal? Because when you're just like we were just sitting here talking about it, I feel like it's that sounds bad, but it's really hard to really grasp the significance of it, and like why they thought it was so significant exactly. So, I mean, I get retrospect here, how we can really talk about the significance of it, Like you just said, it's really what the country was built on, you know, coming together, and 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. Did they what extent did they actually literally need to go to? Right? How you know how to get into the mind of them at the time. And I know next episode we're going to dive deeper into things, but this is definitely something that's on my mind right now. I would like to I would love to know, like what is the full thought process myself, Like do you really need to send that big of a message or with just simply signing this document with most people be enough of a message. I guess you don't know if they're going to help you anyway though, Yeah, right, And so at this point it's like they, I guess, felt that it needed to have more people, and without enough people, it would look like a fractured and easily beaten army. And you have to realize you have to inspire the regular soldiers to fight against a massive armada and army coming their way that you know, no one had ever believed to be beatable. So it's kind of like, is it a political move or is it simply a fun story to tell around campfire about how everyone came together to sign this and so now we're going to fight for it. Yeah, that's actually really well said. I got a lot of questions, but I feel like I definitely need to save them before we bookend on the next one, for sure, anything else on this top of guys, or what are we thinking? Don't have anything else tonight myself. So we're gonna draw a line in the sand right now and we're gonna jump back in next week. It's what we're saying. Yeah, yeah, we'll be jumping in basically on July fifth or sixth, and in how everyone around the country is reacting to this and what happens in New York and then what will happen in Brittain when they learn of it. And then we're also going to talk about some of the undercard you could call, of people who signed the declaration who people don't talk about very often, And there's gonna be and we won't we'll talk about it, I'm sure, But there's so many people that just don't really know. I'm sure what's really going on. There has to be people just in their own world, just living their own life, completely away from society, because that's how they that's why they came here. A lot of them, they probably have no interest or maybe not even any sort of sense maybe what's going on? Yeah, exactly, there's definitely a bunch, So don't Jack. It is time to do the 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 We're at America story Pod on Twitter and actually X now it's x now that is correct. I've updated that, okay, So yeah, and you can also email us if you have like questions or you just want to talk or whatever. You know, you can email us at America Stories Pod at gmail dot com and you can find us on americastories dot us. Yeah, she can. That's a night neat little website that Jack's gonna get around to one day. I so let me let me ask you one thing. Can we get out of here? Do you think you had to like? Who owned X dot com? And how much money do you think they got from that. I really want to know. You had to be like it had to be a porn site, right, I mean there's a good chance, but I mean whoever it was had to make a little bit of money off that. Yeah, I imaginally they got a couple hundred thousand at least. What if they just wouldn't sell it to them, like nope, not gonna have that would have been hilarious. So then it would like backfire the whole plan changed the decks, right, Yeah, a couple hundred thousand. I'm not sure like how it goes on like early domain days, because I've only been into domain biz fifteen years and really it's probably a twenty five thirty year thing and its most h starting point. But man, you got to think some of those domains are worth a lot of freaking money. Yeah yeah, yeah, even once you wouldn't think would be worth very much money, but like Google dot Com, Yeah, that one would be worth a lot. Yeah, they make sure. I wonder, like what they had to like these people go in and buy things ahead to be people like if you're just in this common folk listening, this has nothing to do with the podcast this point in time, by the way if it's not exactly easy to go find to domain. And when I say it's not easy, I mean if you just say, like, and I don't know how we pull it off. If you just say, hey, I'm gonna make a podcast called America Stories, You're not gonna get dot com nor is it even active by the way, just some prick holding on to it, right right exactly. You can't just go get any domain you want, is my point. So that's when I don't know. We got lucky enough to get the variation of it with the dot us, which kind of works out. But there's people that got like America Stories dot they got all that crap block they're not even using it. So there's so many domains inactive that are owned. I guess that's my point. I'm off my rim Yeah, well it is. It is ridiculous sprite lemon legacy that is delicious. By the way, it looks so looks so refreshing. I'm super refreshing. 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 is it kind of called it the decoration of indepenants a DFD D of I reaction from people all around the country and even the British encounterparts around the world. Luke, that's what is that, Sumer. What we're gonna do next week pretty well yep, df I, yep, but that is coming up with all sorts of T shirt ideas. With that being said, until next I say next week's actually bi weekly. Until next episode, keep being you and keep being great as I'm shaking the hell out of the sprite. Got the kind of figs everybody knows. Brother around there, Flue, it's going at you have and you like you finding the road and you do it as wrong people gotta thank all the dangers, find it inside the The best of us take care what they want episode to them. Some of us do you do the best weekend? Some of us do Jeff Townsend, media saves you good night. And the question is do I stay here? Will you be back? Are you going to come back? Will you be back? Are you coming back