00:00 - The following program was financed by a grant

00:03 - from America. 250.

00:06 - Good evening everyone.

00:07 - Welcome to Washington's crossing.

00:09 - My name is Matthew Darrah.

00:10 - I'm the chief of staff for America. 250.

00:13 - We are the official commission charged with all the planning,

00:16 - programing and events around the 250th anniversary of our country.

00:20 - This year, in 2026, and after all the planning and,

00:25 - plotting and all.

00:26 - It's amazing

00:27 - to think that we're here right on the cusp of this momentous anniversary.

00:31 - We like to think of this milestone as an opportunity to do a lot of things.

00:35 - One of them is to learn together.

00:38 - We are blessed here in the southeast part of Pennsylvania

00:41 - with a lot of wonderful historic sites like Washington's Crossing

00:45 - or wonderful museums like the Mercer Museum not far from here.

00:49 - But we also think that history is not just these amazing places

00:54 - or a wonderful exhibit, but it's the stories we tell.

00:58 - It's the questions that we ask.

01:00 - And that's really the logic behind the lecture.

01:02 - 250 series.

01:04 - A number of lectures in partnership with wonderful groups

01:07 - across the Commonwealth to help bring folks together,

01:10 - asking interesting questions and sort of explore

01:15 - different

01:15 - aspects of our history here in Pennsylvania.

01:18 - I am very gratifying to see so many folks out tonight.

01:22 - This is a great opportunity to get to know your neighbors, to get to know

01:25 - this Commonwealth, and to explore the heritage we share.

01:28 - Because I think by getting to know our past, we have a better understanding

01:32 - of where we are today and where we want to be in the future.

01:36 - I will just say, I want to thank our amazing host.

01:40 - Washington's crossing is a very special place.

01:42 - I've had the privilege of traveling around the Commonwealth.

01:44 - I've been to a lot of state parks,

01:46 - but I think the unique partnership between the friends group,

01:49 - the Friends of Washington's Crossings, actually, who received our grant,

01:52 - and the state park itself and Dcnr commissioner or.

01:56 - Excuse me, Secretary Adams Dunn is one of our commissioners.

02:00 - I think it creates a lot of unique opportunities.

02:03 - This this place is one of the crown jewels of revolutionary history.

02:07 - And I think the programing, the events,

02:10 - everything that goes on here is a real testament to that collaboration.

02:14 - So, you know, I just want to thank Jennifer.

02:16 - I want to thank the folks at Dcnr for

02:20 - doing so much with this grant and doing so much to honor

02:24 - American history, not just in this semi semi centennial year, but every year.

02:30 - I will leave you

02:31 - by saying that this is one of many lectures we're doing.

02:35 - We're doing a the next lecture is actually in Philadelphia

02:38 - at the end of May at, Eastern State Penitentiary.

02:41 - It's a very interesting program on criminal justice, faith and reform.

02:46 - If you're interested in that, if you're interested in our mobile unit,

02:49 - which will actually be in Bucks County tomorrow, Peddler's village

02:52 - or any of our other programing

02:53 - like our concert series, you can visit America 250 performed.

02:57 - And without further ado, I'll move on with our program.

02:59 - And thank you again for being here.

03:01 - It's an honor and a pleasure.

03:01 - And I'm very excited for this lecture.

03:13 - Well, good evening, everyone.

03:15 - Welcome to Washington Crossing historic park.

03:17 - My name is Kim McCarty.

03:19 - I am a museum curator here, and I am thrilled to have everybody at our

03:25 - April,

03:27 - addition, I guess, of our of our parks lecture series.

03:30 - And it is lovely.

03:32 - And we're so honored to have our friends from America, to join us this evening.

03:38 - And we are very grateful for their support with their lecture.

03:41 - 250 PA Grant for our lecture series.

03:43 - So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank.

03:49 - You just do a little housekeeping

03:52 - for the folks that are, in person with us this evening.

03:55 - I want to let you know that we're going to,

03:59 - have questions at the end of our presentation.

04:03 - And then after that, you're all welcome to join us in the Riverview Room

04:07 - for, a book signing

04:10 - of this evening's book by Doctor Emily Self.

04:14 - When the Declaration of Independence was news.

04:17 - Some of these are available for purchase in the gift shop.

04:20 - If you are interested.

04:25 - Tonight's guest

04:26 - speaker, Doctor Emily Snuff, earned her M.A.

04:29 - and PhD in history from William and Mary.

04:33 - She was the guest curator and scholarly consultant

04:36 - for the Declaration's Journey exhibit at the Museum of the American Revolution.

04:42 - Additionally, she was an historian

04:44 - and consulting curator for Historic Track,

04:47 - is managing editor for Americana Insights, and was an exhibition consultant

04:53 - for These Truths at the American Philosophical Society Library and Museum.

04:59 - Her recent publications include.

05:01 - Rethinking the Revolution in New York from Cornell University Press,

05:06 - Fix It Up, and Open View The Declaration of Independence

05:09 - in Wartime, New York 76 objects

05:12 - from the American Historical Review,

05:16 - A Soldier's Annotated Declaration, and, of course,

05:20 - the Reason we're here tonight, this wonderful book,

05:23 - when the Declaration of Independence was news.

05:27 - Tonight's discussion focuses on the nation's founding documents.

05:30 - At the moment of its creation in 1776, before anyone knew

05:35 - what the legacy of the declaration

05:37 - would be, or if the United States would win the war against Britain.

05:41 - It explores how the

05:42 - declaration was communicated to people in the new nation

05:45 - and around the Atlantic world, and reveals the stories

05:49 - of the many people involved in the process of declaring independence,

05:53 - from printers to soldiers to diplomats to translators.

05:59 - And with that, I'd like to welcome Doctor

06:01 - Emily Snuff.

06:05 - Thank you.

06:05 - Thank.

06:11 - Thank you.

06:11 - Matt.

06:11 - Thank you.

06:12 - Kim, this is such a wonderful crowd.

06:14 - To to be here in person at Washington Crossing is really thrilling.

06:18 - I'm so pleased to, be with you all in this month of publication.

06:23 - For when the Declaration of Independence was news and this 250th

06:28 - anniversary, for the Declaration of Independence itself.

06:32 - So, as Ken mentioned, my topic this evening is going to be

06:37 - the writing of the Declaration of Independence

06:40 - and more specifically, what it meant in 1776.

06:44 - You're going to do a bit of time travel with me if that's all right.

06:48 - And I'll be sure to to mention, when Washington.

06:51 - Crossing comes into the story, perhaps in an unexpected way,

06:56 - my book focuses on 1776.

06:59 - Well, with the caveat that it does stretch into January 1777, if you'll allow me.

07:05 - But it focuses on this really nine month period of time

07:09 - when the founding document of the United States was news.

07:14 - And the reason why it starts in May 1776

07:19 - is that's when the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia

07:22 - first issues a document which is perceived

07:26 - by some people, both in the Continental Congress

07:29 - and outside of Independence Hall, as a declaration of independence.

07:34 - And then it stretches through the summer, July 4th

07:37 - into the fall and concludes in January 1777

07:43 - with a particular printing of the declaration, which marks

07:45 - the transition from the declaration being news to the declaration

07:50 - being the archival treasure that we're familiar with today.

07:55 - So to begin with, let's take a look at that.

07:57 - May 15th documents the this first time

08:01 - that the Continental Congress, is, treated

08:04 - as though they have declared independence from Great Britain.

08:08 - The particular resolution I'm talking about was actually passed on May 10th,

08:13 - and then a preamble was added to it,

08:16 - which John Adams took credit for writing.

08:19 - The resolution itself was,

08:23 - a suggestion that every colony should get rid of the vestiges

08:28 - of royal government and establish new representative governments.

08:33 - This was a pretty measured resolution.

08:36 - It was reflecting what had already happened in many of the colonies.

08:40 - The preamble that was added on to it was the first time

08:44 - that the Continental Congress directly blamed King George the Third for what

08:49 - the colonists were enduring, and this marked a change.

08:54 - So this resolution that's issued on May

08:56 - 15th was treated by some of the delegates in Philadelphia,

09:00 - as if it was essentially independence from Great Britain.

09:04 - It also traveled internationally and was perceived

09:07 - in Great Britain as well as in Portugal.

09:10 - Great Britain's longtime ally, as a declaration of independence.

09:16 - That same day, May 15th, another resolution happened.

09:20 - Coincidentally, I love coincidences.

09:22 - You see a few of them in my book,

09:25 - in Virginia, in.

09:26 - Williamsburg, Virginia, on May 15th, the Virginia convention meeting there,

09:32 - passed a resolution calling

09:35 - for three things independence,

09:38 - confederation, and foreign treaties.

09:41 - And they sent this resolution and new instructions

09:44 - essentially to their delegates in Philadelphia.

09:48 - And then on June 7th, Richard Henry

09:50 - Lee, on behalf of the Virginia delegation, presented

09:55 - what I like to call the To-Do list for the Continental Congress.

10:00 - They had these three tasks in front of them independence,

10:04 - Confederation, foreign treaties.

10:07 - Now, I listed them out in this order, and that was the order

10:10 - that they appeared in the Virginia instructions.

10:13 - But there was great debate

10:15 - within the Continental Congress about which should come first.

10:19 - And so some of the delegates who we remember as being

10:23 - against independence were, in fact, against independence.

10:27 - First out of this list, people

10:30 - like John Dickinson were thinking about, well, shouldn't we have a confederation

10:35 - among the colonies before we separate from Great Britain?

10:39 - Shouldn't we have something bonding the 13 colonies together

10:43 - other than representation in the Continental Congress?

10:47 - Shouldn't we have a foreign ally on board?

10:49 - We just sent a representative to France secretly.

10:54 - He won't know that we declared independence.

10:56 - France won't know. Shouldn't we let them know ahead of time?

10:59 - These are all the conversations that are happening.

11:01 - When this To-Do list is presented,

11:05 - we tend to forget that these three things

11:08 - were being discussed in tandem

11:11 - because they ultimately happened at different moments.

11:15 - So the Declaration of Independence ended up coming first.

11:19 - Out of this list, the model treaty, which could be applied to France

11:24 - or other potential allies, was ready later in 1776.

11:29 - But the first formal alliances

11:32 - were not instated until 1778,

11:36 - and then the Articles of Confederation, because they required

11:39 - ratification, took the longest, and ultimately didn't work.

11:44 - And that's why the declaration sits alongside the US Constitution

11:49 - in the rotunda of the National Archives in Washington, DC.

11:53 - So these three things, we have to think back to 1776

11:57 - and think about them all being worked on simultaneously.

12:01 - And we have to remember that the declaration was not supposed to do

12:06 - everything.

12:07 - It was supposed to be one of a set of documents.

12:11 - So drafting committees were established in June 1776,

12:16 - to create documents for these three purposes.

12:20 - One five man committee was tasked with the model Treaty.

12:25 - 113 man committee, one from every colony

12:28 - was tasked with the Articles of Confederation

12:32 - and then another five man committee, which we remember as the Committee of Five

12:37 - was tasked with the Declaration of Independence.

12:40 - And you can see them here.

12:41 - We have, from left to right, John Adams, Roger Sherman of Connecticut,

12:46 - Robert Livingston of New York, Thomas Jefferson and then Benjamin Franklin.

12:53 - So this committee

12:54 - worked together on the Declaration of Independence.

12:58 - Though Jefferson was the principal author of the text,

13:01 - he was the first person to put words on paper.

13:04 - He had been thinking about a new constitution

13:07 - for his home colony of Virginia,

13:10 - and so the first words that he sort of crafted into the Declaration

13:14 - of Independence were actually coming out of that Virginia context.

13:19 - We know what John Adams and Ben Franklin contributed to the draft.

13:23 - There's a rough draft

13:24 - that has notes explaining that this was Adams, this was Franklin.

13:29 - We don't know what Sherman and Livingston did other than sort of give

13:33 - geographic roundness to the committee,

13:37 - but this committee worked in spare moments.

13:39 - There was a three week window of time where the Continental Congress,

13:44 - postponed a debate about independence

13:48 - in an effort to try to get the sense of the people to figure out,

13:52 - do all of the colonies actually want us to declare independence?

13:57 - But that three week window doesn't mean that this committee,

14:00 - or even Thomas Jefferson, was sitting and scribbling for three weeks.

14:05 - They were still on a number of committees.

14:07 - They were still running a war.

14:09 - So they worked on the declaration in spare moments.

14:12 - And Ben Franklin had gout, so he wasn't really going anywhere.

14:17 - Now, I've shown

14:18 - you this sort of inset of a very famous image,

14:21 - which is John Trembles, painting the Declaration of Independence.

14:26 - Trumbull completely imagined the scene he was painting decades later

14:30 - and over the course of several decades, to get all of the portraits

14:33 - necessary for this.

14:35 - But if he came close to depicting any one particular moment,

14:40 - it would be June 28th, 1776.

14:43 - That was the Friday before the debate about independence

14:47 - was set to resume on Monday, July 1st, which would have been a nice round number

14:52 - for a national birthday if they could have agreed

14:55 - to something in one day.

14:58 - So this image of June 28th, you can now see that the committee

15:02 - is in the foreground because they're presenting the draft.

15:06 - Declaration of Independence to John Hancock,

15:09 - who is seated there as president of the Continental Congress.

15:13 - And over his shoulder is Charles Thompson, the secretary of the Congress.

15:17 - This particular copy of the declaration, the committee draft that was handed over

15:23 - and was part of the actual deliberations in Congress, does not survive.

15:29 - Pauline Mayor, who wrote a terrific book on the declaration

15:32 - called American Sculpture.

15:33 - She describes the drafting process

15:36 - as a puzzle for which we may never have all the pieces.

15:40 - And I like to use that metaphor a lot, because it helps explain

15:44 - why we don't know exactly who wrote what, who edited what, who suggested what.

15:49 - We don't have all of the copies that must have been part

15:52 - of the process of drafting and making changes and voting.

15:56 - What we do have is a handful of documents in Thomas.

16:00 - Jefferson's hand, a copy and John Adams hand.

16:04 - And then we have, what are known as the fair

16:07 - copies of the draft Declaration of Independence.

16:10 - This particular one is two sheets, front and back,

16:14 - at the American philosophical Society,

16:17 - these fair copies Jefferson created so that he could send the committee draft

16:22 - to his friends and allies, basically fishing for compliments,

16:27 - saying the final version approved by the Continental Congress

16:31 - is not as good as the committee draft was.

16:35 - So this particular

16:36 - copy Jefferson sent to Richard Henry Lee, who, although he proposed

16:41 - the resolutions on June 7th, had then returned to Virginia.

16:45 - So he was not in Philadelphia for the debates

16:48 - about independence or the declaration.

16:51 - What's interesting about this copy is that sometime

16:53 - later, Richard Henry Lee's brother, Arthur Lee,

16:57 - who was a diplomat in Europe in 1776, he annotated this copy.

17:02 - So he underlined the passages that Congress cut,

17:06 - and he wrote some marginal notes.

17:07 - So you can keep track of what was in the final version and what wasn't.

17:13 - One particularly notable passage, and it is difficult to see

17:16 - because the paper has become so faded over time.

17:19 - But you should still be able to notice

17:21 - a long bracket in the margin and the word out.

17:26 - This would have been the final grievance

17:29 - of the Declaration of Independence, and this particular grievance is lengthy.

17:34 - It would have also been the longest.

17:36 - But in this grievance, Jefferson and the drafting committee, blamed.

17:41 - King George the Third for the colony's reliance on the transatlantic slave trade.

17:47 - And so this particular passage talks about the evils of a system

17:52 - where men, meaning people,

17:55 - are bought and sold at auction.

17:58 - You can see men in all caps.

18:00 - Jefferson rarely used a capital letter in his life.

18:04 - So the to put something in all caps really emphasizes that word.

18:09 - This particular grievance was cut, and there's been,

18:12 - quite a bit of discourse about the reasons why perhaps it was the southern colonies

18:17 - who did not want this to be within the declaration.

18:20 - I think what is sort of easiest to wrap our heads around

18:24 - is the list of grievances in the Declaration of Independence.

18:29 - All these complaints about King George

18:32 - the Third could be read in reverse as a list of things

18:36 - that will no longer be permitted in the independent United States.

18:41 - So if you have a grievance about this evil practice

18:46 - and then it continues in the independent United States,

18:50 - then that would open you up to significant accusations of hypocrisy.

18:55 - So this particular grievance has gained a lot of traction

18:58 - in recent years, especially in civic education, to talk about

19:01 - the collaborative process of writing the declaration,

19:05 - and also what might have been if this grievance had been included.

19:10 - Richard Henry

19:11 - Lee received this copy of the declaration, along with one of the final

19:16 - printed versions of the text, to compare the two.

19:20 - And as Jefferson wanted, Lee wrote back and he said, you're right.

19:24 - They mangled the declaration.

19:28 - He said, however, the thing

19:32 - is, in its nature, so good

19:34 - that no cookery can spoil the dish for the palates of freemen.

19:39 - The thing was independence.

19:42 - It almost didn't matter what was in the declaration,

19:45 - because they had finally achieved what Lee and Jefferson and Adams

19:48 - and all these people had been working towards, which was independence itself.

19:52 - No cookery could spoil that dish.

19:56 - One important point about these fair copies

19:58 - and about the draft declaration in general, we all know it today.

20:02 - We can look it up online.

20:03 - We can see the, Jefferson Papers at Princeton,

20:07 - have a fantastic website analyzing the draft.

20:10 - We have access to that.

20:12 - But no one outside of the Continental Congress's

20:15 - immediate network, their wives, their family members, their friends knew

20:20 - what was in the draft declaration of independence in 1776.

20:25 - And actually, they did not know for 30 years.

20:28 - The draft was not made public until the untimely death of George

20:33 - with one of Virginia's delegates who, like Richard Henry Lee,

20:37 - had returned to Virginia.

20:39 - Jefferson sent him a fair copy, which you can see here.

20:43 - In 1806,

20:44 - 30 years later, when Jefferson was president,

20:48 - West was murdered by his grandnephew, who was looking to get his inheritance

20:52 - a bit early and put arsenic in the coffee for the household.

20:57 - And the very pro Jefferson,

21:00 - printer of a Richmond newspaper in Virginia,

21:04 - got his hands on with papers including the fair

21:07 - copy of the declaration and printed it for the first time.

21:11 - So after years of speculation and, you know, praising Jefferson

21:15 - for being the author, finally in 1806, people actually knew

21:19 - what had been in the draft versus what was in the final version.

21:23 - So we have that knowledge today.

21:25 - But in 1776, they would not have had that knowledge.

21:29 - What they would have had is the printings of the Declaration of Independence,

21:34 - beginning with this first one, John Dunlap's broadside.

21:38 - Dunlap had a printing office at the corner of Second and Market Streets

21:42 - in Philadelphia, and he would have worked through the night.

21:46 - On July 4th, after the Continental Congress voted

21:49 - to approve the declaration, and through the day on July 5th.

21:54 - And then he would have handed a stack, probably hundreds of broadsides,

21:58 - back to the Continental Congress to be sent out through official channels.

22:02 - And then also some delegates sent them to friends and loved ones,

22:07 - just to orient you to how the declaration looks on the page,

22:11 - you can see the bold title at the top of the document,

22:15 - and then the opening two paragraphs, beginning with that big initial W.

22:19 - That's the preamble of the declaration, and that's

22:23 - where we find the parts of the declaration that are most familiar to us.

22:26 - 250 years later,

22:28 - all men are created equal life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

22:32 - That's all there.

22:33 - Then the longest stretch of the document

22:36 - is the list of grievances about King George the Third.

22:40 - And then the final

22:42 - paragraph is the actual Declaration of Independence.

22:45 - That's the formal resolution that marks the transition from dependent

22:50 - British colonies to the free and independent United States of America.

22:55 - I like to remind people that the declaration didn't need to be this.

22:59 - It could have taken any form.

23:01 - Everything that comes before that final paragraph was optional.

23:05 - That was Jefferson's design.

23:07 - This document becomes the originator of the genre

23:11 - and other independence movements use this as the model.

23:15 - But it didn't have to be this.

23:16 - It didn't have to be this length.

23:19 - The Congress ultimately cut about a third of what was in the committee draft,

23:23 - both slashing longer passages like that one particular grievance,

23:27 - but also just tightening up Jefferson's language because he was pretty loquacious.

23:32 - So the declaration could have taken any form,

23:36 - and it effectively was a press release.

23:39 - It was explaining this decision to declare independence from Great Britain.

23:44 - So if we think of it in that sense, it is news, right?

23:48 - It is something that needs to be distributed quickly.

23:51 - There needs to be process that people need to have access to.

23:55 - And the Continental Congress in that final paragraph

23:57 - said that they solemnly publish and declare this information.

24:01 - So they are thinking about publishing in two senses of the word

24:05 - in printed copies, like this broadside, which was a poster

24:09 - sized sheet that could be put up in public spaces.

24:12 - But also publishing orally, reading the declaration aloud.

24:17 - The first public readings of the declaration happened

24:21 - on July 8th in the greater Philadelphia area.

24:25 - The one that gets the most attention is the one that was

24:27 - outside of Independence Hall on July 8th at noon.

24:32 - And when we think about these public readings

24:35 - of the declaration, and you'll have plenty of opportunities

24:37 - this summer to attend a reading of the declaration, if you so choose.

24:42 - We tend to focus on the reader,

24:44 - the person who was up on a platform, on the steps of a courthouse,

24:49 - sometimes on top of a horse, was the best that they could do.

24:52 - But, you know, elevated above the crowd, reading the declaration aloud.

24:57 - In this case, outside of Independence Hall, the reader was John Nixon,

25:01 - who was a colonel in a battalion of Pennsylvania Associated.

25:06 - And John Adams complains

25:08 - that John Nixon had an annoying voice.

25:11 - So maybe that's why he was picked in this time before amplification.

25:15 - Maybe you need that guy with the annoying voice to read the declaration.

25:20 - So we know about Nixon.

25:21 - We have accounts in the newspapers about the crowd

25:25 - that there were hundreds, if not thousands of people in attendance.

25:29 - But we tend to lose sight of the experiences

25:33 - of the people who were in those crowds.

25:35 - And I've tried to reconstruct some of that in my book.

25:38 - One person who we know was in the crowd outside of Independence.

25:42 - Hall on Monday, July 8th, was James Fortin.

25:45 - And if you take a look at his dates, you may notice he was a child.

25:49 - He was nine years old when he stood in the crowd

25:52 - and heard the Declaration of Independence, read aloud for the first time,

25:57 - fought and went on to become one of the most successful black

26:00 - entrepreneurs in Philadelphia, as well as a leading abolitionist

26:04 - and he remembered back to this moment

26:06 - of hearing the declaration read aloud,

26:09 - and you can see how it inspired his later work.

26:13 - It's inspired him to fight for independence as well,

26:17 - so I think it's worthwhile to pay attention to the experiences

26:20 - of the people who were in those crowds.

26:22 - Hearing the declaration read aloud.

26:25 - Another reading that happened on July 8th was on the other side

26:29 - of the Delaware River in Trenton, and you can see this mural depicting it,

26:34 - at this reading outside of the county courthouse.

26:38 - Now, the reading that happened in Trenton is particularly interesting to me

26:42 - because the declaration was read alongside the new Jersey.

26:46 - Constitution, which had been passed on July 2nd.

26:50 - And what's interesting about the new Jersey Constitution

26:53 - is that the final article of that Constitution said that

26:58 - if we reconcile with Great Britain, then

27:01 - this entire document is null and void.

27:05 - So you can imagine the cognitive dissonance

27:07 - of being in that crowd in Trenton and hearing the declaration,

27:11 - but then also but if we reconcile, never mind.

27:14 - It would have been kind of jarring to experience.

27:18 - And people in the Continental Congress, including John Adams,

27:21 - wrote to some folks in new Jersey and said,

27:23 - did you really have to include that last article?

27:27 - So these experiences of public readings,

27:30 - so far have been ones where we know it was a Dunlap broadside.

27:34 - It was a Dunlap broadside that traveled to the greater

27:37 - Philadelphia area over to new Jersey.

27:40 - Let's take a moment to trace the Dunlap broadside a little bit further.

27:44 - And this particular one is on view at the Museum of the American Revolution.

27:48 - Right now in the Declaration's journey here, you can see Jonas Phillips,

27:53 - who was a Jewish merchant in Philadelphia,

27:56 - and he sent this Dunlap broadside to a relative in Amsterdam.

28:02 - We have Jonas Phillips, his portrait on view.

28:04 - Perhaps we should have his wife Rebecca's portrait as well.

28:08 - She was part of a prominent Sephardic Jewish family in New York.

28:13 - Jonas Phillips came to North America as an indentured servant,

28:17 - so after he worked off his indenture, he moved to New York.

28:20 - He married Rebecca and used her connections

28:23 - to establish his mercantile business, and they had 21 children together,

28:28 - so she gets her due.

28:31 - So Jonas Phillips sent this copy,

28:33 - one of the first printings of the declaration, to Amsterdam.

28:38 - Or at least he tried to do so.

28:41 - He sent it through the Dutch Caribbean,

28:44 - and he enclosed it in a letter, and the outside of that letter

28:47 - is franked by Jonas Phillips, his contact on the island of Saint You. Status.

28:52 - So we know it made it there,

28:54 - and he signed off and put it on a ship intended for Amsterdam.

28:58 - Unfortunately, that ship was intercepted by the British

29:03 - and Jonas Phillips.

29:04 - This copy of the declaration never reached its intended destination.

29:09 - His relative, Gumbel Sampson

29:11 - so Gumbel Samson, was a merchant in Amsterdam, part of Phillips's

29:16 - extended family, and so Phillips wrote this letter enclosing the declaration.

29:20 - And for those who are looking on the screen,

29:22 - this may be difficult to see, so I'll zoom in a bit.

29:24 - Is that better?

29:28 - Jonas Phillips wrote this letter in Yiddish

29:32 - because he understood the perils of transatlantic communication

29:36 - at this particular moment,

29:37 - and so he wrote it in the language that he and his recipient could read

29:42 - by anyone who intercepted the letter, probably wouldn't be able to read.

29:46 - Now, if you're a British officer and you find this letter

29:51 - with a copy of the declaration inside, and it's dated Philadelphia,

29:54 - July 1776, and this kind of looks like it's written in code.

29:59 - You might think you hit the motherlode, right.

30:01 - This might be some super secret spy craft.

30:05 - Unfortunately, no.

30:06 - Jonas Phillips just wrote about his family, his business.

30:10 - He did share his initial thoughts on independence and how the confederation

30:14 - of the colonies looks similar to the Dutch Republic, where Samson lived.

30:20 - And we know that he wrote intentionally in Yiddish,

30:23 - because at one point he says, I could explain myself better in English.

30:27 - So this just gives you a sense of how people were thinking

30:30 - about themselves within the world in 1776,

30:34 - that he's trying to communicate the declaration across the Atlantic,

30:38 - but also knows it's a possibility it might not get there.

30:43 - And just to show you, this is the Dunlap broadside,

30:46 - which ended up in the intercepted papers in the British National Archives

30:50 - for the last 250 years and has now returned to Philadelphia.

30:54 - We do have to send it back, but at least it was able to come back to Philadelphia.

30:59 - The British National Archives has one of the best collections

31:02 - of copies of the declaration, which is pretty funny,

31:05 - but it reflects the fact that a lot of copies

31:08 - of the declaration ended up in British hands.

31:11 - And you can see that the stamps Her Majesty's State Paper Office.

31:16 - One footnote to this story about the Phillips

31:18 - family is that Jonas and Rebecca's daughter, Rachel,

31:22 - had a son named Uriah Phillips Levi,

31:25 - who became a Commodore in the US Navy

31:27 - and purchased Thomas Jefferson's Monticello plantation.

31:32 - He saved it from falling into ruin effectively,

31:35 - and so his mother, Rachel Jonas, and Rebecca Phillips, his daughter,

31:39 - actually spent the final years of her life at Monticello, and she's buried there

31:44 - now. Jonas.

31:45 - So it's a story, is a reminder that Dunlap broadsides,

31:51 - could, have some wayward journeys

31:53 - and no one experienced that, more profoundly than Silas Stein,

31:58 - who was the Continental Congress agent that they had sent to France,

32:03 - to try to foster some relations with the court of Versailles.

32:07 - And poor Silas Dean, wrote at the end of 1776

32:12 - that he presented the declaration to the court of Versailles

32:15 - after it had indeed become an old story in every part of Europe.

32:20 - So what happened?

32:21 - Why did it become an old story before Dean was actually able

32:26 - to present the declaration, ultimately in November of 1776?

32:31 - Well, what happened is the Continental Congress,

32:33 - within a few days of July 4th, tried to send a Dunlap broadside

32:38 - to Silas Deane, but it was thrown overboard.

32:43 - The captain of the ship, entrusted

32:44 - with the information for Dean, was given instructions that,

32:49 - if he encountered a British vessel, he should throw the package overboard.

32:53 - And of course, the ship hadn't

32:54 - even left the Delaware River when he encountered a British ship over.

32:58 - The declaration goes so all of this is to say this.

33:02 - This is just the Dunlap broadsides.

33:04 - We haven't even gotten to the rest of the printings of the declaration yet.

33:08 - But I think you'll agree with me.

33:10 - And this is one of the premises of the book

33:13 - which is publishing the news of independence was messy.

33:17 - It was messy, both in the sense

33:19 - of the materiality of copies of the declaration.

33:22 - There's a reason why there's ink splatters on the cover of my book.

33:26 - There's ink splatters on the declaration, different copies.

33:30 - There's dingy paper typos, all sorts of material evidence

33:34 - of the process of declaring independence.

33:37 - But it was also messy because it was inefficient at times,

33:41 - and things did not go as the Continental Congress might have hoped.

33:46 - So let's take another look at

33:47 - some of the printings of the declaration that came after Dunlap,

33:52 - beginning with Benjamin Towne, and his Pennsylvania Evening Post,

33:56 - the first newspaper printing of the Declaration of Independence.

34:01 - He issued this newspaper on Saturday, July 6th.

34:03 - He had a tri weekly schedule at a time when most newspapers were once a week.

34:08 - And so he was able to beat out his competitors

34:11 - in Philadelphia, including John Dunlap.

34:14 - The declaration was printed in every active newspaper in the United States.

34:19 - The declaration was also quickly translated into German.

34:23 - Within a few days of July 4th, the declaration appeared in the biweekly

34:28 - German newspaper the ShotSpotter, and it was created as a broadside.

34:33 - Now, the intent behind broadsides was to be posted up

34:37 - in public spaces or used for public readings,

34:40 - so the existence of a broadside in German

34:44 - implies readings of the declaration in German and communities

34:48 - where the declaration was posted up in public spaces in German.

34:52 - And as someone descended from

34:54 - people who probably learned the news of independence in German,

34:58 - this is one of my favorite copies of the declaration.

35:02 - Now, I couldn't come to.

35:03 - Washington's crossing without talking about the big man himself.

35:08 - George Washington received the news of independence

35:11 - and follow the Continental Congress.

35:12 - His instructions to have it read to the Continental Army in Manhattan on July 9th.

35:18 - So only five days after the Congress approved the text,

35:23 - and he wrote back to John Hancock that the declaration had the soldier's

35:26 - most hearty assent, the expressions and behavior of officers and men

35:31 - testifying their warmest approbation of it.

35:35 - However, that evening something else happened in New York

35:40 - the gilded leaden statue of King George

35:43 - the Third, came tumbling down.

35:46 - Accounts differ.

35:48 - As to who was to blame for this,

35:51 - destruction of the King's statue.

35:54 - Some people did attribute it to soldiers, some to, you know, common civilians.

35:59 - And as described in the newspapers,

36:01 - the Sons of Freedom were the ones responsible.

36:05 - And the statue was laid prostrate in the dirt,

36:07 - the just desert of an ungrateful tyrant.

36:10 - And you can see the paw tail of the horse who did nothing wrong.

36:14 - The horse was not a tyrant.

36:16 - But the tale survives in the New York Historical Society's collections.

36:22 - The rest of the statue was carted off to Connecticut to be melted down

36:26 - and turned into bullets, to be fired back at the British forces.

36:32 - So George Washington didn't necessarily disagree

36:35 - with this statue of the king coming down.

36:39 - But he disagreed with the manner in which it came down.

36:41 - And so the following day, in his general orders,

36:44 - he said, though the general doubts, not the persons who pulled down

36:48 - and mutilated the statue, were actuated by zeal in the public cause.

36:53 - Yet it has so much the appearance of riot

36:56 - and once of order in the army that he disapproves the manner of it.

37:02 - And this was a challenge

37:03 - because the Continental Congress had declared independence,

37:07 - but it was up to the Continental Army to secure the independence.

37:11 - And Washington understood that the eyes of the world were on New York.

37:16 - They were watching the Continental Army.

37:18 - And any incident like this that could be perceived as sort of mob

37:22 - activity would not reflect well on the Continental Army.

37:27 - Now, we talked about messiness in the sort of diplomatic sense with Silas.

37:31 - Dean's example, the messiness of the statue

37:34 - coming down and soldiers being caught up in that story.

37:39 - But I do love some typos. So.

37:40 - So let me show you, a particularly messy copy of the declaration.

37:45 - This is the Massachusetts Spy, which for a long time was run by Isaiah

37:49 - Thomas, who literally wrote the book on printing in America.

37:55 - But he handed control of his newspaper over to two men

37:58 - who, by Thomas's own account, were not very good at it.

38:01 - And you can see the evidence of that in these two excerpts that I've pulled out.

38:06 - The the very famous second sentence

38:08 - of the declaration says, we hold these truths to us.

38:12 - Self-evident, not quite right, that all men are created equal,

38:17 - that they are endowed by their creator

38:19 - with certain unalienable rights.

38:22 - And then the final paragraph of the declaration talks

38:24 - about the free and independent states.

38:27 - So not the most efficient work there, but it does show

38:32 - the speed at which printers were trying to get the news of independence out.

38:36 - These typos did not have a huge impact on how people read the declaration.

38:41 - But they do show us the number of hands involved

38:44 - in the process to stay in Massachusetts.

38:47 - There's another copy, that's a particular favorite of mine.

38:50 - This is a broadside, again, a poster sized sheet, which was printed,

38:55 - by a sort of coalition of printers

38:57 - in post British evacuation Boston.

39:02 - And this particular broadside is annotated

39:04 - and you can see the list of grievances is numbered.

39:08 - So it begins 1 to 3.

39:10 - And then towards the end of the list it says 2527, corrected to 26.

39:15 - We've all done that.

39:16 - I love the the annotations on this because it shows deep

39:19 - reading of the declaration.

39:22 - So the question is who was reading the declaration?

39:24 - This intently?

39:26 - Thankfully, he signed the declaration just below John Hancock's

39:29 - name, agreed by Daniel Gould.

39:33 - So who's this Daniel Gold?

39:35 - Well, thankfully again, he left us a note on the back.

39:40 - So on the

39:41 - back of the declaration, there's a few different annotations

39:44 - from when it was folded up, labeled, unfolded, folded back up again, labeled

39:48 - but this is the note that is particularly important.

39:52 - And in this note, Daniel Gould says, I bought this

39:56 - when the Declaration of Independence was first celebrated in Boston

40:00 - in the year 1776, when I was a soldier in the Continental Army.

40:06 - Isn't that great?

40:07 - We have very little evidence of individual soldiers

40:11 - engaging with the Declaration of Independence,

40:14 - and this is the most material evidence we have.

40:17 - Right?

40:17 - This is an individual soldier buying a copy of the declaration

40:21 - and not only holding on to it, but marking it up, making it his own.

40:26 - This particular Daniel Gold was hard to track down

40:29 - because gold was a popular surname in Massachusetts at this time.

40:34 - But I was able to figure out, because he left this note, why?

40:37 - He was in Boston in July 1776,

40:40 - when most of the Continental Army had moved on to New York or up to Canada.

40:45 - And the reason was he was one of the lifeguards

40:48 - for Major General Artemus Ward.

40:50 - So even though the rest of the soldiers that he had, you know, grown up with and

40:55 - been with since the battles of Lexington and Concord, had moved on to New York.

41:00 - Gold had stayed in Boston and purchased this declaration.

41:05 - Another Massachusetts

41:07 - story, gives us the first formal acknowledgment

41:11 - of the independent United States of America.

41:14 - And it doesn't come from France.

41:16 - It doesn't come from a European power.

41:18 - It comes from our indigenous neighbors.

41:21 - So there was a group of, well, those two quick and Mi'kmaq chiefs

41:25 - who had come down from like New Brunswick and Maine, to meet with George Washington

41:31 - outside of Boston, didn't know that he had already left for New York.

41:35 - So the Massachusetts, you know, provincial officials,

41:39 - quickly organized some treaty, conversations.

41:43 - And in the middle of these treaty conversations, the declaration arrives.

41:47 - And so the next day, when the meetings resume,

41:51 - these Massachusetts officials say, hey, we've got some news.

41:54 - And they translate the declaration into French

41:58 - for the indigenous chiefs who knew that language and could further translate it.

42:03 - And one particular Willow Creek chief, Ambrose Bear,

42:06 - responded, at least according to the treaty minutes.

42:09 - We like it. Well,

42:12 - now, those four words,

42:13 - whether they're the actual words he said, are a translation or summary of them,

42:18 - those four words are the first formal acknowledgment of independence,

42:23 - and it comes within two weeks of July 4th.

42:26 - And by sheer coincidence of this treaty meeting happening at the exact moment

42:31 - that the declaration arrives in Massachusetts, you can see Ambrose Bear's,

42:36 - pictogram at the bottom of the treaty, which is known as the Treaty of Watertown.

42:41 - And the last paragraph of the Declaration of Independence

42:44 - was incorporated into the first paragraph of this treaty.

42:50 - Now, I've talked about positive responses to the declaration,

42:53 - but I do want to leave a little

42:55 - bit of space for the negative responses to the declaration.

42:59 - And there's one chapter in the book.

43:00 - It's actually the last chapter that I wrote,

43:03 - which is about Anglican ministers

43:06 - and how the declaration impacted them.

43:09 - Which was really interesting because they had sworn an oath at their ordination

43:14 - to King George the Third as the head of the Church of England.

43:18 - So if that was your ordination oath, what do you do after the.

43:21 - Declaration of Independence?

43:24 - One particular,

43:25 - Anglican rector who got caught up in this, was Jacob Duke,

43:29 - the rector of Christ Church in Philadelphia.

43:32 - And what you're looking at here is a page from

43:35 - Christ Church's Book of Common Prayer,

43:38 - where the prayers for King George, the Third were actually crossed out

43:43 - immediately after the Declaration of Independence,

43:46 - and in one case replaced

43:48 - with a new prayer for the Continental Congress.

43:52 - Dash did this, sort of against his will,

43:56 - hoping that the church

43:56 - would be able to stay open and, you know, navigate this tricky situation.

44:01 - And a few days after this, he was also named chaplain

44:04 - of the Continental Congress, also against his will.

44:09 - A year later, when the British occupied

44:12 - Philadelphia, Dutch was able to preach

44:15 - and openly pray for King George the Third in Christchurch.

44:19 - And when he walked out of the church building, British officials

44:23 - arrested him because he was the chaplain of the Continental Congress.

44:27 - So the guy could not catch a break.

44:30 - And he wrote a

44:31 - letter to George Washington saying, can't you please convince

44:34 - the Continental Congress to rescind this declaration

44:38 - of independence?

44:41 - Now, I mentioned Silas Deane and the perils

44:44 - of transatlantic communication, in 1776.

44:48 - So it's the declaration took a long time to get to Silas in, in France.

44:54 - That begs the question, how did it get across the Atlantic?

44:57 - How did it become an old story by the time Deane had access to it?

45:02 - And the answer is British mail ships.

45:04 - So you can see here that the declaration traveled on ships

45:08 - from New York over to London.

45:11 - It took about five weeks for the declaration to cross the Atlantic.

45:15 - It was printed in London, and then from there

45:17 - spread through European newspapers.

45:21 - This is the first printing of the Declaration in London

45:24 - on August 16th, 1776.

45:28 - By Henry Sanson would fall in the public Advertiser would fall had warned

45:32 - his readers the day before that the declaration would be in

45:35 - the next day's issue, so it seems like he had advanced access to the text.

45:40 - That same day,

45:41 - the declaration was also printed in Lloyd's Evening Post.

45:46 - But you can see it looks a little different.

45:48 - The specific reference says to King George the Third as a tyrant,

45:53 - have been replaced with long dashes.

45:56 - So this was a self-censorship strategy

45:59 - because the Declaration of Independence is all about King George the Third.

46:03 - So that makes it a dangerous document to print in the British imperial capital.

46:08 - This was one strategy, another strategy employed, the next day in the Daily.

46:13 - Advertiser was to just skip over the list of grievances.

46:17 - And in this case, they said the Congress recite a number of proceedings

46:22 - detrimental to the colonies, most of which have been already mentioned.

46:27 - Right. These were all in previous petitions.

46:29 - We don't need to print them.

46:31 - These

46:31 - strategies for printing the declaration were then copied

46:36 - by other European newspapers.

46:39 - When the text was translated.

46:41 - This particular example is from a newspaper in Harlem in the Dutch Republic.

46:46 - And you can see not only the long dash replacing the word tyrant,

46:51 - but also a bracketed note saying here, the the Continental Congress

46:55 - repeated their previous complaints about the King.

46:58 - Well, unfortunately for the printer of this Harlem newspaper,

47:02 - his readers actually wanted to read the list of grievances.

47:06 - So in the next issue, he had to issue, this apology, saying,

47:11 - I didn't know

47:11 - you actually wanted to read the grievances about King George the Third.

47:15 - So now I'll print them for you.

47:17 - But because he had censored the reference to the king

47:20 - for the first grievance, he had to say he.

47:23 - And then in parentheses, namely, the king.

47:26 - So it just shows you a glimpse at the European reception of the declaration.

47:32 - Now, the one copy

47:33 - that I have not mentioned so far is perhaps the most well known.

47:38 - The signed parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence.

47:41 - You can see on the right the actual parchment,

47:44 - which is in the National Archives.

47:46 - The image on the left is much more familiar to us.

47:49 - This is an engraving that was created, in the 1820s,

47:53 - by which point the declaration was already starting to fade.

47:56 - And so this engraving captured what not only the handwritten text,

48:00 - but also the signatures, looked like on the declaration in the book,

48:05 - I describe the signed copy of the declaration

48:09 - as timeless in the worst sense of the word.

48:12 - Let me explain.

48:14 - The parchment has the date at the top

48:17 - in Congress July 4th, 1776,

48:21 - but this parchment did not exist on that date.

48:24 - The parchment was not ordered until later in July,

48:27 - and it was not ready for signing until August 2nd.

48:31 - So this July 4th date, creates some confusion.

48:35 - And if you really want to,

48:37 - you know, outsmart your friends, there's two 50th

48:40 - when people say July 4th, 2026 is the 250th

48:43 - anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

48:46 - And believe me, a lot of people are saying that you can say, oh no, no,

48:50 - it was not that date.

48:51 - July 4th is the day that the declaration was approved.

48:55 - Signing happened later.

48:56 - The Continental Congress focus was on publishing the declaration

49:01 - before signing it.

49:03 - Additionally, in terms of timelessness,

49:06 - there are 56 names on the signed copy of the declaration,

49:10 - representing 56 men who were never in the same room at the same time.

49:15 - If we actually look at the signatures as they appeared on August 2nd,

49:19 - I've crossed out the names of the men who were not in Philadelphia either.

49:23 - They had left the Congress and hadn't yet returned, or they were not yet members

49:28 - of the Continental Congress.

49:29 - In the case of Matthew Thornton from New Hampshire, one interesting,

49:33 - sort of caveat with this is most of these names that are,

49:38 - you know, signers who came on later are at the bottom

49:41 - of the delegations, but not Virginia.

49:44 - And you can see that Thomas Jefferson was the first Virginia signer

49:48 - of the Declaration on August 2nd.

49:51 - But he left room above his name for George

49:55 - with and Richard Henry Lee to sign when they came back to Philadelphia.

49:59 - So even though Jefferson put author of the Declaration

50:02 - of Independence on his tombstone, and was very proud of that fact

50:06 - when it came to signing the declaration, he actually left space

50:09 - for the sort of elder statesmen of the delegation.

50:14 - Now, if we think about this long period of time

50:17 - when the declaration is being signed all through the fall, you know,

50:19 - members are coming back to Congress and signing it.

50:22 - It coincides with, not great times for the Continental Army

50:26 - and the Continental Congress in December, of 1776,

50:32 - Robert Morris, one of the Pennsylvania delegates in Congress,

50:36 - sat down with a heavy heart to write to Silas Stein in France,

50:41 - because the Continental Congress had to evacuate Philadelphia,

50:45 - worried that there would be a British attack on the city.

50:48 - And Morris, by his own account, was the only remember,

50:52 - only remaining member of Congress in the city.

50:55 - And so he writes this long letter to Dean, really encouraging him.

50:59 - We need an ally. Please work on France.

51:03 - We need to have an ally.

51:04 - Things are not looking good.

51:06 - Unfortunately for Morris, he could not send his letter.

51:08 - Every time he tried.

51:10 - There were British ships patrolling the river.

51:14 - So that brings us to January of 1777,

51:17 - by which time Morris still was not able to send his letter.

51:21 - But as he wrote this detention affords me the pleasure of giving you

51:25 - a detail of what has passed since the 20th of December,

51:28 - when the above was written, and thank God the picture

51:31 - will be more pleasing to you, as the reality has been to me.

51:35 - Because things took a turn.

51:37 - Someone crossed the Delaware River on Christmas.

51:41 - There were some successes for the Continental Army.

51:44 - In the light of this sort of change for the Continental Army,

51:49 - the Continental Congress made the decision to print copies of the declaration

51:53 - with the names of the men who had signed so far,

51:57 - and they gave this task because they were in Baltimore,

52:00 - to Baltimore printer Mary Katherine

52:03 - Goddard, who was also the postmaster of the city at this time,

52:06 - and she created these broadsides with John Hancock, sent out to each of the states,

52:12 - to lay the foundation of each state's archive.

52:15 - Now, I say, the men who had signed by that time, because Thomas McKean of Delaware

52:20 - had not yet signed the parchment copy of the declaration.

52:24 - And so his name does not appear on Goddard's printing.

52:27 - So it's another reminder that although this time, when the declaration

52:31 - was news comes to a close with Goddard's printing, the messiness continues.

52:38 - If you're watching this or,

52:40 - if you're in the room and unable to stay for our, signing this evening,

52:44 - and you would like to learn more of the stories behind the declaration,

52:49 - you are welcome to, purchase the book, and you can save

52:52 - a little money ordering directly from Oxford University Press.

52:55 - I want to thank you all for your attention this evening, and I look forward

52:58 - to your questions.

53:09 - Thank you so much.

53:10 - It was wonderful.

53:13 - Does anyone have any questions?

53:18 - Yes, I know I can count on you.

53:29 - That was a great talk.

53:30 - I'm sure it's in the book, but, how many of these Dunlop,

53:34 - broadsides were printed and how many survive?

53:37 - So we don't know the exact number of Dunlop broadsides that were printed.

53:42 - It must have been in the hundreds.

53:44 - Historians have, estimated maybe 200 or printed.

53:49 - But he certainly was working, a really,

53:52 - you know, long shifts to try to get them printed as quickly as possible.

53:56 - About two dozen survive.

53:59 - And there are different iterations of Dunlap's broadside.

54:02 - There's the sort of initial run.

54:04 - At one point, he, he had Philadelphia in the imprints of his broadsides.

54:09 - At one point, he switched out Philadelphia to Baltimore,

54:12 - where he had a second location of his printing office.

54:15 - Perhaps that's evidence that he wanted to make a buck off

54:19 - selling the declaration at his other location.

54:23 - And then he also printed,

54:25 - a completely different type setting on parchment,

54:28 - which would have been a more durable thing to print on than paper.

54:33 - So there's, a number of Dunlop broadsides

54:35 - that survive, given the total run,

54:39 - and a lot of them are going to be on view this year for the two 50th.

54:45 - I want to echo thank you so much for the talk.

54:47 - It was awesome.

54:49 - My question is to the speakers of the declaration

54:52 - when it was in the different towns and wherever it was,

54:54 - did they have any criteria of who would speak it, or was it just

54:58 - then the leader of the town, Ric, had a good voice,

55:00 - like what was kind of the background in the who got selected?

55:03 - That's a great question. Thank you.

55:05 - So in a lot of cases, the sheriff was tasked with reading the declaration.

55:10 - And technically

55:11 - it should have been the sheriff who did the reading in Philadelphia.

55:14 - For whatever reason, William DeWeese, the sheriff, gave the responsibility

55:18 - to John Nixon.

55:19 - Maybe it was his annoying voice.

55:22 - But in a lot of places, it was the sheriff who read it aloud.

55:25 - And then in Massachusetts, there's an interesting distribution strategy.

55:30 - Where the declaration was sent out to ministers,

55:33 - and they were the ones who were instructed to read the declaration aloud,

55:37 - which worked pretty well for getting the news to the people,

55:40 - but not so well for the ministers who were Anglican

55:43 - and not necessarily supportive of the declaration.

55:47 - And in some cases they refused to read the declaration.

55:50 - So, largely we see it, coming out of the mouths of sheriffs, you know,

55:54 - respected public officials, people with experience speaking.

55:59 - So a few years ago,

56:02 - a copy of this was found behind a painting.

56:06 - It was added in early copy or later copy.

56:09 - So, there was, Dunlap broadside that was found, behind the painting.

56:14 - And sort of started the trend of Dunlap broadsides

56:18 - being valued in the multi-millions and everyone thinking they found

56:22 - a special copy of the Declaration of Independence, hiding somewhere.

56:26 - There are certainly more copies of the declaration

56:28 - out there than the ones that we know about.

56:31 - But don't feel like you have to open up all your frames.

56:33 - It's probably pretty rare occurrence.

56:38 - Who's your favorite signer?

56:41 - Interesting question.

56:45 - I so I will give a little bit of credit

56:48 - to Josiah Bartlett from New Hampshire.

56:51 - His letters to his wife, Mary.

56:53 - About the declaration and sort of the process.

56:55 - He was on the Articles of Confederation drafting committee.

56:58 - His letters are really interesting.

57:00 - He also, I think we can blame, for the size of John Hancock's signature,

57:06 - because John Hancock signed the way he always signed a document.

57:10 - And then Josiah Bartlett

57:11 - was the first signer after Hancock, and his signature is pretty small.

57:16 - And all of the other New England signers kind of followed that size.

57:20 - So it's probably Josiah Bartlett's fault that John Hancock's

57:23 - John Hancock is so well known.

57:27 - Hi. Thank you for your talk.

57:29 - It was awesome.

57:30 - I just have a question about the printers who actually printed the broadsides.

57:34 - What kind of danger or repercussions might they have suffered due to the printing?

57:39 - It's a great question.

57:40 - So within the US,

57:43 - not really, you know, too much danger.

57:46 - And in some cases, printers were among the most sort

57:48 - of patriotic, outspoken people in their communities.

57:52 - When the declaration traveled overseas,

57:55 - London printers definitely were worried about printing the declaration.

57:59 - And we see those self-censorship strategies.

58:03 - Then by the time we get to Mary Catherine Goddard's broadside,

58:06 - I think there was some risk of publishing the names of the signers because,

58:11 - you know, that's the list of the people to hang if things don't go well.

58:15 - And she typically printed under her initials, Mark Goddard.

58:19 - So it wouldn't be necessarily obvious that she was a female printer.

58:23 - But on the broad sides of the declaration, she prints her full name.

58:26 - So it's as if she's signing her life, her fortune, her sacred

58:29 - honor, the same way these 55 men were.

58:33 - So she recognized the risks?

58:35 - Certainly.

58:36 - I think things look different in the winter than they had in the summer.

58:43 - Do we know how many

58:44 - drafts were made of the declaration?

58:47 - Great question.

58:48 - We don't, we know there are pieces of scrap paper

58:52 - that are in Jefferson's papers at the Library of Congress,

58:56 - which were, you can sort of piece together and get some glimpses of

59:01 - what must have been a lot of copies that were moving across his desk.

59:06 - One of the challenges of figuring out the drafting process,

59:10 - and I talk about this a little in the book,

59:12 - is that the men at the center of the story, Jefferson and Adams,

59:16 - who were, among the longest lived signers, had terrible memories.

59:20 - Neither of them could really remember what happened.

59:23 - When the fair copy, that was Richard

59:26 - Henry Lee's, was deposited at the American Philosophical Society, the library.

59:31 - And there reached out to Jefferson

59:32 - and said, what can you tell me about this copy?

59:34 - Is it one of the drafts?

59:36 - And Jefferson's response is literally like, I don't know,

59:39 - like he does not remember the process.

59:42 - I think it's fair to assume that there were a lot of, at least partial drafts.

59:48 - And what Jefferson does say is that when a copy got so covered

59:52 - in notes that it was illegible, that's when he created a fresh copy to work with.

59:57 - 363 So that tells us that there must have been a lot more than what survives.

01:00 - 02.708 All right.

01:00 - 04.343 Thank you.

01:00 - 07.770 I know there's no such thing as a dumb question, but this comes pretty close.

01:00 - 13.419 In the movie 1776, there's a confrontation between

01:00 - 19.058 Jefferson and Adams on the word unalienable and inalienable.

01:00 - 19.426 Yeah.

01:00 - 23.519 Is there any mention of that, that that confrontation actually took place.

01:00 - 27.833 So, the the way it plays out in the musical is based on the fact

01:00 - 31.737 that the copy of the declaration, the draft and Adams's handwriting,

01:00 - 35.774 which he perhaps sent home for his wife Abigail, to read, has one

01:00 - 39.702 version of the word and Jefferson's drafts have another version of the word.

01:00 - 42.848 And then you look through the printings, and there is some back

01:00 - 45.875 and forth between inalienable and inalienable.

01:00 - 48.787 I think it's more a product of different spelling choices

01:00 - 53.016 in 1776 than any deliberate sort of measure one way or the other.

01:00 - 59.064 And today,

01:00 - 01.800 early leaks are a way of,

01:01 - 03.902 influencing policy.

01:01 - 06.605 Was there no

01:01 - 11.034 leaking of any of these discussions ahead of time to kind of influence,

01:01 - 14.113 the outcome of the declaration, you know, beyond

01:01 - 17.140 the people that were actually in the room or the committee itself.

01:01 - 20.586 You know, I did an event last week where I had a similar,

01:01 - 23.613 question like, who would have leaked if there had been a leak?

01:01 - 26.225 The answer is Thomas Jefferson.

01:01 - 29.662 But no, the Continental Congress proceedings were secret.

01:01 - 33.990 They were, very intentional about the fact that the doors needed to be closed.

01:01 - 39.395 The, the records of who said what were not kept, they were not written down.

01:01 - 43.409 So all that we have is sort of memories and, you know, accounts

01:01 - 46.469 written later, or letters describing what happened.

01:01 - 49.982 I say Thomas Jefferson would have been the one to leak it

01:01 - 53.443 if it had been, because the one piece of evidence that we do have,

01:01 - 56.021 comes from Jefferson where

01:01 - 59.315 he, in a letter back to Virginia,

01:02 - 04.387 he was complaining about not quite having enough support, from the colony.

01:02 - 06.699 And he said, you will have my creed

01:02 - 09.826 in the form of a declaration, which is forthcoming.

01:02 - 14.697 So clearly he was like, you know, spoiling that the declaration would be coming.

01:02 - 18.577 And then additionally, in John Dunlap's Baltimore newspaper.

01:02 - 22.371 So his second location, we see the only reference,

01:02 - 25.417 to the declaration,

01:02 - 27.619 being sort of in the press,

01:02 - 30.646 that says it's the work of an eminent Virginian.

01:02 - 34.359 And so that shows that Jefferson or

01:02 - 37.920 someone else was talking about Jefferson's role as author.

01:02 - 42.167 But I think based on the, the fact that he sent out the fair copies,

01:02 - 45.361 he was trying to, you know, get people's feedback on,

01:02 - 48.931 the final version versus the version he preferred.

01:02 - 52.211 If there had been, a leak or if the media was similar

01:02 - 55.338 then to what we see today, I think it would have been Jefferson.

01:02 - 58.685 Thank you

01:02 - 01.711 for so much for your wonderful talk.

01:03 - 06.091 I grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, and I.

01:03 - 09.928 And I've got two friends that I'd love to share your talk with.

01:03 - 14.123 And I was wondering if there will be any way to get a copy of it.

01:03 - 15.135 Absolutely. Yeah.

01:03 - 16.702 We're a live streaming on PCN,

01:03 - 20.163 and then, Washington Crossing will also have the video to share.

01:03 - 23.509 We want to make it available to everybody.

01:03 - 26.536 So we're going to do what we can for that.

01:03 - 31.107 But I love that question.

01:03 - 32.552 Thank you

01:03 - 35.578 for the book and and for this talk.

01:03 - 39.115 So you talked about the secrecy in,

01:03 - 43.028 Independence Hall, but there was a lot of less

01:03 - 47.089 formal conversation at City Tavern and other places.

01:03 - 50.536 Was this discussed there?

01:03 - 52.037 Absolutely. Yeah.

01:03 - 56.132 The the taverns would have been a good place to eavesdrop on the conversations.

01:03 - 57.766 Jefferson kept,

01:03 - 01.146 a sort of accounting of his expenses.

01:04 - 05.908 So we know just how often he was eating out in the summer of 1776.

01:04 - 09.378 And you can imagine that some of the committee conversations or the sort of,

01:04 - 13.125 extended debriefs after meetings in Congress

01:04 - 16.919 would have happened in the tavern, in the coffee house.

01:04 - 19.965 We know that as the news of independence spread, it

01:04 - 22.701 also spread through those places pretty quickly as well.

01:04 - 24.403 So, yes. Absolutely.

01:04 - 27.430 So the tavern, the other taverns in town would have been the place to go,

01:04 - 30.566 rather than Independence Hall to hear information.

01:04 - 34.847 This tavern here,

01:04 - 37.349 we're going to have, after

01:04 - 40.376 this question, one more.

01:04 - 41.854 Thank you.

01:04 - 43.755 Thank you for the presentation.

01:04 - 46.258 Great. Excellent.

01:04 - 47.826 Two real quick questions.

01:04 - 51.787 One is, were you saying, like there was no recording secretary

01:04 - 55.725 at work during the conversations?

01:04 - 57.836 There was.

01:04 - 58.171 Yeah.

01:04 - 01.197 Congress had a secretary, Charles Thompson.

01:05 - 04.776 But when they met in the committee of the whole, which was all of the delegates

01:05 - 10.215 meeting together, Thompson did not keep a record of what was being said.

01:05 - 12.217 And, you know what was being debated.

01:05 - 13.086 Okay. Thank you.

01:05 - 15.387 And real quick,

01:05 - 18.156 certain lectures mentioned about, Thomas.

01:05 - 21.284 Paine and his influence,

01:05 - 26.398 with the five person committee almost being like a ghost writer.

01:05 - 27.966 Some people.

01:05 - 29.368 Do you have any comment?

01:05 - 31.503 Paine definitely was in conversation

01:05 - 33.338 with the men who were working on the declaration.

01:05 - 38.167 He also had been the author of the viral sensation Common Sense, which really,

01:05 - 43.139 develops this, popular understanding of the need for independence.

01:05 - 46.184 We don't know if he specifically contributed

01:05 - 50.289 to the language of the declaration, but we do know that he was working

01:05 - 53.316 in sort of a clerk capacity and had the connections.

01:05 - 56.528 And, you know, it's possible that maybe there's,

01:05 - 01.057 some pieces of the declaration that came, you know, from Paine's influence.

01:06 - 05.661 But, yeah, he was one of the people who was sort of in the mix, in Philadelphia.

01:06 - 08.674 Can you speak a little

01:06 - 12.844 about the hold up, before the signing

01:06 - 17.106 as it relates to slavery and some of the southern,

01:06 - 19.985 colonies?

01:06 - 20.653 Absolutely.

01:06 - 24.423 So, the in the days leading up to the vote

01:06 - 28.393 for independence, when the debate resumes on July 1st, we again

01:06 - 33.055 have minimal records from the moment most of it's recollections from later.

01:06 - 36.659 But what Jefferson says is that,

01:06 - 40.839 this issue of addressing the transatlantic slave trade

01:06 - 44.166 and the idea of the reliance of the colonies on slave labor,

01:06 - 47.879 was something that South Carolina and Georgia objected to.

01:06 - 52.050 And Jefferson also says he suspects that the northern brethren,

01:06 - 55.478 the New England delegates, objected a bit as well,

01:06 - 59.115 because New England benefited from the enslaved labor

01:06 - 02.918 of the South on the sort of triangle trade, with the Caribbean.

01:07 - 06.188 So we know that it was a major topic of discussion.

01:07 - 11.761 At the same time, the declaration, has become such a symbol

01:07 - 15.907 for, black civil rights in the United States.

01:07 - 18.543 The language of all men are created equal.

01:07 - 20.312 And life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

01:07 - 24.216 was being used for abolitionist causes in 1776.

01:07 - 25.350 Immediately.

01:07 - 28.220 And we see the trajectory through Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther.

01:07 - 32.048 King, Jr of interrogating the declaration and using that language,

01:07 - 37.696 first in anti-slavery capacities and then, for black civil rights more generally.

01:07 - 41.323 So, we know that slavery was a topic of discussion.

01:07 - 44.560 We know that slavery did not end up in the declaration.

01:07 - 48.330 And it's the start of this sort of complicated,

01:07 - 51.676 let's put it off for the next generation strategy

01:07 - 54.379 that people like Jefferson were undertaking.

01:07 - 57.406 I wish we had more evidence of what, actually,

01:07 - 00.052 conversations that happened in the room.

01:08 - 03.355 But it's up to, you know, historians like me to try to piece it together

01:08 - 04.580 to the best of our abilities.

01:08 - 07.793 I fibbed one point.

01:08 - 09.528 One more.

01:08 - 12.197 This is really it.

01:08 - 15.491 Thank you again very much for a very informative discussion this evening.

01:08 - 20.463 You mentioned on the 15th of May was when the resolution was decided

01:08 - 23.899 in regards to, putting together a declaration.

01:08 - 28.413 At the same time, actually on the 17th,

01:08 - 31.574 there was a request or there was a resolution from Congress,

01:08 - 36.679 as well, to have a day of thanksgiving and fasting and prayer.

01:08 - 40.792 Another one of your coincidences or can we see a connection

01:08 - 45.764 there, given the fact that there a lot of focus on the 17th of March of.

01:08 - 51.069 May this year for, actually a rededication of the nation under God?

01:08 - 54.539 Because when you look at the Declaration of Independence, there are four different

01:08 - 59.502 references to, right to divine providence and divine or creator.

01:08 - 00.346 Not as that one.

01:09 - 03.014 I just interested in your your coincidence.

01:09 - 03.282 Yeah.

01:09 - 06.308 So in that case, the Congress had ordered this,

01:09 - 09.221 feast day, the day of thanksgiving and prayer,

01:09 - 12.457 ahead of time because they needed to get the word out

01:09 - 14.626 to everyone from New Hampshire down to Georgia.

01:09 - 18.330 So they had scheduled that May 17th, day.

01:09 - 20.198 Well, in advance.

01:09 - 23.235 But we do have members of Congress who are reflecting on

01:09 - 25.504 the sort of providential nature of,

01:09 - 30.332 having this, important resolution quickly followed in Philadelphia, at least,

01:09 - 33.645 by this day of prayer and reflection,

01:09 - 36.672 and support for, the fight for independence.

01:09 - 39.651 So, yes, there's, there's interesting moments like that, but

01:09 - 43.722 it's also a reminder that, you have to plan quite a bit ahead of time

01:09 - 47.249 if you want to have a collective effort stretching across the colonies.

01:09 - 50.853 At a time when information took days, if not weeks to spread.

01:09 - 54.733 Thank you.

01:09 - 57.760 Thank you all.

01:10 - 02.407 And thank you.

01:10 - 06.001 Thank you all for coming and joining us here at Washington Crossing.

01:10 - 08.813 Thank you all for joining us virtually.

01:10 - 11.840 And in, recorded session later.

01:10 - 16.612 And again, thank you to America to 50 PA

01:10 - 19.915 for your support and your friendship and,

01:10 - 23.552 helping us with this program and everything that you do.

01:10 - 27.256 Again, for those of you who are with us today,

01:10 - 31.269 you're invited to join us in the Riverview Room for a book signing.

01:10 - 34.673 If you already have your book perfect, you can get right in line.

01:10 - 38.677 If not, that's okay because we have some in

01:10 - 41.680 the gift shop if you're interested, and then you can get it signed here.

01:10 - 45.217 So everybody should enjoy. Again, thank you.

01:10 - 49.688 And please look at, the parks, the website for the Friends

01:10 - 55.451 Washington Crossing park.org to see our next lecture.

01:10 - 00.055 We'll have one in partnership with the American Philosophical Society and August.

01:11 - 05.303 We'll have another one in September with our guests, our friends

01:11 - 11.267 from the Mercer Museum talking about the Jones and Taverns in Bucks County.

01:11 - 14.713 And we're going to feature Augustine Willett, who was a tavern

01:11 - 17.916 owner and crossed the Delaware and October.

01:11 - 22.378 We're going to have Don haggis here, and he is going to talk about Roger lamb.

01:11 - 26.548 And finally, in December, we're going to welcome back

01:11 - 30.419 front of the Park, Larry Kidder, who will be talking about

01:11 - 34.833 the book that he has coming out in the fall, called Reference Tree,

01:11 - 40.796 where he talks about all of the December crossings that took place in 1776.

01:11 - 43.708 So please join us for that as well.

01:11 - 44.732 And thank you.

01:12 - 23.548 The following program

01:12 - 27.443 was financed by a grant from America 250 A.