The story of July 4th is messier than you remember

10:08Denise Kiernan:Taking away charters. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us. One of the ones that we hear often, he has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

10:24Denise Kiernan:I'm curious who their audience was. Were they writing this so that King George III would read it? Were they writing it for all the people they were representing in the colonies to sort of feel like they were unifying as a country?

10:38Walter Isaacson:Yeah, there were three or four audiences. The people in the American colonies. You have to remember, at the beginning of 1776, most Americans did not want a break from England. They wanted representation, but they were not trying to overthrow the control of the king.

10:57Denise Kiernan:England's enemies.

10:58Walter Isaacson:Our revolution against England was actually a part of a much larger war, which was a war basically between France and England. Then we're going to make it part of this larger war and France will support us.

11:12Denise Kiernan:And their colleagues in Congress. This would have to go on to be approved by Congress itself, right? They need votes from representatives from the 13 colonies, north to south. By early July, their draft was ready, and they took it to Congress. But before the language could be finalized, a vote was set for July 2nd, 1776. The vote on July 2nd is, are we going to declare independence from England? If the answer was no, the declaration of independence would be stopped in its tracks. There was an incredible amount of debate. The evening before the vote, they took an informal poll, and... It did not appear it was going to pass.

12:00Denise Kiernan:Coming up, the midnight ride that saves the Declaration of Independence.

12:14Denise Kiernan:Hi there, this is Francesca Violich Kennedy. I'm calling in from Brooklyn, New York. You're listening to ThruLine from NPR. This message comes from MidiHealth. CEO Joanna Strober shares why they started a virtual care platform for women in paramenopause and menopause. Our goal at Midi is to make sure that all women have access to really expert care, starting around 35 and 40, making sure that they get access to all the things that can help them thrive as they're growing older. MidiHealth. Committed to helping women in midlife with paramenopause and menopause care. Accessible via telehealth visits.

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13:33Denise Kiernan:Part 2. The Midnight Ride.

13:40Denise Kiernan:On the night of July 1st, 1776, Caesar Rodney received an urgent message. You have to get up here. He was in Delaware, his home state, overseeing some military plans. The message said a vote was set to happen in Congress the following day in Philadelphia to decide whether they would declare independence from England. And at that moment, the two other Delaware delegates were divided on that question, one for, one against. Without Cesar Rodney's vote, Delaware would be counted as a stalemate, and the vote might fail. And Rodney was not a physically particularly well man. He was described as, quote, the oddest looking man in the world, tall, thin, and slender as a reed, pale, his face is not bigger than a large apple.

14:32Denise Kiernan:Severe asthma and a long battle with facial cancer had left him disfigured and frail. But he rides through the night, 80 miles on horseback, thunder echoing above him, rain pouring down on him, mud everywhere. And he makes it just in the nick of time to vote on July 2nd. Still in his riding clothes, Rodney arrives, a scarf wrapped around his scarred face, and he casts the deciding vote for independence. Legend has it, he said, quote, as I believe the voice of my constituents and of all sensible and honest men is in favor of independence, and my own judgment concurs with them. I vote for independence.

15:26So then, if the vote happened on July 2nd,

15:29Denise Kiernan:why do we commemorate July 4th? Yes. What's the big deal about July 4th? So basically, between the 2nd and the 4th, now you have Congress has to approve this language that the Committee of Five came up with. The vote on the 2nd established, yes, they are declaring independence. But they needed to have the language in that declaration approved by Congress, which wouldn't happen until the 4th, after more tweaking. And in some cases, a lot more than tweaking. A lot of the language around slavery was taken out. The Committee of Five's version had a whole section condemning the king for his role in the slave trade.

16:09Denise Kiernan:He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, He has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce, referencing a promise of freedom that was made to enslaved individuals if they were willing to leave their own slavers and join up with the British, which did have a very significant impact on how the war played out in certain parts of the colonies.

17:04Denise Kiernan:That whole thing was struck. They were not mincing words. But many Americans in the colonies were profiting from the slave trade and the industry it propped up. So before the declaration could be approved by enough members of Congress, that passage was cut. Now, everybody can debate whether or not you should have made those compromises.

17:29Walter Isaacson:You can have historians say that was evil. In some ways it was. You could also have a story and say, if you didn't do it, you would never have the colonies creating a union.

17:43Denise Kiernan:Jefferson himself was a slave owner. They knew that the gap between the words that they were writing and the reality that they were living and that the country was going to be living for the foreseeable future were going to be at odds.

17:59Walter Isaacson:Jefferson himself wrote that sentence while he's enslaving people.

18:04Denise Kiernan:Around this time, Jefferson was enslaving close to 200 people.

18:09Walter Isaacson:So yeah, you got a lot of contradictions in there. It's an incredibly important moral issue. But it wasn't the main issue that they had to contend with. Probably the main issue was, were we a federation of states, or were we one nation? Should Congress have equal votes for state? Should it be proportional representation?

18:31Denise Kiernan:A lot of the thorniest questions remained unanswered, a problem for another day. But on that day, July 4th, 1776, a revised version of the Committee of Five's Declaration of Independence was approved. Now they needed to let the world know about it. So July 4th, it goes to printer John Dunlap, who prints up 200 copies. And this is not one of the things about the Declaration of Independence is we think there's that one really pretty copy with the great handwriting that everybody signed. That's not the case. Not all the pretty. Nothing fancy. Straight up typeset.

19:11Walter Isaacson:The day they write the Declaration, parchment copies go out and they ride from Philadelphia to the southern tip of Manhattan in New York.

19:20Denise Kiernan:Continental Army headquarters is in New York City at this time.

19:24Walter Isaacson:That's where George Washington and his troops are.

19:27Denise Kiernan:George Washington says, I want the Declaration of Independence to be read aloud to the troops.

19:34Walter Isaacson:They're still trying to convince people in the colonies.

19:38Denise Kiernan:Estimates range, but it's believed that at no time did more than 45 percent of colonists support the war. And around a third of colonists fought for the British.

19:48Walter Isaacson:So you got to unify the country. You got to get Europe on our side. And maybe you have to explain to yourselves, this isn't just about taxes on tea or a Boston tea party or a problem we're having with poliment over stamp acts or something. We now are on a larger mission. We're creating a new type of nation.

20:09Denise Kiernan:And this document is telling the troops and the world what that new nation is going to be.

20:18Denise Kiernan:Everybody has to show up. As Washington's colonels begin reading the declaration out loud, the soldiers are taking it in calmly. And then it starts getting into, hey, we're really mad about X, Y, and Z. Which really riles them up.

20:37Denise Kiernan:A massive riot erupts in Lower Manhattan, what is now Lower Manhattan.

20:45Denise Kiernan:that becomes very focused on this huge statue of King George III in Bowling Green, this little tiny park in lower Manhattan. It got ropes. People managed to topple it and tear it down. It was gilt over lead, so it wasn't solid gold. And in those days, people were interested in the lead because that was used to make ammunition. One of the eventual signers of the Declaration of Independence, Oliver Walcott of Connecticut, who was also serving in the military as an officer, he's like, we need to get this to Connecticut. So they get as many chunks of the statue as they can. they get it out of Manhattan they get it across the sound they get it overlanding Connecticut to his backyard in Litchfield and behind Walcott's house Walcott's wife Laura and his daughter Marianne and people they gathered from the community begin melting down King George's statue into bullets.

22:00Denise Kiernan:And Oliver Walcott keeps meticulous records of who did what. And in the end, there were more than 40 ,000 bullets made from this statue that was toppled in Bowling Green because George Washington said, we need to read this document aloud to the troops and to the people. A chunk of those bullets ended up being used, and they later referred to those bullets as melted majesty because they had melted down King George. I mean, talk about heavy-handed symbolism, right? The Declaration of Independence leads to this statue being melted down into bullets that would return back towards the king's army. Yeah.

22:48Denise Kiernan:And it's interesting because it gets at something, right? That the declaration, even then, even, you know, within a couple weeks of it being drafted and approved by Congress, begins to take on a life of its own. And have an impact. I mean, we were already fighting, right? We already had a standing army. There had already been battles. There had already been death. We'd already had naval ships from Britain ravaging our seacoast, as they say. It is something else to put in writing, hey, hey, this is who we are, this is what we stand for, and this is what we're not going to stand for anymore. By the end of 1776, the tide was slowly beginning to turn.

23:28Denise Kiernan:Washington and his troops were having more luck on the battlefield. But most people in the colonies still had no real sense of who had signed on to this declaration. The copies that had been passed around were unsigned. And in some ways, the anonymity was an obstacle to unity. Because how could a farmer in South Carolina or a cobbler in Massachusetts know for sure if their colony was a part of this vision of a new nation? Coming up, Congress decides to let their constituents and the British crown know exactly who is behind those words.

24:13Walter Isaacson:Hi, this is Rob from Arlington, Virginia.

24:16Denise Kiernan:You're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

24:28Denise Kiernan:This message comes from Granger. This is the story of The One. As a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility, he knows keeping the line up and running is a top priority. That's why he chooses Grainger. Because when a drive belt gets damaged, Grainger makes it easy to find the exact specs for the replacement product he needs. And next day delivery helps ensure he'll have everything in place and running like clockwork. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done. This message comes from Alloy Health. Menopause doesn't mean stepping back.

25:05Denise Kiernan:It means getting the right support to keep moving forward. With the right care, you can stay focused, confident, and fully present. Alloy connects you with menopause-specialized doctors for personalized solutions so you can thrive in midlife. Right now, new customers get$20 off site-wide when you visit myalloy.com and use code NPR. Part 3. The Commons In January 1777, a printer in Baltimore named Mary Catherine Goddard was tasked with printing a new version of the Declaration. That features individual colonies and the names of the people who signed on. 55 names in total. Well, 56 if you include Mary's name at the bottom.

25:56Denise Kiernan:The first female postmaster of the United Colonies and the only woman to have her name on the Declaration of Independence, Mary Catherine Goddard. It's heightened risk for everyone, including her, right? Anyone whose name is public at that point suddenly has potentially a target on their backs if the war goes wrong. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If it goes terribly wrong, that's not a name you would want out in the public.

26:23Denise Kiernan:When you're talking about unity as a concept, like if I'm someone sitting in South Carolina or in Virginia and I'm just like a regular person, seeing my representative there is different than a kind of vague, like, we're all unified now. Absolutely. So that does seem really significant in terms of selling the idea to the people that we are actually one united country. That's right. Absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. It's not just the handful of guys in Philadelphia who were making this decision. It is representatives from throughout all 13 colonies, including Georgia, including South Carolina. They can look and say, oh, Edward Rutledge is on board with this, you know, or, you know, Richard Henry Lee or George Walton from Georgia, you know, who's off fighting and gets, you know, injured in the, in the battle of Savannah.

27:15Denise Kiernan:These were guys out there leading troops and representing their colonies, melting bullets in their backyard. I mean, they had a real stake in what was going on. They had a personal stake. They were not detached from the ills and the struggles of what was happening. The Revolutionary War would continue for another six years. There were countless battles and moments before and after the declaration was announced that helped shape the course of the country. And yet, it was July 4th that stood out as the pivotal moment when the nation became a nation.

27:54Walter Isaacson:We celebrate July 4th. And we started celebrating it pretty soon after the founding. Within 10, 15 years, the 4th becomes a holiday.

28:06Denise Kiernan:It's a touchstone for what the signers aspired for America to be, in a sense.

28:13Walter Isaacson:I'm really not particular fans of people who say we were totally conceived in evil and demonizing all the founders or people who are sugarcoating and canonizing the founders. We were humans when we started this country and we are humans now. We can decry the founders from making a compromise that allows South Carolina to sign the declaration. but we can also say, as Franklin did, when we were young tradesmen in Philadelphia, we had a joint that didn't hold together. You'd take from one side and take from the other, and you had a joint that would hold together in centuries. And so, too, we here must each part with some of our demands.

28:55Walter Isaacson:And his point was that compromises may not make great heroes, but they do make great democracies.

29:03Denise Kiernan:It feels like we live in a time where compromise is a lost, art.

29:09Walter Isaacson:It's a lost art and it's partly due to people like you and me in the media. I'm not throwing NPR under the bus here. But once you get cable news networks where people have to demonize or canonize somebody in a quick soundbite or a 140-character post, you're not encouraging people to say, oh, I kind of see their point and I'm going to change my opinion a little bit. And you just get tagged as a waffler or somebody who changes their minds. And we're not good at compromise. We're not good at humility.

29:44Denise Kiernan:But Walter says throughout American history, people have returned to the Declaration of Independence and the second sentence in particular to find a way through the problems of their time. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

30:12Walter Isaacson:People die on battlefields in Gettysburg fighting to get closer to a country in which all men, all people, are equal.

30:21Denise Kiernan:Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation.

30:30Walter Isaacson:And as Lincoln will say, when he's consecrating their graves, they died trying to make that sentence a little bit more true. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal. Whether it's a Seneca Falls Declaration of Women, in which they invoked the sentence to say it really should be all men and women are created equal. This nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. Whether it's Dr. Martin Luther King invoking that sentence in his speeches. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

31:16Walter Isaacson:At times, history and fate meet at a single time, in a single place, to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. Whether it's Lyndon Johnson invoking the sentence when he signs a civil rights bill. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. In the late 1960s, you had the assassinations of Kennedys and Kings. And then you had the Vietnam War. You had Watergate. You had the urban riots. You had the resignation of a president. For our 200th anniversary, we rang the Liberty Bell. The tall ships came into our ports.

32:13Walter Isaacson:We put aside some of our differences. And we kind of healed during the bicentennial. We all watched the same fireworks. We all ate soggy hot dogs. This is not happening this time around, which is a shame. Because I started writing this book a year ago. and John Meacham started writing American Struggle and Ken Burns was doing his documentary. Rick Atkins, we're all doing books that maybe if they come out the year of our 250th will cause people to rally together.

32:49Denise Kiernan:I appreciate the spirit of what you're saying, right? But when you think about the wars that the U.S. is waging directly in the case of Iran, in the case of Gaza indirectly with weapons. When you think about the state of the economy and the fact that so many people are struggling, when you think about all these layers of very real issues, what some might say is a kind of imperial identity that the U.S. has taken on, is it enough to heal through something like the declaration?

33:23Walter Isaacson:But do you think our challenges now are that much worse than the late 60s? I think things are very bad now. I'm just saying we've been through this before. We went through it in the McCarthy era. We certainly went through it in the Civil War. We went through it in the late 60s. Can America come together and heal is a good question. But as a historian, you say, well, we've certainly done it before. I'm somewhat optimistic that at some point a group of political leaders is going to emerge who are going to run on the idea that we're not a red nation or a blue nation, that we share more values than we disagree on, and that we should all heal and come together.

34:15Denise Kiernan:Heal and come together feels like a far cry from where we are right now as a nation. And it's hard not to ask a different question. What would the founders think of the system in place today, where corporations are king, and where many feel a sense of injustice about how they fit into that equation?

34:34Walter Isaacson:We've hollowed out a middle class in America. So it's not just the extremes of the politics. It's also people got left behind by an era of globalization. And so we have to be sensitive of why are they picking up their pitchforks? Why are they voting for everybody from Donald Trump to Mom Donnie? Well, because they're feeling the system didn't work very well, and they have some truth to that.

35:00Denise Kiernan:When should you choose to create a new system versus try to reform the old one? How do you compromise on matters of life and death? There's no easy answers. But Walter says, for starters, we have to find more ways to connect with each other.

35:15Walter Isaacson:So one of the things that has held our country together is a notion of common ground. And that's physical at times. You build Boston Common so people who don't have land, there's a place where they can graze their herds and bury their dead and plant their gardens. And John Locke in the second treatise teaches us, and he's a big supporter of private property. He says you only can do that if enough is left in common for others. You have to rebuild a common ground where everybody feels they've become part of the process and that their kids will do better than they did.

36:00Walter Isaacson:We all go to different entrances in the stadiums now. We have VIP entrances. We have divided ourselves far too much. And as John Hancock would tell us, let's see if we can try to hang together instead.

36:29Denise Kiernan:And that's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Adelfattah. Throughline was created by me and Ramtin Adablui. This episode was produced by me and... Casey Miner. Devin Kadiyama. Sarah Wyman. Amy Padula. Kiana Moghadam. Julia Redpath. Skylar Swenson. Liana Semstrom. Irene Noguchi. Jasmine Romero. Thank you to Johannes Durgey, Matthew Pollack, Cheyenne Butler, Yolanda Sanguene, and Tommy Evans. Thanks also to Dan O 'Neill for his voiceover work. Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vocal. This episode was mixed by Maggie Luther. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes...

37:17Denise Kiernan:And finally, if you have an idea or liked something you heard on the show, please write us at throughline at npr.org. And if you're open to us giving you a call back, leave your number too. We might feature your idea in an upcoming episode. Also, make sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify, or the NPR app. That way, you'll never miss an episode. And while you're there, feel free to leave us a review. Thanks for listening.

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38:33Denise Kiernan:For that, they need people, orchestration, and governance working as one. Dataiku is the platform for AI success, built to bring it all together. Visit dataiku.com slash NPR.