Pepperdine Law's Pulitzer Winner Edward Larson on the Spirit of 1776

The Learning Curve Ed Larson

Alisha Searcy: [00:00:00] Welcome back to The Learning Curve podcast. I’m your co-host, Alisha Thomas Searcy, with Center for Strong Public Schools, and joined again, our special guest co-host, former Supreme Court justice from the state of Minnesota, Barry Anderson. Welcome back two weeks in a row, Barry.

Barry Anderson: Yeah, I’m delighted to be here.

Uh, the search for a competent replacement co-host continues, and I’m sure you guys will find one soon. But until you do, I’m, I’m happy to fill in in this role, and I’m really happy to fill in today to visit with another one of our well-known academics with another great book about the founding era of the United States.

Alisha Searcy: Yes, very excited to have you back. [00:01:00] And of course, before we get to our guest, who I’m also excited to talk to, we’ve gotta talk about some news articles. So would you like to go first?

Barry Anderson: As a matter of fact, I’m gonna take you up on that offer, and I’m gonna talk about a article that the Minnesota Reformer had about records revealing another Minneapolis Public School accounting error.

This particular one was four point one million. The Reformer is an interesting publication. It’s got a little bit of an edge to it, but they do some really interesting investigative work, and they did a nice job on this piece. Before we talk about all the problems the Minneapolis Public Schools have, and they do have problems ranging from test scores and other issues, these are mostly about financial matters.

It’s worth noting that there are some really fine public schools in that district and many fine public school teachers in that district, but they have had problems. And The Reformer went through in great detail about this particular accounting error, noting that it is the third multi-million dollar blunder reported by the online Reformer and notes that there’s been [00:02:00] the departure of the district’s three top finance leaders.

The district’s had a collapse of enrollment in the last quarter century, but hasn’t closed a commensurate number of school buildings. That’s, of course, very controversial with residents of Minneapolis. And he noted at least two other previously unreported instances of missed funding. And I’m not gonna go through the article in detail.

I recommend it to people if you wanna have some indication of some of the difficulties here. And, and incidentally, they also noted that there was a December one deadline to correct some of these errors, and that was missed. So there have been lots of problems in this school district, and the school district has had multiple superintendents.

How that’s all gonna work out, we don’t know, but it does look like they’re on track to do something about these problems. I just note in passing, the Urban Debate League, which is an organization I have had something to do with, has done some really great work with Minneapolis Public Schools. So there are things to be done here.

There’s much to be corrected, but there’s also much good that gets done here as well, and we hope for the best here. Having [00:03:00] high-performing urban public schools is really important to the future of our country.

Alisha Searcy: Absolutely. As is accountability, right? And the effective use of tax dollars. So very, very important.

Barry Anderson: It’s a really good point there, and I just wanna note again that The Reformer here is doing its part as journalists to bring some of that accountability forward, and that’s a good thing too.

Alisha Searcy: And speaking of accountability, I wanna just talk for a second about an article that I came across in “The 74”, New York City parents think their kids are on track in reading, but are they?

This, of course, piqued my interest. I am deeply passionate, Barry, about accountability. You know, we often spout in this country, we’ve got these high graduation rates, but then when you look at reading proficiency rates, they don’t line up. And so in this particular article, there’s a survey that goes out in New York between February to April.

And so of the parents that were questioned, four hundred forty-six thousand or so responded, and they were strongly [00:04:00] positive about their children’s learning experience. For example, the article says ninety-two percent of parents of third grade students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that my child is progressing in reading the way I would expect.

But then when you look at NAEP scores, it tells a different story. That in fact, just forty-four percent of the students in third grade are proficient in reading. This is critical because we know there’s a disconnect between what parents see on report cards and then what test scores are saying. And I think also in this rhetoric that we’ve been hearing probably in the last ten years or so on both sides is, you know, tests don’t matter, all of these things.

And certainly we’ve got to have the right assessments. There’s no question about that. But if parents don’t respect the value of testing, if you will, and they’re only relying on report cards, I don’t think we’re telling parents the truth about how their students are performing. So this article is pointing out that in fact, test scores are important, [00:05:00] and those early grade results help us to understand strong performance in the future, and even points out a study from NWA that says only fourteen percent of students who start kindergarten in the bottom twentieth percentile eventually read proficiently by the third grade.

And so again, important article. We’ve got to value standardized testing, again, having the right assessment, making sure it’s aligned with the curriculum, giving us the information that we need so that when there are gaps, we can actually fill them and tell parents the truth about how their kids are performing so they can actually get the support that they need.

Barry Anderson: Yeah, and I, I will just comment on this, that Minnesota has seen some erosion in its NAEP scores here as well, and that led the legislature to adopt some of the science of reading improvements. Although, significantly, they did not go all the way that Mississippi went on the retention of students point.

Mm-hmm. And that’s a matter of some concern, but this is a real issue. And the good news here is, [00:06:00] you know, th-this is not a partisan issue. I mean, uh, both parties see that we’ve got a problem- Mm-hmm … and there’s been some progress in moving to, uh, improve those scores, and that’s a good thing and we hope that continues.

Alisha Searcy: Absolutely. Well, thank you for your article, and I think mine is deeply important. So as usual, we have to keep these conversations going and make sure that, uh, we have the right accountability systems in place. So when we come back, we’re gonna have on with us Professor Edward Larson, who is the Hugh and Hazel Darling Chair in Law and University Professor of History at Pepperdine University.

So stick around.

Professor Edward Larson is the Hugh and Hazel Darling Chair in Law and is University Professor of History at Pepperdine University. He has taught at Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, University of [00:07:00] Melbourne, leading university, and the University of Georgia, where he chaired the history department.

Larson is the author or co-author of 14 books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion; A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign; Franklin and Washington: The Founding Partnership; The Return of George Washington: Uniting the States, seventeen eighty-three to seventeen eighty-nine, a New York Times bestseller; and most recently, Declaring Independence: Why 1776 Matters.

He is interviewed frequently in the media, including The Daily Show, The Today Show, PBS, BBC, The History Channel, C-SPAN, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, NPR, and his articles have appeared in Nature, Atlantic Monthly, Science, Scientific American, Time, Wall Street Journal, American History, [00:08:00] and The Guardian, among others.

Larson graduated from Williams College, earned a PhD in history of science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a JD from Harvard Law School, and was awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Ohio State University. Welcome to the show, Professor Larson. Let’s jump in. In your book, you say, “America’s year of independence, 1776, began with virtually all those living in Britain’s 13 North American colonies content to remain under royal rule, so long as they could enjoy the basic rights of British subjects.”

End quote. Would you give our listeners a brief overview of your book?

Edward Larson: Sure. The book came about because as we were approaching the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of American Independence, we hear a lot about the Spirit of 1776, and so I was curious about why that [00:09:00] particular year mattered. If you think about it, America actually secured its independence with the peace treaty in 1783, and more critically, the warfare had really begun

Well, it sort of began, the, uh, resistance to British rule began with the Stamp Act crisis in 1765 and overflowed into open warfare in 1775, whether it’s the Battle of Lexington, Concord, or Bunker Hill. Why not the Spirit of 1775? And so I decided to bury … I love doing archival research, and I just buried into the writing.

I buried into the writings of the leaders of the time, the Washingtons, the Adams, the Franklins, people like this, the pamphlets of the time, the speeches, but also the writings of individual people, the soldiers in the field. Remember, the Patriots already had an entire army of 16,000 on the field around Boston in 1775, and Washington’s already in [00:10:00] command.

Their letters back home, the letters of constituents to delegates at the Continental Congress, the articles in newspapers, and essays and letters to the editor, and I tried to figure out what happened in 1776. What changed? And what I concluded was, just as you read from my book, that when 1776 began, virtually everyone, Washington, John Adams, you could just run down the list, what they were fighting for, what they said, was rights and reconciliation.

We want our traditional rights as English subjects of the Crown, and then we’ll reconcile. That’s what they were fighting for. By the end of the year, virtually all of them, a clear, controlling majority of those that cared about the issue had flipped over to say liberty and independence, that the liberty we’re seeking, the traditional [00:11:00] rights we’re seeking to establish, we can only have when we have our own representative government.

We’ll never get it from authoritarian rule out of England that doesn’t represent us.

Alisha Searcy: Makes sense. Thank you. Quote, “Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil. In its worst state, an intolerable one,” end quote, reads Thomas Paine’s 1775 to ’76 pamphlet, Common Sense, advocating for 13 colonies’ independence from Great Britain.

Professor, could you tell us about Thomas Paine, about Common Sense, and the wider impact of political pamphlets and treatises on the spread of revolutionary ideas in late 18th century colonial North America?

Edward Larson: Thomas Paine and his Common Sense pamphlet that you read from was the match thrown into the armory.

It [00:12:00] precipitated the explosion. It didn’t cause it About real estate, they say location, location, location. With historical events, it’s timing. And what Thomas Paine had done is at the urging of a pro-independence, as I said, most Americans were not supporting, most leaders, most people in the Continental Congress were not supporting independence in 1775, but there were a few that y- were.

And one was Benjamin Rush, and Benjamin Rush and Thomas Paine had become friends. Thomas Paine was a writer working on the only magazine in America at the time, the editor of it, in Philadelphia, and Benjamin Rush lived there. And Benjamin Rush and Thomas Paine had become close because they were both abolitionists, which was somewhat unusual at the time.

And Rush went to him and said, “What we need is a pamphlet arguing the case for independence.” And he then worked with Thomas Paine to write it during the fall of [00:13:00] 1775. Later on, late at that time, he drew in Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams, who were also early advocates of independence, and they sort of shop-worked it back and forth to get the tone just right.

And what Paine does is Paine builds on the logic of John Locke, in John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, which was, you know, nearly 100 years old at the time, but very influential among Whig thinkers. Whig thinkers were sort of proto Republicans. They wanted a Republican government. And he makes an argument for a new type of government, and that new type of government was one not under a monarchy or under authoritarian rule, but rather truly representative, and makes a long argument for that, makes an argument of why the English government is deeply authoritarian and utterly unrepresentative of the people.

He had some great lines like he argues that, “The [00:14:00] design and end of government, it’s freedom and security, and the happiness of individuals.” Those are the lines that Jefferson will later pick up, life, liberty, and happiness. They come from Paine and then from Adams, who then picks them up in his Thoughts on Government, which was the other really important pamphlet of 1776.

And he contrasts it with monarchy, which he says that, “Monarchy has laid not this or that kingdom, but the whole world in blood and ashes. In a republic,” he argued, “the mode of government is the mode of government that contains the greatest of individual happiness at the least national expense.” And he makes this argument and he ties it to Britain, and he explains how we can have something new under the sun, a type of government that will promote Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And as I say, timing was key because it comes out, becomes the best-selling pamphlet of the era at a time when newspapers, gosh, newspapers had a circulation of under [00:15:00] 5,000, even the biggest ones, of under 5,000. 100,000 copies of Common Sense flew off the patriot presses beginning in January and was issued.

And then as timing would have it, the same issue that it issues the newspapers that announced the Common Sense pamphlet contained the first publication in America of the King’s Speech, a speech from the throne given the following fall, where he outlines that he would crush the American Revolution, as he called it.

The patriots were in rebellion. They were committing tyranny. He’s, of course, speaking of Lexington and Concord, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the raising of a military there. And he said he’s gonna crush it with more troops, more ships, and Hessian mercenaries. Indeed, England sent 32,000 troops, the largest army they had ever assembled overseas, to crush the American Revolution.

And so the Common Sense, [00:16:00] the second edition, it sells out overnight. This new edition comes out a week later, and it includes a little addition that said, “Since the publication of the first edition,” remember that’s only a week earlier, “or rather on the same day that it came out, the King’s Speech made its appearance in this city,” meaning Philadelphia.

“Had the spirit of prophecy directed the birth of its production, it could not have brought forth at a more sensible juncture or at a more necessary time. The bloody-mindedness of the one,” that is the King, “showed the necessity of pursuing the doctrine of the other,” that is Common Sense. “Men read by way of revenge, and the speech, instead of terrifying, prepared a way for the manly principles of independence.”

So I argue it’s the King’s Speech as much as Common Sense that precipitated the change in feelings that we can never have rights and reconciliation. We can only have liberty with independence. [00:17:00]

Alisha Searcy: Yes. I love that. You say in your book, Declaring Independence, quote, “At the time, the battle lines around Boston had changed little since the Battles of Lexington and Concord nine months earlier,” end quote, and not at all since the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Would you discuss the military landscape of 1776 colonial North America and the ways in which it mirrored the wider political crisis between Great Britain and the 13 colonies?

Edward Larson: During the lead up to the American Revolution, you know, the British Parliament had issued the Declaratory Act, which declared that Parliament had full authority to rule over the colonies in all matters whatsoever.

And the king had backed up Parliament’s position that Parliament and the king totally ruled, controlled what happened in the colonies. And to back it up, they had sent troops to Boston, which seemed to them to be … They’d sent some to Virginia as well. Those seemed to be the two hotbeds [00:18:00] of rebellion in the colonies, so they wanted to crush those, and they, in Boston, after the Boston Massacre and then the Boston Tea Party, you have this 4,000 soldier army in Boston and a lot of ships.

And so there came the Battle of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill, and the 16,000-member colonial militia had surrounded these 4,000 British troops in Boston. Now, they were protected ’cause Boston was virtually an island back then, and they had the British Navy, and so they had sent Washington up to be in command.

So this much larger Patriot army militia could not actually reach the British in Boston, and Boston’s were sitting there. And so the focal point of everything in the colonies was this, the confrontation of the British Army in Boston surrounded by this much larger Patriot army, which had been adopted. It was mainly mostly New England militia, but had been adopted by the Continental Congress as the Continental Army with [00:19:00] Washington in charge.

And that’s where it basically stood, this standoff. Now, that was the military landscape when it began, but what the Patriots were doing is they knew they had to basically push the British out of Boston. And so a young, a very young, in his young 20s, artillery officer named Henry Knox came up with the idea that the Patriots had already taken Literally the entire rest of the colonies because there were no British troops.

But among the things they’d taken was the Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point, where the British had large cannons that had originally been installed there 10 years earlier, over 10 years earlier, for the French and Indian War to block the French from coming down through Lake Champlain. And so he had the great idea of getting those cannons and moving them to Boston, and people had had that idea before.

The British had known it was a possibility, because those cannons were big [00:20:00] enough that if you placed them on Bunker Hill, you could have blown the British out of Boston, which is why there was the Battle of Bunker Hill. The British had taken it, but there still were heights to the south of Boston at Dorchester Heights, where the Kennedy Presidential Library is now.

Mm-hmm. And if you’d placed them there, you could push them out. And so what Knox came up with the idea is we wait till winter, and we can slide them over the snow, drag these multi-ton cannons, these huge cannons, across the snow, and then place them in Dorchester Heights. And so that’s what happened over the winter, and it’s incredible maneuver.

Henry Knox had maneuvered these cannons over. Washington installed them on Dorchester Heights, and the British had no choice to leave. And so that was the landscape. The British had to retreat from Boston, or they would’ve been blown out of the city, and their ships would’ve been sunk in the harbor from Dorchester Heights.

But what the British were doing is instead of taking the troops home, they took them up to Nova Scotia, where they [00:21:00] reassembled in Halifax, quadrupled their number, and prepared for a massive invasion of New York City the next summer. Washington knew it was coming. He moved all his troops to New York City, and New York City would become the center of the storm, not only then, but throughout the revolution

Alisha Searcy: Fascinating.

Thank you for that. You also say in your book, quote, “A few radical delegates such as Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and Connecticut’s Roger Sherman seemed inclined toward separation as early as their attendance at the First Continental Congress in 1774.” And you go on to say, “But even Patrick Henry did not give his revolutionary give me liberty or give me death speech until 1775,” end quote.

So can you briefly talk to us about some of the political dynamics within the Continental Congress as well as the main legal conflicts between Great Britain and its North American [00:22:00] colonies in 1776?

Edward Larson: Sure. That comes down to the debate within Congress. The Patriots, really by 1774, were united in their demand for their rights.

You can see this in Thomas Jefferson’s great pamphlet in 1774 where he argues for rights and reconciliation, beautifully argues of how the British Parliament is taking away their rights. It begins, of course, with the Stamp Act imposing taxation without representation, but it expands way beyond that. The Quebec Act taking the frontier, a whole variety of acts, and then the Declaratory Act declaring that Parliament has a right to rule over the colonies in all manner whatsoever.

That’s the exact phrase. And so those were out there. And some people, some Patriots, Samuel Adams was early, Benjamin Franklin was early, he saw it up close being in London at the [00:23:00] time, maybe Roger Sherman, Patrick Henry said, “We can never get our fundamental rights, our birthright as citizens under the king as long as we’re being ruled by Parliament,” ’cause Parliament is representative of another group of people, a small group of sort of wealthy elites in England elected Parliament with a very narrow electorate.

And then the House of Lords, the other … That’s the House of Commons. The House of Lords, it’s even worse. They’re born aristocrats in the House of Lords. And so they’re hoping that the king will be their protector. The colonial argument was that the way the English constitution works is you have an elected parliament or assembly And those are directly under the king.

So their argument was in Virginia, we have the House of Burgesses, in Massachusetts, we have a representative assembly. In all the colonies we do, and they should be directly under the king. And the king is our executive. He can veto our laws. We have to work with him, but he [00:24:00] will protect our rights. And so they keep hoping in Jefferson’s pamphlet, in the Olive Branch Petition, even in the Declaration of Causes for Taking Up Arms issued in summer of 1775, when the Continental Congress adopts the militia, the New England militia surrounding Boston as their army and place George Washington in command.

Now remember, he takes command in August of 1775, not ‘6. Even when they’re doing that, they’re saying, “We remain loyal subjects of the king,” and they plead with the king to defend their rights versus Parliament. When the king rejects that in the King’s Speech from the Throne in the fall of 1775, and when new word of that reaches the colonies, and then followed by the Prohibitory Act, which the king approves, which declares the colonies in open rebellion, calls for a blockade of all colonial ports, a British blockade of all colonial…

A banning of [00:25:00] all trade by the colonies, by the 13 colonies. They cannot trade with anyone. They can’t trade with each other. They can’t trade with Britain. They can’t trade with British Caribbean colonies. A total blockade prohibiting Trade by the colonies as economic warfare against it. When they heard all this, this was the dynamic.

So before that, they were trying to get their rights through the king, and when they finally gave up because the Prohibitory Act and the king’s speech from the throne, they said, “We can never do it that way.” So the dynamics in Congress were who’s gonna control? The rights and reconciliation force led by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, very influential delegate on one hand, and John Adams had been on his side.

And then the other side, which Benjamin Franklin agrees with, and Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, that say, “No, independence and liberty.” And the dynamics are shifted, but what they do is up [00:26:00] until … It’s a gradual process from January through May. But by May, the liberty and independence side with John Adams now the prime mover shifting over and becoming the prime mover.

They gain control, and they pass a resolution in May over the objections of John Dickinson and the, the other side. They pass a resolution calling on all the colonies to get rid of their old colonial charters that put them under the king and adopt new state constitutions, and those new state constitutions, John Adams believed, will really

Which those new state constitutions made government instead of under the king under the people. In those, each state, John Adams maintained that that was the true declaration of independence.

Alisha Searcy: Wow. Thank you for that. So my last question before I [00:27:00] turn it over to my dear co-host for the day, Richard Stockton wrote, “The man to whom the country is most indebted for the great measure of independence is Mr.

John Adams. I call him the Atlas of American independence.” And we know Richard Stockton was a New Jersey delegate to the Second Continental Congress in 1776. He goes on to say, “He, it was, who sustained the debate, and by force of his reasoning demonstrated not only the justice, but the expediency of the measure.”

End quote. Professor, talk to us about John Adams and his classical liberal arts and legal education, and how that assisted his far-sighted political leadership in leading the cause of American independence.

Edward Larson: Oh, this is great. This builds perfectly on what I had just said. John Adams had not supported revolution.

He was, in 1775, he’d been a supporter of [00:28:00] rights and reconciliation, a very vocal and articulate one. John Adams had what you’d call a cl- yeah, a classical liberal education. He had gone to Harvard. He had studied the importance of cultivating virtue and critical thinking and civic leadership. And he, even though he had a farm and was a farmer, he studied the law and became a lawyer, and was inspired by, most of all, by James Otis as a lawyer and a leader in the fight for rights and reconciliation in Boston.

He gained a name for himself And when they were thinking of these civic virtues, they were thinking most of all of the early Roman Republic, people like Cato and Cicero, and they were thinking in lines of the what’s called the Whig theorist in England. There’d been a hundred years of Whig theory, essayist Addison and Steele, people like this.

John Locke would have [00:29:00] fit in that category. They would follow the English, old English revolution of the mid 1600s and then the establishment of the Glorious Revolution overturning the Stuart rule late in the 1600s, and they articulated a theory of representative government, republican government, of rule of law, of law being passed solely by an elected representative body that truly reflected the people.

That’s clear in Second Treatise of Government by Locke, which John Adams knew very well. And drawing on those resources and his legal education of the rule of law, that you settle things through law, he took over this movement. Now, Grant, originally in the 1775, his, as he called him, his better-known cousin, Samuel Adams, was more the firebrand of the revolution, and Patrick Henry.

But John Adams, because of his restraint, when he shifted sides, he could articulate [00:30:00] the cause of liberty and the ability of a truly representative government to create a government by best representing the people was most likely to promote their happiness. And he wrote this time that the end of man, happiness, is truly the end of government.

And what you need is a government that will promote individual happiness. He had argued this, but most importantly He pushed Congress in May to adopt its resolution on independent government, calling for every colony to repudiate their colonial constitution, which placed them under the king, and adopt a new constitution, state constitution.

And these were the first written constitutions in the history of humanity. There’d never been a written constitution before. But he argued they each have a written constitution that would [00:31:00] place the rule under the sovereignty of the people and include a bill of rights that made sure there wasn’t a tyranny of the majority, that representative government passing laws would be henceforth, rather than decrees by a, an executive who just throws them off, executive orders and executive decrees, rather than representatives of the people adopting this.

This was the only path forward. And so he then wrote what Thoughts on Government, the most important, I think, most important thing John Adams ever wrote. That alone would make him one of the great patriots. That was published in May. He’d sent it as, originally as a letter to the Virginia, North Carolina, and New Jersey constitutional conventions, writing new state constitutions in those states.

And he outlined the sort of representative government that would become the hallmark of [00:32:00] American independence. And then for that, I agree with Richard Stockton. Remember, Richard Stockton was at the New Jersey Constitution Convention, which used Adams’ words, and that’s why I’d agree to him. Now, I too call him w- the Atlas of American Independence.

Barry Anderson: Professor, you referenced the Bill of Rights, and that leads me to what you write in Declaring Independence. Quote, “In New England, some Blacks used revolutionary rhetoric about liberty to call for their rights and freedom, but little came from those calls until late in the war.” And then you go on to note the words of Caesar Sarter, a free Black living near Boston, who had asked local patriots in a published essay at the revolution’s outset the sharp and analytical question, “Well,” open quote, “would you desire the preservation of your own liberty?”

close quote. I think it’s useful for us to spend a few moments discussing slavery and the evils thereof in colonial North America. Can you discuss that topic in light [00:33:00] of the founding era, the Bill of Rights, and some of the conflicts that we see here?

Edward Larson: Absolutely. That’s a tremendously important question.

At the time of when the … In 1776, time of the rising of the American Revolution, every colony had slavery, chattel slavery. Chattel slavery means, you know the word chattel. Human being, almost exclusively African Americans, Africans living in America, were the property of their white owners. But with the rising of the revolution- With the rising of the arguments for liberty from England and the description by so many Patriot leaders that they were being enslaved by Parliament or later enslaved by the king, a number originally mostly free Blacks, because there were free Blacks in every [00:34:00] colony, a small number, as well as a large number of enslaved Blacks, they began saying, “Shouldn’t these things apply to us?”

And they started convincing an increasing number of Patriot leaders. James Otis in Massachusetts would be an early example. John Hancock, Samuel Adams, these people began saying, “There’s some truth to this. How can we demand our freedom when we are enslaving others?” And so there was a rising tone, a rising

Now, it didn’t gain majority in the South. Never did. The South remained committed to slavery. Certain- there were some exceptions to it, but overall remained committed and doubled down on slavery. But you do see during this period, as early as the early 1770s, but certainly by 1776, you begin to see this movement that chattel slavery is not compatible with what we’re [00:35:00] arguing for, and many free Blacks are arguing this.

The petitions are being issued, but Benjamin Franklin is picking it up. Thomas Paine is picking it up, Benjamin Rush. So what you do see is when Benjamin Franklin… This will just be a good example of this. Benjamin Franklin had become an abolitionist. He had turned against slavery. He thought slavery was morally wrong.

He was on the committee that co-wrote the Declaration of Independence with Thomas Jefferson. And Jefferson had the words that he took from the new, the first draft, what he had of the new Virginia State Constitution, that we hold these truths to be as self-evident that all men are created equal. And Franklin didn’t think that was strong enough.

So Franklin in August of 1776, after he’d been on the committee to write the Declaration of Independence, and just before he left for France to be the ambassador to France, he stayed around to chair the convention drafting the new [00:36:00] state constitution for Pennsylvania. And people, especially lawyers, shouldn’t…

But anyone following its history needs to focus on these new state constitutions because they are truly revolutionary. And he tweaks the language, so instead of opening, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal,” he uses the phrases that all men are born free and independent.

That doesn’t put it way in the past. That brings it down to today. And it shouldn’t be surprising that soon thereafter, Pennsylvania, during the midst of the American Revolution- becomes the first state to pass a statute abolishing slavery. Now John Adams then, when he’s writing the new Massachusetts State Constitution, he borrowed Franklin’s words, “All men are born free and independent, or free and equal.”

And then by Supreme Court decree in Massachusetts, [00:37:00] slavery is abolished in Massachusetts because of this line in the state constitution. One particular enslaved Black, known then as Mum Bett, but later Elizabeth Freeman, she takes that name. When she first hears the Massachusetts Constitution she goes off and goes to court and demands her freedom and gets it.

Now New Hampshire follows this approach and they abolish slavery. They put it, that language in their constitution. Vermont does the same thing. And so you get the movement toward abolishing slavery tied directly to these movements. By the time the revolution is over, you have a, you have most of the northern states on the path toward abolishing slavery.

In contrast, of course, the South, where enslaved labor is more economically important, and they’re a much larger number. In the North, New York maybe had one-fifth of its population enslaved Blacks. You go down to South Carolina and it’s two-thirds [00:38:00] enslaved Blacks. They end up doubling down on slavery, and you see that in people like Patrick Henry

Barry Anderson: There is a lot more that could be said about that, but let’s move on to Jefferson drafting the declaration, which you discuss in great detail in your book.

Maybe we could spend some time with the main intellectual, political, and legal influences of the declaration, as well as the reception by the Continental Congress of this document that they had sent this five-member committee to draft.

Edward Larson: In theory, it’s a committee. In practice, it never was. All these five members who were appointed to it were all very prominent, active members of the Continental Congress.

And back then, they had to serve on a lot of committees, so they had quite a bit of other business to do. The three best writers on the committee, hands down, were Franklin, Jefferson, and John Adams. That’s why they were on the committee, for their writing ability, and apparently they were the only ones who saw it.

Jefferson … They were all so busy that Jefferson took the … was chair of the committee, [00:39:00] so he’s in control. He’s chair of the committee because he g- ended up having the most votes to be on it. So he thought … They don’t vote on a chair. It’s automatic. So he’s chair, so he just takes it upon himself to write the Declaration of Independence himself.

Adams didn’t think that the Declaration of Independence was really that important. He thought the important things, as he wrote, what independence is is each state, each … Back then, each colony was viewed as very separate, and the Continental Congress was not a Congress like the current Congress. It was just, uh, uh, delegates sent by the legislatures of the different colonies, and it didn’t have formal authority It wasn’t like a national or a federal Congress.

Adams was convinced that what independence was was each of the colonies that wanted to join. And remember, it wasn’t originally just the 13. I mean, they tried to get Nova Scotia to join, they tried to get The Bahamas to join, they tried to get some of the Caribbean colonies to join. It’s just it turned out to be 13 that did [00:40:00] so and sent delegates.

And so he’s focusing on state constitutions and he’s writing his thoughts on government. Meanwhile, Jefferson’s left with the task of drafting the Declaration of Independence. And as Adams used to joke with him, he’d said, “It was the work of an afternoon.” And Jefferson would come back and say, “Well, it took a day and a half.”

It wasn’t a major list because what he did was he just took things that were already around. His own Summary Views, which he had published in 1774, had a list of grievances against the British government, which the bulk of the declaration is a list of grievances morphed from against Parliament to the king.

They’re basically lifted from Jefferson’s beautiful pamphlet of 1774 Summary View with a few added grievances drawn from other colonies. By this time, Jefferson had had Mason’s draft constitution for the State of Virginia. It’s pretty close to what’s later passed. Not exactly, but pretty close. So the first part is basically lifted from [00:41:00] the opening part of George Mason’s draft constitution for the State of Virginia.

The final part is really just Richard Henry Lee, the resolution passed by the Virginia Assembly, House of Burgesses or Assembly, and had been sent up with Richard Henry Lee to call for independence. Remember, they thought that the key act was adopting the Virginia resolution calling that these colonies are and by right should be free and independent states.

That happened on January 2nd. The Declaration of Independence, as it said, is when we do something like this, it’s, it’s responsible that we explain what we’re doing. So it was written as an explanation of what had already been done. Jefferson then gives copies of his draft to both Adams and Franklin, and they make notations.

Best anybody knows, the other two members of the committee never even saw it. And Franklin makes the most important changes, such as, “We hold these rights to be [00:42:00] self-evident.” Those are Franklin’s words. Jefferson had written sacred, and which would make it… And the problem with Franklin had with that is, no, we should make this coming from the people.

It’s self-evident. Of course, rights… Th- the purpose of government is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was not self-evident to virtually anyone at the time, but Franklin thought it was a good way to put it Taking these pieces together, they patch together this Declaration of Independence that really contains this noble preamble that we love.

It’s the part we all memorize. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the part that Walter Isaacson says it’s the greatest sentence ever written. But back then, it was the second part, the grievances, the longest part, four-fifths of it, that’s the part that resonated back then. And when it was read at the different state capitals, that’s what fired up the troops.

That’s what the people wanted to hear, that, the grievances part. When they heard it in, in New York, [00:43:00] for example, they all ran out and they tore down, in New York City, which was then the capital of New York, they tore down the larger than life gilded equestrian statue of George III that stood in Bowling Green.

He was on a horse, and they pulled it down in reaction to it, and then they scraped off the gild, and it was made of lead, and they melted it down to make musket balls to shoot at the British troops when they soon came. So that was disturbing. And then the final part, again, is just the part formally declaring independence and pledging the sacred honor and fortune of all the delegates to defend that.

So when they later signed it, famously, as recorded by one of the delegates, John Hancock, who was president and had signed it already, said, you know, “We must all hang together,” and then Ben Franklin quipped to the side , “Or we’ll all hang separately,” because indeed it was treasonous

Barry Anderson: You mentioned the draft going to the Continental Congress, [00:44:00] and this is a good place here to very briefly discuss, you know, Thomas Jefferson, slave owner.

In his draft of the Declaration of Independence, he includes this absolutely scathing line that King George 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.

So he writes that language. He also, it’s worth noting, he also w- is largely responsible for the Northwest Ordinance prohibiting slavery, which me- many people don’t know this, but include, actually includes a piece of Minnesota. And yet Jefferson’s scathing draft paragraph gets yanked by the Continental Congress.

Can we talk just briefly about the political dynamics that caused the Congress to remove this really powerful language from that document?

Edward Larson: Georgia and South Carolina, that’s the reason. Jefferson had definitely come to the view by this [00:45:00] time, and George Mason, who wrote the Virginia Constitution, which Jefferson borrowed so heavily for, for the Declaration of Independence, had the exact same view, that slavery was a plague on America.

That not holding these people in bondage was a plague, but having all these people in bondage. For Jefferson, it inhibited, you know… He thought the core of government, future of a republic was yeoman white farmers. That’s what he wanted in the Northwest Ordinance, yeoman white farmers on their small farms.

That was the basis of the virtue needed to make a republic work. And of course, slavery inhibited that because you didn’t have yeoman farmers. You had big plantations. And as George Mason so clearly said so many times, including at the Con- uh, later at the Constitutional Convention, is that slavery makes tyrants of the slave owners.

It weakens them. It makes them [00:46:00] tyrannical. It makes them not the virtuous sort that can maintain a government. And so they thought slavery was a plague. And the way Jefferson had articulated in summary views in 1774, the king, and th- there’s certainly a lot of truth to this. The royal family was getting rich on the slave trade.

Even though slavery was illegal Illegal in England. You could not own a slave in England. You could not own anyone. That as soon as a, an enslaved person was brought to England, they were immediately free. As they said in a decision about this time, the air of England is too free to accept slavery. But the king had gotten rich on this, especially the large slavery factory, as it were, in what’s now Sierra Leone.

And Jefferson wanted to use this as one of in- indictments of the king. Virginia and some other northern and middle colonies had already passed rules [00:47:00] barring the admission of any new enslaved people. Laws. The king had vetoed them all because he was profiting from the slavery trade, and also it promoted plantation agriculture, which made in the Caribbean and in the American South, and that promoted the British economy.

It was multiple reasons. And he wanted to have those. But of course it was Georgia and South Carolina with their rice and indigo crops that were profiting from this and thought economically they needed this enslaved labor. And so they thought that this passage was not only incorrect in the sense that the colonies, especially the southern colonies, were certainly complicit in the arrangement of extending slavery, and therefore you shouldn’t put all the blame on the king, would serve as hypocritical, and second, they didn’t agree with it.

And later, when we had the Constitutional Convention, they were the ones that insisted that even though the central government, [00:48:00] or the general government as they called it, would have control over international commerce, that there was an exception that the general government could not ban the importation of enslaved people for at least 20 years if a state wanted to have them.

And again, Virginia had not supported that, but Georgia and the Carolinas said they’d walk if it wasn’t included, and so it was. And in those 20 years allowed for the importation of enslaved people up till 1808, more enslaved people were brought into the Americas, into the United States through Georgia and the Carolinas than in all of the colonial period

Barry Anderson: A big complicated topic that your book really helps unravel here, and appreciate those comments.

Can you just say a few words about George Washington’s military leadership and how this ragtag continental army managed to prevail against the far superior fighting forces of Great Britain? This, as you put it earlier in our w- conversation today, 40,000 [00:49:00] troops that were sent to quash this noisy but insignificant rebellion.

Edward Larson: It’s a Fabian strategy. It’s a war of attrition. Washington quickly realized with the utter failure to defend New York City. You know, Washington, by using those cannons I mentioned earlier, had driven the British out of Boston, but he was, he was four to one, he was bigger. When he went down to shifted that entire 16,000 man army to New York, the British countered with 32,000 troops in this amazing array of ships.

So many ships that we said at the time that so many British warships went into New York Harbor that they said you could walk from one side of the harbor to the other on the deck of the ship without getting your feet wet. There was no way, and he tried to defend it, and he just got clobbered at the Battle of Long Island, Brooklyn Heights, the Battle of Fort Washington, Saratoga.

I mean, these were just rout of the American army. And he realized the only way to do it [00:50:00] is to do what famously General Fabian had done with the b- Roman army against Hannibal’s invasion, adopt the Fabian strategy, and that is fall back, fall back, keep falling back. Refuse a large frontal attack where the enemy is stronger, wear down the enemy’s morale and resources and patience over time, attack foraging parties and small outposts, and that’s what Trenton was.

Trenton was a tiny little outpost, 2,000 men. Hessians couldn’t speak English. The main British army had conquered New Jersey, but had fallen back for winter quarters. Back then, the troops didn’t fight in the winter. Fall back to winter quarters in New York City, and left some of the Hessian mercenaries in little encampments in New Jersey to hold the ground they’d conquered.

And so Washington assembles a much larger force than the Hessians in Trenton, and goes over on Christmas when they’d likely be [00:51:00] celebrating Christmas, and basically attacks them from the rear. You know, and he captures the Hessians. It wasn’t… It was a pin prick for the British But the Patriot press made the most of it.

Then he followed up with an attack on Princeton, and then when the British came back in force, he basically fled with what was left of his army, very little, to Morristown, New Jersey, a little encampment in the mountains. It got down to 500 men by the end of that winter. But it was a classic example of a Fabian tragedy, wearing down the enemy’s morale, their resources, rely on the distance the enemy is from their homeland, stretch supply lines, attack foraging parties, attack these outposts like Trenton.

And over time, it is just gonna wear them down, wore down the British, and finally the Parliament decided, which the House of Commons was filled with merchants, “Well, rather than this endless battle, we’d rather [00:52:00] settle with these colonies and make peace and have them as friendly trading partners.” And so it was a, the Fabian strategy, the war of attrition.

And indeed, George Washington became known, in fact, Adams wrote a letter to his wife describing George Washington as our Fabian.

Barry Anderson: Interesting. All of ancient history becomes, uh, relevant to these conversations. Before I ask you to read a paragraph of your book, I wanna talk about your conclusion in Declaring Independence, where you note that 1776 is the signal year, and it marked a turning point in the human quest for liberty and equality under popular rule within the context of national independence.

Can you spend just a brief period of time telling us why studying US history and law is so vital for understanding and perpetuating our civic ideals?

Edward Larson: Adams had said, beautifully captures this, I suppose, as much as anybody. We’ve been talking about a line of John Adams today. And John Adams had said that when he was still [00:53:00] president in 1798, he said s- “Our ambition and revenge would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net.”

Remember, he’s a New Englander and a, they were fishermen, and they’d catch fish with net, but you couldn’t catch a whale. So these would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Madison said much the same thing. It’s only virtue. The only way this government can work is the virtue of the people, and virtuous people selecting virtuous or holding to account leaders. Washington says it repeatedly. Benjamin Franklin when he says that great line, “It’s a republic if you can keep it.” He observed that this government would

At, at the Constitutional Convention, he hears this government would end in despotism as any form is when the people shall be so corrupt as to need a [00:54:00] despotic government. So virtue, all of these people believed, was necessary to maintain this noble experiment of republican government. And so that’s why reading history, studying the law, because they believed that it could only work under the rule of law.

As Thomas Paine said in Common Sense and John Adams said in Thoughts on Government, both of them said it. What they’re envisioning is a nation under law, not under men. And that requires studying civics, studying and creating the sort of virtuous people that Adam, Madison, Washington, Franklin, and the rest believed was essential to maintain the sort of government that we’d been blessed with.

Barry Anderson: Professor, I wanna thank you for your time today, and I wanna recommend your book, Declaring Independence, to our listeners. And [00:55:00] it’s just a fascinating unraveling of this whole story focused on one year, 1776, even though there are events before and events later that are important, and we talked about some of those as well.

Perhaps as we close today, maybe you could just share briefly a paragraph of your book to give our listeners some feel for why this is such an important period.

Edward Larson: I’d be happy to. But first, of course, I wanna thank you for having me on. I appreciate having programs like this. I appreciate you all you’ve done.

Minnesota is one of my favorite states, and I love Minnesotans, and so thank you very much. So I’ll try one. Beginning with common sense and the British bombardment of Norfolk, ending with American crisis number one and the Battle of Trenton, and punctuating midway by the Declaration of Independence and British atrocities after the Battle of Fort Washington and during the occupation in New Jersey.

The words and deeds of 1776 [00:56:00] marked a year of fundamental change. Subjects of the king became citizens of their states. Royal colonies became sovereign republics. Customary traditions gave way to self-evident truths. Long-held hereditary hierarchies fell before the asserted equal creation of all men, however poorly applied at first.

Status-based privileges became inalienable rights, at least for some, and increasingly for more. Congress’s resolution on independent governments spawned written state constitutions and declarations of rights that became global models. Foreseeing this, Franklin published these constitutions and declarations in Europe.

Words inspired deeds that inspired more words, leading to what Lincoln would later depict at the Gettysburg Address as government of, by, [00:57:00] and for the people.

Barry Anderson: Professor, thanks very much for being with us today.

Edward Larson: Well, thank you so much for having me

Alisha Searcy: Well, before we head out of here, want to make sure we do our tweet of the week. It comes from NPR: “From Appalachia to Africa: Why Dolly Parton Was Beloved Across the Continent.” Very cool article about how people across the continent of Africa loved Dolly Parton. Who knew? And I even didn’t realize until after this article that Nelson Mandela was a fan of Dolly Parton.

And so of course, on behalf of our show, we want to send our condolences to Dolly Parton’s family, and all of us who loved her and loved her music. We’ll certainly miss her, and we thank her for all of her contributions, not [00:58:00] just to music, but to humanity.

Barry Anderson: Hey, if you’ve been to Dollywood, you’re participating in part of that heritage.

She really was an iconic American figure and has left a permanent mark on the lives of those who will follow her.

Alisha Searcy: Very well said. Well, for our listeners, make sure you join us next week. We will have Owen Sterne, who is the CEO of Excel Academy Charter Schools in Boston. So make sure you check us out.

Barry, thank you so much for joining me again this week. It was wonderful to have you. It’s always a treat to talk to you.

Barry Anderson: Yeah, Alisha, it’s great. Two weeks in a row, and you’ll get back to normal now next week, but feel free to call on me anytime. Happy to do it.

Alisha Searcy: Trust me, we will. Everybody take care. See you [00:59:00] soon.