WEBVTT NOTE 33. Independence Declared 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Volume 4, Chapter 33, Independence Declared 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:21.000 On June 7, in happy obedience to the instructions resolved by Virginia on May 15, Richard Henry Lee submitted to the Continental Congress a momentous resolution for the independence of the United Colonies. 3 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:25.000 His resolution embodied three historic affirmations. 4 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:32.400 First was a Declaration of Independence, that these United Colonies are and of right ought 5 00:00:32.400 --> 00:00:39.580 to be free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British 6 00:00:39.580 --> 00:00:46.200 Crown and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and 7 00:00:46.200 --> 00:00:49.360 ought to be totally dissolved. 8 00:00:49.360 --> 00:00:55.480 One of the great virtues, as well as a corollary of independence, would be the ability to form 9 00:00:55.480 --> 00:01:00.440 alliances with France and other countries in support of the war. 10 00:01:00.440 --> 00:01:06.200 So Lee's second resolve affirmed the utility of forming such alliances. 11 00:01:06.200 --> 00:01:12.300 Finally, if the colonies were now to be separate and independent states, it was clear that 12 00:01:12.300 --> 00:01:18.880 no war, especially no war with the regular army, could be waged unless the states were 13 00:01:18.880 --> 00:01:25.040 were in some way united, and it was believed that a formal compact of unity was needed 14 00:01:25.040 --> 00:01:31.000 to bolster the standing of the Continental Congress, just as formal government was supposedly 15 00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:38.000 needed by each state to replace spontaneous and anarchic rule by organized networks of 16 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:45.420 local committees. Therefore, Lee's third resolution instructed that a plan of confederation be 17 00:01:45.420 --> 00:01:51.060 be drawn up and submitted to the separate states. The conservatives had no objection 18 00:01:51.060 --> 00:01:56.900 to confederation per se. Indeed, a strong central government over the colonies had long 19 00:01:56.900 --> 00:02:03.900 been a dream of many arch-conservatives. Neither did the prospect of alliances frighten them. 20 00:02:04.220 --> 00:02:11.220 After all, war was being waged and the more help the better. The sticking point was independence. 21 00:02:11.220 --> 00:02:18.020 Independence, and this issue polarized opinion and was bitterly fought in the Congress. 22 00:02:18.020 --> 00:02:23.580 Leading the battle against independence were Robert R. Livingston of New York, James Wilson 23 00:02:23.580 --> 00:02:29.260 and John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, and Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, who privately 24 00:02:29.260 --> 00:02:33.300 blasted the resolution as madness. 25 00:02:33.300 --> 00:02:39.940 Ranged in favor of independence were New England, Virginia and Georgia respectively, led by 26 00:02:39.940 --> 00:02:44.460 by John Adams, George Wythe and Richard Henry Lee. 27 00:02:44.460 --> 00:02:47.460 Adams was exultant, writing to a friend that, 28 00:02:47.460 --> 00:02:50.420 we are in the very midst of a revolution, 29 00:02:50.420 --> 00:02:53.620 the most complete, unexpected and remarkable 30 00:02:53.620 --> 00:02:56.240 of any in the history of nations. 31 00:02:56.240 --> 00:02:58.340 The opposition to Lee's resolution 32 00:02:58.340 --> 00:03:01.460 pretended to favor independence in principle 33 00:03:01.460 --> 00:03:04.560 and placed its hopes in postponement, 34 00:03:04.560 --> 00:03:07.720 arguing cogently that it would be more sensible 35 00:03:07.720 --> 00:03:23.720 The radicals came to see the validity of this particular argument, and so Congress agreed to postpone the consideration of independence until July 1. 36 00:03:23.720 --> 00:03:35.720 Still, the radicals lost little time overall, for they were able to carry the appointment of a committee to draft a Declaration of Independence to embody Lee's first resolution. 37 00:03:35.720 --> 00:03:58.720 The Committee to draft the Declaration, appointed on June 11, had an overwhelming radical majority. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman. It also included one conservative, Robert R. Livingston. Committees were similarly appointed on Confederation and on a plan for foreign treaties. 38 00:03:58.720 --> 00:04:12.720 The latter part of June did, as we have seen, bring the middle colonies into the fold, even though Maryland had first pleaded unsuccessfully for postponement of the discussion date beyond July 1. 39 00:04:12.720 --> 00:04:21.720 In addition, loose ends were wrapped up in those New England colonies that had not bothered to issue formal support for independence. 40 00:04:21.720 --> 00:04:29.720 By June 14, Connecticut flatly ordered its delegates to propose independence for the American states. 41 00:04:29.720 --> 00:04:35.720 The next day, the New Hampshire legislature pledged support for independence. 42 00:04:35.720 --> 00:04:40.720 Furthermore, Congress itself drove ever closer to independence. 43 00:04:40.720 --> 00:04:50.720 On June 24, it declared that any American adhering to the enemy king or living war on his behalf was guilty of treason. 44 00:04:50.720 --> 00:04:58.320 In accordance with the resolve, Thomas Hickey, a private in the Continental Army, was hanged 45 00:04:58.320 --> 00:05:01.160 by that army for mutiny. 46 00:05:01.160 --> 00:05:07.840 The momentous day of July 1 brought with it the news of Maryland's affirmation of independence. 47 00:05:07.840 --> 00:05:14.120 New York's delegates, having received no firm reply to a request for instruction from the 48 00:05:14.120 --> 00:05:20.880 and the Provincial Congress decided that they had best abstain from the vote on independence. 49 00:05:20.880 --> 00:05:26.520 Those radicals who really believed that conservative objections to independence had been met by 50 00:05:26.520 --> 00:05:30.960 the events of June were in for a rude shock. 51 00:05:30.960 --> 00:05:35.160 After a fierce debate on the Lee Resolution in the Committee of the Whole, a vote was 52 00:05:35.160 --> 00:05:43.000 taken in which Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted against independence while the two Delaware 53 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:46.000 are members present split on the issue. 54 00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:56.000 Clearly, the delegates from Pennsylvania and South Carolina were voting their own reactionary wishes in defiance of the will of their constituents. 55 00:05:56.000 --> 00:06:00.000 Here was a stunning setback to the radical cause. 56 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:06.000 The next day, July 2, the independence resolution came to the floor of Congress. 57 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:10.000 How was unanimity to be achieved in one day? 58 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:30.000 Delaware achieved it by sheer energy. Thomas McKean sent for Caesar Rodney in a hurried call, and Rodney, who had been leading militiamen against Tories in southern Delaware, rode all night in a thunderstorm from Dover to Philadelphia to cast Delaware's tie-breaking vote for independence. 59 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:43.000 South Carolina's Edward Rutledge, a leader of the fight against independence, announced his decision to take his delegation into the camp of independence for the sake of inter-colonial unity. 60 00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:52.000 That left Pennsylvania, and new delegates were not to be chosen by the radicals in the provincial conference until the end of July. 61 00:06:52.000 --> 00:07:12.000 On July 1, the Pennsylvania delegation had voted 4-3 against independence, with Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, and surprisingly, James Wilson, 4, and John Dickinson, Charles Humphreys, Robert Morris and Thomas Willing, opposed. 62 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:38.000 The next day Dickinson and Morris deliberately absented themselves, and Pennsylvania's precarious three-to-two vote for independence made the congressional vote unanimous. The deed was done. The colonies were now separate, free and independent states, and as the united colonies were now at last informally united states. 63 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:45.000 John Adams was understandably enraptured at having achieved the goal of years of labor and devotion. 64 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:54.000 A greater issue, he wrote blissfully, perhaps never was nor will be decided among men. 65 00:07:54.000 --> 00:08:02.000 The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. 66 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:15.000 I am well aware of the toil and bloodshed and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this declaration. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. 67 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:21.000 The colonies had announced their independence, but only the bare assertion had been made. 68 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:38.000 The Republic of the United States needed a justification, a philosophical explanation and groundwork for the unprecedented act which could inform and inspire the citizenry and the world at large. 69 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:52.000 Heading the committee to frame such a declaration at the age of 33, one of the youngest members of Congress but already renowned for his brilliant pen was Thomas Jefferson. 70 00:08:52.000 --> 00:09:02.000 The committee presented his draft to Congress on June 28 and debate ensued in the Committee of the Whole after the approval of Lee's resolution. 71 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:24.000 An amended declaration was approved by Congress on July 4, by the same vote as that two days before, and this noble and immortal summation of the philosophy and motivation of the American Revolution was first proclaimed to the public in Philadelphia by local associators on July 8. 72 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:43.000 Jefferson's aim in drawing out the Declaration of Independence was not originality of principle but the framing of a succinct expression of the American mind and of the sentiments of the day on the common sense of the subject. 73 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:57.000 The document was indeed a superb epitome of the libertarian natural rights philosophy propelling the revolution as well as the specific grievances that had roused the American people. 74 00:09:57.000 --> 00:10:05.000 Jefferson began with a brief explanation of the decision for composing the document. 75 00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:35.000 When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to 76 00:10:35.000 --> 00:10:38.000 to the Separation. 77 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:44.780 The natural right to independence and self-government was in turn grounded on a fundamental structure 78 00:10:44.780 --> 00:10:47.880 of the natural rights of man. 79 00:10:47.880 --> 00:10:53.200 Nowhere has this philosophy been better put into brief compass than in the succeeding 80 00:10:53.200 --> 00:10:57.240 paragraph of the Declaration. 81 00:10:57.240 --> 00:11:05.960 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed 82 00:11:05.960 --> 00:11:13.360 by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty 83 00:11:13.360 --> 00:11:19.820 and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among 84 00:11:19.820 --> 00:11:26.820 of Young Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever 85 00:11:26.840 --> 00:11:33.320 any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people 86 00:11:33.320 --> 00:11:39.740 to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such 87 00:11:39.740 --> 00:11:46.740 principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to 88 00:11:46.740 --> 00:11:59.100 Here was the quintessence of John Locke and of the 18th century libertarian creed. 89 00:11:59.100 --> 00:12:05.900 It is axiomatic that all men are endowed by nature with inalienable rights. 90 00:12:05.900 --> 00:12:12.380 The proper aim of government, as derived from the consent of the governed, is to secure 91 00:12:12.380 --> 00:12:20.640 those rights. Nothing other than this function justifies government's existence, hence the 92 00:12:20.640 --> 00:12:27.660 right of the people to revolt against any government destructive of those aims. Jefferson 93 00:12:27.660 --> 00:12:34.220 went on to recognize the habit of mankind to suffer evil government rather than right 94 00:12:34.220 --> 00:12:41.640 themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But a long train of abuses 95 00:12:41.640 --> 00:12:49.140 Degrees and usurpations tending toward despotism confronts the people with the duty, let alone 96 00:12:49.140 --> 00:12:54.400 the right, to revolt and abolish such government. 97 00:12:54.400 --> 00:13:01.120 He then proceeded to list the long train of usurpations, trenchantly summing up the history 98 00:13:01.120 --> 00:13:07.720 of the Revolutionary struggle since the Seven Years' War, and as he had done in the preamble 99 00:13:07.720 --> 00:13:14.400 to the Virginia Constitution, he pinned the responsibility squarely on the ultimate head 100 00:13:14.400 --> 00:13:18.780 and governing symbol, the king himself. 101 00:13:18.780 --> 00:13:24.940 In the concluding paragraph of the declaration, the representatives of the United States of 102 00:13:24.940 --> 00:13:33.340 America in general Congress assembled, declared the status of the colonies as free and independent 103 00:13:33.340 --> 00:13:40.420 States and repeated the text of the Lee resolution passed two days before. For the support of 104 00:13:40.420 --> 00:13:47.320 the declaration they mutually pledged to each other, our lives, our fortunes and our sacred 105 00:13:47.320 --> 00:13:55.340 honor. Clearly, the formulation of Jefferson's philosophical paragraph owed much to George 106 00:13:55.340 --> 00:14:02.860 Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights. Jefferson's draft asserted, as had Mason, that men are 107 00:14:02.860 --> 00:14:08.340 are endowed with inherent and inalienable rights. 108 00:14:08.340 --> 00:14:13.080 It should also be evident from the context that when Jefferson wrote that all men are 109 00:14:13.080 --> 00:14:20.700 created equal, he did not assert everyone's right to an equal income and he did not intend 110 00:14:20.700 --> 00:14:26.620 the absurdity that everyone is equal in capacity or natural endowments. 111 00:14:26.620 --> 00:14:34.820 He meant, in the words of Mason, that all men are by nature equally free and independent. 112 00:14:34.820 --> 00:14:42.220 In his original draft, he had written that all men are created equal and independent. 113 00:14:42.220 --> 00:14:47.860 In short, man's equality lies in his equal right to liberty. 114 00:14:47.860 --> 00:14:54.460 Neither is any profound significance to be read into Jefferson's use of the phrase pursuit 115 00:14:54.460 --> 00:15:02.100 of Happiness rather than the more usual property. Mason's original draft of the Virginia Declaration 116 00:15:02.100 --> 00:15:08.380 had said that among man's inherent natural rights are the enjoyment of life and liberty 117 00:15:08.380 --> 00:15:16.120 with the means of acquiring and possessing property and pursuing and obtaining happiness 118 00:15:16.120 --> 00:15:24.420 and safety. Jefferson, compressing Mason's statement, originally wrote, among which right 119 00:15:24.420 --> 00:15:31.180 Rights are the preservation of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 120 00:15:31.180 --> 00:15:38.180 In short, the right to pursue happiness includes and implies the right to acquire and possess 121 00:15:38.180 --> 00:15:39.980 property. 122 00:15:39.980 --> 00:15:45.660 Jefferson knew as well as Mason or the other natural rights theorist of the day that the 123 00:15:45.660 --> 00:15:50.980 individual has no natural right to any quantum of property. 124 00:15:50.980 --> 00:15:59.120 Rather, his natural right is the equal liberty to acquire and keep property. 125 00:15:59.120 --> 00:16:05.300 The Declaration's formulation, therefore, was in no sense a repudiation or weakening 126 00:16:05.300 --> 00:16:08.980 of the right of private property. 127 00:16:08.980 --> 00:16:14.540 Some paragraphs in Jefferson's draft were excised by the Congress, and historians have 128 00:16:14.540 --> 00:16:20.260 had been decidedly unfair to Jefferson in ascribing his chagrin at these changes to 129 00:16:20.260 --> 00:16:27.880 mere personal pique and undue pride of authorship. High principle was often involved and it was 130 00:16:27.880 --> 00:16:33.860 not personal pique that led his fellow committee member John Adams to fight tooth and nail 131 00:16:33.860 --> 00:16:40.940 against any changes in Jefferson's draft. One critical paragraph condemned King George 132 00:16:40.940 --> 00:16:46.140 in the Severest Terms for Establishing Slavery in America. 133 00:16:46.140 --> 00:16:52.940 This paragraph boldly, clearly and specifically applied the general doctrine of the inalienable 134 00:16:52.940 --> 00:16:57.460 rights of life and liberty to the Negro slaves. 135 00:16:57.460 --> 00:17:06.220 He, George III, has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred 136 00:17:06.220 --> 00:17:13.340 and rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, 137 00:17:13.340 --> 00:17:19.660 captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur a miserable 138 00:17:19.660 --> 00:17:25.540 death in their transportation thither, determined to keep open a market where men should be 139 00:17:25.540 --> 00:17:32.780 bought and sold. He has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt 140 00:17:32.780 --> 00:17:38.420 to prohibit or to restrain this excrucible commerce. 141 00:17:38.420 --> 00:17:43.820 This paragraph, however, was excised at the insistence of the delegates from ardently 142 00:17:43.820 --> 00:17:51.180 pro-slavery Georgia and South Carolina, as well as by some northern reluctance to condemn 143 00:17:51.180 --> 00:17:55.260 a trade largely in the hands of northern merchants. 144 00:17:55.260 --> 00:18:06.260 Already a libertarian left was beginning to emerge in America. Jefferson, Payne, Mason, highly critical of the institution of slavery. 145 00:18:06.260 --> 00:18:13.260 Even with the attack on slavery removed, however, Jefferson's biographer is correct in saying that 146 00:18:13.260 --> 00:18:20.420 In that, Jefferson's words in the Declaration should make tyranny tremble in any age. They 147 00:18:20.420 --> 00:18:26.500 have alarmed conservative minds in his own land in every generation, and some compatriots 148 00:18:26.500 --> 00:18:32.880 of his have regretted that the New Republic was dedicated to such radical doctrines at 149 00:18:32.880 --> 00:18:35.220 its birth. 150 00:18:35.220 --> 00:18:41.480 With the Declaration of Independence, the United States of America made their final 151 00:18:41.480 --> 00:18:47.160 A fundamental shift from arguing on the basis of historic British rights and privileges 152 00:18:47.160 --> 00:18:54.360 to the necessary grounding of their revolution on the universal principles of the natural 153 00:18:54.360 --> 00:18:57.100 rights of man. 154 00:18:57.100 --> 00:19:02.620 Revolution and independence necessarily went beyond the narrow bounds of an intra-British 155 00:19:02.620 --> 00:19:03.860 argument. 156 00:19:03.860 --> 00:19:09.580 Now the revolution must justify itself at the bar of the world and must therefore do 157 00:19:09.580 --> 00:19:13.940 do so on principles universally applicable. 158 00:19:13.940 --> 00:19:19.940 In doing so, this philosophy brought the separate states closer together by providing a common 159 00:19:19.940 --> 00:19:22.740 revolutionary ideology. 160 00:19:22.740 --> 00:19:27.820 The declaration was the embodiment of this break with the past. 161 00:19:27.820 --> 00:19:31.740 Professor Ariely sums up this development. 162 00:19:31.740 --> 00:19:36.740 The revolutionary separation from the mother country involved a radical break with the 163 00:19:36.740 --> 00:19:43.060 of the Past, the Transformation of English Subjects into American Citizens, and of the 164 00:19:43.060 --> 00:19:46.840 Rights of the Englishmen into the Rights of Nature. 165 00:19:46.840 --> 00:19:53.020 The very strongly developed consciousness of English national traditions and rights had 166 00:19:53.020 --> 00:19:59.220 to be reinterpreted by concepts taken from the natural rights philosophy. 167 00:19:59.220 --> 00:20:04.500 The fact that the American nation was created by a revolutionary separation from the mother 168 00:20:04.500 --> 00:20:10.500 brought about the adoption of rationalistic values and norms.