Declaring Our Independence: The Story of America [Ep. 6]

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If you know or have young people in your life, check out his remarkable Young Readers edition too. When we last left off, war had broken out in the colonies and independence was about to come. Let's get into the story.

Take it away, Bill. With the colonial government's blessing and urging, the Continental Congress introduced a motion or resolution directed towards independence. The resolution passes on July 2nd, which John Adams declared would be a day that would live in the world's memory. Everything we do on the 4th of July, he thought would be on the 2nd of July.

How did that happen? Well, because the 4th of July was the day that the Declaration of Independence penned by Thomas Jefferson with the aid of Adams and Benjamin Franklin was promulgated. This document that is really an explanation to the world what we are doing and why we were doing it. The Declaration of Independence was a document whose momentous character was clear to everyone at the time. The gentleman who signed it, they say, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Very powerful words. You can almost feel in them electricity in the room as the document was being signed. First of all, with John Hancock's old signature so the king could read it without his glasses. They were defiant, but they were well aware of the fact that they were committing treason. This was not going to end well for one party or another. They were on a collision course with destiny. They had to show great courage. They must have felt trepidation. Maybe we can't really prevail in this.

I think an objective observer would have had to say that the chances were very poor. So when they say we pledge to one another our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, they're really saying that they're willing to die together for this cause. It was a long time building towards this. People are surprised that you have Lexington and Concord, and yet Declaration of Independence isn't over a year later.

It took that long for the momentous decision that had to be made to crystallize. So to the Declaration, the masterpiece, a masterpiece of political writing, manifesto writing even. It is regarded by most Americans as foundational. The first part of it, which is probably the most famous part, is Jefferson's effort to justify why a separation of this kind is perfectly reasonable. He says, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands who connected them with another. It almost is being presented as a child grows up.

A child grows up and at some point becomes necessary and good and healthy even for the son to leave the father, for the child to leave the home and make his or her own way in the world. And soon, among the powers of the earth, now back to the nation, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them. Well, there you have the introduction of God and nature. That's an important element here that what we're doing is something that accords with both natural law and divine will. And that we're writing this because we want to explain ourselves. A decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We're doing a press release here.

It was a press release to the world. And he gets to a part of the declaration that's often neglected, but the actual itemizing the grievances against the mother country. But before we get to that, Jefferson has a long paragraph, which is famous. He says, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Just stop there for a second. He's saying that these rights exist independent of governments. They're given to us by God. They're unalienable rights. That means they're not given to us. They can't be taken away legitimately. We can't even give them away. These rights are part of who and what we are from the very beginning.

That's a bold statement. We have these rights inherent in our being. And then when a government becomes destructive of the protection of these rights, that's what governments are for. It's the right of the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government.

This isn't just a matter of the son growing up and leaving the household. An injustice has been perpetrated. A profound injustice. We have these rights. They're from the creator.

They're from nature. They are our rights as Englishmen. Taxation without representation is inconsistent with the principles of English law. We don't do this lightly. But when a long trade of abuses and usurpations pursuing this same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism. It's their duty to throw off such government.

And that's our situation. That concludes, and we go on to say we're union between the crown, political connection between the colonies and the state of Great Britain is totally dissolved. And as free and independent states, the former colonies have full power in letting war conclude peace, contract alliances.

All such things which independent states do. It's a quite momentous document. It's a small wonder that the Declaration is famous and admired and revered all over the world. It has transcended the context of its time.

And it's one of those handful of documents in human history. And you've been listening to Hillsdale College Professor Bill McClay. So much more to come here on Our American Stories. Folks, if you love the stories we tell about this great country and especially the stories of America's rich past, we know that all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation, culture and faith, are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.

Go to hillsdale.edu to learn more. You never know what a project will throw at you. Whether you're in the middle of building a shed, replacing a sink or hanging a ceiling fan, sometimes you get stuck. That's why the Home Depot app is made for doing that doesn't miss a beat. Need help identifying a part?

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Here again is Bill Maclay. The Declaration couldn't do everything. It didn't establish a government. It suggests, and I just read this, that the United Colonies are free and independent states.

That's a plural. Does that mean that Massachusetts was going to be a country? Rhode Island was going to be a country? Or if they were going to be unified, how were they going to be unified? The Declaration has nothing to say. By the way, I don't know whether you ever think about this, but that's a very funny name for a country. The United States of America. There is this notion that the Declaration itself kind of hints at that they're united, but they're also independent states in some way.

How do you get those two things? Both at the same time. This was something the Declaration didn't address. Nor did it address slavery. In one of Jefferson's drafts, it does.

It blames the king, which was kind of ludicrous, and perhaps for that reason, among others, was deleted. But it's always been a bit of an embarrassment to have Thomas Jefferson declare in this document that all men are created equal and not address himself to this institution was already pretty firmly established. So how do we read Jefferson's words now? Was he pointing towards an ideal that he hoped would be realized? Or was he merely, as some people argue, thinking Americans are equal to Englishmen? And nothing more than that.

I don't want to be the one to assert a definitive account of the interpretation of those words. But I do want to quote from Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College. It begins so universally with the declaration of the rights that everyone has.

So universally. And its claim is that in any time, people have certain rights that cannot be violated. And those rights are established in what he calls the laws of nature and of nature's God. It's saying that in your nature is written your rights. That no one may govern you except by your effective consent. That you own the government piece of it.

And that it may not do anything to you except what you agree that it may do. Here are some words of President Calvin Coolidge speaking in 1926 on the 150th anniversary. There is something beyond the establishment of a new nation, great as that event would be in the Declaration of Independence, which has ever since caused it to be regarded as one of the great charters that not only was to liberate America, but everywhere to ennoble humanity. It was not because it proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles.

First, upon the world, unannounced, they're reached by gradual development over a length of time, usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble. The doctrine that all men are created equal, that they're endowed with their certain unalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just power of government must be derived from the consent of the governed. He says about the Declaration, there is a finality.

It is often asserted the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day. We may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern, but that reasoning cannot be applied to this great trial. If all men are created equal, that's fine. If they're endowed with unalienable rights, that is fine.

If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the government, that is fine. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward. Backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient than those of the revolutionary.

Magnificent. And then here's what President John Kennedy said about the Declaration on July 4th at Independence Hall. You and I are the executors of the testament handed down by those who gathered in this historic hall 186 years ago. For they gathered to affix their names to a document which was above all else, a document not of rhetoric, but of bold decision. It was, it is true, a document of protest. But protests had been made before.

It set forth their greetings. It set forth their grievances with eloquence, but such eloquence had been heard before. What distinguished this paper from all others was the final irrevocable decision that it took to assert the independence of free states in place of colonies, commit to that goal their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Today, 186 years later, that decade of the Declaration of Independence, today, 186 years later, that declaration whose yellowing parchment and fading, almost illegible lines I saw in the past week in the National Archives in Washington is still a revolutionary document.

To read it today is to hear a comfort call. Its authors were highly conscious of its worldwide implications. And George Washington declared that liberty and self-government everywhere were, in his words, finally staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. The theory of independence is as old as man himself.

It was not invented in this hall, Independence Hall in Philadelphia. But it was in this hall that the theory became a practice, that the word went out to all, that the God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. But there's no better way to understand what the Declaration of Independence meant to the people of the time than an interview in 1843. Captain Levi Preston, who was 91 at the time, fought the British in Concord in 1775. Question, Captain Preston, why did you go to the Concord fight the 19th of April 1775?

The old man bowed beneath the weight of the years, raised himself upright, turning towards me, the interviewer, saying, why did I go? Yes, I replied, my histories tell me that you men of the revolution took up arms against intolerable oppressions. What are they? Oppressions? I didn't feel them.

What? Were you not oppressed by the Stamp Act? I never saw one of those stamps. Oh, what about the tea text? Tea text? I never drank a drop of that stuff. The boys threw it all overboard. And I suppose you've been reading Harrington or Sidney or Locke about the eternal principles of liberty.

I never heard of them. We read only the Bible, the catechism, watched psalms and hymns and the almanac. Well, then, what was the matter? What did you mean in going to fight? Young men, what we meant going for those red coats was this. We always had governed ourselves and we always meant to.

They didn't need, we should. It was a revolution, as I like to say, a revolution of self-rule, grounded in high principles, but appealing to the weight of experience. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Monty Montgomery himself, a Hillsdale College graduate. And a special thanks to Bill Maclay. He's a Hillsdale College professor. And his book, well, it's Land of Hope. It's terrific.

Pick it up at Amazon or the Usual Suspects. My goodness, that last interview said it all. We were governing ourselves and we meant to continue to do so. That's why the war was fought.

And in the end, that's why the Declaration was signed. The story of us, the story of America, here on Our American Stories. For each person living with myasthenia gravis, or MG, their journey with this rare condition is unique. That's why Untold Stories, Life with Myasthenia Gravis, a new podcast from iHeartRadio, in partnership with Argenics, is exploring the extraordinary challenges and personal triumphs of underserved communities living with MG. Host Martine Hackett will share these powerful perspectives from real people with MG, so their experiences can help inspire the MG community and educate others about this rare condition. Listen to find strength and community on the MG journey on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get yours now at Walmart and Walmart.com.