| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Directed by Brian Knappenberger. | ||
| The series includes never-before-seen footage of the war from the CBS archives. | ||
| Also included in the documentary are interviews with participants in the war, both from the North and the South. | ||
| One of the most frequent voices heard during the series is Columbia University professor Li An Hong Nguyen, born in Vietnam in 1974. | ||
| She is the youngest of nine children and was brought to the United States by her parents in 1975. | ||
|
unidentified
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Author Leon Hong Nguyen with her book, Hanoi's War, an international history of the war for peace in Vietnam on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| We are in Philadelphia for a look into the founding of our country as we kick off an 18-month initiative here at C-SPAN commemorating America's 250th birthday. | ||
| We're joined now by Scott Stevenson, President and CEO of the Museum of the American Revolution. | ||
| He joins us from Philadelphia. | ||
| Thanks for being with us. | ||
| Oh, it's so great to be here, Mimi. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| So remind us of what actually happened on the 4th of July in 1776. | ||
| Yeah, so the 4th of July was the date that the Second Continental Congress adopted and issued the Declaration of Independence, which was a document that had been preparing by the Committee of Five, principally authored by Thomas Jefferson, to explain to the world the action that Congress had actually taken two days earlier, the 2nd of July, | ||
| 1776, of declaring the 13 United Colonies to be free and independent states, birthing the United States of America. | ||
| And you're in Philadelphia. | ||
| What's the level of excitement there on this 4th of July? | ||
| Oh, it's amazing. | ||
| You know, I live within walking distance of the museum, which is located at 3rd and Chestnut Streets, so just two blocks from Independence Hall. | ||
| And Philadelphia is preparing for a big parade today, as we do every year on the 4th of July. | ||
| People are beginning to gather along Chestnut Street and throughout the city. | ||
| There's parades and floats that are sort of staged along the route, getting ready to celebrate the 249th anniversary of American independence. | ||
| And I met Miss Pennsylvania on the way in, so it's been a great day already. | ||
| And remind us of the importance of Philadelphia to the independence of the country. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So Philadelphia was the best way to think of it as the sort of headquarters of the American Revolution. | ||
| This was the place where delegates from the colonies came together even before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1774. | ||
| Directly across the street from where I'm sitting at the Museum of the American Revolution is Carpenter's Hall, which was the location of the first Continental Congress that met in the early fall of 1774 to try to come up with a coordinated colonial response to acts that the British Parliament had taken in response to the dumping of the tea in Boston Harbor in December of 1773. | ||
| And so Congress first met here. | ||
| This is the place where a lot of that founding generation, the leadership, first met one another. | ||
| It's the first time John Adams laid eyes on George Washington, for instance. | ||
| And then, of course, Congress issued an appeal to the king to try to redress these grievances. | ||
| Those delegates went home. | ||
| All of the colonies were encouraged to try to come together in a continental association to Have a non-importation agreement, so to try to prevent any British goods from coming in, so it was the kind of homespun by American movement, and to form voluntary military units or militia units in case it came to blows the following spring. | ||
| When Congress comes back together, and this time they've moved to the Pennsylvania State House, which will only later become known as Independence Hall, they arrive in Philadelphia to the news that fighting has actually broken out at Lexington and Concord, and the war is on. | ||
| And why Philadelphia specifically? | ||
| Why not anywhere else in the country where these events are meetings taking place? | ||
| Well, cheesesteaks, obviously, but in all seriousness, Philadelphia is the largest port in British North America. | ||
| It's one of the largest English-speaking cities actually in the world at this point. | ||
| It is centrally located, and so for delegates who are traveling as far north as New Hampshire and New England and as far south as the Carolinas and Georgia, this is kind of an easily accessible central location. | ||
| You know, large city, it has accommodations, it has taverns, it has private homes, places for delegates to stay. | ||
| And for coordinating what rapidly became a war against the most powerful military force on the planet at the time, Great Britain, it was a perfect cockpit of revolution, a headquarters for revolution. | ||
| It would essentially be the capital of the new United States all through that eight-year protracted conflict of the Revolutionary War. | ||
| And, Scott, what do you think about how we remember the American Revolution, the importance of that to today, and how we see our country today? | ||
| Yeah, this is such an important point and something that the museum, and you know, we're a relatively young institution. | ||
| We just opened on April 19th, 2017, but we've had almost 2 million visitors through the museum since then. | ||
| And one of the most important points that we try to convey to our visitors is to think about the difference between the war, that's the Revolutionary War, which we sometimes use American Revolution as shorthand to mean the Revolutionary War, which was an eight-year conflict that resulted in the independence of the United States. | ||
| And the sense that many of the founders use when they talked about the American Revolution, it's encapsulated best in a quote from a Philadelphian, Dr. Benjamin Rush, who was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a prominent physician here in Philadelphia, did military service during the Revolutionary War. | ||
| And on the eve of the Constitutional Convention, so 11 years after the Declaration of Independence, he wrote a pamphlet addressed to the American people. | ||
| And he said, The American War is over, meaning the Revolutionary War, but this is not the case with the American Revolution. | ||
| Only the first act of the great drama is over. | ||
| And what he meant by that is if you think about the American Revolution as an ongoing experiment in liberty, equality, and self-government, something that is set in motion during the Revolutionary War, with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, where we announced to the world that this is a nation that believes in liberty and equality and natural rights, that we will form republican governments where the people are sovereign rather than a king. | ||
| That is a process that began in 1776 but is ongoing and unfinished. | ||
| And I think for the moment that we're in where we can feel very divided politically, our hope here at the museum is that going back to that founding principle, going back to that idea that even the founders themselves did not believe they had created something finished and perfect in 1776, | ||
| in 1783, in 1787, that they knew that this was going to be an ongoing experiment and it required an active, engaged citizenry who would each generation would dedicate themselves to trying to form a more perfect union. | ||
| And that's the journey that we're all on together still as we're looking forward to America's 250th anniversary a year from today. | ||
| And you can join our conversation if you've got a question about the history of the American Revolution and our guest Scott Stevenson. | ||
| You can give us a call. | ||
| Our lines are regional. | ||
| So if you're in the Eastern or Central time zones, call us on 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you're in Mountain or Pacific, it's 202-748-8001. | ||
| You can also use our line for texting, and that's 202-748-8003. | ||
| So Scott, you are in the Patriots Gallery at the Museum of the American Revolution. | ||
| The museum is holding an exhibit called Banners of Liberty. | ||
| Tell us a little bit about that. | ||
| Yeah, I wonder if you can see me shaking here because I am sitting in a room where half of the surviving American military flags from the Revolutionary War are installed on the walls around me. | ||
| Only about 30 of these incredibly rare banners of liberty, as we call them, have survived from the hundreds and hundreds that were made and flown during the Revolutionary War. | ||
| And for this summer until August 10th, the museum has this exhibition Banners of Liberty on display. | ||
| And so half of those surviving flags are in this room with me. | ||
| No one has seen this many American military flags together since the end of the Revolutionary War. | ||
| So I hope those who are able to come to Philadelphia can make it here. | ||
| But we actually have a digital version, an online exhibit that you can go to the museum's website, which is amrevmuseum.org. | ||
| Or if you're so inclined and you like catalogs, we have this wonderful catalog that we have produced that's available on our website, and that has images and historical information about all of these flags. | ||
| Well, Scott, tell us about the importance of flags during the Revolution. | ||
| What were they, what was their importance? | ||
| What did they convey? | ||
| Sure, yeah, it's a little, you know, because flags are only relegated to sort of a ceremonial purpose on the battlefield today, we don't necessarily think about them in their original utilitarian use in the period. | ||
| So flags were an important rallying point. | ||
| They were a way for troops to orient themselves on the battlefield. | ||
| This was still an era of what military historians and strategists refer to as linear warfare. | ||
| So large blocks of soldiers who were trained to load and fire in unison. | ||
| And that was partly driven by the technology of the period. | ||
| Most of these troops are armed with smooth bore weapons that are relatively inaccurate at great distance. | ||
| So the troops were trained to load, fire, and maneuver together and to fire in disciplined volleys. | ||
| Think of that as like a large shotgun going off on the battlefield. | ||
| And so it's very important for soldiers using those linear tactics to be able to remain in line, to maneuver on the battlefield together. | ||
| And so flags pay a really important way for soldiers to have a rallying point, something to orient their formations on. | ||
| The flags were a way to symbolize and signify the national origin of the troops, so that both friend and foe could distinguish them, as well as the regiment or a particular sub-unit of a regiment that was supposed to stay together. | ||
| And so, most of the flags that are around me here were used on the battlefield. | ||
| They were designed for one of those purposes. | ||
| Well, let's take one as an example. | ||
| This is the Pennsylvania Associators flag. | ||
| It's from 1775 and it was known as the Monmouth flag. | ||
| Right, so this is on loan to us from the Monmouth County Historical Association, which is just across the river over in northern New Jersey from Philadelphia. | ||
| And so, we're really grateful for them entrusting us with the loan of it for a couple of months. | ||
| And it's one of my favorite flags because it can be confusing for people at first because you'll, of course, recognize what we would refer to as the Union Jack or the Union, the British Union, in the canton, which is that upper quadrant of the flag. | ||
| And this flag was known as the Monmouth flag because when it was donated in the 19th century, Americans had really forgotten about the first year of the Revolutionary War. | ||
| When the colonists came together here in Philadelphia, First and Second Continental Congress, really for the year preceding the Declaration of Independence, they were fighting to restore or protect their rights that they saw themselves being inheritors of as English subjects. | ||
| And so, that union canton was a symbol that they were loyal to the king and that they were fighting for the rights that they thought they deserved as English subjects, British subjects. | ||
| And so, this is a flag almost certainly made in the first months of the Revolutionary War. | ||
| By the 19th century, we'd sort of forgotten that story. | ||
| And so, if you saw a flag that had been descended in a family and it had a symbol like this, oh, that must be a British flag. | ||
| So, actually, for a long time, there was a thought that this was a British flag that had been captured at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778. | ||
| A lot of the curatorial research that we've done and the provenance work that we do, which is looking at how it tracks down and traces down and passes down through families, we were able to find the original owner of that flag and establish that he, in fact, was a Pennsylvania militia officer. | ||
| And this matches other flags that have survived with that same provenance. | ||
| What's great about it is it may be hard to make out on screen, but maybe you can see the pattern in the red cross of St. George in that canton. | ||
| If you look really closely, it's a figure damask fabric. | ||
| That's a furnishing fabric. | ||
| So, you would normally see that on upholstered furniture or maybe bed hangings or curtains. | ||
| And what I love about that is that's, of course, Americans, they had non-importation right for the whole six or eight months beforehand. | ||
| So, they had not been importing fabrics from overseas. | ||
| And so, these are merchants who are scrambling around trying to make flags using the textiles that are available to them. | ||
| And that is a flag that certainly shows that scrappy Yankee ingenuity to try to prepare for the military. | ||
| Let's talk to some callers. | ||
| Scott is on the line from Roseville, California. | ||
| Good morning, Scott. | ||
| You're on with Scott Stevenson. | ||
|
unidentified
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God bless you all, everybody in the United States, all of America. | |
| How proud we should be that Italia and Europe, the UK, Spain, we are all a part of that. | ||
| How great we are as a nation. | ||
| To hell with the other nations is something that MAGA is trying to do right now. | ||
| It's a shame that we forget our roots and what we did to the Native Americans and the Mexicans. | ||
| Come out of California. | ||
| California was Mexico before we came along. | ||
| Scott Stevenson, comment on that? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think, Scott, you raise a lot of important historical facts that we have to remember as Americans. | ||
| I think, you know, we cannot ever express enough the indebtedness that we have, for instance, to France. | ||
| It is impossible to imagine American independence being secured, certainly on the timeline that we were able to secure our independence in the Treaty of Paris in 1783 without the assistance, not just of French ships and money and munitions, the support of the French crown, but all those soldiers and volunteers who came here, people like the young Marquis de Lafayette, | ||
| still a teenager when he sailed to America because he was so inspired by the experiment that Americans were launching in Republican government, government by the people. | ||
| And so it's absolutely important to remember all of American history. | ||
| At the museum here, you know, we're dedicated, we say we are dedicated to telling the history of America, warts and all. | ||
| So we try to tell a very honest story that is also very hopeful, uplifting, and hopefully ultimately unifying as a people. | ||
| So your comments resonate with me, Scott. | ||
| Here's Don in Bakersfield, California. | ||
| Good morning, Don. | ||
| You're on. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| I have a question for Scott. | ||
| I recently watched the first part of Sitting Bull on the History Channel, and what came to me is kind of a theory maybe, or what I believe the truth is, is that when Lincoln allowed for homesteading, a lot of people moved west. | ||
|
unidentified
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He wanted to conquer more of the United States or America during the time when the Civil War was happening. | |
| And so also some soldiers went because people were getting, the Indians were trying to keep their land and maintain the buffalo, as we all see and know from history. | ||
|
unidentified
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But during that time, who fought in the Civil War? | |
| And so my question is to you, Scott. | ||
| While that was going on and the Civil War was happening, I believe they had to have numbers and soldiers and guns were put in the hand of slaves. | ||
| And so they were also fighting for the Union. | ||
| And Lincoln ultimately felt compelled to free the slaves because one of the things in that program is that the biggest mass hanging that ever took place under Lincoln was 28 Indians were hung at one time. | ||
| So I want to know if, go ahead. | ||
| Yep. | ||
|
unidentified
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Go ahead, Scott. | |
| Yeah, no, I think you raise a really important point is that those events that you're talking about, of course, taking place almost a century after the Revolutionary War, in many ways are continuing processes that we can see in the 1770s during the Revolutionary War. | ||
| The precedent of enlisting enslaved people of African descent was practiced by both sides. | ||
| Initially, of course, Washington's army, when he takes command of the New England troops that are encircling British-held Boston in 1775, Congress initially demanded that all soldiers of African descent, both free and enslaved, who were serving in those forces, be discharged. | ||
| And those men actually stepped forward and protested and demanded that they be given an opportunity to stand alongside soldiers of European descent, that they were committed to the cause of liberty as well. | ||
| And ultimately, Washington relents. | ||
| And by the end of the Revolutionary War, at least 8,000 soldiers of African descent and some of Native American descent or of mixed ancestry had served in the Continental Army. | ||
| And those numbers almost certainly are lower than the reality. | ||
| It's just that the nature of the records makes it very difficult to look at the full extent of that service. | ||
| And many of those men, one of them at the time, a young teenage boy named James Forton, who lived actually half a block from where I'm sitting here at 3rd and Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. | ||
| He was born to a free black family. | ||
| When he was nine years old, he was at the State House Yard at Independence Hall when he heard the Declaration of Independence read for the first time. | ||
| And he heard the words, all men are created equal. | ||
| When he was 14 years old, he served aboard a privateer ship, a Navy ship that sailed right out of here in Philadelphia. | ||
| So at age 14, he was a combat veteran. | ||
| At age 15, he was not only a combat veteran, he was a prisoner of war who chose imprisonment on a British prison ship in Wallabout Bay outside of New York rather than enlist in the British Navy, someone who was committed to the cause of American liberty. | ||
| So it's very important to remember those patriots of color who were part of the formation of the United States from the very beginning. | ||
| And you also allude to the very tragic story of Native Americans' involvement with the new American Republic. | ||
| Of course, ultimately, there were Native nations that served on both sides of the conflict as they tried to preserve their sovereignty and independence. | ||
| And here at the museum, we honor the Oneida Indian Nation located in central New York now, who have been very involved with the museum for years. | ||
| They were one of America's first allies, splitting with the rest of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy to support American independence and the Continental Congress. | ||
| But ultimately, a very tragic story about the loss of their lands gradually through the 19th century and 20th century. | ||
| So we can't, we really can't do enough to make sure that all of the stories, both positive and negative, that have led us to the moment that we're at as a nation are told and remembered. | ||
| Scott, I wonder how unified the colonists were in the lead up and during the American Revolutionary War on the desire to break from the British crown. | ||
| What were normal day-to-day people thinking about all this? | ||
| It was an incredibly contentious moment, not just, as you allude, not just in Congress itself. | ||
| And there was tremendous debate that took place over the course, really beginning in 1775. | ||
| I mean, people like John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, you know, sort of entered Congress already convinced that independence was certainly inevitable, and it was just really a question of the timing of that. | ||
| Others really were holdouts till the very end. | ||
| There were some like John Dickinson who ultimately abstained from voting and said, you know, I can't support this vote. | ||
| But then ultimately when the vote was taken and we declared independence, said, okay, and they went and put on a uniform. | ||
| And that was certainly the case with people in taverns, in churches, in homes. | ||
| The American people is really where the source of that independence movement began. | ||
| And it's something we explore in the museum here. | ||
| The late Pauline Mayer, who was a historian at MIT, wrote a great book called American Scripture about the Declaration of Independence. | ||
| And one of the things that she uncovered was that there were more than 40 local declarations of independence in communities from New England all through the South before Congress declares independence in July of 1776. | ||
| And so it sort of allowed us to see this as a revolutionary movement, a conversation among the American people. | ||
| We tend to think of it as something that everyone must have been unanimous about, but it was absolutely not. | ||
| It was a dangerous, dangerous step. | ||
| I think we should all reflect on what we would have done if we had been in those uncertain times. | ||
| All right, well, we'll take a little break here and we will have a short tour from Tyler Putman. | ||
| He's the manager for gallery interpretation at the Museum of American Revolution. | ||
| Take a look. | ||
|
unidentified
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So I'm standing on the porch of City Tavern. | |
| This is a reconstructed building, but it's meticulously detailed to look like a real building that was on this site right here on 2nd Street. | ||
| And it was completed in 1773. | ||
| So when the Revolutionary War broke out, this would have been a brand new building. | ||
| It was a high-end establishment. | ||
| This is not a dive bar or a cheap place. | ||
| This is where you bring your parents when they come to town. | ||
| It's when the Continental Congress meets in the city. | ||
| This is the place you want to eat, drink, stay, and make plans. | ||
| And it was in taverns like this that the American Revolution in Philadelphia was really born because there weren't a lot of other places to gather or meet or socialize informally. | ||
| So in little coffee houses, in those dive bars, and in big, fine dining establishments like City Tavern, the people we've heard of, the people we haven't heard of, would have been reading the newspapers, comparing notes about current events, and debating what they would do as tensions within the British Empire arose. | ||
| We're right here at the corner of 2nd and Walnut Street. | ||
| And while we're surrounded by modern buildings and high rises, you can imagine this in the 18th century as a densely populated neighborhood, just about a block and a half from the city's docks. | ||
| And it's facing Dock Creek or Dock Street, an open waterway in the 1770s that's now covered in cobblestones. | ||
|
unidentified
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So you could have also brought cargo or people right up close to City Tavern, unloaded, had a nice lamb dinner, talked about politics, and then decided what you were going to do next as the American Revolution was growing. | |
| Imagine yourself in a room where everyone's drinking fine Madeira wine, smoking Virginia tobacco, and having big thoughts, right? | ||
| So you're reading newspapers that are giving you reports about the Stamp Act, political debates in Parliament, news from Georgia and Nova Scotia. | ||
| It only takes about a month for news to get from Europe to Philadelphia. | ||
| So you're pretty up to date on fashion, politics, parliamentary debates, and you could talk about any of that. | ||
| But a lot of the conversations that happened here would have been like the conversations that happen today in restaurants. | ||
| How are your kids doing in school? | ||
| Is your business doing well? | ||
| Sometimes you talk about big world-changing ideas. | ||
| Sometimes you talk about what are you going to order for dessert. | ||
| City Tavern is a reconstruction. | ||
| It's owned by the National Park Service. | ||
| It's not in operation now. | ||
| Formally, some folks watching might have visited it when it was an operating restaurant. | ||
| But you can at least appreciate its architectural glory and what it might have seen in the 1770s. | ||
| And we are back with Scott Stevenson. | ||
| He's president and CEO of the Museum of the American Revolution on this Independence Day. | ||
| And we are taking your calls until the end of the program, which is at 10 Eastern. | ||
| Here's Alexis in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. | ||
| Good morning, Alexis. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I just want to say that unfortunately, I'm very pessimistic about this country. | ||
| And I heard the response that the guest gave to the first caller saying, you know, that the purpose of the museum is to be hopeful and prideful and all that. | ||
| But I just feel like, yeah, I think we're seeing the end days in 250 may be the end of the story for this country. | ||
| The point I want to make is kind of an anthropological and sociological point, and that is my understanding of how the Revolutionary War came about is, you know, folks along the eastern seaboard, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, eventually D.C., and then the southern part, didn't like being governed by the, you know, King George, who lived, you know, what, | ||
| 3,200 miles away or something in London. | ||
| And I guess that's my point: the geographical distance. | ||
| I mean, if you look at Juneau, Alaska, or even Seattle or Honolulu, we're talking 4,000 or more miles away. | ||
| And I just think that human beings are meant to live in smaller, more tight-knit societies. | ||
| And I can understand why people who live in remote rural areas of this country, let's say in Idaho or Utah or Montana or something, or even Alaska, do not feel represented by folks in Washington, D.C., over 3,000 miles away. | ||
| And I'd like to hear what your guest has to say about the geographical distance of those who are governing. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| Yeah, no, Alexa, this is a really important point that goes right to the anxiety that the founders had. | ||
| And by founders, I mean not just the people in Independence Hall, but people throughout American society that founding generation had. | ||
| You know, they were keen students of history. | ||
| And the model that they looked toward was, of course, ancient Rome, the history of republics. | ||
| So when they were creating these republican, 13 Republican forms of government, you know, different forms of government, but all based as republics where the people were going to be sovereign, they were anxious about the very thing that you raise here because their reading of history is that republics, first of all, were incredibly fragile. | ||
| And that when they had any kind of resonance, when they had been successful at all, the theory was that they could only work if they were small and local and homogenous. | ||
| And of course, America was an incredibly diverse and geographically enormous place, even before it began expanding across the continent. | ||
| And so all of the people in Europe, around the world, who were looking at this experiment, you know, were, I am sure, taking bats about how long it was going to take before the United States collapsed into something else. | ||
| And it was either going to be dominated by monarchies again or fall into some kind of anarchy. | ||
| So the anxiety that is absolutely present in many parts of America today that you express is not something new. | ||
| You are not experiencing something that has not been around for a quarter millennium. | ||
| It was there from the very beginning of the nation. | ||
| And remember that when we are students of history, and this is why it is so critical that we do a better job of teaching students, K through 12 students, and just we as citizens study history. | ||
| I think that it can be reassuring to us to know that there have been many, many moments of fear and pessimism about whether the nation would be able to survive. | ||
| We have been through periods of mass immigration. | ||
| We have been through periods where we are concerned about how we're going to survive as a nation. | ||
| Great civil strife. | ||
| Remember, a civil war that was fought. | ||
| And so to me, the importance of the moment is to A, put that in context, to have the, that's something that museums, educational institutions, teachers can do, is to give us that sort of historical context for what we're feeling today. | ||
| And ultimately, this is an experiment in liberty, equality, and self-government. | ||
| And it has been an incredible inspiration for people around the world for 250 years. | ||
| It's a theme that we're exploring in a special exhibition that will open this fall, in October of 2025, and run through 2027 called The Declaration's Journey, where we will look at 250 years of how the Declaration of Independence was communicated around the world and the response of peoples around the world, the more than 100 nations that have issued their own declarations of independence and statements of human rights that are inspired by the nation. | ||
| So I think that while I want to acknowledge the concern that you are feeling, the response needs to be for us to muscle through. | ||
| We need to look across the aisle at people who we think we don't have anything in common with and have a dialogue with them, see them, hear what they're saying. | ||
| Because I think one of the things that you will find is that the vast majority of Americans actually believe in America. | ||
| They believe in equality. | ||
| They believe in liberty. | ||
| They sometimes have different diagnoses of the problems. | ||
| And the only way to resolve that, because we do not have a king, right? | ||
| We are the sovereign people. | ||
| And so in terms of feeling disconnected from Washington, remember we're represented by people who are from our communities, who we elect through the democratic process, and we send them there to represent us. | ||
| And so I think it was Winston Churchill who once said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the other ones that have ever been tried. | ||
| And so I hope that you'll buck up, double down on this incredible 250-year-old project of ours, and let's try to form that more perfect union. | ||
| Scott, let's talk about another flag in your exhibit. | ||
| This is the Pennsylvania militia flag. | ||
| So this is from 1777. | ||
| Tell us about this one. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So this is sort of a large blue field and it has alternating stripes representing the 13 states. | ||
| Sorry, it's a large red field. | ||
| And what's interesting, it'll be recognizable to you because you'll see it looks sort of like the American flag that we're familiar with, the stars and stripes, but it doesn't have the blue field in the background. | ||
| This is a flag actually made not too far, again, from Philadelphia in Chester County, Pennsylvania, for a militia unit. | ||
| And it's probably the earliest surviving flag that has a depiction of what will become known as the American flag, the stars and stripes. | ||
| It was flown at the Battle of Brandywine in 1777, actually September 11th, ironically, of 1777, and descended in a family in Chester County until it was eventually donated to Independence National Historical Park, so the National Park Service custodians of Independence Hall. | ||
| But it's really, it's on display for the first time publicly in the Banners of Liberty exhibition here at the museum. | ||
| Here's James. | ||
| He's calling from Collins, Mississippi. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, good morning. | |
| Happy 4th of July, sir. | ||
| To you as well. | ||
|
unidentified
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Sir, I wanted to ask you, okay, pertaining to this subject that we're on now, the Museum, the Museum of American Revolution, I wanted to ask you the connection between 1883, June 10th, | |
| and proceed from this subject you own to there with African Americans of slavery descent. | ||
| I wanted to ask you a question because Mitch McConnell came on TV and several other Republicans and said that, and I put all of it together. | ||
| I don't try to separate the wheat from the terror. | ||
| That's not up to me. | ||
| But what I'm saying is, I love this country. | ||
| I love America. | ||
| I love the 4th of July. | ||
| As an African American of slavery descent living in the state of Mississippi in a small town in Collins, Mississippi, I wanted to ask you this question. | ||
| Should African Americans and the white people that died, that was white, European people, died to help African Americans of slavery descent? | ||
| They was hung, they was beaten. | ||
| And when Abraham Lincoln signed that whatever it was, a document for African Americans to be free and to have and to receive restitutions, that applied to all people, to me, especially white people that had died and fought. | ||
| And now Ms. McConnell say over 200 years, that was over 150 years ago. | ||
| So how is it that the Americans can say they're great, yet they're still, how can you be great when you don't clear that problem up? | ||
| All right, James, let's get a response. | ||
| Go ahead, Scott. | ||
| Sure, yeah. | ||
| I mean, we had a couple callers now sort of talking about the Civil War, the aftermath of the Civil War. | ||
| And the important point here is that this is all working out issues that were not resolved by the founding generation, which they themselves knew, that they were not ultimately, you know, they recognized and debated how can a nation founded with ideals about liberty and equality have human enslavement, you know, existing simultaneously. | ||
| And the answer was, you know, that it was a great hypocrisy that they recognized. | ||
| And they ultimately failed to resolve that issue during their lifetimes. | ||
| And it would take a long period of an abolition movement, the Civil War, the civil rights movement. | ||
| And we're still working out all of the issues that are at the very core of our founding, those contradictions of American slavery, American freedom. | ||
| And so it's incredibly important to, again, when you think about the American Revolution, not as something that took place long ago and was over, and therefore we judge the American Revolution by what it achieved or did not achieve in 1783 or 1787, but as this ongoing experiment, this project that continues. | ||
| That quest to make sure that the words, all men are created equal, apply to all people, and that we're mindful of the suffering that has taken place over generations. | ||
| And the legacy of that process is still with us today. | ||
| It's the most important work we can do as Americans. | ||
| And sometimes that can be discomforting, of course. | ||
| And it's important for us to have the maturity and confidence as a nation to recognize the warts as well as the incredible achievements of this great American achievement. | ||
| Jesse's joining us from Tucson, Arizona. | ||
| Good morning, Jesse. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Good morning, Scott. | ||
| I'm a social studies teacher, so I am just so proud of today. | ||
| I wrote this down, so I'm going to be very quick. | ||
| Ultimately, today shows the power of writing to express yourself and to create change. | ||
| And, you know, I'm an English teacher. | ||
| I just preach that like everybody. | ||
| I'm so proud of Deb Holland from Albuquerque, New Mexico. | ||
| I think she's just a true example of our current progress as a nation in terms of helping women become in power, helping Native Americans become in power. | ||
| I recommend everyone go to your public library and find a great book to read, Ben Franklin. | ||
| Come on, guys. | ||
| I preach to everyone: be patient and be brave. | ||
| I thank God for being born in a country with the values of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. | ||
| And I asked this question, it's kind of a rhetorical question I like asking: do you think Gandhi would have been able to do what he did? | ||
| Or do you think he was inspired by the people who created our nation? | ||
| Just a question. | ||
| And I'll just say I started a business, pencilpals.com, and we have red and blue coloring pens. | ||
| Consider buying them to express your patriotism. | ||
| Have a great day, everybody. | ||
| All right, Jesse. | ||
| And Scott, he did mention Benjamin Franklin. | ||
| So I wanted to show one more stop on our little tour by Tyler Putman talking about Ben Franklin. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
|
unidentified
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We're standing in an area called Franklin's Court, a court like a courtyard. | |
| The buildings behind me are what you would imagine Ben Franklin using as a print shop before the Revolutionary War. | ||
| If you've heard of one Philadelphian from the Revolutionary era, it's Benjamin Franklin. | ||
| He arrives here from Boston as a young man, starts up a printing business, becomes one of the most notable figures. | ||
| He's in Independence Hall. | ||
| He's at the Constitutional Convention. | ||
| His houses don't survive. | ||
| Archaeologists in the 1960s excavated this property. | ||
| They found the foundations, parts of those buildings, but they didn't know what the buildings looked like. | ||
| There's no drawings or depictions of Franklin's houses. | ||
| So rather than build them speculatively, they built these incredible ghost structures to allow you to imagine this as it would have been during Franklin's lifetime. | ||
| But Benjamin Franklin actually wasn't here for most of the Revolutionary War. | ||
| He was away in France as a delegate, as a representative of the new American government. | ||
| So you can imagine this area being used more actively by his servants, by his wife, Deborah. | ||
| And imagine the British Army arriving here in the fall of 1777, capturing the city of Philadelphia, or maybe liberating it, depending on your perspective. | ||
| Plenty of people thought that was the return of law and order. | ||
| The occupants of the house were now within, then, weren't the Franklin family. | ||
| They were British officers. | ||
| One of those officers was John Andre. | ||
| You might not have heard of John Andre, but I bet you've heard of his collaborator, Benedict Arnold. | ||
| It's Andre who's the British contact for Benedict Arnold, his liaison in what becomes the Arnold Treason. | ||
| But my favorite part of all of Franklin Court isn't necessarily those stories or these ghost structures. | ||
| It's what you can see through glass panels. | ||
| Archaeologists have left us viewing areas. | ||
| And if we look down into this one, we see an unremarkable brick-lined shaft in the ground. | ||
| This is Benjamin Franklin's 1787 toilet. | ||
| Benjamin Franklin is a fascinating character. | ||
| He's really a quintessential American of the 18th century. | ||
| His lifespan is most of the 18th century. | ||
| He grows up and he becomes a printer. | ||
| And imagine how important printing was the American Revolution. | ||
| If you're getting any news at all, it's most likely from a newspaper. | ||
| Those come out in Philadelphia maybe three times a week. | ||
| And in the two days between each of those issuances, someone has to set the lead type into little sticks, put it into the press, ink those letters, press into the paper, let that dry to get you the news. | ||
| So it's actually amazing how quickly they could do that, how quickly they could get news from around the world. | ||
| Franklin also operated the city's post office. | ||
| So he has the first access pretty shamelessly to reading letters and other materials coming from around the world, integrating those into his newspaper. | ||
| And right here in Franklin Court, you can imagine him doing the experiments he became famous for, having the correspondences. | ||
| He was critical in the founding of important organizations in the city, the first public hospital in the United States, early educational institutions. | ||
| It was Benjamin Franklin who emerged from Independence Hall at the end of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. | ||
| And so the story goes. | ||
| Someone asked him, Mr. Franklin, what kind of government have you given us? | ||
| And he said, a republic, madam, if you can keep it. | ||
| Scott Stevenson, I want to go back to Jesse's question about the American Revolution inspiring, possibly inspiring other movements around the world, including Gandhi's in India. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I referenced earlier an upcoming special exhibition that will open in October here at the Museum of the American Revolution and will run through 2026. | ||
| And it's called the Declaration's Journey. | ||
| And it actually takes up exactly the question that Jesse asked, which is what has the importance and influence of the Declaration of Independence been for the nations around the world? | ||
| And the answer, of course, is it has been incredibly influential, both through American history, inspiring the expansion of rights, rights movements, inspiring people like Frederick Douglass, like Elizabeth C.D. Stanton, all the way through to 20th Century civil rights movements, but also nations around the world. | ||
| The French Revolution, the Irish, the first attempt to create an Irish Republic in 1798, the Haitian Revolution, the first republic created by formerly enslaved people that was inspired again by the events of the Atlantic revolutions that were sparked by America. | ||
| And that continued all the way through to the 20th and 21st centuries. | ||
| When we look at the fall of the Eastern Bloc nations, the fall of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall after 1989, the creation of many new independent nations in Eastern Europe, almost all of which modeled their declarations of independence by using documents that use the structure and language of our Declaration of Independence. | ||
| And Jesse had asked about Gandhi, for instance, and of course, Gandhi used the language of the American Revolution, many of the tactics, things like non-importation, the production of Indian-made goods, the boycotts against British-made goods to try to put political pressure to ultimately bring independence for India after the Second World War. | ||
| So we cannot really, I think, exaggerate too much the ongoing significance of the Declaration of Independence and America's founding for people around the world. | ||
| Here's Ross in Florida. | ||
| Ross, you're on with Scott Stevenson. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good day. | |
| I hope everyone has a wonderful Independence Day. | ||
| I just want to thank C-SPAN for committing to this 250th anniversary starting today. | ||
| And I'm hoping that you'll be able to maximize the potential reaching out to the school systems and all the politicians that everyone to learn about their history as it is with etymology to know about democracy has to be requires to know your history. | ||
| And I'm hoping that you're all going to be able to maximize that potential. | ||
| And going all the way back to the founding, where it all started with the Mayflower and the Mayflower Compact, | ||
| where they all signed an agreement so that we can get along with each other and just learning about our shared history so that we can have a shared present and future. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And Ross. | ||
|
unidentified
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The other thing is I just wanted to say that I'm actually a descendant of one of the signers of the Declaration. | |
| Well, which one, Ross? | ||
|
unidentified
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George Ross. | |
| And Pennsylvania. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Go ahead, Scott. | ||
| Yeah, no, I think, Ross, that dream of us continuing the quest for unity that goes all the way back to many of those founding waves of immigrants who came to these shores Seeking a better life, | ||
| those who came here involuntarily, but whose labor helped to build this nation and who ultimately came to believe that the project of American independence, building governments based on equality, that the purpose of government was the welfare of ordinary people that empowered people to hold sovereignty rather than it coming from those who were nobles or for kings. | ||
| I mean, that is the dream that continues to be America, and it is certainly unfinished. | ||
| But I just hope, you know, the next year between now and the nation's 250th birthday, that we have everyone from school children to the members of America's greatest generation, the World War II generation, who were so conscious are leaving us now and passing, but a good reminder of what the nation can do when it comes together around a glorious common cause. | ||
| And that's, I think, what many of us, despite our differences, are seeking right now. | ||
| And so let's talk to our neighbors and try to make the 250th a recommitment to those founding ideals from the Declaration of Independence. | ||
| Stephanie in New York, New York, good morning. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| And I want to thank Scott Stevenson for his work at the museum. | ||
| I think it's a very important topic. | ||
| I tie it to your earlier question about what does independence mean to you. | ||
| And as somebody who's a 4th of July baby, I actually was born on the 1st. | ||
| My whole birthday growing up was tied to these 4th of July celebrations. | ||
| And I think that Scott brought up something that I think is really important before the show ends. | ||
| And he mentioned that Dr. Benjamin Rush had made a comment about the difference between the American Revolutionary War versus the American Revolution, and that the American Revolution, if I can paraphrase him, was still an ongoing event. | ||
| And I think that we kind of forget that. | ||
| I think that that's an important point. | ||
| And as an educator, I constantly remind the children that this is our goal to live up to the principles of what the Constitution is pushing forth. | ||
| But I find it disheartening and challenging when our independent governing bodies capitulate. | ||
| We had all of these senators and House representatives and so forth saying, don't sign this, we stand against it, and yet they caved to sign it. | ||
| Whether they should or shouldn't, that's their personal choice, but they were sent by their people to fight for our rights. | ||
| And it bothers me when they don't utilize their actual independence. | ||
| And so I find that challenging. | ||
| But the other irony I find, Scott, and with all due respect, you're sitting in this hall with these amazing flags, and the Monmouth flag was created from furniture fabric, but we import the majority of our American flags from overseas. | ||
| We don't even make our own. | ||
| And so I worry that the value that comes from what our flag should be and is represented is lost and diminished, as well as the people we send to be our voices don't utilize their own independence. | ||
| All right, Stephanie, thank you. | ||
| Let's hear from Scott. | ||
|
unidentified
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Go ahead. | |
| Yeah, no, I think it's really important to remember that our form of government absolutely depends upon citizens voting, being civically engaged, holding their elected representatives accountable. | ||
| If you were to get a group of people in this neighborhood in Philadelphia, people working at the taverns and down in the upholstery shops that were making those flags, enslaved people of African descent, members of Congress, and put them in a little time capsule and bring them here today. | ||
| I think one of the things that would be most astonishing to them is, A, that we have universal suffrage. | ||
| You know, everyone who is a citizen has the right to vote. | ||
| That was radical. | ||
| It was an idea that existed at the time, but to see the extent to which that has come to fruition in our times would be amazing. | ||
| And I think they would be very concerned about the low levels of participation, the low, you know, the relatively small proportion of people who participate in local elections, in primaries, let alone in national elections. | ||
| And they would see that as the seeds of destruction of that Republican form of government that they created, because it absolutely depends on using that most powerful tool that has ever been given to mankind to shape its future and present circumstance, and that is representation, and that is voting. | ||
| And so all of us, I hope, will sort of double down as we're educating young people, as we're talking to our fellow citizens, of reminding them that that tool that we have is still a dream for most people living in the world today. | ||
| And it is why America continues to be such an inspiring beacon, despite all of the challenges that we have, that you rightfully point out. | ||
| But let's double down and remember that this is a very special nation. | ||
| It has played an incredibly important role in raising the aspirations of people around the world. | ||
| And there is a lot of work still left to be done, for sure. | ||
| Let's talk to Michael, Plainfield, Illinois. | ||
| Michael, you're on. | ||
| Michael, are you there? | ||
| In Plainfield? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I'm here. | |
| Yes, go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Hello, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
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Birds. | |
| Hello. | ||
| I don't mean to burst your bubble, but I'm not celebrating anything. | ||
| This, you know, our country is gone right in the ditch. | ||
| Just a week or so ago, the Supreme Court, you know, did away with these nationwide injunctions. | ||
| Why was that done? | ||
| So that working people can't even get any redress in the courts, okay? | ||
| The founding fathers, there might have been a handful in there that really believed in some of the things that you've been talking about, but I don't believe it. | ||
| They were rich people that didn't want to pay taxes to the crown, just like our one percenters today, and the whole country is just ruined. | ||
| Look at my grandfather's brother was in World War I. My father was in the Pacific in World War II. | ||
| I was in service during the Vietnam War, and we haven't gotten much of anything for it. | ||
| I'll tell you that much. | ||
| The courts are packed. | ||
| The Supreme Court, a bunch of stooges that are controlled by the one percenters. | ||
| We've got more than just a little bit of work to do to straighten this place out, in my opinion. | ||
| And I think I've earned my right to have an opinion. | ||
|
unidentified
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But you're welcome to comment on that. | |
| Go ahead, Scott Stevenson. | ||
| No one believes more devoutly in your right to have an opinion than I do. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I mean, that is ultimately at its core, what the American Revolution is about, is the ability to express those opinions and then the tools to try to affect change. | ||
| And, you know, there was a letter, wonderful letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to Thomas Paine, the English immigrant who wrote Common Sense and the Crisis and wrote some of the most stirring prose that inspired the American independence movement, including his pamphlet Common Sense, the crisis that he writes in one of the low moments of the Revolutionary War when he writes, these are the times that try men's souls. | ||
| And this is, of course, after the Revolution during the French Revolution. | ||
| But in this letter between Jefferson and Paine, Jefferson says, you know, go on doing with the pen what was formerly done with the sword. | ||
| And he is encouraging him to continue to use his skills as an inspiring writer to support democracy, to support the creation of republics. | ||
| And it's a good reminder that the alternative to the system that we have, as flawed and as imperfect as it can seem to us, is very dark in American history. | ||
| And that is civil conflict. | ||
| That is the sword rather than the pen. | ||
| So I would just, we can be at a different place on the optimism thermometer about where we are currently as a nation. | ||
| But I hope we can all double down on our commitment to using those tools, which are a gift to us from that founding generation and all the generations that have served since then to effect change. | ||
| Let's talk to Hillgrove in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| All you hear from the current administration is about illegal immigration. | ||
| The original immigrants, illegal immigrants in this country were the Puritans, the Pilgrims, the colonists, and the slaves. | ||
| They were never processed. | ||
| But this is not a happy time. | ||
| And I really think this administration doesn't really project the American ideals. | ||
| I'm sorry to say. | ||
| So that's my feeling about the 4th of July as far as that goes. | ||
| I mean, it seems to me that this whole thing about illegal immigration is a total just bogus idea. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And on that, we have run out of time. | ||
| Scott Stevenson, President and CEO of the Museum of the American Revolution. | ||
| You can find more at amrevmuseum.org. | ||
| Scott, thanks so much for joining us. | ||
| Happy Fourth of July to you. | ||
| Happy Fourth of July. | ||
| Great to be with you. | ||
|
unidentified
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C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington and across the country. | |
| Coming up this morning, we'll talk about the national mood this 4th of July weekend and discuss other political news of the day. | ||
| First with Ed Dean of WBOB Radio in Jacksonville, Florida. | ||
| Then Arnie Arneson of WNHN Radio in Concord, New Hampshire. | ||
| Lincoln Square Media CEO and Executive Editor Susan Dimush. | ||
| John Anthony of WDTK The Answer Radio in Detroit, Michigan. | ||
| Carolina Journal's senior political analyst Mitch Kokai. | ||
| And Dean Obadala of The Dean Obadala Show on Sirius XM Progress. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern this morning on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app or online at c-span.org. | ||
| From the beginning, C-SPAN was there for every word of debate, every vote. | ||
| C-SPAN was there, giving you around-the-clock coverage through all-nighters into the early morning hours with record-breaking back-to-back votes in the Senate. | ||
| We're going to press on until victory is won. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| And House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries giving the longest House speech ever. | ||
| Only on C-SPAN could you witness the full story unfold, unfiltered in real time. | ||
| The Yays are 218, the Nays are 214. | ||
| The motion is adopted. | ||
|
unidentified
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We're sort of celebrating like the biggest bill of its kind ever signed. | |
| And it's going to make this country into a rocket ship. | ||
| It's going to be really good. | ||
| As the nation prepares to celebrate 250 years, C-SPAN is your front-row seat for extensive coverage on our nation's journey. |