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- [00:05]
Larry Arnn
Every week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins Hugh Hewitt to discuss great books, great men and great ideas. This is Hillsdale Dialogues, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More episodes at Podcast Hillsdale. Edu or wherever you find your audio,
- [00:31]
Hugh Hewitt
Morning Glory and Evening Grace America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Inside the Beltway that music means the Hillsdale Dialogue is upon us each week. The last broadcast hour of the week devoted to big ideas and big things and big people and big books. This week we got Dr. Matthew Spalding, who is dean of the Kirby center and the School of Graduate, the Graduate School of Studies in Statesmanship at the Kirby center in Washington, D.C. hillsdale's flagship inside the Beltway. And we are meeting here online and in your living rooms and in your cars on a special day because Dean Spalding wrote a great book which we talked about earlier this year, the Making of the American the Story of Our Declaration of Independence. And today it received the Today, this very day, it received the award for Book of the Year from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. And that's a big deal. If you know anything about isi, Matt, congratulations. I did not know that until today. This is well timed. That's a big deal. Congratulations.
- [01:35]
Matthew Spalding
Thank you. It was a great honor and I have great gratitude for it. ISI is a venerable and important influential group of faculty nationwide, conservative faculty and students, and they take books seriously. So that's something I respect greatly. And it was quite wonderful. We had a great ceremony here in Washington, D.C. and it was very important this year of all years to honor something like the Declaration of Independence in that writing. And I think it's also a tip of the hat to the fact that I took it so seriously and wrote a serious, thoughtful book on these things and not just an immediate short term book in the moment. But I wanted to delve down into some of the deeper themes that are behind the Declaration, the roots of it, if you will, going back to the Greeks and the Romans and the Christian traditions we discussed before. And so I take it as a recognition of all of those things. And that's very important. So I was thrilled. I was thrilled. And it's a great honor to receive a Book of the Year award.
- [02:45]
Hugh Hewitt
Well, to be honored by ISI is to be honored by serious people for doing a serious thing. And so congratulations. If anyone has not yet, thank you. Read the Making of the American Mind and they really want to know about the political theory behind the Declaration. Justice Gorsuch has a book coming out Monday for kids about the courage that required to, you know, take the risk and put your life, liberty and honor on the line. But the ideas and the thinking that gave those signers the courage to put pen to paper and to vote yes for freedom, that's a different thing entirely. That's an intellectual history, and that's what Dean Spalding did in the Making of the American Mind. I want to recommend that to you. Now, I started off by asking Matt a very simple question, which he answered very simply, and I want to talk about it. Why did the American Revolution end up at such a different place than the French Revolution? We ended up with a republic of liberty that governs itself by and large. It's at risk sometimes, but it's governed itself by at large for 250 years. They ended up with chaos and the terror. Why is that?
- [03:56]
Matthew Spalding
MATT SWALLEY well, I think it goes back to all those long and deep roots that we've talked about previously. We refer to the American Revolution and the French Revolution as if they were very similar things. But the idea of modern revolutions, because the French Revolution is connected to the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution and all modern revolutions is a very different thing than what the Americans did. I oftentimes like to I prefer to refer to this thing, this American thing called the American Founding, because that emphasizes the twofold nature of it. On the one hand, they broke with the British in terms of their immediate rule, but they also founded something, and that's that deliberative process that created that, that is so important and really distinguishes it from, say, the French. The French was about tearing things down, as Diderot famously or supposedly said. He wanted to strangle the last priest with interest, last king or arch or the other way around. I always get them mixed up, but that's the French Revolution. The American Revolution was a break in the immediate sense, but they reached back into a deeper, longer tradition that really predated them and predated England, for that matter, to find the roots of those British liberties in the very laws of nature and nature's God, as it says in the Declaration. And they appealed back to those things. So I like to say the Americans were radical in the sense that they went down to the roots, their principles, and they found them there and they built their regime on that. The French, they were moderns in the sense that they just wanted to destroy the ancien regime. And early on they had some thoughts about what might happen. Lafayette and some others were involved in it, but it quickly became chaotic. They started turning on themselves, and they had the guillotine and they started having a reign of terror. That's a much different direction. And then on top of that, of course, we can add there were key people in the American Revolution that prevented that from happening, that embodied those principles in America. Of course, that central figure was George Washington, who prevented that from happening and kept that revolution controlled. So that kept focused on its objective, which was to establish a constitutional government, which you. We're celebrating the 250th anniversary of the declaration now, but 11 years from now is the 250th anniversary of our Constitution. And we want to keep that in mind. It's that spread of things, that deliberative process. I mean, the Continental Congress is a legislature, after all. The Declaration is a piece of legislation debated at great length. And it's not just merely the storming the Bastille in a moment. It's a longer, deeper thing that has these deeper roots in constitutionalism, and especially the Christian and religious or at least moral roots underneath it, which the French, of course, were deeply opposed to and wanted to wipe out. So they're very different things, and you can't emphasize how different they are. You can't overemphasize how different they are. The French Revolution, the American Revolution, you
- [07:12]
Hugh Hewitt
wrote to me, ours was a deliberate process. Theirs was not. In other words, ours was argued over and debated. In the next segment, we're going to talk about the spring of 1776. But we have been talking. We've had a series about four or five of these conversations about. We've been at war for a year now, right? When did we start war? April of 1770.
- [07:32]
Matthew Spalding
April 75 was Lexington, Concord. Washington became commander in chief in June of 75. So the war is already a full war. And so it's amazing the extent to which they slowed things down. And no state acted by itself, no colony acted by itself without the permission of the Continental Congress. They did everything together. They stuck together, they held together, they debated, they argued. It's very, very thoughtful and deliberative. I mean, what is the American Revolution known for more than anything else? The pamphlets, the writings, the debates, the Federalist Papers. They argued. They argued. I mean, it's a legislative process, and that's what distinguishes it and makes it so much inheritance of the British constitutional system, but quintessentially American. And how they went about creating this new country, which is why I always like to connect the revolutionary aspect of it to the founding aspect of it. It's what they created from the very beginning they had in mind, not what they were tearing down as much as what they were building. And that's very American.
- [08:43]
Hugh Hewitt
And Matt Spalding, along the way, people were persuaded. They just didn't have a gun put to their head. They were not simply executed or sent to the guillotine. People were persuaded in one case just to stay away from the final vote on the Declaration and in another case to go in because it had to be inanimate. People were persuaded by argument leading up to the Declaration.
- [09:09]
Matthew Spalding
That's exactly right. And remember the first continental Congress in 1774, even a year, even before the war broke out, and they're voting, they're passing major pieces of legislation. There's something called the continental association in 1774. So they're already going down this path. The Declaration is a step, an important step, the crucial step along the way. But they're debating this at every step of the way. Some colonies are divided, the votes are split. They have arguments over what to do. Should we petition the king again? And it's this prudential back and forth. They actually debate what is the prudent thing to do in these circumstances. So that really distinguishes the American Revolution and is one of the reasons why I consider it to be very much grounded in almost this classical sense of deliberative, thoughtful, rational politics, prudential politics that really define what we associate in the west as kind of a statesman's process by which they formed this thing we call America, the French. You really don't see that at all. The French Revolution almost immediately gets out of control, as do modern revolutions. Modern revolutions are about toppling and replacing it with the next strongman, whoever has the power that's not the American model,
- [10:30]
Hugh Hewitt
and lining people up against the wall and shooting them. I'll be back with Dean Matt Spalding. Dr. Matt Spalding. His new book is called the Making of the American Mind. It is a wonderful journey into the intellectual roots and architecture of the Declaration. He'll be right back after these messages.
- [10:46]
Matthew Spalding
Stay tuned.
- [10:51]
Larry Arnn
You know the Robertson family from the hit TV show Duck Dynasty. Now Hillsdale College offers you the unique opportunity to learn alongside the Robertsons as they dive deep into Hillsdale's online course, the Genesis Story. Every Friday on the Unashamed Podcast, the Robertsons will share their insights and perspectives. Learning from Hillsdale professor of English John Justin Jackson. Take a trip down south to Louisiana for this one of a kind learning experience we call Unashamed Academy. Visit unashamedforhillsdale.com and enroll today. That's Unashamed. F O R hillsdale.com to experience the Genesis story alongside the Robertsons. Hey there, it's Scott Bertram, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Great show this week. Our friend Molly Hemingway is back, senior journalism fellow here at Hillsdale College, editor in chief of the Federalist. You see her on Fox News, the brand new bestseller, Alito, the Justice who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution. We will talk in depth with Molly Hemingway about the book and about what she's learned about Justice Alito. Plus, Janie Nitze, lawyer and New York Times best selling author, tells us about her new children's book that she co authored with a Supreme Court justice, that's Neil Gorsuch. The book is Heroes of 1776, the story of the Declaration of Independence. All that this week on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Find it at podcast hillsdale. Edu or wherever you get your audio, including YouTube.
- [12:48]
Hugh Hewitt
Welcome back, America. HUGH hewitt, the Hillsdale dialogue underway. All things Hillsdale at hillsdale. Edu, including their brand new online course on classical rhetoric and logic, much of which figured in the debate about the Declaration of Independence. I'm joined by Dr. Matthew Spalding, Dean of the Graduate School of Statesmanship at the Kirby center in Washington, D.C. the flagship of Hillsdale College inside of Washington, D.C. matt Spaulding, it's May and June of 1776, 250 years ago. We're not to the Declaration yet. Declaration doesn't come for another 64 days. What's going on 250 years ago right now in the spring of 1776, very important things.
- [13:31]
Matthew Spalding
And you've latched onto the key piece here, which is we should always remember that these events are occurring in real time. Last year was the 25th anniversary of the creation of the army and the war is underway. And there seems to be this quiet period, or at least we think there's this quiet period leading up to the spring of 76 towards the declaration. But some crucial things are happening. The British have evacuated Boston in March. Recall, Washington goes to Boston when he's assigned to lead the armies and he famously puts cannons on Dorchester Heights and they decide to evacuate. But he quickly realizes that they're going
- [14:12]
Hugh Hewitt
to get out of Boston. Let's explain. Knox brings the cannon down from, I don't know, Lake Champlain and gets him to Dorchester.
- [14:22]
Matthew Spalding
Roga brings him down 60 tons of cannons and Washington has this idea to place him on the height of Dorchester, which is over the Boston Harbor. The British realize they're outgunned in that moment and they decide to leave because a battle would threaten the British ships in the harbor. So Washington has figured out how to force them out of Boston. There's some thinking that, well, this is good news, they're leaving. But Washington's too smart for that. He realizes they're going to go and regroup and they're going to come back. And he thinks they're going to come back and attack New York. So 250 years ago, right about now, Washington is in the process of moving his continental army from Boston to New York, which, by the way, he didn't have any permission to do. He understood that to be his military commission to go to war. And he's positioning himself, so he's moving. He's already declared independence, in my opinion. He's already on the move, going to New York to prepare for attack. The British go back to. They go to Halifax, which is up above Maine, for a safe harbor. And they're, of course, going to regroup. They're going to get some more ships from England. They're going to gather some ships that are down in the Bahamas, and they're essentially going to prepare the largest naval invasion in world history up to that point, up to World War II. What the British are going to do by sending their ships to New York against George Washington's small army is the largest invasion, naval invasion in history. Bigger than the.
- [15:56]
Hugh Hewitt
That's so amazing to think about. And in. Meanwhile in Philadelphia, they're talking, right? They're just talking.
- [16:05]
Matthew Spalding
And meanwhile in Philadelphia, they're debating, they're arguing, things are moving along. You had Common Sense by Thomas Paine in January, so that kind of burst the bubble. There's now an argument out there for independence. But the debate, and it's actually a fascinating debate, it's not because anyone was for or against the principles for which they were fighting. John Dickinson famously was a, quote, unquote, moderate, but he wasn't against the principle of it. But the debate they're having is one of a prudence. It's not the right time to do it. Indeed, Adams, John Adams initially thinks that the timing isn't right either. We should first create the states, then we should form a confederation, then we should get a foreign alliance, then we should declare independence. The problem is, things start moving very rapidly and the debates in Congress become very intense. In May, there will be some states that by necessity need constitutions because the British governors have disbanded their constitutions and their legislatures. So Congress starts giving them permission initially, and then over the course of five days in May, they decide, and they say that all Colonies must create new governments and no British government in the colonies is legitimate anymore. That's a key move by the Continental Congress. And the question is, why did they do it then in May? And this is where these two worlds connect. Because George Washington, who's a very, very smart military leader, is very good at gathering intelligence. And he has gathered intelligence from England, secretly gets to him in New York, which he then sends down to Philadelphia. And that's when he has literally gotten copies of agreements between the British King and some of the Prussian states to hire up to 40,000 mercenaries. Washington informs the Continental Congress of this, and that's the tripwire, if you will. The debate now intensifies very quickly over a matter of days because now it's clear that their petitions to the King have failed and were likely going to go to war.
- [18:26]
Hugh Hewitt
You know, Matt, what I love about what you do, what I love about the way we're doing this with you over the course of a year is in most Americans mind, Lexington and Concord is followed by the Declaration of Independence. And then we win.
- [18:40]
Matthew Spalding
Right?
- [18:40]
Hugh Hewitt
And in fact, and in fact, it's
- [18:42]
Matthew Spalding
a scene that's coming out of Zeus's head. It just. Yeah, it's, it's eight years of blood,
- [18:47]
Hugh Hewitt
sweat and tear, toil of trouble, losses, death. I make my law students, right, watch the first two episodes of Adams, the HBO series, because it's about the Continental Congress, just to make them realize they're yelling at each other in that closed room. And it's hotter now you just mentioned, and I think, let's take a minute. Thomas Paine put common sense out in January and it lit a fire. What do you mean by that?
- [19:13]
Matthew Spalding
Right, January.
- [19:14]
Hugh Hewitt
Tell people what you mean by that.
- [19:16]
Matthew Spalding
Well, part of it is Thomas Paine is a wonderful writer. It comes out anonymously in January of 1776. His timing was impeccable. It's the first full throated call for independence. It's a full throated attack on the British monarchy as being corrupt and tyrannical. And it captures the moment. It spreads like wildfire in a population of what, two and a half million people? He sells half a million copies almost immediately. It's spread around. Everyone's reading it, they're all writing about it. Washington, Jefferson, all the members of the Continental Congress have it at hand. So it is, it is stirred up. It is, it is. He's. He's what we today would call an influencer of great magnitude. So that's an argument, right? It's an argument, but it's. That's precisely it's an argument and they're a legislature. You know what we oftentimes forget the Declaration of Independence. You know, this is not something that Jefferson all of a sudden just kind of like Athena coming out of Zeus's head, produced some, some evening. This is years in the making, debating. They're debating this on both sides. What to do, when to do it. What are the grievances? Why is that a grievance? All these things are hotly debated throughout the spring of 1776. It has been since 1774. And we sometimes forget the Declaration was a consensus document. It's what. And the title of my book comes from a letter. Justin later writes he didn't make it up. He says these are not new ideas. It's an expression of the American mind. He understands himself to be capturing that two years of debate in the Continental Congress. He's capturing what they've learned. He's capturing the pamphlets and the sermons and the writings of the letters.
- [21:07]
Hugh Hewitt
Sam, I want you to hold that thought because I just read somewhere there are lots of books coming out right now, none of them as good as Matt's the Making of the American Mind. But I just read somewhere Jefferson consulted no papers, no documents in the three days that he wrote the Declaration. We'll talk about that when we come back. Don't go anywhere.
- [21:30]
Larry Arnn
You know the Robertson family from the hit TV show Duck Dynasty. Now Hillsdale College offers you the unique opportunity to learn along the alongside the Robertsons as they dive deep into Hillsdale's online course, the Genesis Story. Every Friday on the Unashamed podcast, the Robertsons will share their insights and perspectives, learning from Hillsdale professor of English Justin Jackson. Take a trip down south to Louisiana for this one of a kind learning experience we call Unashamed Academy. Visit unashamed4hillsdale.com and enroll today. That's Unashamed. F O R hillsdale.com to experience the genesis story alongside the Robertsons. Hey there, it's Scott Bertram, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Great show this week. Our friend Molly Hemingway is back. Senior journalism fellow here at Hillsdale College, Editor in chief of the Federalist. You see her on Fox News. The brand new bestseller, Alito, the Justice who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution. We will talk in depth with Molly Hemingway about the book and about what she's learned about Justice Alito. Plus, Janie Nitze, lawyer and New York Times best selling author, tells us about her new children's book that she co authored with a Supreme Court justice That's Neil Gorsuch. The book is hero Radios of 1776, the story of the Declaration of Independence. All that this week on the radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Find it at podcast hillsdale. Edu, or wherever you get your audio, including YouTube.
- [23:27]
Hugh Hewitt
Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. The Hillsdale dialogue is underway, the last broadcast hour of every week, sponsored by Hillsdale College. Usually, Dr. Larry Arn is here, but this week, Dr. Matthew Spaulding is with us. Dean Spalding is dean of the Graduate School of Statesmanship, headquartered at the Kirby center in downtown D.C. and very few people know as much as Matt Spalding does about the founding. And we're very pleased at this period of time to have him. We have three segments left. I'm going to save Cesar Rodney for segment five. Matt, for our last segment in this segment, the next one, I want you to take your time and tell us what we need to know about May to July 4th. Because Jefferson's involved, everyone knows Adams says you write it. We got to figure out why they waited till August 2nd to sign it. In Ohio, we're having a big party at Put in Bay on August 2nd to celebrate the signing. But walk us through those, those three critical months.
- [24:22]
Matthew Spalding
Well, you're right in calling them critical. And the fact that we got to the Declaration turns out to be actually quite a close call. The Continental Congress is divided. They have been writing petitions to the king, the majority vote, the majority consensus of the Continental Congress is to try to figure out how to cut a deal and get out of this problem. That majority is led by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania. Dickinson is a brilliant theorist and thoughtful man and agreed with the principles of the Founding. He becomes a crucial figure in the Constitutional Convention. But he's very nervous about what this might mean. He doesn't want to go to war with England. He doesn't want to break with England. When they originally start moving down this road, he gets increasingly concerned. He's worried that we're going to go to war, maybe in a. In a paper boat, unprepared for the storm. And that's essentially the tenor of his debate. John Adams, on the other hand, who's been there since 1774, is the leader of those who are pushing for independence. John Adams initially was not quite sure this was the right time either. I mentioned earlier that there was a sense in which he wanted to follow a certain chronology of things. Well, let's create constitutions first. Let's confederate, and eventually we'll come to independence. But this is a great example. I Think one of the best examples historically of a legislature. Remember, the Declaration is a piece of legislation. It's the culmination of debates that then gets enunciated in this drafting process. But it's a great example of when a legislature is dealing with an issue and they have to accommodate and move rapidly because of changing circumstances. Washington is in New York and he's been telling them constantly about what's going on. They're sending mercenaries. And as you get closer to the dates later in May and June, the Continental Congress calls Washington from the front of the war. He leaves New York, he leaves his command and he goes to Philadelphia and he has a series of secret meetings with the Continental Congress. There's a committee of the Continental Congress. Here's an interesting little tidbit. The committee is headed by John Adams and Richard Henry Lee, dear friend, close friend, fellow Virginian of George Washington. And Washington reports on what is going on, the Hessians preparations. They've got intelligence about the British in Halifax and once that gets moving a little bit later, he's going to be reporting to them almost daily about sightings of British ships moving out of Halifax heading south. So all these things are coming together. Washington goes down in May of 1776 and he tells the Continental Congress that committee in secret, we need a declaration. We need a declaration as bright as the meridian sun, he says. And so you can just imagine him, we're going to war. And the time is now. Adams realizes that his chronology he might have preferred under other circumstances has been thrown off. Necessity calls for an adjustment very quickly. And so he and Dickinson are debating and arguing this whole time through and Adams takes the lead. Jefferson later describes Addison as the great colossus on the floor. Many of his greatest speeches in the Continental Congress aren't recorded verbatim, but all the reports is that he was eloquent and powerful and people would sit for hours to listen and make his arguments. And so over the course of this time, by the time you get to June 7, which is when Richard Henry Lee, remember Washington's friend, just after Washington leaves Philadelphia, he's been instructed by the Virginia Convention, which is their rump legislature, to introduce a motion for independence, which he does on June 7th. But they immediately realized that we've got to wait. We're not ready. It's not ripe. The destruction is not there. We gotta debate more.
- [28:45]
Hugh Hewitt
More coming up about that June 7th to July 4th critical piece right after the break. Dean Spaulding will be right back. During the break, order his book at Amazon, the Making of the American Mind. Spalding S P A L D I N G Go look it up at Amazon. I'll be right back. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. The Hillsdale Dialogue underway. All things Hillsdale at Hillsdale. Edu. Great online courses for free. Sign up for imprimis for free. All of the Hillsdale dialogues are found@hughforhillsdale.com and you can just google Hugh. Hugh Spalding, Making of the American Mind if you want my in depth book interview of Matt Spalding, who's my guest, Dean Spalding, of course, helms the Graduate School of Statesmanship at Hillsdale. Matt, we've got about eight minutes for you to get us. From June 7th to July 4th, what happens?
- [29:37]
Matthew Spalding
Well, so they introduced the motion June 7th. The motion has three parts. One part is to confederate to create a confederation. So that creates a committee which eventually leads to the artist confederation to start forming alliances, which eventually will lead to the French alliance and to form and to draft a declaration and a motion for declaration. And they then create a committee to consider creating a draft if necessary. And that committee then starts its work. On June 11 they are formed and by June 28 they will produce a draft of a declaration. That committee is working all this time is made up of Ben Franklin, who at this point has gout, is not as actively involved. John Adams, of course, of Massachusetts, and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Robert Livingston of New York and Roger Sherman of Connecticut. Sherman is very much in favor of independence. Livingston of New York, not so much. So it comes down to who's going to write it. It's going to be either Adams or Jefferson. And there's a famous letter that Adams writes about describing the whole series of discussions. And Adams says to Jefferson, you should write it. You're from Virginia, I'm from Massachusetts. I'm obnoxious. Everyone knows my opinion. I'm too much of an advocate. So it won't be warmly received. And Adam says, your pen is much more powerful. You're a wonderful writer. You should write it. So he does. And Adams, excuse me, Jefferson takes the pen. They have some meetings. There are some instructions. From what we can tell, they outline it in their meetings. They send Jefferson back with those notes. He then pins drafts and their drafts back and forth to the committee, those committee. It's edited even in that early process. From what we can tell, it goes through several drafts before it goes to the Continental Congress. So that's going on. But in the meantime, the Congress decides we're not ready to debate this. Indeed, most of the colonies at this point have received no instructions. Pennsylvania is very much opposed. New York is divided. And so they postpone the vote. And they're going to debate until July 1st, and they're going to come back and take their first vote. That first debate on the formal resolution is by the committee of the whole. If you know parliamentary procedure, you got to vote twice. The committee of the whole's got to vote. And it goes to the convert itself, which has to vote. The problem is that even on July 1st when they come back, some states have gotten their instructions, but the first test vote passes 9, 2. What that means is that two states are opposed and two states are not voted. And the problem is New York had no instructions, so it was not involved. Delaware is divided, so they lost their vote. Pennsylvania votes against it, but so does South Carolina, which is a key state. And so that means over a third of your delegates are opposed to declaring independence. This is a crisis. And they immediately vote to adjourn on July 1, and they'll think about it again tomorrow. And that is what leads us to the famous shifts in those votes the next morning. John Dickinson, to his great credit, he's a patriot, even though he thinks it's not the right thing to do right now. For prudential reasons, John Dickinson doesn't go to Congress that morning. He and Robert Morris leave, which means the majority in Pennsylvania delegation changes. Delegation. Pennsylvania is yes. South Carolina, probably because they had received notice information that there are British ships off the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. South Carolina changes its vote the next morning. They vote yes. New York doesn't have its instructions. They'll come back in a few days and vote yes. But the key delegation becomes Delaware. Delaware has three delegates. Only two were present on July 1st. They're divided one for, one against. So on the night of July 1st, Thomas Keane, one of the pro. The pro delegate sends for Cesar Rodney. Cesar Rodney is home in Delaware working with the militia. And he rides 70, 80 miles at night in a storm. It's a famous great story. And he arrives the morning of July 2, literally in his raincoat and his. In his boots. And they immediately take the vote on the.
- [34:19]
Hugh Hewitt
Can we pause that, Matt? 80 miles on horseback in a storm. It's not an easy thing to do. It's. Cesar Rodney is a hero. We're going to come back to him in the next segment. But he's a hero because he knows on his vote, on his presence rides the declaration, on the declaration, rides momentum. That a good way to put it right?
- [34:43]
Matthew Spalding
That's right. Now, very much now. Remember, so July 2nd is a vote for independence. Crucial. We always think about one vote. It's actually two votes. They vote for independence on July 2nd. They don't pass the declaration until two days later on July 4th. Only after they vote for independence on July 2nd do they formally take up the declaration and then spend two days debating and editing that. So July 2nd is the vote. Shall we declare independence? And that Cesar Rodney is the key. And Dickinson not voting that day is key. South Carolina, changing votes is key. It really is. It goes down to the very, very moment, and it's close, and it changes overnight. And so it's just an amazingly dynamic, exciting story. And we sometimes forget that.
- [35:35]
Hugh Hewitt
Why did they wait a month to sign it? We got one minute to the break. Why did they wait until August the second to actually line up and sign it?
- [35:44]
Matthew Spalding
That was more because of. They had to wait for New York to formally get its instructions, and they wanted to be unanimous. So they wait till then. And then when's the next time they're all together? So they, on July 4, they do issue the declaration with John Hancock's name on it, but they wait and sign in August. It's even after that. It's not until later in the year that they actually issue publicly a declaration with their names on it. So it's part of the dynamics of warfare. They're trying to move rapidly, but they're also trying to convince themselves from being
- [36:15]
Hugh Hewitt
killed and keep their families safe. When we come back, a final three minutes on Cesar Rodney because he deserves it. And Matt Spaulding's been working on that. So stay tuned for a little bit of dessert to today's Hillsdale Dialogue. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. The Hillsdale Dialogue is wrapping up with DEAN Matt Spalding, Dr. Spalding Helms, the Graduate School of Statesmanship at the Kirby center for Hillsdale College in Washington, D.C. all things Hillsdale, including all the knowledge about the graduate school at Hillsdale. Edu. All our dialogues@hughforhilsdale.com we're just talking about the magnificent ride of Cesar Rodney, which secured the declaration for the country. However, there's a great statue of him in Washington, D.C. tell us what happened to that statute, Matt Spaulding, and what you've been up to.
- [37:03]
Matthew Spalding
Well, this is such a great, you know, he's such a great figure and he's overlooked, but, you know, his statue. There's a, there's this great statue made in the 1920s of Caesar Rodney on horseback that was in, in Delaware, the capital of Delaware for a long time. And in the summer of 2020, if you recall, this is a summer when they were tearing down statues. They took down Cesar Rodney's statue. And Caesar Rodney was one of the ones who was thought, you know, politically incorrect. And so it had to go well, the celebrations for America, 250. And the administration, the Trump administration, who wants to celebrate that, and some of the key people there, Vince Haley in particular with the Domestic Policy Council, who's a great fan of the Cesar Rodney story, we've talked about this at great length many times. We wanted to recover that statue. And it was in storage. And so a couple of weekends to go in the middle of the night, the statue was moved and is now in a place of pride in Freedom Plaza, right near the White House. And it's been restored to a place of honor. There's going to be other statues around it of Continental soldiers and tell a lot of that story. It's a maligned. He was maligned because he owned slaves. What's ironic about that is he did own slaves. This is the great, an important part of our history. He owned slaves, but he freed his slaves and he freed some immediately. He freed the rest in his will, and he took care of them and their emancipation over time. So it's a great story of how the American Revolution actually occurred. He himself imbibed those principles and by
- [38:48]
Hugh Hewitt
getting the Declaration signed, set in motion the inevitable extinction of slavery across the continent.
- [38:56]
Matthew Spalding
And he was there then. He voted for the Declaration and it put that principle into place. After that, he goes off and he fights honorably in the Continental armies. He takes the place of a Delaware leader who was killed in battle. And he fights and continues until Yorktown and finally his own health. When he did that ride to vote for independence, he was already dying from cancer. He's ill and he survives long enough to get to Yorktown. And after that, he essentially he goes on. He's a member of Congress under the continent, the Artist Confederation, but dies soon thereafter. He gives his life to this country. He's a great, noble character and it's a great story and it should be honored. And he should be honored, which he is now because his statue has now been reclaimed and put up in Washington,
- [39:49]
Hugh Hewitt
D.C. hats off to you for that effort and everyone involved in it. Max Spalding, and for your book, the Making of the American Mind.
- [40:02]
Larry Arnn
Thanks for listening to the Hillsdale Dialogues, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More episodes at podcast hillsdale.edu or wherever you find your audio. For more information about Hillsdale College. Head to Hillsdale, Eduardo.