Inside the Declaration of Independence

Summary

HistoryExtra Podcast: "Inside the Declaration of Independence"

Date: June 27, 2026
Host: Eleanor Evans
Guest: Professor Adam Smith

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Episode Overview

In this episode—the second in HistoryExtra’s series on the American Revolution—host Eleanor Evans and historian Professor Adam Smith examine why the American colonies so fervently sought independence in 1776, how the Declaration of Independence came to be, its contents, and the complexities around its meaning and legacy. The conversation moves from the aftermath of Lexington and Concord through the philosophical underpinnings and drafting process, to the immediate and evolving impact of the Declaration.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. From Rebellion to Independence

• Lexington and Concord: Evans opens with a recap of the prior episode, emphasizing the significance of these 1775 battles as a turning point for colonial engagement.

  “The skirmishes nevertheless included the shot heard around the world.” (03:02)

• Shift from Reform to Independence:
  Professor Smith explains that even after hostilities began, many colonial leaders hoped for reconciliation rather than full secession:

  “There was still this sense that independence could be accomplished within the context of the British Empire… Even at this late, late stage, there’s this persistent hope that somehow the King will come to their aid…” (03:30-05:55)

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2. The King's Proclamation and a Point of No Return

• The King's Proclamation:
  King George III’s declaration that the colonies were in rebellion fundamentally changed the political atmosphere:

  “It changes it fundamentally… for Adams… it's the British government that declare war on the colonies. The proclamation that you mention states that the American rebellion was carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent empire. That’s the British government in the name of the King saying that.” (06:36-07:36)

• British Actions Push Colonies Towards Independence:

  “This whole story is driven from London. It's actions in London and reactions in America that's the story up until this point.” (07:41)

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3. The Road to the Declaration

• Not a Spontaneous Act:
  Smith highlights that the Declaration was the culmination of a broader movement, not a sudden dramatic event:

  “Rather than thinking of the Declaration of Independence as this kind of dramatic lightning strike moment… it’s almost better to think of it as the culmination of a sort of growing recognition…” (08:05-09:05)

• Local Declarations:
  At least 90 local declarations preceded the famous national one, illustrating a grassroots process:

  “A historian called Pauline Meyer… has found at least 90 local declarations of independence.” (09:10)

• Similarities in Grievances:
  Repeated complaints included the “coercive acts,” suspension of local government, and loss of perceived rights as Englishmen:

  “They all refer to the coercive acts… The sense that they're not being treated as equals within the British Empire is the fundamental enduring theme…” (09:33-10:39)

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4. Drafting and Adoption: The ‘Press Release’ of Independence

• Key Dates:

  • July 2, 1776: Congress votes for independence.
  • July 4, 1776: Declaration serves as public justification.

• John Adams’s Anticipation:
  Adams believed July 2nd would be celebrated as Independence Day:

  “John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail… ‘The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America…’” (12:23)

• The Document’s Purpose:

  “The declaration… was the press release. It was the explanation of what had been done on 2 July.” (10:53)

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5. Depicting King George III: “A Tyrant”

• Jefferson’s Language:
  Excerpt: “A prince whose character is marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” (13:43)
• Historical Perspective:
  Smith offers nuance, challenging the view of George III as a true tyrant:

  “I don't think George III was a tyrant in any meaningful sense of that word… if he'd really been a tyrant… probably America would not have achieved its independence.” (14:14-16:06)

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6. The Declaration’s Philosophy and Rhetoric

• Philosophical Roots:
  The document draws heavily on the Enlightenment and John Locke's social contract theory:

  “The underlying idea here is that governments depend upon the consent of the governed… They are thinking of themselves as within that British tradition…” (19:17-21:00)

• Famous Passages:
  Smith reads and dissects the iconic “all men are created equal”:

  “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” (21:00)

  • Smith notes these ideals reflected the worldview of white male property holders, not universal equality.

• Purpose of Government:

  “…Governments are instituted among men… to secure these rights, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” (22:27)

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7. Reception and Immediate Impact

• Spreading the Word:
  The Declaration was read aloud publicly and to the Continental Army:

  “There are public readings of it… George Washington orders the Declaration of Independence to be read in full… you need the anger and fear and the sense of grievance… but also this kind of this higher set of ideals in those first paragraphs…” (25:35-27:26)

• British Response:
  The British government largely ignored the Declaration’s legitimacy. Intellectuals like Jeremy Bentham derided it:

  “Jeremy Bentham… called the Declaration of Independence’s opening paragraphs absurd and visionary. What is all this highfaluting language? This isn’t a way of… actual real governments.” (27:43-29:06)

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8. The Declaration in American Memory

• Immediate Appropriation of Rhetoric:
  Smith highlights paradoxes: while many signers were slaveholders, oppressed groups immediately used the Declaration’s language to claim rights.

  “Enslaved people started using that language in order to advocate for their own freedom… It was immediate before oppressed groups started. And what about us?” (29:26-30:58)

• Legal Use by Enslaved People:

  “There are cases in Massachusetts where enslaved people take to court a case for their own freedom using, directly using the language of the Declaration of Independence.” (31:03)

• Evolution of Meaning:
  The Declaration’s ideals gained new significance during the Civil War era:

  “The Declaration of Independence changed its meaning around the time of the great crisis over slavery in the 1860s and became probably even more central to American political culture from that moment onwards.” (31:37)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Independence’s Slow Arrival:
  “It’s extraordinary, really, how late it is that the Second Continental Congress… really commit to saying, we want to fully secede from the British Empire…” —Adam Smith (03:30)
• On The Declaration’s Two Sides:
  “You need the sense of fear and grievance, but you need the aspirational side as well. You need this sense of hope for the possibility of what can be created once the war is won.” —Adam Smith (27:26)
• On the Allure and Limits of “All Men Are Created Equal”:
  “Clearly, when Jefferson wrote the phrase all men are created equal, he did not mean that enslaved people were equal to him and his chums…” —Adam Smith (29:26)
• On the Enduring Power of the Declaration:
  “The Declaration of Independence is kind of sewn into the American imaginary. Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War is an important part of this story…” —Adam Smith (31:37)

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Important Timestamps

• Lexington & Concord and Context (03:02-05:55)
• King’s Proclamation and Path to Independence (06:36-07:55)
• Local Declarations and “Lightning Strike” Myth (08:05-10:39)
• Congressional Adoption & John Adams’s Letter (10:53-13:43)
• Depicting King George III as a Tyrant (13:43-16:06)
• Philosophy & Famous Passages Explained (19:17-25:17)
• Public Reception and Impact on Colonies (25:35-27:26)
• British and Intellectual Response (27:43-29:06)
• The Declaration and Groups Left Out (29:26-31:03)
• Legacy and Evolving Meaning (31:37-32:25)

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Conclusion

Evans and Smith provide a thoughtful and richly detailed account of how the Declaration of Independence emerged from a slow-building crisis and debate, drawing on familiar and exclusionary rhetoric, yet with far-reaching consequences. They illuminate how a document born of rebellion, in a particular social and political context, would echo through American history as both an instrument of inspiration and a tool for critique—its meaning recast and contested for centuries to come.

Next episode: The series continues by returning to the military conflict and examining the impact of America’s self-declared independence on the revolutionary war itself.

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Transcript

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[C]

In 1776, a group of colonies in North America made a bold and uncertain leap declaring independence from one of the most powerful empires in the world. What drove that decision in 1776? What did the Declaration actually say? And who did it leave out? And how do you declare a nation into existence? Is that how it works? Welcome back to the History Extra Podcast to episode two of our series on the American Revolutionary War, the War of Independence. I'm Eleanor Evans and I'm joined by historian and professor Adam Smith. Adam, welcome back.

[A]

Thank you. Nice to be Here.

[C]

So last episode, we travelled as far as the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775.

[A]

The skirmishes nevertheless included the shot heard around the world.

[C]

It's a big moment for sure. As you say, we might laugh about the size of it, but it did mark a turning point in engagement. In this story, we're going to put the battles on ice for just a moment. We will return to them in episode three and just shift our focus to the cause of independence itself and actually how this was declared. So at the moment of Lexington and Concord, Adam, what did independence look like? How much of it was on the table?

[A]

Yes, independence was certainly in the air after Lexington and Concord. We ended the last episode by talking about that passage from Patrick Henry's famous speech, which actually delivered before Lexington and Concord, in which said, give me levity or give me death. For Henry and for hundreds of thousands of other colonial subjects, by the summer of 1775, this had become an existential fight. The absence of freedom meant slavery. They were seeing this now in black and white terms. Even so, at this point, there was still this sense that independence could be accomplished within the context of the British Empire. It's extraordinary, really, how late it is that the second Continental Congress, the second meeting of the delegates from all of these colonies, it's extraordinary how late it is that they really commit to saying, we want to fully secede from the British Empire to sever our ties with the King.

[C]

They are running a war, and at the same time, they have to establish a government that sort of sorts everything out at home and is running these colonies. So it's a big job, right?

[A]

Yes, indeed. The actual, the practical business of government, the royal governments, the British appointed governments, are largely ceasing to function effectively by the summer of 1775. So really, the main thing that the Second Continental Congress has to do is just to try to step into that gap and to organize these societies. So they are acting already by the summer of 1775, as a quasi national government. They're appointing ambassadors, for example. They are organizing the Continental Army. And they're doing this then in. In a context where they're still unwilling. In the summer and, and, and fall of 1775, they're still unwilling to formally and finally break completely with the British Empire, because as we were saying in the previous episode, they're still, in the end, advocating for their rights as Englishmen. They're still advocating for what they think they already have, not really for anything new. And so this, even at this late, late stage, there's this persistent Hope that somehow the King will come to their aid, dismiss the wicked ministers around him and restore the self government of the colonies. But in the meantime, they have to step into the breach and create what becomes this incipient national.

[C]

So it feels like these dominoes are all falling rather quickly at this stage, as we look back now. And so something else that happens in this time. Shortly afterwards, George III issues this King's proclamation for suppressing rebellion and sedition. He disavows these British colonial subjects as rebels. So how can we go into how this changes the situation?

[A]

It changes it fundamentally. John Adams, the Massachusetts patriot leader, later Vice President and then second President of the United States, wrote that it may be fortunate that the act of independency should come from the British Parliament rather than the American Congress. So for Adams, who is a naturally conservative person, it's the British government that declare war on the colonies. The proclamation that you mention states that the American rebellion was carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent empire. That's the British government in the name of the King saying that. In other words, it's London who's saying, looks to me like you're trying to establish an independent empire. And in the end the Americans are like, yeah, actually you're right, we are doing that. But it takes the British to say that before that is fully accepted on the American side.

[C]

So in their view, they might have been pushed to this by being disavowed rather than being the antagonists.

[A]

Yes, indeed. I mean, I think this whole story is driven from London. Right. It's actions in London and reactions in America that's the story up until this point.

[C]

So how fundamental is this moment then, in terms of this actual act of writing the Declaration of Independence? Perhaps we can turn to this moment when it's written down. How does this come about?

[A]

So the Declaration of independence of July 1776 followed from at least 90 local declarations of independence that were passed and written ratified in local towns and communities and local meetings up and down the colonies in the preceding months. So rather than thinking of the Declaration of Independence as this kind of dramatic lightning strike moment when everything changed, a lot did change. The Declaration of Independence was hugely consequential, of course, but it's almost better to think of it as the culmination of a sort of growing recognition that because of the position that the British government was taking, the Americans were de facto being compelled to fight for, as the King himself put it, to create their own independent empire, seceded from, separate from the British.

[C]

So what are these Building lists of grievances. You mentioned. Sorry, you mentioned 70.

[A]

A historian called Pauline Meyer, in a book published about 25 years ago, has found at least 90 local declarations of independence.

[C]

Wow. Okay. And so how do these mini declarations, if I can put it so simply, feed into. Are there commonalities, or are they all quite disparate looking? And how they begin to feed into the document that we now know as the one?

[A]

There are differences, of course, but the similarities probably outweigh the differences. They all refer to the coercive acts. It's really the actions of the British government in the very recent preceding 18 months or two years. The suspension of the government of Massachusetts, the repression of the town meetings, the suspension of the normal judicial process, the attempt to. To punish the colonies as if they're recalcitant children rather than the equals of Englishmen in Great Britain. The sense that they're not being treated as equals within the British Empire is the fundamental enduring theme and shading into the accusations of tyranny that we heard from Patrick Henry, we talked about at the end of the. Of the last episode. The sense that underneath this is a kind of militarization of British power, which represents an existential and new threat to the everyday free lives of American colonists.

[C]

That's really interesting to think of it as. When they put pen to paper, it's drawing on this groundswell of rhetoric of grievances, rather than, I guess we so often see it as this committee of five putting pen to paper. That's maybe the mythology that's there.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, the critical moment in the minds of many of the people gathered in Philadelphia in the Second Continental Congress was 2 July, when a resolution was passed stating that creating an independent empire, again, to use the king's words, was the objective of their struggle, which had now become a military struggle with a continental army, with a head of the army that they had appointed George Washington. The declaration that followed two days later was. This is not my own phrase, but it was the press release. It was the explanation of what had been done on 2 July. The declaration, which, as you say, was drawn up by a committee of five. Although Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the first draft, the Declaration was an explanation to the world of why it had become necessary after, in the American's view, years of patience and restraint and trying all of the usual routes of petitioning the king and peaceful, loyal remonstrance, why it had finally become necessary for them to take this very dramatic position that they were renouncing their loyalty to the crown in a formal way and in a way which, if it had not paid off, would have been regarded as treasonous.

[C]

I wonder if there'll be any fireworks on the 2nd of July this year as opposed to the 4th.

[A]

Well, you may think that's what John Adams expected to be the case. So after the congress had voted for independence on 2 July, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail, back home near Boston, and he said in this letter, the second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great, great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore. That's a very extravagant, enthusiastic letter from John Adams, who is usually much more restrained than that. You can tell how excited he was and how convinced he was that this act of independency, which, as he had already said, had been, as he understood it, initiated from London, that this act of independency of 2 July would be the nation's true birthday. In fact, of course, it was the press release two days later, the Declaration of Independence, explaining and justifying that separation which has become the nation's birthday.

[C]

This sense of exhilaration, this moment, this line in the sand, you can feel it from that quote. You can feel it as we're talking. I think, to go into some of the grievances that are listed in the Declaration. I want to pick up on this one from Thomas Jefferson's hand. His description of King George iii, a prince whose character is marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. I wonder if we can talk a bit broadly in the sense about your take on this tyrannical reputation that George III has in this story.

[A]

Well, Eleanor, you've chosen to interview a British based historian of the United States. You would get different answers if you talk to other historians. Of course, I don't think George III was. Was a tyrant in any meaningful sense of that word. The Americans hadn't really thought he was a tyrant up until, you know, a few weeks before this. They had objected, and understandably objected in my view, to many of the things that the British government were doing. Although what the British government was doing, at least up until The Coercive Acts was entirely understandable, for from their point of view, George iii, you know, who was fairly young, I mean, he'd succeeded to the throne in 1760s, succeeding his grandfather George II. George III was fairly young and kind of interested in governance. He respected and understood the Glorious Revolution, but he was nevertheless took a very active role, especially with regard to the colonies. He took his sense of sort of responsibility as the king of the whole of the Brit extremely seriously. And it was definitely true by 1775 at least, that George III, this was his top priority and that he had entirely lost patience with the colonists and had come to the view that the only appropriate response was the smack of firm government. But the irony, of course, is that if he had really been a tyrant, and we might get into this in subsequent episodes when we start to talk more about the war, if he'd really been a tyrant, then probably America would not have achieved its independence. There are an awful lot of things that the British government and British armed forces and the Royal Navy could have done in the 1770s that they did not do, which would have justified the term tyrant.

[C]

Nevertheless, this is the sort of sword that he's branded with by Jefferson in the Declaration by Thomas Paintou, one of the great propagandists of this era. So this is the reputation that we're sort of handed down, I suppose, from history, which as you say, we will come onto in later episodes. And I'll just pause here to say that for more on George iii, including how tyrannical he was really, and whether he even actually read the Declaration of Independence. Historian Andrew Roberts has weighed up what history tells us on that, and I've included the link to some great opinion pieces from Roberts and a podcast interview with him in the show Notes as part of our further reading. And all of that is available on the History Ext.

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[C]

so if grievances against the King are forming a big part of this Declaration, can we look at what else is captured in it? Can you give us a sense of the type of rhetoric that's being used?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, so we you mentioned the grievances, which do form the largest part of the Declaration, but that's not generally what the Declaration of Independence has been remembered for. The final text, as agreed by Congress, amending Jefferson's first draft, begins in a narrative form in a way that seeks to justify what the colonists feel they have to do by the summer of 1776, according to an understanding of government which is deeply rooted in English traditions. And the most obvious influence on this is John Locke in his Second Treatise on Government. So it begins when, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of Nature's God entitle them a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. So the underlying idea here is that governments depend upon the consent of the governed that there is an underlying social contract which is required to justify and legitimize any form of rule. So it's incredibly important to the representatives gathered in Philadelphia that they lay out this, you know, really quite extreme circumstances, not unprecedented. It's happened most obviously in the 1640s in British history. And once again, you know, they are thinking of themselves as within that British tradition, the most recent time when it has happened, that it has become necessary for the nation to reject the authority of the king because the contract has been broken by the King as it was in the 1640s and in a slightly different way as it was Indeed in the 1680s in the glorious Revolution. It's necessary for them to say, look, the same has happened here for us. And this is not some unrooted revolution. We're not a mob. We are doing this through due process, with due respect to the opinions of mankind. And we are petitioning the world. Very specifically, they were petitioning the governments in Paris, but we can come back to that later. But they were petitioning the world, the opinions of mankind, of the civilized world, as they would have understood it, of European powers, to say, we deserve to now be taken seriously and recognized as a legitimate power because of this broken contract. So it's a very serious, thoughtful, historically and philosophically grounded document. So after that first paragraph, which explains the purpose of the document, we then come to the second paragraph, which is even more famous. We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Referencing Locke and what Jefferson is doing there, as the author of the first draft is simply stating, as he says, a self evident truth. This is our lived experience as white colonial Englishman. This is our experience and our understanding of equality. He doesn't mean, of course, he doesn't mean literal equality between all people. He means equality in the sight of God. He means equality among white heads of household to establish their own autonomy and freedom, free from tyrannical government, free from oppression of one kind, another, free from the, probably the, you know, the oppression of the Catholic hierarchy. And that these core rights which are God given, they are natural, they are innate, they are inalienable. No one can take away any man's rights. That to secure these rights, the Declaration goes On governments are instituted among men. That, in other words, is the point of government. That's the social contract theory. That's locked social contract theory that from a state of nature men come together, and I'm using the gendered language deliberately and consciously, men come together in order to create collective security, to secure their innate rights. That's where the underpinning justification of government comes from. This is not a Hobbesian view that, you know, any government is better than anarchy almost. This is. Governments are therefore instituted for this particular purpose to secure rights and their just powers, therefore, as Jefferson continues, derive from the consent of the governed. And that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends, if it ceases, in other words, to protect men's inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish that government and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such a form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness. So the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not new. This is not some new American idea. This is not some new set of principles that's going to be instantiated for the first time in any new American government that emerges from this. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, in Jefferson's words, are what they already have.

[C]

So this document, as you say, it asserts what people believed they had before, before this tyrannical imposition of control with these coercive acts and so on. How does word spread domestically, and how is it received throughout the colonies? What does that picture look like?

[A]

Well, there are public readings of it. I mean, copies made, printed, and it can fit on a broadside, and that's quite important. You know, they were editing it down to make sure that it's not too long to fit on a single broadside. It's printed, and copies are sent to all the colonies, and there are public readings in town squares, from courthouse steps, and critically, to the Continental Army. George Washington orders the Declaration of Independence to be read in full these first famous paragraphs. Famous now, but critically, also the long list of grievances. And the intention, of course, is both to remind, if they needed reminding, the soldiers in the Continental army and the people in the colonies of why they're in this situation in the first place. You know, you need the anger and fear and the sense of grievance to justify and to make them put up with the hardships that attendant on. On a. On a military campaign. But also this Kind of this higher set of ideals in those first paragraphs that we're not simply resisting, we are also doing so in the name of values like freedom and this basic notion that all men are created fundamentally equal and their rights therefore, cannot be trampled upon and taken away. They are inalienable. That this is the kind of society that we are fighting to preserve. So, as with any long war, you need both of those things. You know, you need the sense of fear and grievance, but you need the aspirational side as well. You need this sense of hope for the possibility of what can be created once the war is won.

[C]

You've got this aspirational rhetoric, then, that people are getting behind, certainly on a domestic front. If we look at the. The converse of that, how it's received in Britain. Are there voices in Parliament commentating on this? You mentioned Samuel Johnson last episode, and perhaps the contradiction he's spotting there.

[A]

Yes, there are reactions in Britain. There's no formal British government reaction because they don't deign to recognise it. Of course, to recognise it would be to recognise the legitimacy of the Second Continental Congress, which is, just, as far as the British government is concerned, is an illegal, unconstituted body. But there were, nevertheless, reactions, and they were overwhelmingly negative. There were rejections of the list, some of the details of the. Of the grievances, but there was also, from, you know, Conservative voices in Britain, a sense of sort of incredulity at the famous opening paragraphs. Jeremy Bentham, the radical philosopher, called the Declaration of Independence as opening paragraphs absurd and visionary. What is all this highfaluting language? I mean, this isn't a way of. This has got no connection to actual real governments. So it's a document, in Bentham's view, which starts with these glittering generalities with no sort of substance to them, and then proceeds into these kind of fantasy grievances, many of which are highly disputable. And so, for him, it's not a serious project of government. It's not really addressing real concerns and real political problems.

[C]

Okay, so very different views here. And if I can bring us back to the present day for just a moment before we perhaps put a full stop at the end of this episode, that rhetoric that you've mentioned obviously has such a strong place in US society still today. What do you think the Declaration itself, what's its role in terms of this origin story more broadly?

[A]

Well, it's a massive role, isn't it? And so the really important thing here is that the intentions of the Framers, which are often invoked and discussed in American politics, really don't necessarily have very much to do with the way in which the document is later interpreted. But most of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence, certainly, of course, including Thomas Jefferson, were slaveholders. Clearly, when Jefferson wrote the phrase all men are created equal, he did not mean that enslaved people were equal to him and his chums. That clearly wasn't what he meant. Jefferson had. There's a whole long, complicated and interesting story of Jefferson's somewhat ambiguous relationship to slavery, but it's pretty clear that he didn't actually mean the equality of the. Of the races. But immediately after the Declaration of Independence was signed and circulated and read aloud, enslaved people started using that language in order to advocate for their own freedom. It didn't take a generation, it didn't even take a decade for oppressed groups within the American colonies or the American states, as we should perhaps now start calling them in this discussion. It was immediate before oppressed groups started. And what about us? If this is the claim this is inspiring language, what about us? We want to make that a reality.

[C]

So it's something that's there to inspire, but it's something that's also to push against immediately.

[A]

Yes. There are cases in Massachusetts where enslaved people take to court a case for their own freedom using, directly using the language of the Declaration of Independence. So this becomes a document that within a year or two of its signing, becomes, in some cases, of practical legal use to enslaved people and others to advocate for their own emancipation.

[C]

So a document that looms large still today, 250 years on?

[A]

Oh, certainly. I mean, it's that much of the American political tradition is based on an invocation of that idea. And one, you know, thinks about the great abolitionists of the 19th century of Abraham Lincoln, of Frederick Douglass, of Martin Luther King. The Declaration of Independence is kind of sewn into the American imaginary. I mean, Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War is an important part of this story. The Declaration of Independence changed its meaning around the time of the great crisis over slavery in the 1860s and became probably even more central to American political culture from that moment onwards. But as I'm saying, it was certainly definite, a powerful idea that was circulating as early as the late 1770s.

[C]

Thank you for that, Adam. You've given us a real sense of the long series of ideas that the Declaration was drawing on itself and certainly its long legacy in the 250 years since. So that's sort of where we'll leave it for today. Next time, we will be returning to the conflict itself. We'll certainly be talking about how this sort of newly formed identity as the United States of America is affecting the conflict, how both sides are seeing that. But for today's episode, thank you, Adam thank you.

[B]

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