Transcripts For CSPAN2 Booknotes 20141206

Cspan pauline maier, author of american scripture, where did you get that title . Guest it began, actually, as sacred scripture. I was interested in how what was a workaday condocument of the Second Continental Congress became a sacred document for americans. And i was told sacred scripture wasnt going to work because it would get classified as a religious book. So in the course of negotiations, we retitled the book. Cspan and whats this book about . Guest its about the declaration of independence, about how it was originally drafted, about the event, independence, that it announced to the world and particularly to the people of the United States and then how really the American People and ultimately, with the very eloquent help of Abraham Lincoln, redefined it into a document that served a very different purpose. Cspan early on in the book you tell a story about two summers ago1995. Guest yes. Cspan you were at a Woodrow Wilson scholars seminar and you walked across the street to the National Archives. Guest exactly. Cspan for what purpose . Guest i wanted to look at what they wereadvertised as our precious national documents, documents which i hadnt seen and which, in fact, scholars dont need to look at normally. There are so many facsimiles that works ourdoes our purserves our purpose perfectly well. But i wanted to see what the display was in the National Archives. Cspan and were looking at that right now. Guest we are. Yes. Cspan you said something about an altar. Guest it looks like an altar. It looks like a church. Itsits maits encased inthe declaration of independence stands where the tabernacle or a monstrance would be on an altar. On the face of the altar is the constitution and what the National Archives calls the bill of rights. But there are enormous pillars. Its three steps up from the main floor in the rotunda National Archives. It is like a religious exhibit full of religious imagery. Onei have actually asked students who have visited this what they thought it was like, and i was expecting them to tell me it wasnt like an altar. The one student said it was like a tomb. Cspan whats this painting . Guest this is the wall to the left as you face the altar. It is the members of the Second Continental Congress. What we have here are the members of the drafting committee that congress appointed to produce a text of the declaration of independence cspan who is the fellow with the red hair standing in the middle . Guest ah, must be our boy Thomas Jefferson. Cspan but you said as people looked up there they were talking about George Washingtonsome of the tourists. Guest they were. They were. George washington, of course, is a prominent revolutionary for most americans. They assumed he had to be there they were looking for George Washington. But George Washington wasnt at congress in july 1776. He was in new york heading the continental army. Cspan do. Guest the people were sure they saw him there. Cspan what else did you hear people say that surprised you about what they thought they were seeing in that room . Guest well, imwas interested in their responses. They thought thei was struck by the mother sayingi took it to be the mother saying to her children, doesnt this make all of your history come alive . and i wondered if it did make it come alive or if it somehow locked it in some sacrosanct quasireligious past that was not reachable for most people. Cspan you write in your introduction the following perhaps i should also explain that i bear no animus toward jefferson. True, i once nominated him as the most overrated person in American History for an American Heritage survey. guest right. Cspan why did you do that . Guest well, because hes been so mythologized that we almost loslose the person. This is an old thing. I mean, this isnt new. For centuries now jefferson has been largely mythologized. Hes made bigger than life. Hes portrayed as theeither the champion of virtually every aevery species of American Freedom gender equality, racial equality. Much of that, i mean, had nothing to do with the things he actually stood for actively in his life. Hes given credit for things he didnt do and, i think, not gigiven credit for some of the things which he did quite brilliantly. On the other hand, if were down, hes down. Its as if the image ofthe selfimage of the nation is reflected in what we think of Thomas Jefferson. Cspan do people get mad at you in the academic world . Guest oh. Well, the academic world sort of used to idiosyncratic views. I find a lot of jeffersonians are a little annoyed at what i say. Cspan what are they annoyed about . Guest well, i think they really think jefferson is absolutely wonderful. And i think jefferson is very wonderful, too. Its the mythologizing that i object to. Hes an interesting man, but he gets credit with things heas i say, he didnt do. The Jefferson Memorial wai guess that well talk about it a little later. Cspan actually, we can talk about it now. Guest ok. Cspan you do write about that also. Guest i do as well, yes. Cspan what did you find there . Guest well, among other things, i found a passage that he didnt write. Cspan if you look up on the wall there, thats inside the Jefferson Memorial here in washington. You can see there certain inalienable rights, and you can see it there up close. Guest yes. Yes. The printed version said unalienable. the earlier version said inalienable. and theresit was a change that happened while the document was being printed, from inalienable to unalienable. and they go back and forth often. Cspan how long has that memorial been there . Guest itsit was dedicated in 1943. Cspan who was responsible for changing the language that ended up on the wall . Guest well. Cspan because, you know, when conor cruise obrien was here, he also had found Something Else that was changed on that wall. Guest ah, yes. Well, it was the Jefferson Memorial commission that had to choose passages that would go on the panels and they were limited to, i think, 325 words. And so they had to cut what they were going to put on a panel. First of all, it was clear they would use that most famous, i think, passage from thefrom the second paragraph that begins, we hold these truths to be selfevident, but they included virtually the whole document, the whole sentence, i should say. That sentence is an extremely interesting and an extremely important one. It was written according to an 18th century mode where one phrase was piled on another phrase and the meaning came through at the end. And the culminating sentence asserts the right of revolution, the right of people to alter or destroy a government which is destructive of their rights and then to found another which, in their opinion, is more likely to serve their security and happiness. The part ofthe last part was cut off. They didnt have enough space for that. But they did go through, at least, the right of revolution. They sent the passage to president Franklin Roosevelt who said, lovely. Absolutely fine. But wouldnt it be nice if we had a passage from the final paragraph that is so familiar and so moving to people . And i will show you how you could do it. and Franklin Roosevelt, of course, the harvard man, sat down and made out an abbreviated version of the final paragraph of the declaration of independence, putting in ellipsesthat is, dots which would show where words were left out, something the Jefferson Memorial commission was not too scrupulous about doing. And they then, of course, had much too long of a passage so they hacked it down further. They hacked off the right of revolution, which, incidentally, was the most important part for Thomas Jefferson throughout his life. He was a committed revolutionary. When he talked about the principles in the declaration of independence, i think it was the right of revolution which was primary in his mind. It was primary in 1776. In the 1820s he saw it as an inspiration to the oppressed throughout the world, to throw off their chains and to foundto realize the blessings of selfgovernment as the americans had done. But out it went. And we got a rather different passage with a rather different culminating statement, but one which was more useful for an established government. And thats what was put on the memorial. Cspan make you mad . Guest it doesnt make me mad. Its a reinterpretation of a basic document that happened over time. I think we make a great error if we think that memorials, whether the shrine in the National Archives or the Jefferson Memorial, are, in fact, faithful representations of the 18th century. What they often do is tell a great deal about the period in which they were built. Cspan can you remember the first time you ever got interested in the declaration of independence . Guest i was a freshmen at radcliffe taking a course in political science, and it had assigned a passage from lockes second treatise of government that sounded an awful lot like the declaration of independence and i remember saying, you know, this is amazing. This is where he got it and, of course, this is a big scholarly controversy. How much was he directly influenced by locke . But, i mean, i remember this as amy first year atduring my first year in college being enormously struck by the coincidence of language. Cspan a couple of months ago we checked in ourall the transcripts of the booknotes over the last eight years and looked for names that were most often repeated. The number one name out of all eight years booknotes was john locke. Guest john locke cspan what does that say . Who was he . Guest well, he was a 17th century englishman who wrote second treatise on government, what, in a sense, laid down the basis ofor defined principles that were actually widely shared by other englishmen at the time on the basis of the beginnings of government; that itsan agreement among men to creitits a human creation. It isnt based simply on the will of god. People createthese rulers are there as the trustees of the people. Iif thethey violate the terms of that compact, the people, of course, have a right to overturn the government and found another. It is the basic philosophy that came out in the declaration of independence. That doesnt mean that jefferson cribbed it, however, as i thought in my innocent way. What ive since learned is that those ideas were virtually everywhere. He could get them directly from locke. He could get them filtered from a large number of other places. Those ideas americans encountered in the press, in sermons and, therefore, the lines that are most familiar to us didnt seem particularly noteworthy in the 18th century. Hardly anyone paid attention to them. Cspan you were at Radcliffe College, which was the Womens College for harvard . Guest itwas. We called ourselves, gracefully, the annex. we were still the annex. We werent yet actually harvard students, as my daughter, who is class of 87, was. Yeah. Cspan and you say you first got interested when you made this comparison with john locke and. Guest well, i remember this you somehow feel something in your life has faded occasionally. Of course, ive spent most of my professional career studying the revolution. And ithis is one of thethis confrontation with the declaration my freshmen year is one of my most memorable experiences of that year. But i have to say i was also sent to Radcliffe College by the beneficence of a man who i had met who was a judge on the minnesota supreme court, who found out that i had been accepted to this place called Radcliffe College, of which i had never heard. And i dmet him, i was selling something at montgomery ward, and he met me on a panel and he said, where are you going to college . i said, i got accepted someplace out east called radcliffe. Did you ever hear of it . well, he was a yale graduate, hed heard of it. At any rate, he went around and collected money from his rich friendsprobably middleclass people like i am, you are, i would suspect today, to send me to Radcliffe College. His name was james otis. Something providential. Cspan and did he send you to college . Guest well, they sent me to radcliffe my freshmen year and, yes. Cspan do you remember how much money they had to raise to. Guest i thinkwell, i remember that the tuition in that year had gone up to 1,000, which was absolutely amazing to me because you could go to the university of minnesota for four years for that much money. Cspan and you lived where at that time . Guest in st. Paul, minnesota. Cspan what was your family like . Guest my father was a city fireman. My mother was a mother. And i was the oldest of five children. Cspan and had you been interested in government and things like this . Guest i was very interested in government and in politics. I assumed i was going to go into journalism. And i went to Radcliffe College and got a hook in me onon history. Cspan do you have any idea how you got interested in the first place . Guest you know, there is something about history that it is another dimension of Human Experience and youre attracted to it. I dont know. Itwasit had a complexity that was fascinating and ias i think about it, it connects with other things; the novels ive liked, which are dealing with time as an element in Human Experience. Its just fascinating to me. And i think if American History didnt exist, any history would do. It was a way of getting at this dimension in Human Experience. It just fascinates me. Cspan what court was judge otis on . Guest it was the minnesota supreme court. Cspan did you stay in touch with him . Guest i stayed in touch with him and i stayed in touch with his wife, who was an absolutely wonderful woman who remarried laterlouise otisgeist otis nichols and who died in may; was a marvelous person who had, to my inoimmense joy, the chance to read this book in bound galleys and was very enthusiastic about it. I felt very pleased that itthat it pleased her. Cspan when did the judge die . Guest some years ago. Cspan did he have a chance to see you be successful . Guest well, he knew about earlier books, but i think this book hasis probably the most accessible for people of those i have written. Cspan after you got out of radcli. Guest in nonacademics, anyway. Cspan after you got out of radcliffe, whered you go . Guest well, i went forfor a year to the London School of economics on a fulbright, was married at the end of the year and then came back to do my graduate work at harvard. Cspan whod you marry . Guest i married charles maier, who is a historian, now a professor, at harvard. Cspan you got your phd in what . Guest in American History. And i work with bernard bailyn, who was an eminent historian of early americanof early america at harvard. Cspan so along the way, what did the old fireman think of all this . Guest he watches with great pride. And people are very nice. Hecollects all the books, and when people come in, he says, let me show you what my daughter did. and my mother rolls her eyes and most people say, he has a right to be proud of his child. Take it with very good grace. cspan are they alive . Guest my parents are both alive and well. Cspan and did he or your mother ever have an interest in history back in those days . Guest no, i dont think so. Its my peculiarity within the family. Cspan so after you got your phd, then what . Guest i taught first at umassboston, and then after, i think, nine years, got a fine chairindeed, a wonderful professorship at the university of wisconsin in madison. But afterwe were trying to put the family together. My husband was teaching at duke and i was teaching in wisconsin and that was rather distant. And we discovered that was not altogether a workable arrangement, and i had a chance to go back to mit the next year i did. He said, i will move up the coast. and he did it a few years later in one great leap so that he is at harvard and i am aand i am at mit. Cspan and how many years have you been there . Guest i have been there now 19 years. I have become. Cspan teaching still . Guest . An old settler. Indeed, i came in 1978 and im still teaching. Cspan now how much does this book mean to you . I mean, youve kind of alluded to it. Guest the book means a fair amount. I mean, it is on a very focused subject, but i have been thinking and reading and writing on the revolution now for, well, a quarter of a century. Id like to think some of what i learned ishas made this story not just interesting, but accessible to people beyond the university. Cspan now if you could get on the phone and call up the men, and theyre all men in this story. Guest ah, who would i call . Cspan . Who would you call, who would you ask to have over to the house for dinner if you really wanted to get the straight scoop on the declaration of independence . Guest well, i would love to talk with john adams, mainly because this is the guy who could talk. And he was acerbic. He never minced his words. He was straightforward. We now know most about the drafting of the declaration on the basis of what he and Thomas Jefferson wrote in the decade before their death. Now that should put all of our little sort of warning flags up i mean, you know, do you believe what people say40 and 50 wordsfir40 and 50 years after the fact . I get things confused the next week, i mean, and this is a long time afterwards. Nobody bothered to ask the questions, really, until after the war of 1812 when the Younger Generation of americans became very interested in the revolutionary past and dedicated themselves to not only saving the documents of the time, which were being lost and separated and so on, but the memories of the revolutionaries who they realized were dying right and left, taking all kinds of knowledge with them. So they went out and asked people questions. Now that, of course, biases what we know. The survivors told the story and you have to take what they said and look at them against harder evidence from early on to sort of assess whats reliable. Cspan john adams, number one . Guest john adams is number one. He got dismissed. Cspan number two . Guest well, i guess Thomas Jefferson would not be a bad man to have for dinner. I would enjoy that. Cspan you talk a little bit in the book about his being a better writer than a speaker. Guest yes. This was, remember, an age of oratory. And Thomas Jefferson was well known for being a very poor public speaker. John adams said he rarely spoke in public more than three sentences together. His talents lay elsewhere. His talents were in writing. The congress, in a very interesting way, had a kind of a writers corps, people who it could call upon to write its public pronouncements. John dickinson of pennsylvania was one of the favored writers and probably the most popular because he had written a set of newspaper essays already1767, 68, sometime earlierthat had been widely copied in the newspapers, which, of course, is the television of the time, the public medianmedium. Cspan did you read all those, by the way . Guest i reoh, yes. Ive read them all. Theyre wonderful. And people took them as a statement of the american position. He was one of the first Great American heroes. Cspan John Dickinson . Guest . In a sense, John Dickinson, because people thought he spoke their thoughts and spoke them well. So he was very well known. He was, you know, quickly used to write documents and was the senior man, was senior to jefferson, who, when he first came into congress, was a rather young, unknown person, but whose talentswhowhose talents for writing were known nonetheless. And so the Congress Quickly grabbed on him. Cspan around the time that you were assembling this group, right after the declaration of independence was written and signed. Guest yes. Cspan . John adams would have been how old . Guest well, he would have been in his 80s, in his upper 80s and. Cspan nobut not in 1776 . Guest oh, in 1776. Quick cal. Cspan because he died in 1826. Guest quick calculation. Cspan thirties . Guest thirties, forties. Yeah. Cspan so. Guest so he was still a young man. Cspan . He would have been in his 30s and Thomas Jefferson would have been about how old . Guest a little younger. About five years younger. Yeah. Cspan so also in his 30s . Guest yes. Theyre young men. He is a very young man. Cspan John Dickinson . Guest i cant give you the ages very quickly like that. I dont have them in my head. But theyre roughlytheyre young men. They are young men at this point in their lives. Cspan weve got three names. We got to have at least six at the table. Guest well, dickinson might be fun to talk about. Now dickinsons going to be on the other side. Dickinson doesnt like independence and he feels compelled for the rest of his life to explain why, because this becomes kind of an embarrassment politically that hethat he didnt approve it. His explanation, we know he made later as well, i just didnt think the timing was right. and that seemed a little lame considering that they did pull it off. So you have to have a little bit ofof sympathy for John Dickinson. Cspan you got one from massachusetts, one from virginia, one from pennsylvania. Guest one from pennwell, lets get Benjamin Franklin at the table. Cspan another pennsylvania man. Guest another pennsylvanian, but always a good dinner companion. Cspan yeah. Guest certainly he will leaven the conversation. Therell be a little humor here cspan older . Guest older. Much older. Much older. Yes. Another generation, really. Cspan thats four. Guest ok. I get two more. Well. Cspan at least. Guest . Id like Roger Sherman because i dont know very much about him. Hes on this committee. Hes one of the more mysterious members of the committee. Id like to know what he thought. Id like to know what he did. Cspan what state . Guest so now youre raising all these possibilities. I can ask these people questions that they didnt live to be asked. Cspan what state was he from . Guest he was from connecticut. Lets get robert r. Livingston at the table, too. Now theres an interesting guy. We. Cspan new yorker . Guest new yorker. We had the debates in june. He was on the other side. He argued against independence while john afadams and Richard Henry lee and george wythe carried the burden of arguing in favor. We know some of the arguments that were raised, but then he got put on the committee to draft the declaration. Hey, look, robert r. Livingston has an interesting story to tell. Cspan all right. You also write aboutyou write about biography and paintings and other things that happened back in. Guest yes. Cspan . The 1800s. Guest yes. Cspan . And you talk about a man named john trumbull. Guest yes. Yes. John trumbull. Cspan who was he and what did he do . Guest he was an artistan american artist who painted what is conceivably the most importantwhat isi could say undoubtedly the most important painting concerned with independence. And this is what iswaswhremembered sometimes as the signing. It is not the signing. It was called the declaration of independence and what the painting showed was the committeethe drafting committee presenting its report to the president of congress. Cspan we have some video well show you and well look at the ceilingthewe had that just a minute ago, but we have the rotunda. Guest ok. Cspan . In the capitol. And theres one of the. Guest yes. Cspan . Paintings on the wall. Guest yeah. Cspan . In the rotunda. Millions of americans have come to visit this. Guest right. Trumbull painted a series that were specially commissioned. Now this is part of the whole revival of interest in the revolution that comes after the war of 1812. The first he turned to was indepthethison the declaration of independence, it was by far the most popular of the series. It was shown to large audiences in cities before it was finally moved to. Cspan it might be easier for you to look over at this monitor right here. Guest . Okbefore it was finally moved to washington. Cspan theyre the drafters right there . Guest they are indeed. John adams. More mysterious figures here. One is. Cspan either Robert Livingston or sherman. Guest robertRobert Livingston or sherman, indeed. The most prominent figure is, of course, Thomas Jefferson. Cspan and the next ones ben franklin as we move over to the right. Guest franklin as we move to the right, exactly. Cspan sitting at a table with john hancock. Who was he . Guest he was the president of congress. Cspan where was he from . Guest and he was from massachusetts. Cspan you can see then, i believe, its mr. Thomson there, the secretary, standing. Guest yes. Ok. Cspan and that painting, again, is in the rotunda of the capitol. Guest it is. Now it shows a large numprobably a far larger number of the members of the Second Continental Congress than were actually present. John adams later criticized that painting. He called it a shin piece because it showed everybodys knees, i think. And he said it was part of the evolving mythhistorical myth that was starting to become apparent in the 1820s; that there were more people there were more people there because we dont know how many people were actually there when the declaration was presented to congressthe draft was presented to congress. We dont really know altogether how many were there on the fourth of july because they didnt keep attendance. The document wasnt actually signed until august 2nd, and then people came in and signed later so that there are probably a larger number of signatories than were there to maktoforpresent for the original vote either on independence on july 2nd or on the declaration itself on the fourth. Cspan in 1776, what was the atmosphere in this country . How many people were here and what was the body of control . What was the legislative body . Guest oh, probably about two and a half million people, a smallby our standards, of course, a small body of populbody of people. There are 13 colonies who are uniting for independence. The government is in a state of disarray. Some of these colonies still have their colonial governments in place, but not very many. In one colony after another revolutionary governments have taken the place, and they usuallytaken the place of the regular official crowned government. And they normally took the placetook the form of an elected legislature, which wasnt called a legislature if it was extralegal; it would be a convention or a congress. So these bodies of elected delegates, andif you will, of the people, were the operational government in most colonies. Now a couple still had the old legal governments again. Of course, connecticut and rhode island were everall officials were always elected; they retained their traditional government. The royal governor remained a long time in maryland and other places. So its a kind of a mishmash. But all of these colonies are sending delegations to the Continental Congress. The Continental Congressthe Second Continental Congress, which first convenes right after lexingtonconcord on may 10th, 1775, is a kind of a jerrybuilt institution. Cspan where is it meeting . Guest its meeting in philadelphia. It isnt meant to be a government. It becomes the first government of the United States. But itthe delegates who were elected there probably thought they were going to be like the members of the first Continental Congress just come together to discuss the situation, to see what could be done, to make some grand policy statements. And they probably expected theyd be able to go home in under two months, like the delegates to the First Congress were. But the situations entirely changed as result of lexington and concord. The Congress Finds itself, de facto, the government of, for all practical purposes, a nation at war. So very soon theyrehave to make decisions for the military; theyre making decisions for indian affairs. One topic after another falls on their agenda and they become, in fact, the government of a country to be, if you will. Cspan when you decided to do this book, how did you go about it . Guest well, iit wasnt at first what i thoughtwhat it has become. I thought i was writing just a very short book that was supposed to, you know, put on paper ideas i already had that would be a teaching book for advanced High School Students and maybe lowerlevel college students. But then iyou know, i just didnt want to write a book like most of those that already were wellknown onon the declaration of independence. They all focused on the political thought or the political theory that seemed to giveto actualto be expressed in the second paragraph. As i say, as i came to this topic, i thought those were quite ordinary ideas; that it really wasnt what was important about the declaration, wasnt a very good way of getting into the political thought of the time. And it had been written on anyway. I wanted to find some other way of going about it. And it seemed to me, how could youandand the declaration had been so glorified. Howwas there some way we could sort of get it down to earth . And i thought comparisons are always very useful, so i started poking around to see what we find. And i started coming across these state and localwhat i call now the other declarations of independence, statements written by people in town meetings in massachusetts or county meetings in maryland or virginia. The ordinary people on this local eventmen, of course, because men were polpolitics was confined to men at this pointwould meet, theyd discuss the issues, they drew up documents that affirmed their support of independence and told their representatives to thistheir state legislators to support it, to try to get the instructions sent to the delegates to congress changed so that they could vote for independence. But they not only stated their views, they explained them. And they were, in some cases, very moving and very eloquent documents. Cspan was there a. Guest and they were lost. Cspan was there a document in there that particularly got your attention. Guest well, you know, one. Cspan . From the state. Guest . One really sticks in my mind, maybe because i had heard of the town, but it was one of the first i encounteredwas from a town called ashby, massachusetts, which is sort of North Central massachusetts, not a major town then. And mostly they paraphrased the question that was submitted to them by the general court, but they said, if congress decides to vote for independence, then we, the inhabitants of ashby, will most solemnly defend that decision with our lives and fortunes. and it was very moving. I mean, these farmers who, in the boondocks, by our standards, had utter confidence that their opinion made a difference in thein the course of human affairs. And it was expressed with an eloquencea kind of a simple eloquence that i found very moving. Cspan so you did the local and the statesor the colonies at the time, thatthe local documents. What else did you do in this book thats different . Guest well, i needed to somehow figure out how they fit into the story, why they were important. They were important because this government of the United States called the Second Continental Congress didnt have a written constitution. What limited what it could do were the instructions they receivedthe delegations received from their states. They couldnt do anything that a majority of delegates were not authorized to do. So the real fight over independence was over getting proper instructions that would allow the delegates to vote for it. And i had to fit that into the story. I had toits the politics of independence that seem to me very interesting. And, you know, there were inadvertent discoveries in the course of doing that. I mean, we had a kind of a hwhy did independence have, and i think a lothappen . I think a lot of accounts have a kind of a magic bullet simplification account. And theres one man i didnt put at that table, and i dont think id want him there, actually thomas paine. Thomas paine made an important contribution, but im not sure hed feed into the conversation. Cspan why . Guest . And the chemistry of the conversation. Well, he was very anxious to claim credit for independence, but he wasnt part of this political process in a direct way. Its the delegatesi have questions to ask the delegates to the congress. Of course, he published common sense in january 1776, and it did open a public debate over that issue. There was a kind of a silence reigned. I mean, people were hesitant to face up to it, although the events were going in that direction. But its published right after news of a sof the kings speech to parliament in october 1775, where he says, these americans, whatever they say, theyre trying to be independent. the congress says, oh, wesomebody in Congress Stands up and says, we should disavow that, and the others say, wait a minute, lets just think this through. itsohan important moment, in other words, that the newest comand theyd also heard that, as the report went, the kings army hador navy, as it happens, had burned norfolk, virginia. And how long are they going to go on saying, we dont really want independence as the king piles one atrocity on the other, as they understood it . So ithecommon sense is published at a point where the information arriving in america is starting to make the congress think, you know, maybe thats where were going. cspan did common sense sell . Guest common sense sold. It was at a low price. It had a kind of a language that Common People could relate to. So it was enormously popular. And theres no doubt in my mind that he helped change popular sentiment in favor of independence. But what was very interestingand this is a sort of inadvertent discoverythat when the statewhen these local people started explaining why they came for independence, the arguments they put forward were notthey came to paines conclusion, but they didnt use his argument. Cspan and what would he have been like at the table . Guest i have a feeling he might have dominated the conversation a bit. I could be wrong, but i think probably the chemistry of that dinner party would not be ideal. Cspan you know, over in the rotunda that we were just talking about is kind of a mockup gift from england of the magna carta, not the original. Guest right. Cspan but the original was brought over here in 1976 as a gift for a year. Guest yes. Cspan . And put on display. And now theres this kind of elaborateitswell show it on the screen here in just a moment. Guest yes. Mmhmm. Cspan i dont see it, but. Guest this is ross perots copy of it. Cspan no, this is not. Guest this is not . Ok. Cspan his copy is down at the archives. Guest this is the one that was here. All right. Cspan but this is just one that sits over there that you can look at and you can get a sense of what it is. Guest on the left as you go out of there. Cspan yeah, right. Guest no, this is the one that they showed when magna carta was here. This is the real magna carta. Cspan this is not. Guest ok. Cspan this is just a display. Guest all right. Cspan the original one was there for a while, a 1215 version. Guest ok. Cspan and its back in england, and this is there for people to see. And then theres the ross perot magna carta down at the archives. Guest yes. Ok. Cspan i bring it up for this reason. Guest ok. Cspan what was it . What impact did it have on theour declaration of independence . Guest well, it was 1215. It was negotiated between a group of barons and the king, and it laid outit laid out their rights that they wanted the king to respect. It was known as magna carta, great charter, not because it was a powerfully important document; because it was physically very large. And then its reissued forseveral times thereafter. And it isnt, you know, a sacred text until its revived later, and then its remembered quite selectively. And that istheres a passage talks about, you know, the judgment of peers. This becomes trial by jury. Trial by jury did not exist in 1215, but it seems to predict it. This passage is grasped; its taken as a fundamental document of basis, a commitment on the part of the king to continue a trial by jury. A lot thats in that document is simply forgotten. I mean, its a very long document, and many of the clauses have to do with the 13th century. They are pretty arcane by our standards. But parts of it were remembered because they were relevant to people later. And by 1776, americans who accused the king of violating their right to trial by jury might, as William Henry drayton did in south carolina, cite magna carta. It had become a sacred text by then. Cspan were these men that wrote the declaration of independence extraordinary, and itcould it be done by people that we know here today . Guest i believe so. I think that these werethat the gene pool hasnt changed. Americans are fond of saying, and havesay to me quite often, they werethat these american revolutionaries were really a different order of men; they were different than we are. John adams was very anxious to say that was not true. He became upset at what he called the canonization of men like washington. He said we needed anothersecond protestant reformation. He really was an old puritan; this is out of the 1820s. He thought that it was important to grant esteem, fame to those who had contributed in an important way to the founding of their country. But he found the religious imagery unrealistic and discouraging to younger americans who thought that they were therefore inferior to the fathers. The fathers are put on an enormous pedestal. And he was at great length to tell younger americans that his generation was no better than theirs; that, in fact, there was more talent in the country in 1820 than there was in 1776. there werent very many talented people around in 1776, he said, which made it very easy to realize your ambition. and theres a ktheres a kind of a healthy antidote, i think, to many of our mythological tendenmythologiizing tendencies in the wisdom of john adams. If there was more talent in the country in 1820 and the reason was because there were more people and there were more educated people because a large number of schools and colleges were founded right after the revolutionit was a democratic countryneed to have an educated citizenry. More newspapers were out there by which people were able to educate themselves, well, then at present we have still a greater fund of talent. We have a larger population. We have more educated people. We do ourselves a disservice, i think, by doing more than granting proper attributesproper attribution to the founders for beginning a system. They were ordinary men who lived in extraordinary times and certainly made memorable contributions. Iwere right, i think, to regard what they did with a certain amount of respectwith a great amount of respect. And i think jeffersons draftsmanship, within the limits given him by the committee, was brilliant. But we should understand it in the context of the times, and we shuldnt overemphasize what it took to do that because it sort of lets us off the hook. It says they did it all. Were responsible for maintaining that tradition. Cspan a couple of weeks ago a fellow who wrote a book about the constitution is credited, by the way, in your book. Guest mm. Cspan . Of having something to do with your bookwho won a pulitzer prize, named jack rakove. Guest oh, yes. Jacks an old friend. Cspan now explain to the audience, heyou give him credit forwhat . Having read your book and giving you advice . Guest well, he did; he read the book, and he also wrote a wonderful book earlier that was on the Continental Congress. Cspan what kind of role does a person like that play in the final product of your book . Guest well, the way historians work is, in some ways, very isolating. I mean, we dont work in teams. We dont work in laboratories. I say im ofi often explain my life as im somewhat of a hermit. I mean, i love being and poking around in the back reaches of a Major Research library. So you spend your days, you know, alone. You do your work alone. And youd either go crazy or you find ways of building human contact in. We talk to colleagues, we talk to friends. And itin the end, when we produce a manuscript, we get itat least the way i work and many of my colleagueswhere we get it to a point that its as good as we think we can make it, and then we pass it by people who might know better about some of the things we write about. Id like to think that by the time something i write is in print, my friends have already told me the worst that is to know about its deficiencies, and that i have remedied them as best i can. So i sent this book to a handful of people whose opinion i respected for Different Reasons ray crofterly knew about the congress, and i knew he could find mistakes. I sent to ronald hamway, who, to my mind, is one of the most knowledgeable people on 18th century political thought. And i sent it to an old graduate friend named dick brown, whos at the university of connecticut. And they responded wonderfully by reading the manuscript, giving me suggestions. And the book is much better for their help. Cspan where would we have found you . What Research Library . Guest widenerharvards widener library, the Harvard College library, a delightful place to work and, in my field, probably the best place in the world. Cspan where did you write it . Guest i actually wrote it in widener library. Cspan inin what way . Guest on awell, a little laptop computer, you know, pulling the books off the shelf, writing aswriting, putting the books back. Its no. Cspan when did you start the actual writing . Guest i have difficulty reconstructing that. I think i have been working on this off and on since 1992, but i think i got down to working on it in a serious way in 1993. And at first, you know, i started reading the documents, reading some of the earlier books, and they were bewildering. It takes a while till you get sufficiently familiar with them that you feel at homefeel enough at home that you understand what the shortcomings are of whats been written andand what you have to say. Cspan knopf is your publisher. Guest knopf is my publisher cspan how many did they print first out . Guest they announced 30,000. Cspan was that what you wanted . Guest well, thats a by my standards, thats very good. I hope they sell 30,000. Cspan you had two former booknotes endorsers on the back i want to read what they said. Joseph ellis of mt. Holyoke college. Guest oh. Cspan . Said, quite simply the fairest, fullest and finest account ever written of how the declaration of independence happened. how do you get someone like joseph ellis to write something that strong . Did you ask him . Guest i didnt. I didnt bribe him. I dthe publisher sends him the text and asks him if he would like to make a statement on it. Actually, joseph ellis contacted me early on. I had written a paper for a seminar at the masters historical society, and he was working on his biography of jefferson and was very excited. It was a section that was on these state and local declarations. So we were in contact with each other, and i had seen parts of his book and hed seen parts of my book. In fact, he was one of the persons that read the manuscript. I think he probably readhe read the whole thing in the end and, again, gave me some very useful feedback. Cspan the other fellow i want to quote, by the way, sat where you are sitting and said, when i asked him, how dowhere do you write and how do you write . he said he writes in the nude. I dont know if thatlli dont know if thatll change your perception. Guest ooh. Whos this . Cspan Forrest Mcdonald. He. Guest oh. Oh, forrest is wonderful and a wonderful character. Cspan i should explain. He says he lives way out in the country and that theres plenty of freedom out there. Anyway, heres whatheres what he said a lot of confounded rot has been written about the declaration of independence. It is therefore a joy to encounter pauline maiers account of how the document came to be and how later americans sacralisedis that right, sacralised . Guest sacralised. Cspan yeah. her book is solid, insightful and wise and an utter delight to read. now how did you make that connection with Forrest Mcdonald . Guest well, again, they just sent thei think the bound galleys to forrest and asked if he had any comment to make. I know him, but i know forrest well enough to say he wouldnt say he liked something if he didnt. He feels no constraint to saytomake concessions to people. So i take great pride in that statement from somebody whose opinion i respect. Cspan theres a point in the book where you say that in 1820 the declaration of independence really kicks in. Guest yes. Cspan why . Guest its part of the desire of that Younger Generation to recover their revolutionary heritage. It isnt the only document thats being recovered; a lot of documents are being reprinted at that point so that they arent lost. But what really gets the americathe declaration of independence, i think, on the american agenda is the controversy over slavery. The statement all men are created equal obviously contradicted the existence of a system of slavery because slaves held their status by heredity and they were not subject to their masters by consent. That drove the defenders of slavery to contest the declaration of independence. And the statement all men are preliare created equal became particularly controversial, and itit became denied. People like john c. Calhoun said, this is evidently false. People are not createdtheyre not born equal. Theyre born dependent. This is a selfevident falsehood. others said, its a selfevident lie. now if you were an american who had been raised to hold these traditions and this document with a certain amount of reverence, this was offensive. And certainly those who found slavery itself offensive sprung to the defense of the declaration of independence. And it became very central to the debates. It was, in part, the attacks on the declaration of independence, i think, that brought Abraham Lincoln back into politics. Here you have a littleknown illinois lawyer who had served one term in congress before his constituents turned him out because they had rather different views on the mon the mexican war than he had. He readsyou can sort of see him in his office with his feet up on the desk, reading the congressional globe, the debates over the kansasnebraska act, which would have extended slavery into what had been free territory. To him, thats wrong. He sees the attacks on the declaration that are being raised. Hes offended by them, and he goes back into politics. And he ishe contests, in the first instancesinstance, stephen douglas, who is an illinois senator who had sponsored and brought into congress the kansasnebraska bill. He starts attacking him in sort of isolated speeches. By the time he is the republican candidate for the senate, of course, they havewe have these famous debates, the lincolndouglas debates. They are almost exclusively oneissue debates that are over the expansion of slavery, and a good bit of the difference turns on the meaning of the declaration of independence and at this point lincolnhes really building on the debates that hes encountered. Indeed, members of the Republican Party have taken the declaration of independence as a statement of their founding principles. So hes part of a group of people; hes not isolated. Thats very important to know. And he builds on arguments that hes encountered that have been made by others. And he reinterprets the document. What does it mean that all men are created equal . Well, he made sense of it by taking the first statement and eliding it with the second. all men are created equal they arethat they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. he confuses the two; he says, the founders did not say that men are created identical in their appearance or their talents or their physical strength. They are equal in rights. This, he says, the founders said and this they meant. whether thats what the declaration said is open to contest, but it doesnt matter. It made sense of theof the document, and it made it rather more like a bill of rights and a message important for not just black americans, but for all americans. Cspan you mention that the 1824 tour of the United States by marquis de lafayette, a man who was. Guest yes. Cspan . At 19was a Major General in the revolutionary war. Guest yes. Cspan . From france. He came back here at an invitation of the American People to tour around to the 24 states, had an impact on the declaration of independence visibility. Why . Guest well, theres a whole new attention given, of course, to the revolutionary era. This is part of the whole celebration. That the lafayette visit in particular redirected attention imto the declaration, im not sure. Certainly, it wasityouone can see the reverence that the whole tradition had; that people were taking all kinds ofany physical artifact from the revolutionbuttons, whateverholding them with a great reverence. Andthe idea was that all of these relics, as they came to be known as, sort of, for people who knew the story, that it would incite deep feelings of reverence to the tradition and theyd rededicate themselves to that tradition. And, of course, what theyre coming increasingly to think is that the meaning of the revolution is expressed in the declaration. Why the declaration . Well, these principlesthe great revolutionary principles that were so commonplace in 1776 werent in the constitution. They werent in the federal bill of rights. Many states had written them into their bills of rights. But if you wanted those principles, if those principles were important to you or to your cause, you had to go back to the declaration of independence; its all you had. And the principles were increasingly understood to be important. Cspan who was king george iii . Guest king of Great Britain, the king against whom all the charges are leveled in the declaration of independence. Cspan and there were a lot of charges. How many in total . Guest there were a lot of charges. Well, jefferson had 21; i think congress cut it back to 19. Cspan were theywhowhat was he like . Do you have any ideaking george iii . Guest george iii was probably an insecure man, not the smartest man that ever walked on the face of the earth; a man that was probably somewhat bewildered by the rash of constitutional arguments that the americans were putting forward. He was certainly deeply dedicated to his country, to his traditions. He was the third of the hanoverian kings. His father had died. His grandfather wasstill spoke with a deep german accent. This man spoke english well, was raised in england. I mean, he was ahea dedicated englishman and stood for the rights of parliament. He thought that the welfare of Great Britain turned on its continuing to hold its american colonies. The colonies had become a major purchaser of british goods. That was clear. They had surpassed the west indies, who were always the preferred colonies earlier on. But the americans had come to import far more british goods. So he thought, if we lose the american colonieswhatthat was his greatest nightmare. if we lose the american colonies, we shall sink back into obscurity and be just a small, insignificant island once again. cspan you mentioned. Guest so he wanted to be severe in making sure that didnt happen. Cspan you mentioned the german connection, and you also suggest in the book that the americans really got mad when he brought german troops. Guest absolutely. Cspan . Into the revolutionary war. Guest absolutely. Cspan howd that happen . Guest well, it was the way the british actually fought their wars. Rather than using their own people, they liked to usehire other peoples soldiers and especially in a war like this which was of questionable popularity. People were a little hesitant to go shygo fighting other englishmen abroad. They would hire thehire foreign soldiers. And in some ways it was an economical move rather than using their own people. But to the americans, this was the ultimate atrocity. He was using foreigners to put them down. Cspan how many . Do you know . Guest numbers i cant give you off the top of my head. Yeah. Cspan the declaration of independence was signed on roughly what day . Guest on. Cspan andbut compare that with when the actual first shot was fired at lexington and concord. Guest well, itsapril 19th, 1775, is the conventional date for the beginning of the war at lexington and concord. Itscongress adopts independence on july 2nd, 1776. It issues the declaration on the 4th. After new york comes in, the congress then says, ahha, it is now unanimous declaration of the United States of america, and orders it put on parchment. And its only after its on parchment and is brought back to congress, and on august 2nd, that they formally sign the document. Now as i said earlier, they dont always sign it on that date. Some people came in later and said, id like to sign the declaration of independence. and congress doesnt actually circulate a copy of the document with signatures until january 1777. Why . Well, this was a confession of treason. You were putting your head in the noose. And the war went very, very poorly in 1776. Think of washington losing on long island, retreating up manhattan, retreating down the jersey coast, crossing the delaware. Hey, it looked real bad till the end of the year, till trenton and princeton. Only after trenton and princeton made it possible to believe that the americans could have stayed in the field, they might possibly win this waronly then did they circulate the document with their signatures. Cspan when you come to washington and go to the National Archives, is that the actual original document . Guest it is the original signed document in the National Archives, yes. Cspan is it all there that was signed . I mean, all the words are there . Guest its rather faded at this point. Nobody can read it, not only because youre ushered past it rather quickly, but because it was faded. It wasnt taken care of very well in the early years. It was sort of rolled up, carried around with the Second Continental Congress. And then the state department kept it, and if people came, theyd pull it out and show it to them. None of this, you know, enormouswhat do they call it . At the library of congressargon caskets, you know, these heavy metal, glass cases that have gas in them without oxygen so that the documents dont decompose. And the library of Congress Keeps them sort of in a refrigerator. Its the most precious documentsnone of that. I mean, they just pulled it out and showed it to you, the real thing. And then they got tired of pulling it out, so they pasted it up on a wall in what was then the patent office, and there it remained for 30 years near a very bright window. It faded. And they spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out what they could do with it. Modern preservation techniques are really a quite recent development. Cspan would you change the way we display it if you could . Guest no, i wouldnt. I should make clear im not saying dismantle a shrine in the National Archives. I think its a very eloquent testimony to the 20th century. I think that shrine was put together in 1952opened in 1952. I think the religious imagery tells us a lot of what was important to the country in 1952. Weit advertises the importance of what was different between the United States and, as we saw in the 1950s, the godless communism. I mean, theres religion. Theres liberty in these documents. There is capitalism or, you know, free enterprise, if you will. A lot of the brochures talk about which companies contributed to the enterprise. I find that very interesting. I even find the character of the guards very interesting. I know that after world war ii, at first, thethethe guards were made up of members of the armed forces in succession, and i would think they were almost exclusively white men. At present, thereswhen ivisited in 1995, it was a black woman and a black man, civilians. And, of course, the work force of contemporary washington is highly africanamerican. But there was something very significant about having them there with this sense of deep reverence; this is their tradition, too. Its the answer to stephen douglas, who said the declaration said all white men are created equal or all british and americans are created equal this is their declaration. Lincoln was right. Cspan heres the cover of the book. Its the story of the making of the declaration of independence by mit professor pauline maier. And we thank you very much for joining us. Guest thank you. Perspective and what is it like to collect about and challenge. So i pitched the story to the new yorker just kind of barebones saying what you think about this and affected get someone to talk to me they said great. 5,000 words when can you give me a copy. That is a look at some of the top books for 2014. For a link to the philistines to see other publications elections, visit the booktv website, booktv. Org. Co creators of citizen radio are next on booktv. They talk about the Mainstream Media failure to properly report on important issues of the day including climate change, rights and terms. This is about 50 minutes. Thank you for coming to the book launch