Chosen as one of New York Times. One notable books of 2015. Professor moore teaches at the university of oxford and has lectured internationally on 18th century history. He also hosts a podcast called travels through time, which i encourage you to check out. Tonights moderator, richard cohn is the author of making history, a book that we presented in this past year in the american inspiration series. He also has written by the sword chasing the sun and how to write. Like tolstoy, the forming former publishing director of two leading publishing houses, he has edited books that have won the pulitzer the booker and many other prizes 21 books under his watchful. I have been number one bestsellers. Richards written works have appeared in the New York Times book review and in the wall street journal. He is also a fellow of Royal Society of literature. Richard will join us for the second half of our program. But to start us off, peter. Welcome to you. Peter moore. It is such a delight to have you here and all of us in the audience, of course, know that we set this 3 p. M. Eastern time to suit your uk time zone and i think itll be worth it to get your transit atlantic perspective. Thank you so much for taking us back to the mid18th century and sharing information about the onyx expected influencers behind americas independence. As the Washington Post called it, i think im sure you remember that review well, they also called this group caste beyond the Founding Fathers. And i love that word beyond. So we really you for your research and over to you to introduce us to this caste of men and one woman, thankfully. Peter, welcome. Margaret its a real pleasure to be here. Hello to all of you. Im in west london at the moment. The sun has gone down, but im still awake, luckily enough. But well find out if i am awake enough for subject anyway. So im going to talk a little bit about the book. I didnt have long really, but i wanted to introduce you to the central characters around which ive constructed this story. But lets begin at a common point of departure, because theres an image on your screen at the moment that i guess will be instantly familiar to so many of you. This really captures is one of the i dont want to use the word iconic because it feels cliched, but for this this image, its the right word, really. Its one of the iconic moments in the birth of the United States. That foundation and story of yours. And we can date this moment pretty well, because theres lots of documents that tell us what was going on through that summer of 1776. This is the moment when thomas jefferson, much younger than the two people hes there with, is presenting his draft copy of the declaration of independence. So you have three members of the fabled committee of five here. You have john adams. Obviously, hes sitting, looking i suppose, a little bit inscrutable in the center. Franklin is running his eyes over the text. And jefferson is looking, i suppose a little bit nervous because he would be a bit nervous if Benjamin Franklin was about to critique your copy. But this is this is this this really central moment. And i suppose we can imagine here. Franklin, reading those famous words when in the course of human events and so on and going through the words around which i structure my book life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now, this is a 20 20 century representation of an 18th century moment. So its, i suppose, a romanticized image. But we do know that Something Like this happened. Its its its testified in the documents that we have. We know this that franklin did make editorial interventions and that this moment really was at the start of a period of redrafting that went on between maybe the 20th of june and the 4th of july with the critical moment really coming on the 2nd of july, when it was adopted by by the congress. And it was actually passed and signed on the 4th of july, which of course, then becomes the first independ once a day. So i think its what were looking at here is is the original rough draft of the declaration, which i believe still exists . Well, i know it still exists. I think its in the New York Public Library now, and you can have a look at it on online. This digitized copy. And its a really fascinating document. And its so for all little editorial changes to the text that youre familiar with, franklins big editor really intervention in the preamble was to to to include the words selfevident which is a nice enlightened twist looking at with your eyes. These things are selfevident. But already jefferson has caught much of the flavor of the text that were familiar with today. I think at this point the famous line goes life and, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So its a little bit different. Theres an extra and in there, but essentially this Great American moment is captured here and already the document is well on its way. But if we can move to the next slide, im going to tell you about some of the other characters who are not so familiar. So lets go lets back up a bit. A year before this moment. In 1776, we have a very, very similar use of language from a man called william strawn, who is probably the one the least well known of my in the book. Strawn is a scottish born london based printer. He was originally called William Strachan and he came to london in the 17th thirties and he you can you can see him writing in a letter to his great friend, Benjamin Franklin. These words i wish the liberty and happiness of all of our brethren with you. Okay. Now, i think these are Little Things that as a historian, really provoke you. You wonder, well, hang on, theres a real echo. The next year in a declaration of this language. And im not making the case that theres a connection between this particular letter that strawn writes and the declaration. But what i am pointing out here to you now is the language that jefferson was using at the time, that famous preamble was not wholly original and this is something that jefferson owned himself. He said his idea or his job to recreate new language. His job was to encapsulate the best thoughts that people were expressing in their time, in the most eloquent way. And so you can see here these words, liberty, happiness already. And if we just go back to storm for a moment, i want to dwell on him because hes one of the important characters in my book because of his friendship with Benjamin Franklin, which stretches over the whole course of the book really between the 1740s and 1775. And like franklin, hes a printer by trade. Hes really interested in politics. And together they discuss endlessly what is going to be the fate of british america is it going to remain as part of the British Empire or is it as franklin comes to believe, are going to be an independent country . And this is this is i suppose, one of the central plot lines, the book and strawn and franklin fall out over this. I just want to quote to you. The letter that franklin was writing to strawn on the very same day this. So this is on the 5th of july, 1775. I think this is one of the great letters in the whole of the revolution ordinary literature, so strong by this point has become a member of the british parliament, and hes sitting on the green benches in westminster behind lord north as all these coercive acts have been passed through parliament and franklin writes, mr. Strawn, youre a member of parliament and one of that majority which is doomed. My country to destruction. You have begun to burn our towns and murder our people. Look upon your hands there are stained with the blood of your relations. You and i were long friends. You are now my enemy. And i am yours. Benjamin franklin. I think thats one of the great sign offs to a letter in history. Im reliably informed that you can buy a t shirt on ebay with that very letter inscribed on the front. But lets move on. Hes one of the characters i talk about. We might get back to strawn in a bit, but the the next character is called john wilkes. Not really what i was trying to do when i started constructing the story was solve a few mysteries of my own. And a lot of you who are listening today will instantly know that the the greatest book about the American Revolution was written by Bernard Bailyn and the 1960s is called the ideological origins of the American Revolution. And in it, he writes about john wilkes and how john wilkes was an incredibly important influence at an early point in the American Revolutionary story. Here, you can see him. Im again centering in on these important words, liberty. I consider this the birthright of every subject to the British Empire. And i hold Magna Charter to be is in full force in america as in europe. Wilkes his story in the 1760s is both absolutely extraordinary and completely forgotten. I first began to conceive of this book as being a british prelude to the American Revolution with playing the part of the protagonist as to upend politics with his great campaigns for liberty wilkes was a Brilliant Writer a very unfaithful lover, a very daring politician. And he ran into great problems with the british political establishment. He first had him thrown at parliament and then had him declared an outlaw. His story was huge in britain, but what really interested me when i was writing the book was that i found out that his story was huge in america as well. Maybe well get back to wilkes in a bit, but thats another part of that sentence. Liberty, liberty and wilkes are next slide, please, if you can. Catherine mcauley now a lot of people dont remember john wilkes and they remember john wilkes booth, who is a later incarnation of the same name or a similar name and. A lot of people forget. Macaulay, the historian, because they remember the victorian macaulay historian, but the original macaulay historian. Was this one that you see in front of you right now. And somebody else who i write about and let me pull out this quote. Ill read it for you. Its only the democrats school system, rightly balanced, too, which can secure the virtue, liberty and happiness society. Again, you can see an approximation with the text which becomes really famous less than a decade later. Macaulay is an astonishing character. I think that she should be cherished and celebrated really in the american founding story because she paid an incredibly Important Role. She she was very skeptical about monarchy. She was a great advocate for republican government. She thought that power should be split because she didnt believe anyone could be trusted with any power. So her concerns were the concerns the american patriots and through the late 1760s into the 1770s, her writings were hugely, hugely popular in the american colonies. She wrote and corresponded with Abigail Adams and and and lots of the others. I mean, theres a whole list if you go and have a look at her published letters, which recently have been put out by Oxford University press. I think youll find all of her correspondence with these great founding characters and theres a bit of a topsy turvy feel to these letters as well. But shes in a way, the more the more prominent of the figures in 1775, probably one of the most perilous moments of the whole Foundation Story. Macaulay wrote a pamphlet in support of the the first Continental Congress. So shes a really important character. Again, well get back to her. I know. Ive got to keep moving on, so lets keep moving on. But you can see if you look in the corner, a little nod to sydney in the bottom, the great champion of liberty from the 17th century. Okay, next slide, someone he didnt like, macaulay as well. Someone who didnt like macaulay at all, i should say. But someone who appears in my story as a foil to the progressives to the enlightenment ers who believed that society should be moving forward at a pace and all development was good with samuel johnson. Now, Samuel Johnsons birthday is today in the old style, so i hope youll kind of wish him well on this on this occasion. Hes a real hero of mine. Im from lichfield in staffordshire very much like him. But i have to say, if hes got a home in america, it may well be cambridge in massachusetts because thats where a lot of his papers are kept in the library. He did some some so many great johnson scholars have come from the United States, which ive always thought a real strange thing, because he was very rude about the american patriots in response to macaulays pamphlet in 1775, johnson one called taxation no tyranny, which included a phrase that once read never forgotten, which is how, is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of . Maybe well talk a bit more about that later, but johnson was very much on the side of what he thought the as the common person he was, he was very interested in what he thought of as the living world and the big theme throughout all of johnsons writing was about happiness. In 1759, he produced a novella called restless, which is all about the quest for happiness. He uses this phrase the pursuit of happiness five times in his writings before 1776, now wrote a piece for the atlantic when the book came out about johnson and jefferson and the connections between the two of them, not making not making the argument that. Jefferson took that particular phrase, which is so quintessentially his own from johnson. But in the sense that they both thought about happiness in a similar manner, that jefferson and johnson both believed that happiness wasnt something that could be safely obtained. It was something that had to be strived for. Okay, ive got a couple of minutes left to tell you the next two characters, so lets move on. Thomas paine is someone who again falls between the gaps in a way he doesnt neatly fit into the Founding Fathers narrative. But the british obviously dont consider him quite one of their own as well. But you can see he is talking about happiness in a similar way to johnson, you can see, well, just a bit of context about thomas paine. For those of you who dont know, he came to philadelphia in late 1774. In 1775, he became this pioneering magazine journalist and the one quality about him, which was just extraordinary, was his prose style. In 1776, he started that fabled year off with his pamphlet, common sense, which by the end of the year, i mean, theres been so many different estimates of how many copies it sold, but some say as many as a quarter of a million or half a Million People read common sense. And its often described the book that started the revolution. People have said i think it was john adams. He said, without the pen of paine, the sword of washington would have been would not have been used at all or something probably a bit more eloquent i imagine giving it was the 18th century, but here we have paine with a very enlightenment ish idea of good ordered science. The politician consists in fixing the true point of happiness and freedom. Those men deserve the gratitude of ages. He should discover a mode of government that contained the greatest sum of individual happiness, the least national expense. Quite like that. Quite so. Weve got one more character to go and then my whistle stop tour of them of characters will come to a close and i can talk with richard bit more about the story. So the last one in this half dozen is someone who needs certainly no introduction for me apart from observation, which i have to say is quite unshakable, that Benjamin Franklin is the greatest american of all time because of what he represents and what he lived through. If anyone wants to argue with me about that, ill happily ill happily argue with you. But this quote in itself isnt a particularly profound. Its Franklin Owens attitude towards happiness, which comes down in this quote to a kind of stoicism, i suppose. But the quality about it i really like is that its franklins writing. Franklins writing is prose. Style is what my favorite things of all. Its just a wonderful treat to read him. Hes such a quotable, enjoyable player, playful, and i used him as as a kind of touchstone throughout the book to knit everything together. And i cant quite read the quote here because theres a big picture of my face on top of it. So ill have to leave you to navigate it yourself. But this idea of franklin and the weather and waiting for the clouds to pass and the sun to shine, i think really captures something. But also what i hope ive showed you here is, just giving you a taste of is of some of these characters who not only jefferson, but these characters were thinking about the business of life, the business of liberty, and the business of happiness as well. Okay. Thank you. No, i think its at this point that i come in as your questioner, peter. And i have to say, first of all, i really enjoyed the book and my spread through it is so wellwritten and so lively and it was fun to read and. I was just wondering, was it fun to write . Did you have fun doing it . Occasionally, im sure there must have been some points. I mean, when i say that what i said about franklin, i absolutely mean and this was a period so rich in ideas, so rich in writing. I think the American Revolution is a great era of of income paper. It was an event that was the kind of physical matter the American Revolution. Its not like if you think of the english revolution of the 17th century, it might be more of puritans standing in pulpits and shouting out screeds about god. The American Revolution was very much pamphlet so stumps or, you know, these kind of things, documents and i just loved working with that primary source material. I thought it was fabulous and and that went for wilkes. He was a fabulous writer. Johnson is probably the greatest prose style in the english language. Macaulay was quite bo