Adam Smith:
0:13
Hello, and welcome to the last best hope, the podcast from Oxford's, our AI that examines America from the outside in. My name's Adam Smith. Abraham Lincoln called America the last best hope of Earth. And when Lincoln stood up to give his gettysburg address in 1863, he opened by locating the birth of the nation, Four score and seven years ago, in 1776. Why 1776 Lincoln might have chosen 1783 exactly four score years ago, as he might have put it, which was the date when the United States was formally recognised in international law as an independent country in the Treaty of Paris, he might perhaps have chosen 1789 three score and 14 years ago, the year the Constitution came into effect when in the course of human events 1776 was simply the date when a bunch of rebel leaders signed an insurgent manifesto, the Declaration of Independence. In fact, most of the declaration is a series of indictments of the king has obstructed the administration of justice many little better than the recycling conspiracy theories and fake news. He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices, but the opening to the declaration rose to a transcendent level of abstraction, 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. So how did the declaration come to be the signature document of the American nation? What was its role in forging Americans conception of themselves as somehow exceptional, the last best hope of Earth. And today, in 2022 12 score and six years later, does 1776 still convey a message that can unify a divided America?
Patrick Griffin:
2:36
What the Declaration of Independence offers is really something that's quite strikingly evocative, as Americans now reclaim this to be the very heart and soul of what it means to be American. It means that more and more people are going to be able to buy into this idea that as long as you subscribe to a certain set of ideas, that somehow makes you America. My name is Patrick Gryphon on the Madden History Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. I'm delighted also that I am the Harmsworth visiting professor in American history at Oxford this year. So that makes me a fellow at Queens College and a fellow at the Rothermere American institute. I've written a number of books and the focus of my research has largely been on the 18th century Atlantic world, but also on revolutionary America.
Adam Smith:
3:21
Patrick, thank you so much for joining me.
Patrick Griffin:
3:22
Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me. Pleasure.
Adam Smith:
3:24
So Patrick, let's begin with what happened on July the fourth 1776. I think many listeners will probably have in their mind that very famous painting, showing the Founding Fathers lined up in order signing this document all dressed in silk stockings and nice coats in a sun filled room. Is that really what it was like? What actually happened in that Hall in Philadelphia on July the fourth 1776? What do we know?
Patrick Griffin:
3:58
I don't think it was as dramatic as say the John Trumbull painting is that you're referring to? The funny thing is, is that we think of July the fourth, of course, is Independence Day, the day when the Declaration of Independence is going to be signed, but that's really not what happened. John Adams originally thought that is July The second was going to be the day that Americans were going to be celebrating their independence because that's the day more or less that the Second Second Continental Congress voted to declare independence. July The fourth is the day that it's going to be formally ratified and promulgated. And that's the day that we generally tend to celebrate for the most part.
Adam Smith:
4:37
There's some question of course, about whether it really was whether really, anybody signed anything on July the fourth, I mean, there was for a long time, a tradition dating back into the 19th century that in fact, it all happened a few weeks later in early August, wasn't it when I mean, because clearly some of the names on the Declaration of Independence weren't people who weren't actually in Philadelphia at all on July the fourth so what's the latest thing he on this that some people signed on July the fourth Often the others signed up later.
Patrick Griffin:
5:02
Most of them were signing later on and so signatures were coming in but dribs and drabs over the time afterward, John Hancock puts his famous John Hancock on the document much later after July the fourth,
Adam Smith:
5:14
there's certainly no sense of hesitation is there in the confidence with which John Hancock signs this beautiful, elaborate signature of his. But where are these people, these men gathered together in Philadelphia? Were they putting themselves at any risk? Was there any personal Jeopardy involved in making this decision to sign a declaration saying that these 13 colonies as eventually was, we're going to break away from the British Empire?
Patrick Griffin:
5:39
Yeah, there was a great deal of risk. Technically speaking, once they did that, they almost signed their death warrants. They were traitors, and they were rebels. And that many of them understood and knew this at the time. So this is something that they took very, very seriously. And there was it don't get the sense also that there was inevitability about this. I mean, at the time anyway, most of them are, are really concerned with kind of are Americans going to go along this or all the state's going to be on board, are the people back home going to be okay with the radical move that they're making. And so if anything, there was an extraordinary amount of indecision on top of this, there were some people still pushing and saying, This is just going to be a step too far. Let's go back. And let's try to make kind of another entreaty to the Kagan see that if we can get on the same page, maybe they'll eventually just understand what our frustrations are. And we can come to some sort of accommodation. So you have people who want to race along and want independence, others that are kind of like holding back a little others that are even more circumspect wondering if they're going to get support from the people at home. So we generally tend to view this as kind of something that was just going to happen. And we see these guys that are just kind of proudly signing their names. And that's it that we're off to the races. But that was hardly the case at the time.
Adam Smith:
6:50
Right. Up until this point, as newer, you've been alluding to this, the strategy of the rebellious colonists had been to apply pressure on London. There's no sense though, is that once you sign a declaration of independence, that's not a strategy to give yourself more leverage. There's no scenario in which once you've signed that document, there's there's any way back, this is not a bargaining chip,
Patrick Griffin:
7:15
no, and no point if there's no point of return. And you said use the word leverage leverage had largely been exhausted. People had been exasperated with others, like moderates, like for example, John Dickinson, who just kind of said, no, no, we have to try to find some sort of accommodation, some sort of middle ground with the Crown again, and they just sent out another what so called Olive Branch petition, to try to get the king to see their way of what was happening at the time. But the king didn't go for he just considered them kind of out of hand rebels. And that's all there was to it. And so after they had really exhausted everything, that was the moment anyway, where they just kind of made this move where the die was cast.
Adam Smith:
7:56
What did they have in their mind when they were doing this? Did they think they were taking a step into the unknown and doing something completely unprecedented in human history, which is sometimes the way in which their acts have been retrospectively imagined? Or did they see themselves acting? I mean, perhaps most obviously, to my mind, anyway, one would imagine they saw themselves acting in the tradition of, of the, the 17th century forebears who took this step of in different circumstances, obviously, but of signing the king's death warrant in the 1640s, that kind of challenge to royal authority.
Patrick Griffin:
8:30
They did not think at this moment that they were doing something that was going to transform the world, that's for sure, later on, that's the way that some people will interpret it. And I think, Adam, you're exactly right. When you say if anything, they were looking toward the precedents they knew. And those are English precedents. And here, I'll give you a great example of how exactly this work. Just a few days after the declaration of independence is ratified. New Yorkers are going to hear of it. And on July the ninth, they're going to read the Declaration of Independence on the commons in New York City, we're actually City Hall would be today. At that point. Anyway, a group of New Yorkers marched right down to the very tip of Manhattan to the battery. And there there was a statue of King George a third, a wonderful equestrian statue kind of use modelled after Marcus Aurelius. And some seamen who were there are going to toss ropes around it and just start tugging, and they're going to pull this statue down. So this is a very, very famous moment. What happens more impressively is what goes on and more important for our purposes, what happens afterward, and they're going to break this thing up to pieces. They're going to behead the statute, then they're going to send it up to Connecticut to be melted down into bullets. And they're going to create from this as a talus anyway 42,088 bullets and the 42 and the 88 are important because those go directly to those years in the 17th century, when kings were toppled before King Charles the First in the 1640s. And of course in 1680 1690s was going to be King James the Second so there's Still thinking about what they're doing in light of what they know that even though they are now breaking away and becoming independent, they are still so British in so many ways.
Adam Smith:
10:10
That's absolutely fascinating. So they, they, they imagine they present that number deliberately in order to invoke those two years, 1642 and 1688. Because those are the precedents that everybody in these in these British colonies understand as the moment when the people of England stood up against tyrannical royal authority. That's the tradition that they want to identify themselves with.
Patrick Griffin:
10:33
Absolutely. And so even though, you know, there are pains to say, as you put it earlier, that they're breaking away, and when they're going to break away, there's kind of no going back on this. At the same time, the only world that they know the only precedence the only template they have for understanding what they're actually doing is a British template. There's not like as as if they signed the Declaration of Independence and they kind of Jiffy they become Americans, it doesn't work that way to become an American was gonna take a long period of time at this point, they were still British,
Adam Smith:
11:02
Patrick, we've got to be getting on to this, but as as we know what what happened in the aftermath of the American Revolution was at that moment, whatever it was, that actually happened on July the fourth was turned into this kind of sacred moment, this this moment in which the nation was created and the world changed. But you've also one of the things you've emphasised, and I think you're going to be emphasising more in your in your forthcoming book is that we should understand 1776 The Declaration of Independence within a broader Atlantic frame. I mean, this after all, was the age of revolutions. There have been other ages of revolutions, other moments of revolutions and world history. But this late 18th, early 19th century moment in the Atlantic world was the age of revolutions. How does thinking about it in that way to frame change how we understand what happened on July the fourth 1776,
Patrick Griffin:
11:57
the first part of your question that is exactly spot on. I mean, in the sense of that this didn't become some sort of like sacred text for a long period of time, the first thing to realise is that this is a wartime document. So Americans and the British have been kind of shooting at each other now for more than a year, by the time these delegates are meeting and the time that they're going to draft this, and they're going to write this up. But I also think more importantly, they were doing so in the midst of the collapse of British authority. And this is where it gets to a broader Atlantic issue. So when I say the collapse of British authority, more or less the crown, and the crown and parliament were not ruling in America, as they had in periods before this, more or less people had taken it upon themselves to kind of step out of older accepted roles. And now we're becoming actors, some of them for the very first time. And this is absolutely exhilarating, exciting moment, but a terrifying one, nonetheless, because they are stepping into this great void. And so what happens in America is not that it's something exceptional or distinctive. It's more or less what we see throughout this broader age. And that is tied into, I think, the ways that empires were reforming in these years, and the way that people were acting upon that reform. And in many cases, it was going to be those far from kind of central authority were the ones who are going to be the first to decide that they were going to have to figure out a new way of governing themselves, in light of reform meant to them.
Adam Smith:
13:27
I guess the reason why it's important, historic graphically, in other words, in terms of the way in which historians have understood this moment is because there is this very strong tradition in American academic writing, and certainly in American popular culture or thinking about 1776 as the epitome of American exceptionalism, that this was a purely American moment by which they mean a United States of American moment, and that what was achieved, accomplished in that Declaration of Independence, the unalienable truths which were outlined in that document, and all that followed from it was something that secures and anchors a sense of how America is different from the rest of the world. And by framing in the way that you've just done, Patrick, what you're pointing to is the fact that this was far from being unparalleled. This was part of a broader process of Imperial fragmentation tensions, which arose in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Patrick Griffin:
14:27
Yeah, I agree completely. We generally tend to view it as an exceptional moment, an American centred view of themselves and exceptional people. But in this regard, historians are people too, and historians are also ones who kind of fight over what America means and what America is exceptional identity also means. So historians, generation after generation have continued to fight and refight the American Revolution. And it's usually done along these sort of exceptional terms, but the way that America kind of becomes, or senses itself to be somehow exceptional, something that develops with time. It doesn't happen right away. But we see this happening throughout the broader Atlantic too. That's one of the interesting sorts of dynamics is that even though so many different peoples are going to be experiencing the same sort of revolutionary process throughout these years, many have had to come up with an idea that somehow they are different from other people. It's somehow their revolution was somehow the important one, the distinctive one, the one that different from all others. And Americans in this regard are no different than anybody else.
Adam Smith:
15:30
So it precisely Americans exceptionalism that make them unexceptional.
Patrick Griffin:
15:36
Yes, absolutely.
Adam Smith:
15:37
I suppose one response to what you've just said there, Patrick, is that the American Revolution was first. And the Declaration of Independence of 1776 was adopted, reframed its language was borrowed countlessly in other places, certainly in the by Latin American revolutionaries in the early 19th century, but But long into the 20th century as well, people all across the world, over two and a half centuries now have used that document, that declaration of independence. So in that sense, Patrick, although it may be part of a broader movement of Imperial fragmentation, was the first wasn't it? And doesn't that matter?
Patrick Griffin:
16:22
Oh, it definitely matters. And it was indeed the first but it was the first because it was the British Empire was the first to fracture under so many of the tensions that other empires are going to be dealing with at that particular moment in time. And it was probably the first fracture because the British were the ones who were most able to kind of see reform measures through and to keep pushing and pushing. Whereas other imperial powers when they tried to say tack some of their colonists as the French would do in sand demand, or the Spanish and Portuguese would do in Latin America, they more or less relented when the provincials pushed back. But as Americans push back, and these are British provincials again, as they begin to push back, the British Empire is the one that does not relent. And because of that, you have a crisis that others are able to avert for some period of time. You also point to something else. Really important, though, and this is another dynamic when we have this, when we study this period, also, is we have to remember, this is an absolutely hyper connected world. And it's a hyper connected world where people are not only going to experience the same sorts of tensions, but were there also emulate one another and look at what other people are doing. And so when the Americans do indeed declare their independence, others later on are going to be using the same document as they're going to be making these same moves again. But interestingly, it's not so much that they focus upon the very evocative phrases that Americans consider to be sacred to who they are, we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they're endowed with their Creator with certain unalienable rights. And among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's the sort of thing that's become American scripture. But as David Armitage in one of his books has demonstrated, it's not so much the principles that people focus on. But it's actually the earlier part of the declaration, where kind of Americans are declaring themselves to be sovereign and independent. It's that particular part of the Declaration of Independence, that's going to whipsaw around the world, not only during the late 18th and early 19th century, but well into the 20th century as well. So America, it's an interesting thing, because Americans are going to provide, if you will, a template for other people, a model that other peoples are going to be able to emulate, even though so many of these same places are going to be undergoing the same process for the exactly the same sorts of reasons that Americans are earlier on.
Adam Smith:
18:41
So 1783 is the date when the United States was formally recognised in international law. Tell us a little bit of bad how the declaration of independence after that date, came to be this sacred thing as you've been discussing it describing it?
Patrick Griffin:
18:58
Well, in the 1770s, and 1780s, no one really invokes or thinks about the Declaration of Independence, there are a few there's going to be a number of African Americans at the time, we're going to say, hey, wait a minute, these principles that are inscribed in this document really have to have meaning. But they would be exceptional in this regard, that most Americans while they're fighting the war, in the years just after the war, more or less gonna forget about this document. And that's to a certain extent, understandably so again, when they thought about the document at the time, the principles were the thing that people focus upon the principles of principles, what we regard is just boilerplate British ideology. And so because of it, no one really invokes the principles. And then after independence as effectively one as you put in 1781, that'd be victory at Yorktown in 1783. With the Treaty of Paris, more or less people could ask themselves, Well, isn't the declaration sort of a relic, a relic that just commemorates a time when we were breaking away and now we've achieved everything that documents set out to achieve? It's only going to be resurrected? into the years thereafter. And that's when people are going to start focusing upon particularly on the principles. And I think this has a great deal to do with Americans struggling to bring their revolution to an end. You know, revolutions don't end easily. And we in America have this sort of mythic conception of a revolution. It's bounded by two documents by the declaration of independence by the Constitution, and is done by guys who are meeting in a room in Philadelphia, who happen to look nice, who are out there in the gritty sidewalks outside who aren't on the battlefields, who are just citing these sorts of documents, and then you more or less kind of encapsulate the story of America. That's hardly the case, however, America was literally turned upside down by the revolution. And at that point, anyway, making sure all of these tensions were going to be able to put to bed was not something that was really that simple. What we find is just in the 1790s, and right around the turn of the century, into the 19th century, that's when Americans really discovered the founding fathers. And this is when they're going to rediscover the Declaration of Independence. And the Declaration of Independence then begins to take on a life in and of itself. And this now is when people if you will, and I use the word resurrection, they're going to resurrect these ideas that had been boilerplate British ideals, and now we're going to consider them to be the very heart and soul of what it means to be American. It's something that happens with time as Americans are dealing with all the tensions of putting revolution to to an end, and then trying to define in a very fluid period of time, who they are,
Adam Smith:
21:32
Given that it's necessary for Americans, for elite Americans, for the people who are kind of running the show who've established a new political regime in the 1780s. Given that it's necessary for them to contain the American Revolution, and say that we created this extraordinary thing which guaranteed people's rights. Why is it necessary to go back to the Declaration of Independence to do that? Isn't the Constitution shouldn't the Constitution have been enough that after all, was the document that established broadly speaking, the framework that are regulated the relations between the state and the national government and with the first 10 amendments, articulated the rights that citizens of the United States have over category of EU citizens were wasn't clarified, but who, who are the rights that Americans have in with against government? So what do they need 7276 for?
Patrick Griffin:
22:29
Because after you read the two documents, you tell me which one do you think is a little more evocative? Which one do you think has a bit more of emotional appeal? The constitution is a workman like document no matter how much you made like the preamble, it just states what a government is supposed to do. And the role of this new government as a matter of fact, the most important three words and the ones that had any emotional appeal to the first three, we the people, the painful, but they speak to a reality that defined America at the time. The people we the idea of we the people was just not some kind of idea from on high that was kind of put down there to try to figure out who was going to be sovereign at this period of time was an animating fact that Americans had for a long time been out of doors. And as I said before, this was a world that was turned upside down. Americans have become actors and then is politicised and mobilised moment. How do you deep politicise and de mobilise. And so what the Declaration of Independence offers is really something that's quite strikingly evocative as Americans that are reclaim this to be the very heart and soul of what it means to be American, it means that more and more people are going to be able to buy into this idea that as long as you subscribe to a certain set of ideas, that somehow makes you American. Now, granted, there was going to be a lot of exclusions bound up at first, and this is goes to the difficulties of ending a revolution, some people will be completely written out of the equation. African Americans, Native Americans, women are going to win a proverbial half loaf, they're going to get not so much political rights as they will have sort of like cultural cachet in the years after the American Revolution. But it means for white men anyway, the ones that you have to worry about unsettling a government because they're upset, if they can now claim also to be heirs to those ideas of equality of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is a way that you ensure stability in this sort of society. And with that, anyway, the Declaration of Independence is able to do that much, much more effectively, than, say, a constitution.
Adam Smith:
24:33
So it's a sort of the Declaration of Independence becomes a kind of container within which you can have debate and tension. People can interpret it in different ways, but they're all trying to interpret the same document and the document is the moment of the nation's founding. And so even if you're interpreting the Declaration of Independence in ways that challenge existing authority in particular ways, you're still doing so within the terms that are Everyone agrees upon. So it creates boundaries to political debate.
Patrick Griffin:
25:04
It definitely does. And say for example, the one there's a couple things that are more or less kind of ruled out discursively in America at this time loyalism, it's done. You know loyalism is an animating philosophy is dead after the time of the American Revolution, you have to buy into a set of principles. And it just so happens a declaration of independence is kind of provides those principles in beautiful, evocative language. And as you put it to what's going to happen is, if you will people, once they lay claim to it are going to be able to kind of push out the bounds of citizenship and what citizenship can actively mean. So at first 1776, in July, the fourth is largely going to be an elite holiday. And so spoofs like kind of the order the Cincinnati that George Washington belonged to, and some of his senior officers, which is supposed to be this hereditary order that these former military men can sign up for, these are going to be the groups that are going to be celebrating July the fourth more than anybody else. But soon enough, it's going to be white working men are also going to be laying claim to that date, as well and being laid claim to the principles laying claim to the principles that they think they think, underscore what the state means, and also what it means to be an American. And so what you find from very early on, as soon as Americans kind of adopt the Declaration of Independence is theirs and the principles that kind of again underwrite it, what you're going to find is people are going to start taking it on and claiming then that through it, they can push out the bounds of what it means to be an American,
Adam Smith:
26:37
Patrick, you mentioned that among the few people who remembered and quoted the Declaration of Independence, in its immediate aftermath in the 1770s and early 1780s, were African Americans. And you've also noted that abolitionists and African Americans were among those people, almost always excluded from formal politics, who nevertheless saw in the language of the Declaration of Independence, the potential for their own emancipation, and and this leads me really to, to ask you about the Civil War as a a refounding moment in American history. One way of interpreting one very common way of interpreting Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg in November 1863, is precisely that, that he was taking up the Declaration of Independence and making it into something new. So four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the draft of the Declaration of Independence had called that had called the idea of equality, a self evident truth. Lincoln described it as a proposition. And then, of course, went on to say that the great civil war that they were now fighting was a war that was testing whether any nation so dedicated and so conceived, dedicated to liberty and conceived so that proposition could long India. So Lincoln, in this interpretation, picks up the Declaration of Independence and makes it into something new. Do you agree with that?
Patrick Griffin:
28:36
Yes. And no, I think that certainly saw it as a challenge. I would go even further he saw the declaration at that point is a sacred challenge. But he's not the first one to say this, of course, I think it's the two groups you talked about earlier on are really going to transform what the declaration is and what the declaration can mean. And that's African Americans and abolitionists. I think the most beautiful, evocative understanding we actually have the Declaration of Independence, isn't in the Gettysburg Address, however pithy it is, it's actually in Frederick Douglass Fifth of July oration in Rochester in 1852. When he is not going to be speaking on the Fourth of July, he's going to be speaking on the fifth of July and already famously put his what to what to a slave is the fourth of July, what does that mean? And that he considers it to be an utter an absolute insult. He considers it to be perverse that people are going to be celebrating the Fourth of July when so many people are still held out in bondage. Now, this doesn't mean that Douglas is rejecting the Declaration of Independence, actually, it's just the opposite. He wants to embrace the declaration. He considers the founders for all of their part for all their faults, to have been this enlightened group of people who kind of laid out these sacred principles now that all Americans have to try to measure up to and he says, look at it out here in 1852. It's clear we have not measured up it's clear We have not measured up. And so we think that when Lincoln comes to Gettysburg in 1863, there have been so much bloodshed, so many people have been slaughtered. Of course, when he's a Gettysburg, he's talking really at a mass grave. That's what it is to commemorate a mass grave. And at that particular point in time the ever religious Lincoln is one know who is going to see 1776 It's not only something that matters for Americans, politically, it doesn't really matter to their identity doesn't matter to how they define themselves as a people. It's something that's much, much more important. This is something that harkens back to a deep relationship with God that the United States really has a providential role to play slavery, and not America allowed Americans to Americans to live up to that providential role. And now, with all of these people who had sacrificed their lives for what he hopes to be this principle, Americans can finally live up to the principles that are inscribed in 1776.
Adam Smith:
30:59
Given what you've just said, there, Patrick, and the way that you've told that story about Frederick Douglass, black abolitionist, and the other abolitionist role in helping Lincoln to understand the providential mission of the United States as being to fulfil or to try to fulfil, or to work towards the fulfilment of the principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence. And yet, in the 21st century, as we head towards the 200 and 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, progressive politics today appears to be rejecting 1776. As a moment, the New York Times 1619 project is an effort to offer an alternative reframing, you could say an alternative way of explaining American exceptionalism in a dark rather than a positive way. So whereas 1776 is the moment in which the United States in its in the exceptional narrative sets itself up, as the last best hope of Earth, which offers the promise of fulfilment for these universal principles. 1619 is the date in which enslaved or at least unfree African Americans were first landed in Virginia. And so the structural racism, the white supremacy that is baked into American society was baked in at that moment in 1619. So very self consciously what the New York Times 1619 project is doing is offering a counterpoint to 1776, which is why the Trump administration set it up the 1776 project as a deliberate rebuke to 1619. So this has become very political now, hasn't it? How do we navigate between in a very polarised political environment which we're now in, in which 1619 becomes the totem of if you believe that 1619 is the way of understanding American history, you are aligning yourselves with those who understand the depths of racism in American society? Whereas if you align yourself with 1776, the implication is you are aligning yourself with this incredibly upbeat triumphalist self congratulatory exceptionalist narrative, how do we navigate between those two positions as historians? And indeed, in your case, as a United States citizen?
Patrick Griffin:
33:36
I think we go back to Frederick Douglass, I think that people who want to see 1776 is a celebratory ideal. They're creating a myth that may have existed for a very short period of time early on. But it's just that a myth. Now, every nation defines itself by certain sets of myths. That's one myth we could choose that. Another myth would be is that we have to reject 1776 Altogether, although I would argue when it comes to the 1619 project, that's 1776. And his principles, shadows at all, in the sense that the people who are behind it are still supporting the ideas that Equality matters a great deal in 1776, in the best sense of the word, is necessarily bound to the idea of equality. But Douglas offers us and Lincoln to off, they both offer us a different, subtly different idea than both of these. But what I think that 1619 ties into more effectively than, say the 1776 project. They offer us an idea of redemption, the space between the principles, and those who can enjoy the principles are going to define the struggle of what it means to be an American. And that struggle is premised upon the idea of redemption. The idea that even though we don't live up to the principles 1776 effectively all the time, there's the idea implicit now and being an American, that we have to try to, and we have to try to do better. And this is the mythic conception of 1776 that has developed over time. This is the one that has stood the test of time. This also is the one that explained so much of the bloodshed during the Civil War that turned just kind of deaths that could have been meaningless deaths into sacrifice. And because of that, I think this myth that Frederick Douglass and Lincoln are going to hold on to this is the myth that offers us hope going forward. And that's why ironically, though, a lot of people say like think the end is now when it comes to 1619 versus 1776. I don't think that's the case at all. And it's because I think the idea of 1776, as it's developed is something that does offer hope, and does indeed consensus on the idea of redemption.
Adam Smith:
36:00
I worry that the 1619 project in the hands of some interpreters and possibly in the hands of some of those who created it is so focused on creating an alternative paradigm that it's going to be quite difficult in 2026 to articulate the kinds of ideas that you've just articulated without being accused of rejecting what the 1619 project is trying to say about the problems that American society is facing. But I hope you're right that it is there will be space in between
Patrick Griffin:
36:42
1619 is a good and vivid reminder of how much pain some Americans still feel. And we have to listen to that and we have to appreciate and we have to acknowledge it. I just believe that 1776 is still the answer. Ultimately.
Adam Smith:
37:02
Patrick Griffin, currently the Harmsworth Professor of American history at Oxford. As Patrick was arguing 1776 has meant different things to different people in American history. Some have seen the declaration as the master document in a triumphant narrative of the greatest nation in the history of the world. Others, Frederick Douglass, for example, found in it the inspiration to struggle for equality in an imperfect society. But whether it is a sacred text written by godlike founders to set the seal on an exceptional nation, or an unintentionally radical articulation of the need to constantly challenge inequality, the declaration has rarely been far from the centre of American political debate. In the Bicentennial celebrations in 1976, America was a troubled and divided country. But almost everyone agreed that 1776 was worth celebrating, albeit for different reasons. Well, that also be true in 2026 during the 200 and 50th anniversary celebrations, what seems certain is that the meaning of 1776 will be more contested than at any time since Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg. And perhaps since 1776 itself. You've been listening to the last best hope podcast. The producer was Emily Williams. And I'm Adam Smith. Goodbye
0:13
Hello, and welcome to the last best hope, the podcast from Oxford's, our AI that examines America from the outside in. My name's Adam Smith. Abraham Lincoln called America the last best hope of Earth. And when Lincoln stood up to give his gettysburg address in 1863, he opened by locating the birth of the nation, Four score and seven years ago, in 1776. Why 1776 Lincoln might have chosen 1783 exactly four score years ago, as he might have put it, which was the date when the United States was formally recognised in international law as an independent country in the Treaty of Paris, he might perhaps have chosen 1789 three score and 14 years ago, the year the Constitution came into effect when in the course of human events 1776 was simply the date when a bunch of rebel leaders signed an insurgent manifesto, the Declaration of Independence. In fact, most of the declaration is a series of indictments of the king has obstructed the administration of justice many little better than the recycling conspiracy theories and fake news. He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices, but the opening to the declaration rose to a transcendent level of abstraction, 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. So how did the declaration come to be the signature document of the American nation? What was its role in forging Americans conception of themselves as somehow exceptional, the last best hope of Earth. And today, in 2022 12 score and six years later, does 1776 still convey a message that can unify a divided America?
Patrick Griffin:
2:36
What the Declaration of Independence offers is really something that's quite strikingly evocative, as Americans now reclaim this to be the very heart and soul of what it means to be American. It means that more and more people are going to be able to buy into this idea that as long as you subscribe to a certain set of ideas, that somehow makes you America. My name is Patrick Gryphon on the Madden History Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. I'm delighted also that I am the Harmsworth visiting professor in American history at Oxford this year. So that makes me a fellow at Queens College and a fellow at the Rothermere American institute. I've written a number of books and the focus of my research has largely been on the 18th century Atlantic world, but also on revolutionary America.
Adam Smith:
3:21
Patrick, thank you so much for joining me.
Patrick Griffin:
3:22
Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me. Pleasure.
Adam Smith:
3:24
So Patrick, let's begin with what happened on July the fourth 1776. I think many listeners will probably have in their mind that very famous painting, showing the Founding Fathers lined up in order signing this document all dressed in silk stockings and nice coats in a sun filled room. Is that really what it was like? What actually happened in that Hall in Philadelphia on July the fourth 1776? What do we know?
Patrick Griffin:
3:58
I don't think it was as dramatic as say the John Trumbull painting is that you're referring to? The funny thing is, is that we think of July the fourth, of course, is Independence Day, the day when the Declaration of Independence is going to be signed, but that's really not what happened. John Adams originally thought that is July The second was going to be the day that Americans were going to be celebrating their independence because that's the day more or less that the Second Second Continental Congress voted to declare independence. July The fourth is the day that it's going to be formally ratified and promulgated. And that's the day that we generally tend to celebrate for the most part.
Adam Smith:
4:37
There's some question of course, about whether it really was whether really, anybody signed anything on July the fourth, I mean, there was for a long time, a tradition dating back into the 19th century that in fact, it all happened a few weeks later in early August, wasn't it when I mean, because clearly some of the names on the Declaration of Independence weren't people who weren't actually in Philadelphia at all on July the fourth so what's the latest thing he on this that some people signed on July the fourth Often the others signed up later.
Patrick Griffin:
5:02
Most of them were signing later on and so signatures were coming in but dribs and drabs over the time afterward, John Hancock puts his famous John Hancock on the document much later after July the fourth,
Adam Smith:
5:14
there's certainly no sense of hesitation is there in the confidence with which John Hancock signs this beautiful, elaborate signature of his. But where are these people, these men gathered together in Philadelphia? Were they putting themselves at any risk? Was there any personal Jeopardy involved in making this decision to sign a declaration saying that these 13 colonies as eventually was, we're going to break away from the British Empire?
Patrick Griffin:
5:39
Yeah, there was a great deal of risk. Technically speaking, once they did that, they almost signed their death warrants. They were traitors, and they were rebels. And that many of them understood and knew this at the time. So this is something that they took very, very seriously. And there was it don't get the sense also that there was inevitability about this. I mean, at the time anyway, most of them are, are really concerned with kind of are Americans going to go along this or all the state's going to be on board, are the people back home going to be okay with the radical move that they're making. And so if anything, there was an extraordinary amount of indecision on top of this, there were some people still pushing and saying, This is just going to be a step too far. Let's go back. And let's try to make kind of another entreaty to the Kagan see that if we can get on the same page, maybe they'll eventually just understand what our frustrations are. And we can come to some sort of accommodation. So you have people who want to race along and want independence, others that are kind of like holding back a little others that are even more circumspect wondering if they're going to get support from the people at home. So we generally tend to view this as kind of something that was just going to happen. And we see these guys that are just kind of proudly signing their names. And that's it that we're off to the races. But that was hardly the case at the time.
Adam Smith:
6:50
Right. Up until this point, as newer, you've been alluding to this, the strategy of the rebellious colonists had been to apply pressure on London. There's no sense though, is that once you sign a declaration of independence, that's not a strategy to give yourself more leverage. There's no scenario in which once you've signed that document, there's there's any way back, this is not a bargaining chip,
Patrick Griffin:
7:15
no, and no point if there's no point of return. And you said use the word leverage leverage had largely been exhausted. People had been exasperated with others, like moderates, like for example, John Dickinson, who just kind of said, no, no, we have to try to find some sort of accommodation, some sort of middle ground with the Crown again, and they just sent out another what so called Olive Branch petition, to try to get the king to see their way of what was happening at the time. But the king didn't go for he just considered them kind of out of hand rebels. And that's all there was to it. And so after they had really exhausted everything, that was the moment anyway, where they just kind of made this move where the die was cast.
Adam Smith:
7:56
What did they have in their mind when they were doing this? Did they think they were taking a step into the unknown and doing something completely unprecedented in human history, which is sometimes the way in which their acts have been retrospectively imagined? Or did they see themselves acting? I mean, perhaps most obviously, to my mind, anyway, one would imagine they saw themselves acting in the tradition of, of the, the 17th century forebears who took this step of in different circumstances, obviously, but of signing the king's death warrant in the 1640s, that kind of challenge to royal authority.
Patrick Griffin:
8:30
They did not think at this moment that they were doing something that was going to transform the world, that's for sure, later on, that's the way that some people will interpret it. And I think, Adam, you're exactly right. When you say if anything, they were looking toward the precedents they knew. And those are English precedents. And here, I'll give you a great example of how exactly this work. Just a few days after the declaration of independence is ratified. New Yorkers are going to hear of it. And on July the ninth, they're going to read the Declaration of Independence on the commons in New York City, we're actually City Hall would be today. At that point. Anyway, a group of New Yorkers marched right down to the very tip of Manhattan to the battery. And there there was a statue of King George a third, a wonderful equestrian statue kind of use modelled after Marcus Aurelius. And some seamen who were there are going to toss ropes around it and just start tugging, and they're going to pull this statue down. So this is a very, very famous moment. What happens more impressively is what goes on and more important for our purposes, what happens afterward, and they're going to break this thing up to pieces. They're going to behead the statute, then they're going to send it up to Connecticut to be melted down into bullets. And they're going to create from this as a talus anyway 42,088 bullets and the 42 and the 88 are important because those go directly to those years in the 17th century, when kings were toppled before King Charles the First in the 1640s. And of course in 1680 1690s was going to be King James the Second so there's Still thinking about what they're doing in light of what they know that even though they are now breaking away and becoming independent, they are still so British in so many ways.
Adam Smith:
10:10
That's absolutely fascinating. So they, they, they imagine they present that number deliberately in order to invoke those two years, 1642 and 1688. Because those are the precedents that everybody in these in these British colonies understand as the moment when the people of England stood up against tyrannical royal authority. That's the tradition that they want to identify themselves with.
Patrick Griffin:
10:33
Absolutely. And so even though, you know, there are pains to say, as you put it earlier, that they're breaking away, and when they're going to break away, there's kind of no going back on this. At the same time, the only world that they know the only precedence the only template they have for understanding what they're actually doing is a British template. There's not like as as if they signed the Declaration of Independence and they kind of Jiffy they become Americans, it doesn't work that way to become an American was gonna take a long period of time at this point, they were still British,
Adam Smith:
11:02
Patrick, we've got to be getting on to this, but as as we know what what happened in the aftermath of the American Revolution was at that moment, whatever it was, that actually happened on July the fourth was turned into this kind of sacred moment, this this moment in which the nation was created and the world changed. But you've also one of the things you've emphasised, and I think you're going to be emphasising more in your in your forthcoming book is that we should understand 1776 The Declaration of Independence within a broader Atlantic frame. I mean, this after all, was the age of revolutions. There have been other ages of revolutions, other moments of revolutions and world history. But this late 18th, early 19th century moment in the Atlantic world was the age of revolutions. How does thinking about it in that way to frame change how we understand what happened on July the fourth 1776,
Patrick Griffin:
11:57
the first part of your question that is exactly spot on. I mean, in the sense of that this didn't become some sort of like sacred text for a long period of time, the first thing to realise is that this is a wartime document. So Americans and the British have been kind of shooting at each other now for more than a year, by the time these delegates are meeting and the time that they're going to draft this, and they're going to write this up. But I also think more importantly, they were doing so in the midst of the collapse of British authority. And this is where it gets to a broader Atlantic issue. So when I say the collapse of British authority, more or less the crown, and the crown and parliament were not ruling in America, as they had in periods before this, more or less people had taken it upon themselves to kind of step out of older accepted roles. And now we're becoming actors, some of them for the very first time. And this is absolutely exhilarating, exciting moment, but a terrifying one, nonetheless, because they are stepping into this great void. And so what happens in America is not that it's something exceptional or distinctive. It's more or less what we see throughout this broader age. And that is tied into, I think, the ways that empires were reforming in these years, and the way that people were acting upon that reform. And in many cases, it was going to be those far from kind of central authority were the ones who are going to be the first to decide that they were going to have to figure out a new way of governing themselves, in light of reform meant to them.
Adam Smith:
13:27
I guess the reason why it's important, historic graphically, in other words, in terms of the way in which historians have understood this moment is because there is this very strong tradition in American academic writing, and certainly in American popular culture or thinking about 1776 as the epitome of American exceptionalism, that this was a purely American moment by which they mean a United States of American moment, and that what was achieved, accomplished in that Declaration of Independence, the unalienable truths which were outlined in that document, and all that followed from it was something that secures and anchors a sense of how America is different from the rest of the world. And by framing in the way that you've just done, Patrick, what you're pointing to is the fact that this was far from being unparalleled. This was part of a broader process of Imperial fragmentation tensions, which arose in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Patrick Griffin:
14:27
Yeah, I agree completely. We generally tend to view it as an exceptional moment, an American centred view of themselves and exceptional people. But in this regard, historians are people too, and historians are also ones who kind of fight over what America means and what America is exceptional identity also means. So historians, generation after generation have continued to fight and refight the American Revolution. And it's usually done along these sort of exceptional terms, but the way that America kind of becomes, or senses itself to be somehow exceptional, something that develops with time. It doesn't happen right away. But we see this happening throughout the broader Atlantic too. That's one of the interesting sorts of dynamics is that even though so many different peoples are going to be experiencing the same sort of revolutionary process throughout these years, many have had to come up with an idea that somehow they are different from other people. It's somehow their revolution was somehow the important one, the distinctive one, the one that different from all others. And Americans in this regard are no different than anybody else.
Adam Smith:
15:30
So it precisely Americans exceptionalism that make them unexceptional.
Patrick Griffin:
15:36
Yes, absolutely.
Adam Smith:
15:37
I suppose one response to what you've just said there, Patrick, is that the American Revolution was first. And the Declaration of Independence of 1776 was adopted, reframed its language was borrowed countlessly in other places, certainly in the by Latin American revolutionaries in the early 19th century, but But long into the 20th century as well, people all across the world, over two and a half centuries now have used that document, that declaration of independence. So in that sense, Patrick, although it may be part of a broader movement of Imperial fragmentation, was the first wasn't it? And doesn't that matter?
Patrick Griffin:
16:22
Oh, it definitely matters. And it was indeed the first but it was the first because it was the British Empire was the first to fracture under so many of the tensions that other empires are going to be dealing with at that particular moment in time. And it was probably the first fracture because the British were the ones who were most able to kind of see reform measures through and to keep pushing and pushing. Whereas other imperial powers when they tried to say tack some of their colonists as the French would do in sand demand, or the Spanish and Portuguese would do in Latin America, they more or less relented when the provincials pushed back. But as Americans push back, and these are British provincials again, as they begin to push back, the British Empire is the one that does not relent. And because of that, you have a crisis that others are able to avert for some period of time. You also point to something else. Really important, though, and this is another dynamic when we have this, when we study this period, also, is we have to remember, this is an absolutely hyper connected world. And it's a hyper connected world where people are not only going to experience the same sorts of tensions, but were there also emulate one another and look at what other people are doing. And so when the Americans do indeed declare their independence, others later on are going to be using the same document as they're going to be making these same moves again. But interestingly, it's not so much that they focus upon the very evocative phrases that Americans consider to be sacred to who they are, we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they're endowed with their Creator with certain unalienable rights. And among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's the sort of thing that's become American scripture. But as David Armitage in one of his books has demonstrated, it's not so much the principles that people focus on. But it's actually the earlier part of the declaration, where kind of Americans are declaring themselves to be sovereign and independent. It's that particular part of the Declaration of Independence, that's going to whipsaw around the world, not only during the late 18th and early 19th century, but well into the 20th century as well. So America, it's an interesting thing, because Americans are going to provide, if you will, a template for other people, a model that other peoples are going to be able to emulate, even though so many of these same places are going to be undergoing the same process for the exactly the same sorts of reasons that Americans are earlier on.
Adam Smith:
18:41
So 1783 is the date when the United States was formally recognised in international law. Tell us a little bit of bad how the declaration of independence after that date, came to be this sacred thing as you've been discussing it describing it?
Patrick Griffin:
18:58
Well, in the 1770s, and 1780s, no one really invokes or thinks about the Declaration of Independence, there are a few there's going to be a number of African Americans at the time, we're going to say, hey, wait a minute, these principles that are inscribed in this document really have to have meaning. But they would be exceptional in this regard, that most Americans while they're fighting the war, in the years just after the war, more or less gonna forget about this document. And that's to a certain extent, understandably so again, when they thought about the document at the time, the principles were the thing that people focus upon the principles of principles, what we regard is just boilerplate British ideology. And so because of it, no one really invokes the principles. And then after independence as effectively one as you put in 1781, that'd be victory at Yorktown in 1783. With the Treaty of Paris, more or less people could ask themselves, Well, isn't the declaration sort of a relic, a relic that just commemorates a time when we were breaking away and now we've achieved everything that documents set out to achieve? It's only going to be resurrected? into the years thereafter. And that's when people are going to start focusing upon particularly on the principles. And I think this has a great deal to do with Americans struggling to bring their revolution to an end. You know, revolutions don't end easily. And we in America have this sort of mythic conception of a revolution. It's bounded by two documents by the declaration of independence by the Constitution, and is done by guys who are meeting in a room in Philadelphia, who happen to look nice, who are out there in the gritty sidewalks outside who aren't on the battlefields, who are just citing these sorts of documents, and then you more or less kind of encapsulate the story of America. That's hardly the case, however, America was literally turned upside down by the revolution. And at that point, anyway, making sure all of these tensions were going to be able to put to bed was not something that was really that simple. What we find is just in the 1790s, and right around the turn of the century, into the 19th century, that's when Americans really discovered the founding fathers. And this is when they're going to rediscover the Declaration of Independence. And the Declaration of Independence then begins to take on a life in and of itself. And this now is when people if you will, and I use the word resurrection, they're going to resurrect these ideas that had been boilerplate British ideals, and now we're going to consider them to be the very heart and soul of what it means to be American. It's something that happens with time as Americans are dealing with all the tensions of putting revolution to to an end, and then trying to define in a very fluid period of time, who they are,
Adam Smith:
21:32
Given that it's necessary for Americans, for elite Americans, for the people who are kind of running the show who've established a new political regime in the 1780s. Given that it's necessary for them to contain the American Revolution, and say that we created this extraordinary thing which guaranteed people's rights. Why is it necessary to go back to the Declaration of Independence to do that? Isn't the Constitution shouldn't the Constitution have been enough that after all, was the document that established broadly speaking, the framework that are regulated the relations between the state and the national government and with the first 10 amendments, articulated the rights that citizens of the United States have over category of EU citizens were wasn't clarified, but who, who are the rights that Americans have in with against government? So what do they need 7276 for?
Patrick Griffin:
22:29
Because after you read the two documents, you tell me which one do you think is a little more evocative? Which one do you think has a bit more of emotional appeal? The constitution is a workman like document no matter how much you made like the preamble, it just states what a government is supposed to do. And the role of this new government as a matter of fact, the most important three words and the ones that had any emotional appeal to the first three, we the people, the painful, but they speak to a reality that defined America at the time. The people we the idea of we the people was just not some kind of idea from on high that was kind of put down there to try to figure out who was going to be sovereign at this period of time was an animating fact that Americans had for a long time been out of doors. And as I said before, this was a world that was turned upside down. Americans have become actors and then is politicised and mobilised moment. How do you deep politicise and de mobilise. And so what the Declaration of Independence offers is really something that's quite strikingly evocative as Americans that are reclaim this to be the very heart and soul of what it means to be American, it means that more and more people are going to be able to buy into this idea that as long as you subscribe to a certain set of ideas, that somehow makes you American. Now, granted, there was going to be a lot of exclusions bound up at first, and this is goes to the difficulties of ending a revolution, some people will be completely written out of the equation. African Americans, Native Americans, women are going to win a proverbial half loaf, they're going to get not so much political rights as they will have sort of like cultural cachet in the years after the American Revolution. But it means for white men anyway, the ones that you have to worry about unsettling a government because they're upset, if they can now claim also to be heirs to those ideas of equality of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is a way that you ensure stability in this sort of society. And with that, anyway, the Declaration of Independence is able to do that much, much more effectively, than, say, a constitution.
Adam Smith:
24:33
So it's a sort of the Declaration of Independence becomes a kind of container within which you can have debate and tension. People can interpret it in different ways, but they're all trying to interpret the same document and the document is the moment of the nation's founding. And so even if you're interpreting the Declaration of Independence in ways that challenge existing authority in particular ways, you're still doing so within the terms that are Everyone agrees upon. So it creates boundaries to political debate.
Patrick Griffin:
25:04
It definitely does. And say for example, the one there's a couple things that are more or less kind of ruled out discursively in America at this time loyalism, it's done. You know loyalism is an animating philosophy is dead after the time of the American Revolution, you have to buy into a set of principles. And it just so happens a declaration of independence is kind of provides those principles in beautiful, evocative language. And as you put it to what's going to happen is, if you will people, once they lay claim to it are going to be able to kind of push out the bounds of citizenship and what citizenship can actively mean. So at first 1776, in July, the fourth is largely going to be an elite holiday. And so spoofs like kind of the order the Cincinnati that George Washington belonged to, and some of his senior officers, which is supposed to be this hereditary order that these former military men can sign up for, these are going to be the groups that are going to be celebrating July the fourth more than anybody else. But soon enough, it's going to be white working men are also going to be laying claim to that date, as well and being laid claim to the principles laying claim to the principles that they think they think, underscore what the state means, and also what it means to be an American. And so what you find from very early on, as soon as Americans kind of adopt the Declaration of Independence is theirs and the principles that kind of again underwrite it, what you're going to find is people are going to start taking it on and claiming then that through it, they can push out the bounds of what it means to be an American,
Adam Smith:
26:37
Patrick, you mentioned that among the few people who remembered and quoted the Declaration of Independence, in its immediate aftermath in the 1770s and early 1780s, were African Americans. And you've also noted that abolitionists and African Americans were among those people, almost always excluded from formal politics, who nevertheless saw in the language of the Declaration of Independence, the potential for their own emancipation, and and this leads me really to, to ask you about the Civil War as a a refounding moment in American history. One way of interpreting one very common way of interpreting Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg in November 1863, is precisely that, that he was taking up the Declaration of Independence and making it into something new. So four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the draft of the Declaration of Independence had called that had called the idea of equality, a self evident truth. Lincoln described it as a proposition. And then, of course, went on to say that the great civil war that they were now fighting was a war that was testing whether any nation so dedicated and so conceived, dedicated to liberty and conceived so that proposition could long India. So Lincoln, in this interpretation, picks up the Declaration of Independence and makes it into something new. Do you agree with that?
Patrick Griffin:
28:36
Yes. And no, I think that certainly saw it as a challenge. I would go even further he saw the declaration at that point is a sacred challenge. But he's not the first one to say this, of course, I think it's the two groups you talked about earlier on are really going to transform what the declaration is and what the declaration can mean. And that's African Americans and abolitionists. I think the most beautiful, evocative understanding we actually have the Declaration of Independence, isn't in the Gettysburg Address, however pithy it is, it's actually in Frederick Douglass Fifth of July oration in Rochester in 1852. When he is not going to be speaking on the Fourth of July, he's going to be speaking on the fifth of July and already famously put his what to what to a slave is the fourth of July, what does that mean? And that he considers it to be an utter an absolute insult. He considers it to be perverse that people are going to be celebrating the Fourth of July when so many people are still held out in bondage. Now, this doesn't mean that Douglas is rejecting the Declaration of Independence, actually, it's just the opposite. He wants to embrace the declaration. He considers the founders for all of their part for all their faults, to have been this enlightened group of people who kind of laid out these sacred principles now that all Americans have to try to measure up to and he says, look at it out here in 1852. It's clear we have not measured up it's clear We have not measured up. And so we think that when Lincoln comes to Gettysburg in 1863, there have been so much bloodshed, so many people have been slaughtered. Of course, when he's a Gettysburg, he's talking really at a mass grave. That's what it is to commemorate a mass grave. And at that particular point in time the ever religious Lincoln is one know who is going to see 1776 It's not only something that matters for Americans, politically, it doesn't really matter to their identity doesn't matter to how they define themselves as a people. It's something that's much, much more important. This is something that harkens back to a deep relationship with God that the United States really has a providential role to play slavery, and not America allowed Americans to Americans to live up to that providential role. And now, with all of these people who had sacrificed their lives for what he hopes to be this principle, Americans can finally live up to the principles that are inscribed in 1776.
Adam Smith:
30:59
Given what you've just said, there, Patrick, and the way that you've told that story about Frederick Douglass, black abolitionist, and the other abolitionist role in helping Lincoln to understand the providential mission of the United States as being to fulfil or to try to fulfil, or to work towards the fulfilment of the principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence. And yet, in the 21st century, as we head towards the 200 and 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, progressive politics today appears to be rejecting 1776. As a moment, the New York Times 1619 project is an effort to offer an alternative reframing, you could say an alternative way of explaining American exceptionalism in a dark rather than a positive way. So whereas 1776 is the moment in which the United States in its in the exceptional narrative sets itself up, as the last best hope of Earth, which offers the promise of fulfilment for these universal principles. 1619 is the date in which enslaved or at least unfree African Americans were first landed in Virginia. And so the structural racism, the white supremacy that is baked into American society was baked in at that moment in 1619. So very self consciously what the New York Times 1619 project is doing is offering a counterpoint to 1776, which is why the Trump administration set it up the 1776 project as a deliberate rebuke to 1619. So this has become very political now, hasn't it? How do we navigate between in a very polarised political environment which we're now in, in which 1619 becomes the totem of if you believe that 1619 is the way of understanding American history, you are aligning yourselves with those who understand the depths of racism in American society? Whereas if you align yourself with 1776, the implication is you are aligning yourself with this incredibly upbeat triumphalist self congratulatory exceptionalist narrative, how do we navigate between those two positions as historians? And indeed, in your case, as a United States citizen?
Patrick Griffin:
33:36
I think we go back to Frederick Douglass, I think that people who want to see 1776 is a celebratory ideal. They're creating a myth that may have existed for a very short period of time early on. But it's just that a myth. Now, every nation defines itself by certain sets of myths. That's one myth we could choose that. Another myth would be is that we have to reject 1776 Altogether, although I would argue when it comes to the 1619 project, that's 1776. And his principles, shadows at all, in the sense that the people who are behind it are still supporting the ideas that Equality matters a great deal in 1776, in the best sense of the word, is necessarily bound to the idea of equality. But Douglas offers us and Lincoln to off, they both offer us a different, subtly different idea than both of these. But what I think that 1619 ties into more effectively than, say the 1776 project. They offer us an idea of redemption, the space between the principles, and those who can enjoy the principles are going to define the struggle of what it means to be an American. And that struggle is premised upon the idea of redemption. The idea that even though we don't live up to the principles 1776 effectively all the time, there's the idea implicit now and being an American, that we have to try to, and we have to try to do better. And this is the mythic conception of 1776 that has developed over time. This is the one that has stood the test of time. This also is the one that explained so much of the bloodshed during the Civil War that turned just kind of deaths that could have been meaningless deaths into sacrifice. And because of that, I think this myth that Frederick Douglass and Lincoln are going to hold on to this is the myth that offers us hope going forward. And that's why ironically, though, a lot of people say like think the end is now when it comes to 1619 versus 1776. I don't think that's the case at all. And it's because I think the idea of 1776, as it's developed is something that does offer hope, and does indeed consensus on the idea of redemption.
Adam Smith:
36:00
I worry that the 1619 project in the hands of some interpreters and possibly in the hands of some of those who created it is so focused on creating an alternative paradigm that it's going to be quite difficult in 2026 to articulate the kinds of ideas that you've just articulated without being accused of rejecting what the 1619 project is trying to say about the problems that American society is facing. But I hope you're right that it is there will be space in between
Patrick Griffin:
36:42
1619 is a good and vivid reminder of how much pain some Americans still feel. And we have to listen to that and we have to appreciate and we have to acknowledge it. I just believe that 1776 is still the answer. Ultimately.
Adam Smith:
37:02
Patrick Griffin, currently the Harmsworth Professor of American history at Oxford. As Patrick was arguing 1776 has meant different things to different people in American history. Some have seen the declaration as the master document in a triumphant narrative of the greatest nation in the history of the world. Others, Frederick Douglass, for example, found in it the inspiration to struggle for equality in an imperfect society. But whether it is a sacred text written by godlike founders to set the seal on an exceptional nation, or an unintentionally radical articulation of the need to constantly challenge inequality, the declaration has rarely been far from the centre of American political debate. In the Bicentennial celebrations in 1976, America was a troubled and divided country. But almost everyone agreed that 1776 was worth celebrating, albeit for different reasons. Well, that also be true in 2026 during the 200 and 50th anniversary celebrations, what seems certain is that the meaning of 1776 will be more contested than at any time since Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg. And perhaps since 1776 itself. You've been listening to the last best hope podcast. The producer was Emily Williams. And I'm Adam Smith. Goodbye
