- Good afternoon, everyone. Wow, it's really loud today. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Bloomington
- Rotary Club Celebration of Service Weekly. And I just realized I'd forgot to hit the bell, I think,
- the last two times to start the meeting. So, you know, you leave the country for five months and you
- forget what you're supposed to do. It happens. So for those who can, please silence your electronic
- devices. And with that, let's go to the first. Oh, I have the controller here. I can do this.
- There we go. Who's heard of Shetland United Kingdom? Anyone? Okay. You've been there? All right. Well,
- that is our Where in the World is the Rotary Club today. Shetland is a club, it's nearest club is 129
- kilometers away. And by the way, there is a series called Shetland that's actually quite good that I
- highly recommend on Acorn TV if you have it.
- They have, it's a very small island at the very northern point out of Scotland. They have residents
- of the island, do not travel a lot. And there's not many people on the island. They have about, I think
- it's 7,000 people. So they have a club membership of, I think it was 17. And what they do is they set
- up a market every weekend to tell people about Rotary. And that's how they help support local charities
- at the markets.
- So again, in the spirit of understanding how different clubs act differently across the world, that's
- how they act in Shetland. And by the way, if you ever get the chance to visit it, it's pretty cool place.
- Yeah, you were just there, I think. So from a birthdays standpoint, actually before birthdays, we are
- going to have Michelle Cohen do the reflection. I just want to give a shout out to Michelle. We didn't
- have anyone sign up.
- for the reflection. And Michelle said, you know what? I'll do it. So thank you, Michelle. You're welcome.
- I just wanted to give a shout out to the Rotary Magazine. If you haven't read it yet, the article I
- am going to share with you highlights someone here in Bloomington. So if you want to check it out for
- yourselves,
- The article is called Life Quakes, and it talks about dealing with difficult issues and surrounding
- yourself with folks that can help you get through rough times. So I was meandering through this, reading
- through it, and I will just go ahead and share this with you. So this portion is talking about purpose
- and how that helps people get through difficult times. For many years, community service had been a
- part of Gabe Glodin's life.
- He'd been an AmeriCorps member, and he even got his master's degree in nonprofit management. But when
- he married and had kids, his priorities shifted. He didn't feel like he had extra time to give. Parenthood,
- after all, can feel like its own life quick. Then he went through a divorce. As he and his two young
- children rebuilt their lives together, Cloden was feeling unmoored, disconnected from the community
- around him. In therapy, he began to understand that he had an opportunity
- to shift his focus to activities that were important to him. Around that same time, a colleague asked
- if he'd be interested in joining a non-traditional rotary club she was starting for families. The Family
- Service Satellite Club of the Rotary Club of Bloomington Sunrise in Indiana would meet monthly for service
- projects that kids and parents participate in together. Glodin was energized by the idea.
- I could engage my children around the value of service, he says. And I also saw this as an opportunity
- for us to have a social experience outside of the house. Since 2024, Rock, who is 10, and Beatrice,
- 11, have helped fill book bags with food for kids, sorted items at food pantries, weeded gardens, and
- served as extras in a movie made by an arts organization. They've also gotten to know the other like-minded
- families in the club.
- who are committed to making Bloomington a better place. Gloden says that by participating regularly
- in something that's bigger than themselves, all three have grown. Service is not just about the action
- and the outcome you expect to have with the organization you're volunteering for, he says. It's also
- about the change that takes place in the volunteer. So if you know Gabe, just tell him he's famous.
- And I also wanted to share because that talks about community service. Diana Hoffman and I are the community
- service co-chairs, and we're going to have our first meeting after the August 25th regular meeting.
- So if you're already on the committee, please stay after. If you're not and want to come join us,
- please do. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle.
- What a great reminder for our children to remind them how important community service is. So thank you
- for sharing that. Lynn Schwartzberg apparently was the smart one and picked today to read the guest.
- We have no guests, so Lynn can just enjoy her meal. Was there anyone online, Leslie? Nope, no guests
- online. Okay. But we have a full house, so I'm very excited about that to see all the faces.
- that are out there. From a birthday standpoint, we have a pretty light sheet today. We have Lauren Snyder,
- his birthday's the 9th. And then Megan Neist, for anniversaries, has been with us for 10 years. And
- then for announcements, we have quite a few announcements. I wanted to quote Winston Churchill, perseverance,
- it does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. And I share this because I want to
- acknowledge Mark Peterson,
- How many of you got the announcement about the credit card capability? Woo, let's hear it. We have been
- talking about getting that capability on our system for three years that I've been here. So Mark, thank
- you for the perseverance. Thank you for getting it. And looking forward to being able to pay on it.
- And being able to pay on it through the Ignite app, all right?
- And then I also wanted to share that August's monthly theme is membership and new club development.
- And we've already started with last week having an induction. We'll have another induction next week.
- So as you look around and are talking to neighbors and friends, if there's someone that you think would
- be a great member, please bring them. Next announcement, fellow Rotarian James Wolf is recovering from
- a stroke. He has had two nasty falls as well.
- We will be sending him a card. Obviously here is his phone number or you can look it up and ignite your
- ignite app. But I'm sure he would appreciate any well wishing and calls. And then lastly, on a more
- uplifting note, we did get approval for the district grant. It is funded. Good job. Tina Swanson, Kyla
- Cox Deckard and Sarah Laughlin will be the planning committee to work with the community kitchen on
- how we spend the six grand.
- the 3,000 that we match, and then the 3,000 from the district grant. So great job. We all know that
- that's very important, and that's a good reminder to buy tickets for the toast. That is how we get the
- money that we raise for the grants. So everybody, toast tickets are for sale. And let me make sure,
- oh, a couple other announcements that actually get their own slide. Just a reminder, Polio, we're seeing,
- you know, I look at these, I get these weekly,
- Still, the numbers are low, which is great, but obviously with some of the USAID funding that was pulled,
- it's so critical that we continue to support because Rotary and the Gates Foundation are really the
- ones that drive the reduction in polio cases that we've seen internationally. And Afghanistan and Pakistan
- continue to be the ones that seem to be problematic from a polio standpoint. And then lastly,
- So I saw, I don't know where I got the announcement, but I got it. Oh, it was on Instagram. Posting
- about Whitney, our own Whitney Cordoba Gruy. So is a SMDP Piotek scholar. She got an award, which is
- phenomenal. And then today I found out that her family has actually been very adversely in her town,
- I should say, adversely affected with the earthquake in Columbia.
- So it's caused serious damage to her hometown. There's been, I believe, about 224 deaths as a result
- of that earthquake at this point. There's Red Cross taking donations. There's Save the Children taking
- donations. So any opportunity while we celebrate on one side, let's keep her in your prayers on the
- other side. All right, and I think that was it for the announcements.
- Next, we have happy dollars. Do we have any happy people? And Michael will come. Do we have any happy
- dollars? We've got Sarah. And while he's getting all set up, I will just share. I'll do a $20 happy
- dollars. We just got back. As you know, I wasn't here last week. We went to internship with our son
- to see him in Denver.
- He has decided, now this could change, but he has decided that he believes he's going to get a job offer.
- I said, well, when it's there, we'll talk. But he loves Denver, and I suspect he's going to be living
- there. And he's just so happy and doing well. So it was really heartwarming to see that. So I'll share
- that. And Sarah? I've got 20 bucks for a teacher's warehouse, probably my last 20 bucks, because I just
- bought a house. It's in Hoosier Acres.
- And it needs a spot of work, so I met with Lauren Wood this morning. It's probably going to be a year
- before I move. But anyway, it's very exciting. It's 0.75 acres compared to the nine I have now,
- and 2,500 square feet compared to the 4,000 I have now. So I think it's going to be, actually, maybe
- after next year, I will have money.
- So I have five happy dollars because we had a great beach bash event on Saturday. The weather cooperated
- and Lake Monroe Water Fund raised the money we needed to. So thanks people who came out and showed up.
- I have 10 happy dollars because I'm almost through with the set, but I do have my overalls on so I am
- going back to finish it.
- You do have on your table a little sweet treat, which is chocolate mousse is always so kind. Besides
- riding herd over the taste of Bloomington, they'll do this for the various nonprofits. If you go there
- on the 18th and tell them you are there on behalf of Off Night, they will give 20% of whatever you spend
- to Off Night for the next show. So we really appreciate you coming out. There's information about the
- next show. It opens on Sunday, but we're already sold out on Sunday. So if you are getting tickets,
- get them soon, because we've
- kind of been known to run out. Awesome. I want to contribute $21 for happy dollars and that 21 is very
- meaningful. I just returned from the four day second annual. My name made a name is mobile mobile family
- reunion hosted by my daughter, which was meaning
- Me too. And we had 21 attending. These are my brothers, sisters, their children, and now the next set
- of generation. So 21 of us, and we all had our numbers on our back, our different numbers.
- happy we're leaving for California this evening to go to Monterey car week which is one of my partner's
- bucket list activities and I can look at cars I'm happy and offering $20 because my daughter Rachel
- has just moved to Bloomington and there's a lot that's unsettled but she's here
- And while he's walking over to Ellen, anybody online, Leslie? No, we're pretty stingy and unhappy over
- here. I was so happy I had a chance to be in Wisconsin for quite a while and see all my wonderful friends
- there who have been in many things that I had participated in.
- And I would like to contribute $20 for the safety and the wonderful time I had and the wonderful time
- they all had. And we attended Rotary right away that time. And so that was wonderful. So thank you so
- much always for allowing us to have these opportunities in America where we have the freedom.
- Awesome. All right. Lots of happy people. That's great. One quick announcement. Somebody left a parking
- ticket. We'll put it up front. So if you're missing your parking ticket, that will be upfront.
- And with that, I will turn it over to Jeff Richardson to introduce our guest today. So good afternoon,
- everyone. Glad to be here.
- I'm delighted to welcome Professor Constantine Dirks to our club today. Let me give you a little background
- about Constantine. He's an associate professor in the Department of History at IU. I'm a history undergrad
- major. He arrived in Bloomington and IU in August of 2001. His first book was on letter writing and
- communications in early America. And actually one of the chapters in the book focuses specifically on
- the American Revolution.
- His current research focuses on globalization of the United States between American Revolution and the
- American Civil War. And there are many Americans venturing not just west across North America, but all
- over the world during that time period. And you'll learn more about that. Served as consultant for the
- Declaration of Independence, the motives, the moment, a fantastic exhibition currently on view at the
- Little Library. And it's there till
- December and I've been there twice and I learned as much the second visit as I did the first. It's really,
- really well done. He's teaching a special class on 1776 and the Declaration of Independence this fall
- semester. I also got to see Constantine firsthand. So this is, I'm not winging it by having him here
- as a fellow history person, but he gave a compelling arts and sciences hosted presentation
- related to an exhibit by Jack Wicks, Steve's brother, entitled, Returning to the World, Vietnam Veterans
- Journeys. And these were reflections from veterans in central Indiana after 50 years. An interesting
- and entertaining IU mini-university class on the American Revolution that included numerous questions
- from the students when I was one of those students. No quizzes, no exams, great program.
- and remember that for a second because I'm gonna come back to the questions part. I wanna add too that
- I learned this morning, I knew that Constantine had a couple kids, but there are some highlights from
- the summer. One of them is in marching band already starting, plays the flute and is very excited. But
- the other, this is really important to me, learned how to drive a stick shift because I've been often,
- solicited to drive the sick shift, because no one else knows how to. So that's a major development,
- especially for kids this age. Finally, this is going to be a relatively short presentation. And the
- good news is that means we're going to have more time for questions. And what I noticed at Minnie University
- was one of the most engaging presentations, because a lot of people had a lot of questions. And there's not
- one question that Constantine couldn't answer. So please start thinking about questions you might have.
- And with that, I welcome Constantine to the stage. Thank you. OK, I'm a mobile person, so I'm going
- to try to not move around too much. But thank you so much for the invitation to come speak with you
- today. Thank you, Jeff.
- for inviting me originally. I'm really, really glad to talk about the Declaration of 1776 and this 250th
- anniversary year to as many people as possible. I was very involved in the exhibition at the Lilly Library.
- I encourage all of you to go there. I'm very, very grateful that people are interested in what I'll
- call archival research-based history, given that it is under considerable pressure in this historic
- moment. And I certainly feel
- that if you really look at history in an honest and complete way, that has an empowering function that
- empowers you to understand the past better and empowers you to build a better future at the same time.
- So I'm very, very committed to research. It's what I've been doing all summer. There are so many new
- books about the Declaration being written right now because of the 250th anniversary. So I'm reading
- constantly. I'm going to the Monroe County Public Library. It's a great collection.
- that I hope you enjoy and they have new books every week now about the Declaration in 1776. So there's
- so much material now being thought about. If you read the Times this morning, the New York Times that
- is, sorry, there's an article about AI founding fathers that are being produced. So you could listen
- to interviews with the founding fathers, which is rather crazy and what is put in the mouths of the
- founding fathers.
- Uh, but anyway, if you're, it's, uh, it sort of appears everywhere in our culture. Uh, title of my,
- what I want to do today is about the trying times of the declaration of independence. And if you remember
- your, uh, Thomas Paine, of course, in December, he writes, uh, the American crisis. He starts writing
- a serial serial publication, the American crisis. And these are the times that tribe men's souls is
- one of the famous quotes from that, uh, at the end of a very, very difficult and challenging year.
- And I'd like to project that to help us better understand what happens at the time of the Declaration
- of Independence itself in May, June, and July 1776, because there's people involved in that moment from
- the Continental Congress were confronted with a lot, a lot of challenges. And we sort of have a very
- sacralized view of the Declaration. It's a wonderful, wonderful document you can see in the Lilly Library.
- They've done that broadside, the first printing.
- a very, very rare copy in the world and certainly in this part of the world. And it's a beautiful document,
- but the document doesn't really contain its own context, which is why the exhibition tries to do that
- a little bit. And I'm going to hopefully do that a little more intensely today to help you appreciate
- what kind of commitment was involved and what kind of work was involved in creating the Declaration
- of Independence. But my first question to you is actually, I'm gonna do something that I often do, which is,
- What do you remember of the Declaration of Independence? I'm going to pause. I'm going to have time
- pressures, unfortunately. I know you want to be short. But I'd like you to actually talk among yourselves
- for a moment. What do you remember from the Declaration of Independence? If you haven't looked at it
- in a while, what do you remember from it? So this is for you for a moment, one moment. What do you remember
- from the Declaration of Independence?
- uh... uh...
- . . .
- from the audience. No, not now. Too too much time. Thank you. All right, people. Time is up. Because
- I have I I'm doing an entire semester. I'm doing a course in 1776 and Declaration of Independence. I
- get 16 weeks.
- to do that. I don't have lots of special lectures, but I really have 15 minutes today. So your time
- is up. But how many people said, who knows, we hold these truths to be self-evident? Does anyone remember
- that from the Declaration? All right, pretty good. How many people remember all men are created equal?
- You're a woman, you remember that too? Strangely enough, OK, even though you're not included. Sorry.
- So these are the classic things in the Declaration of Independence, right? These are the things we remember,
- et cetera, et cetera.
- And this is from the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. And at the time, one of my favorite
- documents in the Lilly Library exhibit is John Lind, who was a writer for the British government. And
- he was hired to write a response to the Declaration of Independence. And it's one of the great books.
- It's 20-something pages long. And it's about why the Declaration of Independence is all wrong from beginning
- to end. But the things that you remember, all men are created equal. We hold these truths to be self-evident.
- Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are the classic phrases.
- John Lynn looked at that, and he said, that's all just nonsense. I'm not even going to bother with that
- nonsense. I'm going to talk about the important part of the Declaration of Independence, and that's
- the grievances. How many people remember grievance? 14? 10? 21? But that was what he felt. The King
- is being insulted.
- by the Declaration of Independence, and it's the grievances that are the part that need refutation because
- they were all false accusations against the king. And if you look at the document, the Dunlap Broadside,
- it's the grievances that occupy the most space. And that's what occupied the most attention at the time
- in newspapers, with the British government, et cetera, et cetera. That's a part that was reprinted most
- often. The preamble, the words that we have become sacred for us, right, all men are created equal,
- life, liberty, and the fruits of Haptas, et cetera, et cetera,
- Those words became much more important in the 19th century when you had abolitionists fighting slavery,
- when you had women's rights activists fighting against the exclusion of women, et cetera, et cetera.
- And those were the words that were plucked out and given meaning after in the 1830s and 1840s and beyond
- and into the 20th century and Martin Luther King, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But in 1776, those
- words were the least important and they were the least often reprinted in newspapers at the time. It
- was the grievances that commanded attention.
- And so I want to think about the Declaration in a more complicated way and really bring you back into
- the atmosphere of how the Declaration was written by this collection of upstanding men, the 56 men,
- the quote-unquote signers. Some of those men who were there on July 4th didn't sign the document. Some
- of the people signed the document who weren't there on July 4th, of course, so the signers is mystification,
- a little bit of the process of how the document was created.
- but I'd like to steep us into May and June and July for a little bit, just so you can appreciate sort
- of not this document and the words that it has, including the grievances, but how the document was produced
- and put into the future and the future that was unexpected for people at time, which again is the preamble
- has carried so much meaning since then. So I'm gonna refer, I'm gonna,
- Run out of time, I can tell already. So the declaration has 1,337 words in it. I'm going to actually
- spend much more time in something else, which is a lot, lot more words. And that's the journals of the
- Congress. And I want to look at this from the inside of the Congress, the inside of the people who were
- there, who considered the document, wrote the document, et cetera, et cetera, and dealt with the document,
- and look at it from their vantage point looking out. And there, we have a lot. There are 26 volumes.
- were more of the journals of the Congress. There are several for 1776. There are a lot of words, and
- there are a lot of things that happened in that time period. So I want to emphasize five of them so
- you can see the pressures that were on people in this moment, all the things that were bombarding them
- from the outside to deal with all the issues that they had to deal with, which included, for a couple
- of days, the Declaration of Independence. There was so much that happened before and so much that happened
- afterward.
- So one of the things that happened, number one, is just state building. And I don't mean state building
- in a more general way, of building a government. And one of the first things that was an intense project
- in May of 1776 was to build, there was 13 colonies. They weren't states. If you look at the Declaration
- of Independence, it says the United States of America, there were only four states, actually,
- on July 4, 1776. Eight of them were, the rest were still colonies. They were not states.
- because they were being asked in May 10th and May 15th, they were being asked to save these colonial
- governments where most of the royal governors had been vanished from the scene, shall we say, but they
- had no governance. They were all illegally meeting, et cetera, et cetera. So how do you create legitimacy
- for these colonial governments that had no legitimacy at all? And they were all encouraged to write
- constitutions. And this became an
- This is what Thomas Jefferson wanted to be doing. Instead of writing the Declaration of Independence,
- he wanted to go back to Virginia and write the Virginia State Constitution, because that was the important
- thing to do in his mind. And this is what each of the colonies did in this time period, is
- write constitutions and to try to create legitimacy for who they were. Because you are a legitimate
- organization, you probably have a constitution and bylaws, right? Et cetera, et cetera. That's an important
- part to create your legitimacy. These people did not have legitimacy. The Continental Congress had no
- legitimacy.
- They were all meeting, as far as the British government was concerned, illegally. And so this was one
- enormously enormous project at the time. And these constitutions, we have a constitution that's lasted
- for a long time. The constitutions that were written, if you look at their history, and I won't go through
- this, did not last. They wrote a constitution that was all experimental. They made so many mistakes.
- And they revised them within a few years. They all realized how they didn't work out very well. They
- needed revision and revision. And if you look at, obviously,
- the history of the Indiana State Constitution in the 19th century, revision after revision after revision.
- So there's a lot of instability and a lot of experimentation, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of not knowing
- what they were doing. And that's in all of this process. And this is true if you look at the resolution
- for the Declaration of Independence, it happens at the same time as some other really important things.
- One is to have articles of the confederation. What is the relationship going to be between Virginia
- and South Carolina and Pennsylvania? They had no idea.
- Congress was meeting, they had no idea. So they needed to produce an Artists of Confederation, which
- later on will turn into a constitution to join things. But at that point, it was completely fragmented.
- And again, they had no idea what they were doing. They were asked at the same time also to develop a
- model treaty to have some kind of relationship with other parts of the world, especially parts of the
- world they were asking for money and munitions from. And they had no idea, again, how to do that. So
- this was one of the tasks of this time period
- And just to appreciate, I don't know how many committees do you have? Do you have committees? Anyone
- serving on a committee? So these people were serving on multiple committees. In Congress in 1776, there
- are 233 committees. 233. And some people served on many of those committees, like Thomas Jefferson.
- And this is the project. These are the kinds of things they were confronted with.
- And so the Declaration of Independence happens in two days, but afterward is when the draft of the Articles
- of Confederation come and those debates happen. Afterward is the debates about the Model Treaty,
- for instance. And so the work continues and fundamental, fundamental work. And I'm just going to select
- those couple of things for that moment. And so we have the two days in which the Declaration was done,
- and all you know,
- Like in July 1st, it was a vote of nine to two to two, and it took a couple of more days to have it
- be 12-0-0 or 12-0-1. New York did not say yes to the Constitution, I mean, the Declaration of Independence,
- Central I-4th. They had to wait a few more days, but they didn't have permission to do so. But even
- at the last minute, there was always a lot of work to be done. And I hope some of you have seen the
- wonderful musical 1776. Anyone seen it? Right, which is just a delightful, campy version of all this.
- But at least you can appreciate, like,
- sort of the intensity of the moment and the humanness of the people. These were all flawed people. And
- this is one of the famous things that John Adams says later on, 1811, he writes to a younger nephew
- and he says, we didn't really know what we were doing back then. We were imperfect people. We were human
- beings. And we've been turned into people who are the founders and the fathers of the country. But at the time,
- We were just trying to figure everything out. And I want to immerse you in that. I'm not going to be
- able to go too far. But I want to take you to Canada. I really want to immerse you in lots of dates,
- but I won't be able to do so. But I'll give you a couple examples. In Canada, things went horribly wrong.
- If you know about they tried to take Quebec from the British government in December 1775. It went horribly
- wrong. They imagined that the people in Canada would come
- and embrace them and side against the British government there, and they did not. And so the plans went
- horribly wrong, and then they had to figure out why did the plans go horribly wrong. So they start appointing
- committees. The first committee is appointed in February 1776, actually, and it's just to go up to upstate
- New York and Montreal. They still took possession of Montreal and figure out what went horribly wrong.
- This is one thing. Ben from Franklin leaves the Continental Guard
- Congress and goes up there and they try to figure out what does things look like here? They don't even
- know what things look like. Then a couple days later, they appointed another committee, not the committee
- that's going to do the work, but the committee that's going to write the instructions to the committee
- that's going to do the work. That's another committee, et cetera, et cetera. So this process keeps on
- going, committee after committee after committee, the committees come back.
- Then there's another committee that forms, because there was supposed to be a prisoner exchange. The
- prisoner exchange goes horribly wrong. There's another committee that's formed to figure out what happened
- with the prisoner exchange, and Thomas Jefferson is on that committee. That's in June of 1776, while
- he's writing the Declaration of Independence, for instance. And this process continues going on and
- on and on. What went wrong with Canada on these multiple levels? And there are multiple committees.
- They're meeting in June, et cetera, et cetera, and July, all around
- the Declaration of Independence and all the busyness of the Congress in this time period. And now I'm
- hastening, hastening, hastening, because I want to take you to not the north, but to the west. There's
- a long Declaration of Independence there. And here, just to give you an example, May 25, 1776, a group
- of emissaries arrived from the Iroquois, six nations, and they want to
- come into Congress and see what goes on in Congress. And they arrive on the 25th. This is in the middle
- of the discussions of things. And they are invited to Congress. They attend Congress a couple of times.
- In the meanwhile, Congress is being asked in the South that Cherokees are very, very displeased by land
- being taken away from them. And so there's a war between South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and
- Virginia against the Cherokees. And again, this is presented to the Congress. And the Congress says, well,
- We're sort of busy over here, but you were allowed to go just do what you have to do to take care of
- that problem. And so again, this is under discussion. The Cherokees are not there. They're under discussion.
- The Iroquois are there in Philadelphia meeting with members of Congress for several weeks, et cetera,
- et cetera. And this is a lot of what's happening. If you look in the journals of Congress, again, this
- is a lot of what they're working on and thinking about and doing, which is to figure out what they call
- frontier defense,
- where the British are trying to lure native nations to side with them, and how do you respond to the
- situation? So there's a lot of diplomacy that faces that way. So that's facing west. Then, in June of
- 1776, again, right before the Declaration of Independence, William Howe arrives, and Richard Howe arrives.
- William is a military general, and his brother is a navy admiral, and they are
- arriving as peace commissioners. And they are trying to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the people
- who are causing trouble in the colonies. And so this process also starts and becomes an intense one.
- In this time period, in June and July, they're writing letters. They're friends with Benjamin Franklin
- when Franklin was in London. So they're writing to him. They're writing to George Washington. And they
- write a letter to George Washington. And they don't address it in a respectful manner. And George Washington
- refuses to see the letter.
- He doesn't even accept the letter, but it's addressed to him as a private individual, not as his title
- as commander of the Contral Army, et cetera, et cetera. So he refuses the letter and there's the Congress
- actually expresses his thanks to George Washington for upholding the dignity of the rebels, and I'll
- call them rebels right now, upholding their dignity by refusing this letter that was simply tried to
- privatize them. And this is what
- the peace commissioners do over and over and over. They try to privatize the situation and try to meet
- with people individually, but they refuse to acknowledge that the condo in Congress exists. Whatever
- the condo in Congress is, it's an organization, it's an institution, it's somewhere in between. And
- the peace commissioners don't want to acknowledge that this is something that has solidity. And of course,
- they want to have solidity. So this goes on back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in this time
- period. And I won't bury you into that, because I want to take you to some other places
- And I'm leaving something so, taking you into the Continental Congress and all the things that they
- were doing in May and June and July 1776. And I'm giving you a couple of examples, just Canada being
- one of them. And again, there's so much in there about Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada. There's so much
- about native nations at this time period. There's so much about the peace commissioners. But I'm leaving
- something major out. Any of you watch Ken Burns' documentary? What major thing am I leaving out that's
- happening right now?
- in May and June and July 1776. Anyone remember from Ken Burns? The British are coming. The British have
- assembled a vast, vast navy. They know this is coming. It is spotted at the end of June. The fact that
- this massive, massive fleet is coming, the fleet has become so large, it's in three stages, but it's
- so large that it's large, the number of soldiers that are coming
- are larger than the population of New York City or the larger than the population of the largest city
- in this part of the world, which is Philadelphia. It's 400 something ships, it's 30 something thousand
- troops that are arriving and they are panicking. And so if you look at what they're thinking about,
- they're thinking about that the British are about to come with the most remarkable military operation
- that the world has ever seen on a scale. Just the descriptions of just the ships
- standing outside Staten Island and the loading of the troops that go into Staten Island, which happens
- July 2nd, is rather extraordinary. And they know all this is happening. They get reports on all of this.
- Their ships are sighted. And they are trying to prepare all of the military operations in time for it.
- And so much of their time is spent on this as well. And of course, these are the times that Tri-Man
- souls are going to continue.
- because these are the military disasters that are about to happen as the British take New York City
- and move into New Jersey and the Congress by December has to flee Philadelphia and go to Baltimore for
- safety. So this is what Thomas Paine is writing about. But this all starts, I just want to appreciate
- the Declaration of Independence is only one task out of many, many tasks and many, many pressures that these
- men in that room were trying to figure out what to do. And they struggled to figure that out, because
- they were, again, under so much pressure from so many different angles. And it's that part, if you look
- at the declaration in Dunlap Roadside, it's a beautiful, beautiful document, but it doesn't help you
- appreciate the context and the atmosphere and the pressure in which it was created. And the only way
- to do that is if you look at other documents, like the Journal of Congress, and you can feel
- how those words appeared in this sacred, sacred document, which I've gone to see like eight times already.
- And it's just an amazing privilege to look at it and to look at the grievances and the preamble and
- all the words that have a real life to them. But the document doesn't make them come alive in terms
- of the human beings who tried to figure out what to do in this moment. And it's that that I want us
- to appreciate because
- At least from my perspective, we are living in an extraordinary crisis where I personally look at the
- news every day and I'm bombarded and bombarded and bombarded and bombarded with crisis and crisis, crisis.
- And so the question I can ask myself is how am I handling the crisis in which I live? And I can hopefully
- learn something by looking at these men and look at how they tried to handle the crisis in which they lived.
- That crisis was severe. And again, it came from so many different angles that are not articulated in
- the declaration itself. You don't see them in the declaration. You only see them when you look at all
- the other things they had to do. And the work was building and building and building. So in 1775, there
- were 56 committees in the Congress. In 1776, there were 233 committees in the Congress, for instance,
- just to do the work and to try to figure things out.
- And if you look at the state constitutions, mistakes were made there, and they had to revise them constantly.
- The Declaration of Independence is not revised, but it's not the clearest document. We look at those
- words, and we hope they've been given all kinds of meaning that Thomas Jefferson never intended, including,
- sorry, I'm going to point to you, women being created equal. He did not intend that. But those words
- have had a life to them that are really, really important in American history.
- is one thing, but it's the, how do you respond? How do you meet a moment? How do you grapple with all
- the different pressures and crises that you're living through in May and June, July in 1776? I think
- that is something else that also carries forward into more of American history and certainly into my
- life right now, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. So now I just want to capture that atmosphere
- And now I'll answer any questions you may have, and I'll do my best. And I hope I'm on time. Sorry.
- Yeah. Oh, we have a microphone. So one of the questions I have is, what was the influence of the Caribbean
- countries? Because that was a major profit source for England, and growing up,
- with American history, that never was something that really entered my mind until recently. And how
- much did that help us in our victory, if you will, because they also were very, they, England, was also
- very concerned about the Caribbean. Okay, now you've answered your own question. You did that very well.
- So there are some wonderful books now about the global American Revolution and how it appeared in different
- places and different times. Some of you have traveled, been to St. Eustatius,
- That was where the guns came from, where the Dutch sent the guns to St. Eustatius, and the rebels sent
- their ships down there to collect the guns and bring them back. For instance, Caribbean was very important.
- It becomes very important in the scale of the war, obviously, because the British are protecting the
- places there from slave rebellion and from French incursion. And they put a lot of the Navy there instead
- of along the coast, and the French Navy
- comes and beats the British Navy to Yorktown. And that's obviously where it was a decisive battle toward
- the end of the war. Again, if you take this globally, when the French enter the war in 1778, it becomes
- a global war. So the last battles of the American Revolution, or the War of American Independence, were
- not fought anywhere near North America. They were actually fought in India, where the British and the
- French fought in India. Those were the last battles. So that's why the Caribbean becomes important.
- If you look at, Spain enters the war as well, and then Spain do a massive military campaign from Alabama
- to Florida, and it also diverts British resources. And the British start fighting a global war against
- multiple adversaries. It becomes very, very overwhelming for them, and they fail. I mean, the other
- thing that's really interesting, by the way, if you look at British versions of what the British were
- dealing with at this time, they were just overwhelmed and incompetent.
- I mean, as tyrants, they were not the best tyrants in the world. They were so divided in the government.
- They were divided among military personnel. They were divided in strategy. They were divided in what
- they were doing. They were also overwhelmed. They were responding to so many things at once. And it
- became untenable for them of any of the war. So that was quick. Yes. Yes. Thank you very much for joining
- us this afternoon. No one can say that you're not passionate about this topic.
- Yeah, no, that's, yeah. Well, so you mentioned the Iroquois Confederacy, a nation. To what extent might
- there have been some influence on their laws on the framing or the shaping of the US Constitution? Right,
- so that's carrying the circumstance a little further. There's so much debate about that very, very question
- about the terms of that influence. And there are people who have sought to,
- look at the records and the archives and try to make an argument for more influence. And there are people
- who've done it and said there's less influence. And so that's an unsettled question. I can't, I can't
- settle that question myself. And it's, I'm so immersed right now in 1776 and the declaration, I'm not
- immersed. Ask me again in 11 years when I'll do the, you know, the 25th anniversary of the constitution,
- I'll be immersed in the constitution the same way. But right now that debate, I think is still unfolding.
- about how much influence there was about political theory and organizing decision-making, for instance,
- are the terms in which this is discussed, for instance, because there are certainly politicians in this
- part of the world who are very involved in negotiation with native peoples and watchful of their political
- systems and their social organization, et cetera, often with racist contempt, but not always with racist
- contempt, and certainly experience in terms of negotiating
- And so this is a question that I don't think has been settled yet. I'm interested in some of the signers
- of the declaration, especially John Witherspoon, who, like myself, was a Presbyterian minister and the
- only clergyman to sign the declaration. And his name is memorialized in Princeton, New Jersey, and recently
- on a street in Louisville, Kentucky. Can you tell us about Witherspoon and some of the other interesting
- signers of the declaration?
- I can say something about Witherspoon. Witherspoon was really, so there's intellectual lineages about
- circulation of ideas and about political theories. And one thing about the British side as well, the
- equation is that British public and the British government was also very, very divided at this time
- period. So there's John Wilkes, for instance, who was opposing the King and opposing the administration
- in Britain. And lots of people were in the opposition within Britain itself.
- There's discussion about how do you organize in the Enlightenment in France and in Britain and in this
- part of the world, how do you organize government and its relationship to a public? What does that look
- like? What is the most effective way to do that? And the British, of course, thought they'd found the
- secret. The French did it in this distorted way. They have a monarch that's too strong and makes really
- bad decisions and accumulates a lot of wealth.
- In Britain, they found a much more balanced way and they thought this was the most free organization
- of a government to balance the Lords and the Commons and the monarchy and to have a constitutional monarchy
- where parliament has a lot of leverage. And so John Witherspoon was really, really important for bringing
- some of that discussion to this part of the world and bringing it to Princeton University where people
- like James Madison studied, et cetera, et cetera. So there's lineages of intellectual influence in terms
- of figuring out
- these high-minded questions of governance. This also happens at the street level, because one thing
- that happens in 1774 is that they organize local committees. We know about the Stamp Act and the protests
- against the Stamp Act. There were very few of those that didn't last very long. But in 1774, they said,
- we're not just going to have people protesting in the major cities and not being organized. We're going
- to try to have
- local committees in every single town, every single county, everywhere in the rebellious colonies. And
- that is another kind of political education that happens not from the top down in terms of ideas, but
- in terms of practices where you have people who've never been involved in politics, have never been
- part of figuring out a relationship. Suddenly our community are thrust in circumstances where they're
- making major decisions about who's right and who's wrong in the community and how
- justice is going to be issued, et cetera, et cetera. So there is the John the Witherspoon level is really
- important here. And I think the local committee level and on the ground and all the people who have
- never been mobilized before are really important here. There are so many other signers. I'll just mention
- one signer, which is also from New Jersey. Richard Stockton is actually captured by the British later
- on. And he says, I signed the declaration, but I don't agree with it at all. And he was under pressure.
- devoted in all kinds of ways. And this is what happened when the British army marched through places
- and the rebel army marched through places. They would ask people to sign oaths of allegiance to the
- condo of Congress or the king. And we have some of those oaths of allegiance now. And you're a bill.
- And so I have an oath of allegiance that you signed saying, I love the king. King George III is my favorite
- human being ever. Because the British army was saying, would you sign this document? And then three
- weeks later, the rebel army came through and they said,
- Bill, would you sign this document? Would you say the Congress is the most lovely group of people that
- ever lived? And Bill signed that document too. So he signed both. Sorry, Bill. I'm not sure what you
- did. But this is, again, what Richard Stockton was under the most pressure to recant. He was the one
- signer who recanted his signing of the Declaration of Independence. So I find him very interesting.
- But the pressure in which that happened was not pleasant. And Bill can attest to that.
- So what do you think of people who argue, for example, who use the Declaration of Independence and the
- sequestration of troops to argue about the National Guard being posted to cities in the United States?
- So I would just say that it's really interesting. There's a really lovely new book by Robert Parkinson
- about the grievances, and he takes John Lind
- I didn't know this, but I liked the John Lin before I read this book. But he looks at all the grievances
- and he breaks them down one by one. What were the grievances actually about? Because some of them are
- pretty confused. They're not very clear what they're referring to, what's happening out there. We can
- think of, oh, this refers to the Stamp Act maybe. But Jefferson is invoking all of these other things
- that people didn't really know what he was talking about. And so there are grievances that are there.
- And for a long time, again, they were not part of American public discourse until very recently. And
- now there's become a lot of interest in a number of the grievances, and they feel like the grievances
- have become more alive. And it's not just the preamble that's very much alive, it's the grievances that
- are very much alive. So that's, I won't talk about specific grievances, but I'll, there's much more
- discussion about the grievances now.
- So fighting a war is real expensive. So can you talk about raising revenue and the role that individual
- states played and the role that the Continental Congress played? Because when I read accounts of 1776
- and the subsequent years, it seemed like the troops were always short of supplies and ammunition. Yeah,
- so how are we going to do this?
- So this is one of the debates, actually, that happens in this moment, in the summer, which is they want
- to form a more durable army, because people are enlisting, right? The first enlistments were very,
- very short. It was just like the British are taking over Boston. They're doing very unpleasant things.
- Let's just mobilize. And it doesn't last very long. And people start dissipating. George Washington
- is very, very upset when he becomes the general of the Continental Army. And he says, what the heck
- is going on here? Because these people are
- or don't know what the heck they're doing, and they're just leaving. And so by the time there's whatever,
- 18,000 of them outside Boston, by the time they get to New York to defend New York, there's so few.
- And by the time Thomas Paine is writing, there are like 3,000. So how do you solve the problem? And
- this becomes one of the debates. So do you say, we have to figure out Pennsylvania has this many people,
- and therefore they should supply this many soldiers? Or, and how do we figure out how many
- people Pennsylvania has?
- There's no census at this moment, right? They don't even know what's called biopolitics. What are the
- number of people that are available to do these different things? Or do we say that each state should
- provide equal shares because all the states are equal and we have equal voting for these issues and
- we should have equal for this? And so this becomes a debate. How do you apportion a responsibility for
- an effort and how do you get the money? Because they start issuing, this is another thing that happens,
- they start issuing money
- And that money loses value very quickly. It's like I was just reading about money in Venezuela. Oh,
- no, Argentina. Argentina Peso has just crumbled in the last couple of years. It's gone from here to
- all the way down to here. This is what happens. The continental dollars that are issued. There's another
- interesting new book now about that the issue was not taxes. It was actually the currency. It was not
- the Stamp Act in position of taxes earlier. It was currency. How do you pay for something? What is money?
- What is money? So I don't know how many of you are paid in cryptocurrency. Is that money? This is one
- of our debates. What is money? And this is what for them was, and this was what the British said, you're
- creating money in the colonies that is meaningless. So we're not accepting that money. We want real
- money, which is our money, not your money. And so what is money becomes one of the big debates in this
- time period. And it remains a crisis in terms of how do you pay for
- a scale of supplying a military operation on a scale that had never been done before, geographically,
- numerically, et cetera, et cetera. How do you do that? And those debates happen for years in Congress
- to try to figure it out. And they're always behind the curve. The need is here, and they're here always
- throughout the war. And Ken Burns does this very well, I think, in his documentary. They're always behind,
- behind, behind. Time for just one more quick question, one quick answer.
- You've mentioned a number of books that you've read or recommend. Do you have a listing of that somewhere?
- Cause I just don't want to go into a library and choose. Yeah, I know there's a lot of awful things
- right now, but I can make a list and I can, I can try to submit it to Jeff or, and is that okay? Cause
- there are some really lovely books there. The Monroe County public library. I don't know what you think
- of it, but I, it's been a godsend since my kids were really small. I've spent so many times there. I
- still go there once a week.
- And they have lots of new books that are really, really fantastic, thoughtful new books. People have
- done, again, research, archival research, have delved in the archives for months and months and months
- to do this work. And that's real history. And that's what I'm a little bit passionate about.
- As you said, thank you. Thank you.
- Constantine, thank you so much for your talk. And I just realized I should have brought my husband.
- He would have been pounding you with questions forever. It was so interesting. In honor of your talk,
- we will be giving a donation of $100 to C Jam for the quarter. And I'd also like to thank today all
- of our volunteers who helped out. Peggy Frisbee for greeting, Lynn Schwartzberg for the pseudo introduction
- of guests. Jeff Richardson for introducing our speaker.
- Leslie Kutsenko for the Zoom host, Michelle Cohen for stepping up for reflection, Judy Schroeder for
- doing the reporting, Michael Shermas as always for the mic and camera operator. We have to get some
- other people here to help you. And Michelle doing double duty, also being photographer for us, Jill
- as our executive assistant, and then Tyler as always.
- for our audio equipment. And I'm never gonna complain about the 12 to 14 committees that we have after
- hearing 233, I'll just say. Our next meeting will be in the state room east on August 18th. Denso Ross
- will be our special guest discussing leading with innovation through healthcare uncertainty.
- Please join us, that probably is one of the crisis that keeps you awake every day. And by the way, one
- other thing I thought about today is Canada is another state, what a thought.
- Just saying. And with that, Tyler, if you could put up the four-way test, and for those who are able,
- please stand. Of the things we think, say, or do, first, is it the truth? Second, is it fair to all
- concerned? Third, will it build goodwill and better friendships? Fourth, will it be beneficial to all
- concerned? And fifth, is it fun?