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?