S11E01

Welcome to Echoes of History, the place to explore the rich stories from the past that bring the world of Assassin's Creed to life. I'm Matt Lewis. In this sequence of episodes, we've taken a trip across the Atlantic to revolutionary America, where the 13 colonies struggled for independence from British rule. Assassin's Creed 3 offers players a glimpse into the room where it happened, the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But what was the Declaration? Was it more than just a document? Who wrote it? And what were the immediate and lasting ripples of making such a declaration? Late morning sunshine streams through the windows, softly lighting the hall. It's the height of summer in the year 1776, and the room is full of delegates who have convened here in Philadelphia from across the 13 colonies of America. Although not everyone from across the colonies are present today, over the coming weeks, 56 representatives will sign their name to a document lying on the centre of the table. The document that represents the birth of a new nation, an independent nation. You hover unnoticed in a darkened corner, watching as the delegates and other members of the Congress talk quietly to one another in small groups around the room, gathered where the American Declaration of Independence lies stand three men. Your closeness to them gives you a thrilling shiver. You know who they are. Know that the document on the table was drafted by them, and that it's their soaring rhetoric that will embolden everyone here in their shared mission. One man stands taller than the others, his hair bound at the back of his neck in a graceful ponytail. His face is drawn with an obvious lack of sleep. He spent many a restless night considering what has to be written here, but his eyes are bright with the feverish energy of the gathering. He is Thomas Jefferson, and he alone catches you looking at him from across the room, returning your curious gaze with a slight incline of his head. The 70-year-old Benjamin Franklin, his spectacles perched low on his nose, stands beside him, and a third man, shorter than Jefferson, speaking quietly to his companions, you recognise as John Adams. The quill pen is not picked up lightly by the signants. The hall grows pensive and silent as the first names are called to sign the Declaration. It is an act of high treason. With this document, they dissolve the colonial bonds with Britain to their king far across the Atlantic. Each man in turn approaches the desk where John Hancock sits. He is the president of this constitutional Congress, and his face is grave. He gestures for the delegates to take the heavy pen from its ornate silver inkstand, and in turn, they sign the Declaration. When it seems everyone present who will sign has done so, you slip through the gathered men, making your way to the table at the hall's centre. You look down at the treasonous parchment stretched out on the desk in front of you. At the page's bottom, it's filled with scrawled signatures. You read the elegant swirls of John Hancock in the centre. You see Jefferson's and other familiar names below. The Declaration itself is made up of line upon line of neat cursive script, detailing the rights and freedoms of this new nation. Your gaze fixes on several stirring lines in particular, and the gentle chatter of the room falls away. As you read, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To find out more about the Declaration of Independence, I'm joined by Frank Colleono, Professor of American History at the University of Edinburgh. His latest book about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, A Revolutionary Friendship, has just been published by Harvard Press and can be purchased from bookstores as an e-book or an audiobook. Welcome to Echoes of History, Frank. Thank you, Matt. I'm really looking forward to this because generally I'm at home in the medieval period and in Europe, so this era of American history is something I know very little about and what I do know is largely based on the musical Hamilton. So please don't shoot me, but that's the limit of my knowledge. Come on in, the water's warm. I think Hamilton's great. It's engendered so much interest in the period. It's wonderful. So yeah, that's great. Perfect. We're still friends. I wonder if you could just set the scene for us a little bit in terms of when are we and in the build up to the Declaration of Independence, what is happening in America? Okay, that's a small question. Thanks, Matt. We'll start off easy and we'll build up from there. So what you need to know is in the summer of, or the spring and summer of 1776, Britain and the colonies or the 13 colonies in North America that were rebelling against Britain had already been at war since April of 1775. So the war broke out in Massachusetts with the fighting at Lexington and Concord outside Boston in April of 1775. At that point, the grand eloquently named Continental Congress assumed governmental powers for these colonies, these rebellious colonies. And Congress met in Philadelphia, but it wasn't really a government. And there's this kind of weird liminal period that goes on for 14 months when the colonies and Britain are waging war against each other, but the colonies haven't yet declared independence. So for example, some of the troops besieged, what happened was there was fighting outside of Boston in April of 1775. Colonial militia besieged the British troops in Boston from April of 1775 until March of 1776. Some of those colonial militia claimed to be laying siege to British troops in Boston in the name of the king. So it's, if you follow me, so it's a, it's a weird, there's a weird kind of period of slightly more than a year when the colonies are rebelling and they are doing so, they claim to defend their rights and liberties, but their status is unclear. And in the spring of 1776, Virginia, which is the largest colony, and it's the largest geographically, but it's also the largest in terms of its population and economic might calls in early May of 1776, submits a resolution to Congress asking for a declaration of independence. And so that's, that's the immediate backdrop. I should also say, and I'm sorry to go on at such length, that in the intervening months between Lexington and Concord in April of 1775 and the formal declaration of independence adopted by Congress on July 4th, 1776, British rule and government had broken down across the colonies to a large extent. And the colonies began kind of de facto governing themselves to a large extent. And so some historians have argued there were a series of declarations of independence when, when colonists took on this kind of authority to govern themselves. Yeah, very interesting. We, we've looked at the kind of battles of Lexington and Concord as the beginning of the revolutionary movement, the desire to separate from Britain. And I was interested in why it took a year, why you've been at war for a year before there is a decision to, to move towards a declaration of independence. So is that about getting it more on a legal footing and perhaps being a bit clearer about exactly what it is you're fighting for? Oh, there's a little bit of that. There's also the fact that not everybody wants to declare independence, even those people who are resisting British rule, you know, they, they, the phrase they use all the time. And I say this mindful of the fact that I'm sitting in Scotland right now, but they talk about the rights of Englishmen, right? And they talk about, they believe these, these American colonists, at least those who are free, believe that they have the rights of Englishmen. And so they're reluctant to sever that tie in the decade between the adoption of the Stamp Act, which started this whole mess in 1765, and the fighting at Lexington and Concord, polemicists and activists have made the case against parliamentary rule quite extensively, but they haven't gone after the King. And, and they've maintained that they were actually loyal for a decade. And so it's a big step to declare independence and many of them aren't ready to do that. Also, you've got to bear in mind the population, John Adams, one of the leading patriots famously said the population was divided into thirds, one third patriot that is supporting independence, one third loyalist that is supporting the British and one third neutral. The proportions are probably off, his proportions are off, but those are the main categories of the population. Not everybody supports independence. So it's going to, it's going to take them a while to get there. And presumably, there are a group of people at this, this Continental Congress who begin to formulate the ideas of what a declaration of independence might look like. Presumably, this is a novel idea. How do they go about gathering the ideas that will be included in the Declaration of Independence? And what kind of people are involved in that decision making? So the Congress itself, unsurprisingly, is comprised of leading political figures from each of their respective colonies. And so these are men of wealth and means. And many of them are slaveholders, for example, including Thomas Jefferson, who will be the main author of the Declaration of Independence. What happens is once Virginia submits its resolution calling for Congress to vote on independence, Congress takes a number of steps. It forms a committee to start preparing a declaration. It also has committees to wage war and to draft a new constitution for these colonies once they become independent, etc. But it also starts, there's a lot of politicking going on because they recognize that for such a momentous step, the way voting was done in Congress then, we use the word Congress and we talk about Congress in the United States today, but it's not the same thing. So voting in the Continental Congress was done by colonies. So each colony had one vote. Didn't matter how large their delegation was. And the congressmen recognized that for a step as momentous as declaring independence, they needed to be unanimous. It wouldn't be enough to have a seven to six vote because that would signal that the colonies weren't united in this cause. They wanted it to be a unanimous vote. So there's a lot of politicking going on in May and June, especially in June of 1776. Meanwhile, however, in anticipation of declaring independence, they established a committee that had the so-called Committee of Five to start drafting the declaration. And so they're preparing for a declaration even before they've even voted on it, if that makes sense. And Congress has issued over the course of its previous meetings in the previous year, it had issued a number of declarations and statements that have been drafted by committee. So there was some precedent for this. I love drafting things by committee, such a great experience. Yes, yes. And what you'll know, what do they do? They give the job to the most junior member of the committee, which was Thomas Jefferson. So there are five people on this committee, John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, excuse me, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert Livingston of New York, and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Jefferson had a reputation as a writer, but he's also the junior guy on the committee. And I think that we know how committees work. They say, you do this, you start drafting the text. Has there ever been a school or work project where there weren't four people that did nothing and one who does all the writing and all the work and carries everybody else? No. I suppose the only benefit for Thomas Jefferson is that he then gets attached to an enormously significant document, which probably makes him more prominent than the rest of the people in the group say, maybe he doesn't do too badly out of it. That's right. That's right. And is there anything in particular that kind of qualified those five men to get in that room and put that together? Because presumably no one has experience of declaring independence. So this is something new. Nobody has experienced declaring independence. They are all prominent people in their respective colonies, come states. Some, you know, Benjamin Franklin is a, if he's not a globally known figure, he's certainly a transatlantic figure of some renowned, you know, both as a scientist and as a political figure. Adams is a leading figure from, helped lead the Patriot resistance in Massachusetts in the run up to the revolution. So these are pretty significant figures in their own rights. Some considerably. So I mean, Franklin, as I say, is probably the most well-known person on that committee when it was formed. The thing to bear in mind is that Congress has dozens of committees. They're doing all kinds of stuff. They're waging war. They're trying to establish diplomatic relations. So there are lots of committees and lots of opportunities for people to serve on committees. But Jefferson in particular is chosen because he'd been the author of a pamphlet, which was published in 1774 called a summary view of the rights of British America, which is one of the most famous pamphlets in the run up to the war, the American war of independence. And it's a very eloquent and radical summation of what would be called, I guess, the Patriot position as of 1774, 1775. So he came to Congress with some renowned as a writer. And so I think he's chosen, you know, Virginia has to be represented on this committee because Virginia is such an important colony. But also he is the guy in the Virginia delegation, who's got a reputation as a writer. Yeah. So I suppose in the absence of being able to Google someone who can draft you a Declaration of Independence over the internet, what you do is find someone who's done something fairly similar, who's sort of justified the cause eloquently previously and set him to work on it. That's right. And he was the main author along with another guy named John Dickinson of a declaration that Congress issued the previous summer called the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, which was justifying the armed resistance to Britain. So he had some form there. And what were as they're drafting this document, what are the fundamental the core messages within the declaration? What is it setting out to achieve? Well, this is this is a really important question, Matt, it's a document that's trying to do several things. First, it is as the document says, it is announcing to the world, we're here, you know, there's a new country or there's, you know, it's a political statement. And it's a but it's also intended as propaganda, it's intended to help mobilize the patriot resistance to Britain, it's trying to lay out in clear terms what this struggles about. Crucially, though, it's also a diplomatic statement, it is saying to the world, but particularly to the great powers of Europe, especially France, that we are not going back, because the French had provided kind of covert assistance to the American rebels, because they're still upset about the outcome of the Seven Years War. But they're not going to risk war with Britain, if the colonists, who historically had always fought against France with Britain, are going to patch things up with Britain and then turn on them. Right. And so that's that's the worry at Versailles. And so the Declaration of Independence is a statement and a signal to European powers, especially France. We are not going back. This is not going to be like the Jacobite rising. We're not going to be kind of suppressed. We are declaring independence, and therefore we are open for business. And please enter into diplomatic relations with us. And that will be important. France, of course, will ally with the new United States in 1778. But also it's crucial because it opens up the coffers of Dutch banks in particular, so that the Dutch and bankers in the Netherlands will also help finance the revolution after the Declaration of Independence. So it's got multiple purposes. It's a political and philosophical statement directed at Britain primarily. It's a piece of propaganda intended to mobilize resistance to Britain within those 13 rebellious colonies. And it's a diplomatic statement. Does the document itself make an effort to justify independence? Does it give reasons why they want to be separate from Britain? Yes. Yes. So what most listeners, if they know the Declaration of Independence, they know the opening. They know the statement that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Right. That's the money shot. That's that. That's the mission statement of the United States. However, the bulk of the texts consists of a long list. I think there are 27 of them charges against George III. And these are the things that often don't get read on the 4th of July in the United States because it's a very, it's a relatively long document. And those are incredibly important, I think, because they're making the case for severing that tie with the crown and with the monarchy in particular. As I said a minute ago, they've made the case against parliament for a decade. They've pretty well established that, look, parliament has no authority over us. We have our own assemblies. They should govern. We're kind of sovereign. They've always said up until 1776, but George III is our monarch. So basically they say, look, the assembly of the House of Burgesses, which is the assembly in Virginia, is the equivalent of parliament. It adopts legislation and the king approves it. Now they're severing that tie with the king, which means that long list of charges in the Declaration of Independence focuses mainly exclusively on the king. And it's very, very personal. Every one of the charges when you read them, it says, he has, he's done this, he has not done that. It's he, he, he, he, he. And that's a reminder, this document was intended to be read aloud. So I would commend listeners to go read the document, but try to read aloud in your head. And when you get to that bit, you get to the end where it says it's the bill of attainder, basically against George III. It's quite powerful and persuasive rhetorically because you get he, he, he, and they're really making the case against the king. Yeah, it's really interesting you phrase it as a bill of attainder then. So the only time I've seen a version of the Declaration of Independence was when the National Archives in Kew in London did a treason exhibition. And it sort of looked at the development of treason, say from Edward III's creation of the the treason laws. A big high point later on, I wasn't expecting was the Declaration of Independence, which was very much in the vein of Charles I, you know, framing the king as a traitor to a nation that was only just coming into existence. And so you say it's really, really personal effort to say the king of Britain is a traitor. And therefore we don't want him in charge of our new country. That's it. It's not what they're essentially saying is, we're not leaving you, you left us. You know, as I say, we've got the rights of Englishmen, we're upholding them. We're, you know, we we are the true Britons is their claim. And it's George III who's left us, not the other way around. In that sense, it's a conservative revolution in the 18th century sense in that it's backwards looking. They are very, very mindful of the 17th century precedents for what they're doing, the glorious revolution, but crucially before that, the English Civil War. And metaphorically, they're executing the king. They're not literally doing it, of course, because they can't. But, but you know, but there's, they're essentially saying, we're not the rebels here. You're the ones who who who've changed the Constitution. We're upholding the Constitution. We're upholding our understanding of the British Constitution. And you've made it untenable here in America. So we have to you've forced us to go our own way in Jefferson's original draft. And I think we should talk a little bit about the two his draft versus the one adopted by Congress. But in his original draft, he's got language about how sort of melodramatic, oh, we might have been a great people together, but you've changed things. And they cut that rhetoric out. But it's quite revealing, actually. After Dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal is a podcast that delves into the dark side of history. Expect murder and conspiracy, ghosts and witches. I'm Anthony Delaney. And I'm Maddy Pelling. We're historians and the hosts of After Dark from History Hit, where every Monday and Thursday, we enter the shadows of the past. We set sail on Victorian ghost ships, learn the truth about the Knights Templar and walk the grimy streets of Victorian London in search of a serial killer. Discover the secrets of the darker side of history twice a week, every week on After Dark from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. It's interesting how they seem to have played out the loyal opposition part. You know, we are loyal to the crown, but we'd like a few reforms. And then they managed to phrase it as Britain are cutting the ties. It's not actually America cutting the ties and seeking to establish a new country. You've sort of backed us into a corner and forced us to do this almost unwillingly. And as you say, it's weirdly kind of conservative revolution when you compare it to the French revolution that is not in the too far distant future. That is very much like, no, we've had enough. We're sweeping all of this away and we want something new. It's kind of almost the opposite of what the American revolution is saying. It's a hoary old chess night for student seminars, you know, to compare the radicalism of the American Revolution to that of the French Revolution. And it is so for a reason, because these are two very, very, I mean, they're related events, but they're in their origins. They're very, very different. And the Americans, at least in the beginning, are, as I say, very much looking back at kind of 17th century precedents in contrast to what we see in France. Jefferson's draft and then the final document, as it's going through this process, what are the main changes and why are things taken out or added from what Jefferson originally planned? So what happens is Jefferson's working on this draft throughout June of 1776. He's also doing other committee work and so on. And Congress eventually agrees on independence. They don't get all 13 colonies to agree, they get 12 and New York abstains. It's complicated. The New York delegation favors independence, but they don't feel that they can vote without the approval of the New York provincial Congress, provincial government in New York. So New York abstains. So they have, they get 12 in favor of independence. They vote on independence formally on July 2nd, 1776. John Adams famously says, July 2nd will forever be remembered as a day that Americans will celebrate with fireworks and parades and ice cream and all this kind of thing. It's kind of typical John Adams and then he gets it right, but also spectacularly wrong. And then what happens is Jefferson's draft is presented to Congress and it spends two days editing it. And so that's why the 4th of July is when the Declaration of Independence is formally adopted. And that of course is celebrated as in the way that Adams suggested as Independence Day in the United States. So not July 2nd. However, what happened was Jefferson prepared his draft in June. He submitted it to the committee of five, which made really minimal changes. And then for the two days between July 2nd and July 4th, Congress really edits Jefferson's draft. And there are important differences. There's a story that Jefferson tells in his autobiography that he didn't like to be edited. None of us like to be edited, but he's sitting, he sat in Congress with Benjamin Franklin and he was very agitated about the changes that Congress was making to the document. And he felt that Congress was kind of despoiling his work. And Franklin told him a story about an incident that allegedly happened in Philadelphia about a hat maker who tried to get a sign designed for his shop. And so first it was like sort of, Matt Lewis, hat maker, was on the, you know, and opened these days and people came in and kept changing. And eventually the sign is reduced to just being a hat. And so Franklin tells Jefferson this story to kind of reassure him while he's going through the editing process. Congress cut about 20% of Jefferson's text. Some of it was for the better. Some of it was for the worst. The longest bit they cut concerned the transatlantic slave trade. And I think this is a really, really interesting and important difference between the document that Jefferson wrote and the document that Congress adopted. Jefferson's clause concerning the slave trade was in that long list of charges against George III. And it's the longest of the charges that Jefferson wrote. He blames George III for the transatlantic slave trade. As history, this isn't very compelling. George III was complicit in the slave trade, but he certainly didn't initiate Britain's participation in the slave trade. Nor is he solely responsible for it. Let us not forget that Jefferson enslaved approximately 200 people when he wrote that condemnation. However, what's really interesting about that clause, I think, is in it, Jefferson writes about George III violating the rights and liberties of a distant people. And the distant people in this case are Africans who are being victimized by the transatlantic slave trade. What's interesting there to me is if we go back to the beginning of the Declaration, with its assertion that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And then we get further down on the document and we see a direct reference to rights and liberties being applied to Africans. It changes the tenor of the document considerably. In seminars with students, I'll say, okay, how do we reconcile this assertion of universal human equality with the fact that 20% of the people in these rebellious colonies were enslaved? And one conclusion, or one argument one could make is, well, yeah, but he wasn't applying it to people of African descent, and everybody knew that, so there was no need to say that. And there's some merit to that argument, except this clause suggests something quite the contrary. He is aware that Africans have the same rights and liberties as Europeans who happen to live in America do. And so it would have made it a much, much more radical statement than it, I mean, it's a radical statement, but a much more radical statement than it was had Congress included that language. It didn't, in part, because there were people saying, oh, come on, look, this isn't going to fly. And according to Jefferson's autobiography that Congress deferred to the interests of two deep South colonies, Georgia, but particularly South Carolina in taking this language out, because of course, one of the purposes of the Declaration of Independence, as I said a moment ago, is to foster unity and help mobilize the population. And not everybody wanted to go there. So that clause gets cut out. It's the most significant change between Jefferson's draft and the draft adopted by Congress. They don't, they're worried, at least according to Jefferson's telling about losing the support of South Carolina in Georgia. Now, there will be an economic event when they, when they banned the transatlantic slave trade, slaveholders in Virginia in particular will benefit from that because it creates an internal slave trade that increases the value of their people who they can then sell down to Mississippi and Alabama. Because basically the slave population in Virginia and Maryland is too large. I mean, they've got more slaves than they can, they can support or they can profit from. And so the abolition of the slave trade, the transatlantic slave trade will benefit them financially. But I don't think that's what they're thinking in 1776. I think, and I've written a little bit about this, and it's a weird, because it's very hard to get students to accept this. I think Jefferson's sincerely anti-slavery in 1776. As he gets older, he'll move away from it. He's still kind of theoretically anti-slavery, but he keeps saying, well, they'll have to do something about this in the future. But I think in 1776, he's pretty sincere in that. Yeah, it's a missed opportunity, no doubt. Because I guess it's always a difficult juxtaposition to understand that idea of everybody is entitled to freedom apart from the people who aren't. It's always difficult to reconcile. And it seems like there was an opportunity there to have started that conversation much, much earlier, this lost opportunity chasing that need for unanimity. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. Although it should be said, the American Revolution does result in the abolition of slavery in all the states, new states, former colonies north of Maryland. So slavery was unquestioned before the revolution. It's not so in the new nation. Now, I don't want to overstate the significance of that, because, of course, the vast majority of enslaved people live south of Maryland. And so it won't directly benefit them. But also, the New Year's United States will vote to prohibit the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, a couple weeks before Parliament does. So there are important steps against slavery that are taken. But it is a missed opportunity. There's no question about that. The glass half full version of this is, look, slavery is unquestioned prior to this, apart from a few radicals on both sides of the Atlantic. And it's now something that has to be defended. And frankly, it's something Jefferson's embarrassed about for the rest of his life. During his tenure as ambassador to France, he's acutely aware of how vulnerable he is to criticism about slavery. And he's embarrassed about it. Now, whether his embarrassment amounts to much is debatable, but it's something that has to be defended after 1776, where it was largely unquestioned, not exclusively, but largely unquestioned prior to that. Interesting point at which the conversation becomes a bit more intricate and detailed. Once you declare all men are created equal, you have to defend that position. I mean, that raises, they didn't have to say that they could have just declared independence. But that's what they say. And they're aware of this. Samuel Johnson, the great English lexicographer, writes a famous pamphlet in 1776, in which he asked the question, why is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty for the drivers of Negroes? You know, they did. This is not something that we thought of later after the fact. They're aware of this. And it is a intellectual problem for them. It's a moral and ethical problem for them. But it's also an issue that enslaved people in particular will not let lie. And so they will use this to undermine the institution. And so I guess we need to get to that famous moment, not John Adams, 2nd of July. But the couple of days later, we've I guess we've given away the date, but I was going to ask kind of when and where is the declaration signed and who puts their name to it? Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to. No, no, it's fine. It's going to be a big surprise to anybody. So it is formally adopted, the text is formally adopted on the 4th of July 1776, in Carpenters Hall, now called Independence Hall in Philadelphia, which is well worth a visit if you're ever in the city of brotherly love. And many, many listeners will be familiar. There's a very famous painting, which is in the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, by John Trumbull of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which has everybody there. That scene didn't happen, because it took about a month for everybody to get around to signing the document. So that kind of signing moment that you get with the committee of five in the center, and all the members of Congress sitting sitting in Independence Hall waiting to sign that moment didn't happen like that. However, it took about a month to sign and 56 men, all men, of course, signed that document over the course of a month. So July 4th is the day it's adopted. There's no question about that. And the text is agreed, and the signing begins, but it will take a little bit a little bit of time for everybody to get around to signing it. In the game, players will encounter that moment, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, they're there as a witness to that and lots of other key moments in the American Revolution. I wonder then what happens in the immediate aftermath of the signing of the Declaration of Independence? Presumably, that's not kind of it. It's all over now. We've declared independence and we're done. What happens in the immediate aftermath to put that into force? Well, there's no point in declaring something unless you tell people you're doing it. That's what a declaration is. And so what happens is, they send copies to Britain, but they also, copies are printed and circulated around the declaration, uses the phrase United States. So we can talk about the United States now, are circulated around the putative United States. They're still not the United States yet. They have to win their independence, but it's read before the troops. So the Continental Army, which is commanded by George Washington, is in New York at this point, preparing to defend New York from an impending British invasion. But Washington has the text read to the troops on July 9th. And there's a famous scene which many listeners will probably have seen different images of, of them tearing down a statue of George III from the Bowling Green in New York. The statue is decapitated, so there's this kind of ritual killing of the king. It's melted down for bullets. So there's a metaphor there. They take this statue of George III and they destroy it and then they turn it into bullets or some of it into bullets that can be used to fight for independence. So there's a kind of dramatic metaphorical moment there. But the hard work of actually winning independence still has to go on. And the war is going to, the war doesn't end until 1783. Much of it goes badly for the Patriots. And, you know, independence isn't really confirmed until the Peace of Paris of 1783. So in the short term, this does mobilize people and it is propaganda and it will in the medium term eventually lead to France joining the war effort, as I suggested a few minutes ago. But in the kind of immediate term, the war went on. But everything's clear. No, no longer are people saying, well, we're fighting the British army in the name of the king. They're now fighting in the name of the United States. It sounds a bit like the, you talked about it being a multifunctional document and that perhaps the most immediate impact was in its use as that diplomatic tool to say to other countries, we are not going back. We are here and we would like your support because then, as you said, France, Dutch banks and things like that feel confident enough to help America, which will hopefully, from the American point of view, tip the balance of the war in their favor. So it seems like that was the perhaps the most immediate impact that it had. It garnered support for the revolution. That's right. I mean, I think the diplomatic impact is in the short term what's most important because it brings France into the war and the French intervention totally changes the nature of the conflict and evens the playing field or if anything gives the rebels an advantage. So there's no question. I think historically, the longer term impact is that first paragraph and that mission statement for the United States and that justification for independence in the name of human equality grounded in actual rights. I wondered if we could talk a little bit too about the continued relevance of the Declaration of Independence, because it feels a little bit like a landlord has served an eviction notice on his tenant, the tenant's gone and then the landlord just sits there keeping reading the eviction notice again and again and again saying this is great. It feels like something that it was a one off moment in time served a purpose. Does it still have relevance in America today? Absolutely. So in 1848, when the first big women's rights convention was held in Santa Claus in New York, they adopted a version of the Declaration of Independence saying that all men and women were created equal. And what we've seen throughout American history is activists and people accutating for their rights always, always invoke the Declaration of Independence to do so because it's what Martin Luther King called a promissory note. It's basically you're saying, you said you were going to do this, you've got to do it. So King quotes it all the time, including on the March on Washington. There's a new book out by a really good German scholar named Hannah Spahn, who's looked at the way that black intellectuals in the United States reframed the Declaration of Independence during the 19th century in opposition to slavery and take it in directions that Jefferson himself probably didn't intend. Lincoln invokes it in opposition to slavery and to justify taking action against slavery. So throughout American history, it's continued to be relevant. It's the touchstone. I recently spent a year working at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home that's now a museum. And every year on the 4th of July in Virginia, they have a naturalization ceremony there where new citizens take the oath of allegiance to the country. And they do it on the 4th of July at Jefferson's home deliberately to make that connection with the Declaration of Independence. And they read the Declaration of Independence that day. In a couple of years time in 2026, we will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It will be a massive, well, Americans can't decide how to celebrate or commemorate that moment because everything is political right now. But something's going to happen two years from now. Maybe they'll read Jefferson's first draft, you never know. That would be something. I mean, that would be my preference. It's the director's cut. So yeah, it still has continued relevance. It's not, you know, it's not, it's certainly not a forgotten document. It along with the Constitution, but when Americans frequently talk about the Constitution, they mean the Bill of Rights are usually invoked. And those are the two documents from the kind of so-called founding year of the United States that continue to have contemporary relevance in the United States. And I think sometimes Americans make more of this than they should, but there is a global impact to it as well in that other countries, the Harvard historian, David Armitage has written about this, other countries have used the Declaration of Independence as a model when they themselves declared independence, especially right after the Second World War during decolonization in the mid 20th century. Sometimes that gets overstated, but I think it does certainly has continued relevance. And I guess as a medieval historian, my mind immediately goes to Magna Carta and the kind of immediate issues that that's trying to address and that what it's trying to deliver in the immediate term versus this almost unforeseen long-term effect that spreads out in all kinds of directions that it was never really meant to. Yeah. And people are always very good at taking Magna Carta to mean things that it never ever did mean and misusing it for all sorts of things. I wondered if we could just ask a question to end on if you had the technology, if you were an Assassin's Creed and you had the animus that you could step into, what moment during this process of independence from Great Britain, would you like to be in the room for? What moment would you like to go back in time and witness? Oh, that's a good one. I think actually either the moment when Jefferson presented the Declaration to Congress and they began debating it, or there's a moment at the end of the war in 1783, when George Washington, this doesn't directly relate to the Declaration of Independence, but George Washington goes before Congress to resign his commission. That's a crucial moment, I think, in the history of the United States because that's when he willingly gave up power. He willingly, he could have remained a military commander, he could have become a man on horseback, and he didn't do so. And when he goes to resign his commission, I think that's incredibly important. It's less dramatic for Assassin's Creed. These are both kind of civilian moments, but I think either of those would be moments I would have liked to have witnessed. George III is said to have said, he said to the American painter Benjamin West, who was president of the Royal Academy, George III asked West what he thought George Washington was going to do at the end of the war. And West said, I think he's going to give up power. And George III is said to have said, but according to West, if he does that, he'll be the greatest man in the world. Nobody can walk away from power. So I would have liked to have seen that moment. I mean, you get that a bit in Hamilton, don't you? Just to bring it all the way back to Hamilton with George III sort of saying, giving up power, is that something a person can do? Right. You know, there's a lot of wisdom in Hamilton. I'm just going to say that. It's not a documentary. So people who kind of pick nets and say, well, what about this, that or the other thing? As a work of art, it's pretty amazing. I think I would probably quite like to be in the room on the 3rd of July when people are pulling Jefferson's draft apart and he's throwing an author's hissy fit about what they're taking out. Yes. Imagine having to sit in the room with reader number two while your prose is being taken apart. Yeah. I feel like I could nod in sympathy while he's complaining about it. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Frank's been fascinating to get a bit closer to this document, a bit under its skin and find out what was going on around it and how it's taken on this life of its own. So thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. The last thing I'd say is people should read it because the text is actually beautiful and it's not that long, but read Jefferson's version. There you go. Two reading assignments to take away. There you go. You can find Frank's latest book, A Revolutionary Friendship, wherever you get your books from. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Next week, we're traveling to the unlikely site of the shot heard around the world and asking just why two unassuming New England towns became the most significant places in the American Revolution. Don't forget to subscribe and follow Echoes of History wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're enjoying it, you can leave us a review too. I'll see you next time among the Echoes of History.