GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE AFTER THE VARIOUS DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCY WHAT LED UP TO THE DECLARATION “I know of no country in which there is so little true independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in America.” — Alexis de Tocqueville “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.” — Abraham Lincoln “We want a country which shall not brand the Declaration of Independence as a lie.” — Frederick Douglass BEFORE THE DECLARATION “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project After the Declaration of War HDT WHAT? INDEX AFTER THE DECLARATION OF WAR INDEPENDENCY GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE 1777 James Madison, Jr. lost his seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, seemingly because he was cheap about treating the voters to the usual whiskey. Never mind, later that year he was elected to the 8-member Council of State. The Reverend Ezra Stiles recorded in his diary1 after a meal with John Langdon, who had been a delegate from New Hampshire to the Continental Congress but had been replaced by William Whipple prior to the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, that he had “Dined in Company with Col. Langdon formerly of the Continental Congress. He says Mr. Jeffries of Virginia drafted the Declaration of Independency.” (The confusion about Thomas Jefferson’s name indicates that Langdon, as well as Stiles, is a hearsay source for this allegation.) If you had asked any of these people at that time, which was the more important document, this declaration or the Articles of Incorporation, there is little doubt but that the response you would have received would have 1. Dexter, Franklin Bowditch, ed., THE LITERARY DIARY OF EZRA STILES. NY, 1901, Volume II, page 155 VIEW VOLUME ONE VIEW VOLUME TWO VIEW VOLUME THREE HDT WHAT? INDEX AFTER THE DECLARATION OF WAR INDEPENDENCY GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE been “Why, the Articles of Incorporation, of course.” NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project After the Declaration of War HDT WHAT? INDEX AFTER THE DECLARATION OF WAR INDEPENDENCY GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE Near the hamlet of Thunderbolt outside Savannah, Georgia, alpha-male signer of the Declaration of Independence and Georgia slavemaster Button Gwinett met alpha-male revolutionary Brigadier General and Georgia slavemaster Lacklan McIntosh for a duel with pistols at 12 paces (approximately 60 feet). Both men were hit in the leg. Gwinett would die of gangrene and McIntosh would be charged with murder, but acquitted. Anglo-Irish aristocrats agreed upon a detailed “Clonmel Code” for their gentlemanly duels. Among this code’s 26 bullet points were: • Acceptable reasons for issuing a challenge included being accused of cheating at cards or horse races, being accused of having insulted a lady, and having been subjected to a blow of the fist. • Challenges might not be delivered during hours of darkness. • The challenger had the right to choose the weapon but the other party might decline the sword in favor of the pistol (pistols would be usual in Britain but swords would be popular in Europe through WWII). • Pistols had to be of a matched set loaded in the presence of the seconds. The owner of a set of pistols was to favor the other principal with first choice. • Misfires, snaps, and half-cocks amounted to shots, and it was prohibited to intentionally discharge a weapon into the ground or air. • Ranges were upon agreement and might vary between 4 and 20 yards. • It was the responsibility of the seconds to attempt to dissuade the principals, not only before a duel but after each firing. HDT WHAT? INDEX AFTER THE DECLARATION OF WAR INDEPENDENCY GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE January 3, Friday: People were trying to kill each other at Princeton in New Jersey, with the American irregulars taking nearly a couple of hundred of prisoners. Hey, looks like it’s gonna be reasonably safe to publish the names of the signatories to our Declaration of Independence! (Although the dates of the signatures ranged from August 2, 1776 to sometime in November of 1776, depending on when each delegate had gotten around to signing it, for safety’s sake the signed version of the document had been being held top secret.) January 18, Saturday: At this point, with the difficult military campaign of 1776 behind them and with victories obtained at Trenton and at Princeton, the members of the 2nd Continental Congress decided that it would be reasonably safe for them personally, to send out to the several states the authenticated copies of their Declaration of Independence as it had been signed by all the delegates in confirmation of their we-will-all- hang-together-or-separately unity. Initially these parchment copies “with the names of the members ... subscribing the same” had been held secret for their personal protection: They were not...given to throwing their fate into God’s hands needlessly. HDT WHAT? INDEX AFTER THE DECLARATION OF WAR INDEPENDENCY GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE The secret signatories had included, among others, for instance, as it turned out, Dr. Josiah Bartlett (1729- 1795) of Kingston, New Hampshire, the 2d to appear on the face of the prettified document: It was Mary Katherine Goddard who was authorized to issue this 1st printed copy of the Declaration document HDT WHAT? INDEX AFTER THE DECLARATION OF WAR INDEPENDENCY GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE which included the names of all its signers. CONTINENTAL CONGRESS Our national birthday, Friday the 4th of July: When the first 4th-of-July commemorative B’day bash was staged, in 1777, what was being celebrated on the 4th was what had happened on the 2nd. The celebration that year didn’t have anything much to do with any formal Declaration of Independence document that had been in process as of the 4th in the previous year, but rather, it had to do with the actual political act, the declaration (lower-case “d”) of our independence (lower-case “i”), which is to say, it had to do with the critical vote which had succeeded on July 2, 1776. The problem was simply that in this year 1777, nobody was yet thinking much in advance — and so it had taken a couple of days to organize the idea of having a celebration.2 In those early years you won’t find any suggestions being made, that the document was a particularly powerful one, or a fine piece of writing. When people quoted from the propaganda broadside, very commonly what they 2. Later on, of course, the forces of historical rectification took over, and some apologist or other swept the pieces of the story together creatively and invented a plausible reason why we have been celebrating our national B’day on the 4th — and that, kiddies, is how the Declaration of Independence, a political broadside, got substituted for our declaration of independence, an act of defiance. Although the Declaration of Independence was probably not signed on the evening of the 4th as Thomas Jefferson would insist it had been, having probably been already approved that morning and lain aside, with the signing of a handscripted parchment copy not beginning until a later timeframe, we have all decided to pretend that it was signed on the 4th because that pretense legitimates our habitually popping off with imitation gunfire and the rockets red glare as of the 4th. There are several good reasons why there have been no objections to this false story our Jeffersons were creating. First, according to Pauline Maier on page 184, his fabrication was at the time merely “entrusted to private letters” rather than being broadcast to people who might have challenged it, and second, he was doing this historical reconstruction only after in the case of many of the participants “death had sealed their lips.” HDT WHAT? INDEX AFTER THE DECLARATION OF WAR INDEPENDENCY GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE quoted were not words from the Committee of Five’s early draft, but words in the final paragraph that had been offered by the Continental Congress acting as a Committee of the Whole, words such as “absolved of all allegiance to the British Crown,” and “are and of right ought to be free and independent states.” The bulk of the document was easily dismissed at the time as yet another mean-spirited “recapitulation of injuries”: Considering how revered a position the Declaration of Independence later won in the hearts and minds of the American people ... disregard for it in the earliest years of the new nation verges on the incredible. It was as if that document had done its work in carrying news of Independence to the people, and neither needed nor deserved further consideration. The festivities included no praise of Thomas Jefferson. CONTINETAL CONGRESS One thing to bear in mind is that, just as there wasn’t just this one copy of this particular Declaration of Independence, also there wasn’t just one such Declaration of Independence. We presently know of at least ninety discrete, different examples of this peculiar art form, and if we had any reason to dig further, surely we could produce record of some more. For instance, according to Lemuel Shattuck’s HISTORY OF ... CONCORD, there was a Declaration of Independence from British colonial rule issued by the town government of Acton MA on June 14th, 1776. Where is it now? –Presumably in the Reserve Book Room of the Acton Public Library, or maybe hanging on the wall.