Male 1: In the last few videos we looked at the final version,
the Declaration of Independence as it was approved of.
Here it seems like we have a very not final
version of the Declaration.
Male 2: What's really amazing is they go through
five drafts at least of the Declaration.
It's wonderful to watch how each of the drafts
changes. You have this committee of real people.
Jefferson and Adams and Franklin are all
part of that committee. Jefferson is using
a lap desk, one of those little things he invented,
so he could stand up or sit down
and write this in a little room on Market Street.
Then he shows it to Adams and he shows it to Franklin,
very deferential, he said, "With your broadened
view of the world, Dr. Franklin, perhaps
you can make some suggestions."
Male 1: Franklin and Adams could be his father.
Male 2: Right, right. Jefferson's only 33.
Really, really young. You have Franklin and
Adams, Franklin's hitting 70s then, and very
much of a father figure. But you see real
people working together in these rooms on
Market Street in Philadelphia,
trying to craft this document.
Male 1: Yeah, yeah, and you see it here.
This looks like someone editing a paper.
Male 2: Which shows you how important it is to edit,
in a way. Those of us who are writers and editors,
we like the fact that you should really quibble
over each word. These are words that matter.
For example, you can see they put in a little
phrase right here, "separate and equal station."
In other words, America's going to become a
separate nation and an equal nation.
That word "separate and equal" actually goes
down in American history with some resonance
because it's used for a while to defend segregation.
Even when they get the words almost perfect,
they have a resonance that they have to be careful about.
Male 1: Do you think they realized when
they were writing it how important this
document was going to be?
Male 2: One of the amusing things is this was
not considered the most important committee
to be on in June and July of 1776.
In fact, John Adams thinks he's already written
the great document of American Revolution,
which is a document written in May asking the
various colonies to get rid of their Royal
governors because we were going to break away.
So Adams is quite willing to let Jefferson write
this draft because he thinks that this is not
the most important of all the documents.
Male 1: And on some level, to defend Adams a little bit,
that does seem like a big deal. This was in
May of 1776 he writes once you're getting rid of your
Royal governors you really are separating yourself.
Male 2: And they've already had a vote to be independent.
So this is just a document,
"let Facts be submitted to a candid world,"
"the opinions of mankind ... they should declare the causes."
This is really just their public relations document.
But, the reason it turns out to be so important
is it's so beautifully written, it becomes
the American creed. When they get together in
these rooms and edit it, suddenly they say,
"All men are created equal." This becomes not just
a propaganda document, but a mission statement
for who we are as a people.
Male 1: And to some degree the power of poetry.
They could have said these exact same things
in very terse and ...
Male 2: This is why it was so good Jefferson
wrote it because Franklin is a very good writer,
but he's a very simple, plain writer.
He writes Poor Richard's Almanac,
"A penny saved is a penny earned."
He's one of the first Americans not to write
in a very flowery way. John Adams' letters
are very beautiful, but they're kind of pompous
and orotund and self important.
You have a beautiful poet in Jefferson,
but as we're looking at this document on the screen,
even he benefits from some good edits.
Male 1: This is literally Jefferson's
handwriting we see here.
Male 2: This is Jefferson's handwriting on the
first draft. It's in the Library of Congress
if you want to go see it. The final document
is in the National Archives, about eight blocks away.
It's really wonderful to look at all of these
documents, especially, I mean what do you see
here where they edit the great second paragraph?
Male 1: "We hold these truths to be self evident."
You mentioned earlier that before it was
written, what, "sacred and ...
Male 2: Undeniable. Yeah. They're using the word
"sacred" for the truths when Jefferson writes the
first draft. To me, if you look at the backslashes,
the dark backslashes there, those are
Benjamin Franklin's backslashes I'm pretty sure
because he used a printer's pen and he was a
publisher, so he used that sort of backslashes to
cross things out. He writes the words "self evident."
One of the things is we historians never fully
know. Carl Becker, who was a great historian
of the Declaration, he's the one who said that
that was probably Franklin's edit. For me, I've spent
a lot of time in Ben Franklin's papers, which
were at Yale University Library. To me, it really
feels like his handwriting. So we assume that it's
Ben Franklin who takes out "sacred" because he
doesn't want "these truths" to be based on religion.
He wants "these truths" to be based on
rationality and reason.
Male 1: So once again it's not only the style
of the crossing out, this is in line with
Franklin's personality and beliefs.
Male 2: Franklin was somebody who had read
the great thinkers of the British and Scottish
Enlightenment. That means John Locke, David Hume.
David Hume was a person who came up with the
concept of "self evident truths." A self evident
truth would be that all bachelors aren't married,
as opposed to a more contingent truth like
Philadelphia is smaller than London.
Male 1: Kind of in math an axiom.
Male 2: An axiom, exactly. The fact that two
plus three is five, that's not something that
has to be further proved. These are somewhat
"self evident." That's what Hume does and
Franklin loves that. Franklin loves Isaac Newton, too,
because Franklin is a scientist. He believes that
there are laws of nature, of nature's God,
and that there are certain self evident truths,
so he doesn't want the word "sacred" in there
because that kind of seems like divine right
of kings. God's the one who made these truths.
He's saying, "no." As we've discussed that whole
paragraph, it's about rationality and reason
getting us to those truths.
Male 1: Right, but they also do talk about,
as we talked about previously,
there's a balance here because
they do talk about "created equal."
Male 2: Well, let's look. Tell us, what do you
see there? This edit, it says that they were
had certain inherent and inalienable rights. You see
John Adams, and we're pretty sure that's
John Adams' writing, not just because of his
writing, but because of the concept.
He was a little bit more religious than the
others on the committee. He says,
"They're endowed by their Creator." He puts in that phrase
"by their Creator" with certain inalienable rights.
It's a balance. It's a balance between
rationality and reason, which is self evident,
and divine providence, this notion that we're all
children of the same Creator and therefore we're all
endowed with certain inalienable rights.
Male 1: Yeah, this is really amazing. Just to
realize that they were human beings
kind of forging through this.
Male 2: Yeah, they're real human beings who were probably
arguing just like you. Jefferson gets really upset
at someone; not at Franklin and Adams, but other
people start editing it. Franklin tells them
this wonderful story about when he was a young
tradesman in Philadelphia and somebody had a sign
about selling hats and everybody tried to edit
the sign for them. Franklin said, "That's why I've
never been on a committee that's going to have
a lot of people editing what I write."
But, those of us who are editors, we kind of think
those edits actually improve the document.
Male 1: Yeah, it seemed like it turned out
a pretty good result.
Male 2: You know, you don't get much better than
"We hold these truths to be self evident."