Original subtitles

Previously on "Thomas Jefferson"...

Jefferson is born into a family

that has wealth and privilege.

His first memory is being held by a slave

on horseback on a pillow.

But despite the fact that he's a plantation prince,

he begins to develop a reputation

as a young man who will rail against British rule.

Taxes and tariffs are being imposed on the Americans

in ways that they had no say in.

It's taxation without representation.

And so the Sons of Liberty organized political opposition

to these unpopular British taxes.

So you see the Boston Tea Party.

To Jefferson, the Boston Tea Party

is an eruption of a long-slumbering resentment.

Is that really going to light a spark of revolution?

Absolutely.

In the 1760s and early 1770s,

Great Britain begins to levy hefty taxes

on American colonists

in order to finance some of their wars abroad.

The colonists resent these taxes and begin to push back.

The resistance culminates in the Boston Tea Party

in December, 1773.

After losing 46 tons of tea in Boston Harbor,

Britain begins to punish the colonists

for their insubordination.

When Great Britain began to realize that the Colonies

were becoming more and more disagreeable and unruly,

they say, well, we're going to do something about that.

It's interesting.

The British are the ones who changed the relationship

between the colonies because they imposed a series of taxes

that causes people on both sides of the Atlantic

to reevaluate that relationship

and think about who's in charge.

One of the methods of retaliation

were the Quartering Acts, which meant

that British troops would be quartered

inside your private home.

They say, "We're protecting you."

Well, what they're doing is seeing what's

going on inside that home.

Is that family communicating or talking with anyone else?

Does that family have particular arms?

The original Quartering Act from 1765

had expired in 1770.

But this updated revival, which passed in 1774,

is one of four punitive measures

known as the Intolerable Acts.

In September of that year, political leaders

across the colonies decide to gather in Philadelphia

to come up with a response.

This meeting becomes known

as the First Continental Congress.

The plan was to try and persuade Britain

to repeal obnoxious taxes.

At the time, Jefferson is just 31 years old.

As a junior member of the Virginia House of Burgesses,

he's not invited to attend the First Continental Congress,

but he's determined to make sure his beliefs are heard.

He writes a letter in 1774 called

"A Summary View of the Rights of British America."

And it's meant to be instructions for the Virginia

delegates to the First Continental Congress,

so it was not written for publication

in the first instance.

It's an outlay of everything that the British government

and everything that King George III

has kind of done wrong.

Jefferson writes,

"His Majesty has from time to time

"sent among us large bodies of armed forces

"not made up of the people here,

"nor raised by the authority of our laws.

"Did His Majesty possess such a right as this?

"It might swallow up all our other rights

whenever he should think proper."

He's saying, Parliament is asking us

to do things that, as British subjects,

we should not be asked to do.

We have been loyal, and kings have never imposed

this on their subjects.

Virginians, especially elite Virginians like Jefferson,

they take great pride in their status as British subjects.

They also believe they are great men.

They don't think they're the hoi polloi.

And so they see these as a direct affront to them.

It's a shot across the bow of Britain

and also a rallying cry for people at home.

"Kings are the servants,

"not the proprietors of the people.

"Open your breast, sire,

to liberal and expanded thought."

He says, "Let not the name of George III

be a blot in history."

That's a devastating critique.

He's suggesting that George III is the head

of state in Virginia as the king,

but Virginians should be basically allowed

to govern themselves, or Americans more generally

should be allowed to govern themselves.

He's arguing that Virginians and colonists in all

of the Colonies should have the same rights as anybody

living in the British Isles.

As the revolutionary cause is gaining some steam,

it needed ideas.

It needed an articulation of what the goal was.

And Jefferson finds himself

before the Declaration of Independence

articulating the case for independence.

But he's not ready yet to declare independence.

He's looking for a way in which Virginians

can retain a measure of sovereignty

while remaining loyal to Britain.

It's a kind of waystation that proves impossible,

but that's what he's going for in '74.

As the delegates prepare to head off to Philadelphia,

Jefferson comes down with dysentery.

Unable to deliver his fiery letter

to the House of Burgesses in person,

he sends it via his enslaved valet.

Jupiter Evans travels by himself

to Williamsburg to deliver this document about freedom

to the Speaker of the House of Burgesses.

Jupiter certainly knows the roads,

he knows the taverns,

he knows the inns along the way.

Jupiter Evans and Thomas Jefferson

have been traveling together throughout his entire life.

And so "A Summary View of the Rights of British America"

arrives to the House of Burgesses

via an enslaved person, and people in Williamsburg

are so impressed with it, they publish it before they

go to Philadelphia.

It's very, very well-written,

and it's a very persuasive account.

And it is being read by people who are politically aware,

people who are committed to this resistance movement

against Britain.

It is indeed the galvanizing of not only

the opinion of Virginia, but the opinions

of the 12 other colonies.

It is read on both sides of the Atlantic,

so it does make an impact.

But before 1774, not everybody was

on the side of the Patriots.

At this point, patriotism,

it wasn't a great majority movement because,

after all, the American Patriots, the revolutionaries,

were traitors.

When you think about it, why would anybody want

to leave the British Empire?

It was the greatest empire in the modern world.

What people want is peace and security.

You, as a good subject, owe your allegiance

to a monarch who protects you.

It's a kind of covenant, protection for allegiance.

And so some people are saying, we're still loyal to the king.

The First Continental Congress

intends to strengthen colonial rights while still remaining

loyal to the British Crown.

They passed a resolution to boycott British goods

unless the King repeals the Intolerable Acts.

King George responds by sending more British troops

across the Atlantic.

By the winter of 1775, things are coming to a head,

really, in New England.

In the wake of the Boston Tea Party and the boycotts,

the British were putting pressure

on the so-called Patriots in Massachusetts,

and the Patriots in Massachusetts

were stockpiling arms in the event

that there might be a war.

Jefferson and so many others realized,

we've had enough, and we're crossing the Rubicon.

All of these methods to subdue us

have resulted in a frenzy of retaliation.

It's just beginning to bubble over.

Jefferson lived the experience of being a colonist

in British North America who resented

and increasing imperial authority.

He had engaged with the great ideas

of natural rights and liberty.

And when these intersected,

he was in exactly the right place

at the right time.

As the conflict with Great Britain continues to escalate,

Jefferson hones his rhetoric and reputation.

The young lawyer uses his keen intellect and articulate prose

to stoke patriotic sentiment, awaiting his chance to become

the voice of a revolution.

In April, 1775, tensions between Great Britain

and the American Colonies reached a boiling point.

Thomas Gage, who was the Military Governor

of Massachusetts, abolished civilian government

in Massachusetts and replaced it with a military government.

He dispatched a British column to seize arms

that the would-be Patriots were stockpiling.

But Gage underestimates the colonists.

Thanks to an elaborate warning system on the evening

of April 18, 1775, riders like Paul Revere

are dispatched across Massachusetts

to warn the Patriots about the impending raid.

The British troops encountered a group

of Patriot militia in the nearby town of Lexington

early in the morning of April 19, 1775,

and shots were exchanged between the British

and the settlers at that point.

There was a prolonged fight throughout that day,

and there were considerable casualties,

particularly on the British side.

Lexington electrifies the Colonies because the idea

that British troops could indiscriminately open fire

on anyone played into an anxiety

that imperial authority was out of control.

This is a crucial turning point because the position

that Jefferson had taken back in 1774

in "A Summary View of the Rights of British America,"

the claim that, we're just British people

who happen to live on this side of the water,

no longer seemed tenable because the soldiers

of that king were killing American settlers.

And this started the War of Independence.

Meanwhile, far from the fighting in Massachusetts,

Jefferson immerses himself in the design

of his new home, Monticello.

Jefferson says that it's a particularly happy setting.

His marriage to Martha was a very, very close marriage.

They both love music.

She played the harpsichord, and he played the violin.

And they like to do duets.

And that was a big part of their lives.

There are books that they read together,

contemporary fiction, I suppose we would call it.

He was a father who was very, very devoted to his daughters.

And strangely enough, I mean, even though he said

that he never thought about women's education,

his daughters had a great education.

Jefferson was highly prescriptive.

He would tell them, read this many times a day,

do dance or some kind of physical activity

this many times a day.

He's involved in a way that is about making them

the best young, polite Virginia gentry women.

And then in May, 1775, delegates from all 13 colonies

are invited back to Philadelphia

to debate future relationships with Britain.

This time, the 32-year-old author of "A Summary View"

is offered a seat at the table.

This Congress is going to take

on the role and the actions of a government.

He knows that.

This is an important historic moment,

and he's going to be one of the men for that moment.

Philly is the metropolis of colonial America.

It's got thousands of people.

It's big by American standards,

by British American standards.

It's the entrepot of the Colonies

both for trade, but also for migration.

It's a bustling port city.

It will be the biggest city that he's ever been to

to that point in his life.

At the Second Continental Congress,

all the great leading lights of the Colonies advocating

for liberty are convening.

And remember, everything was done in secrecy

when that Continental Congress met

in the Statehouse in Philadelphia

because these were acts of treason.

The Congress went from having to organize

a kind of economic boycott of British goods

to trying to manage a war.

The people who get sent to the Continental Congress

are people who are locally prominent in their colonies,

but they're not necessarily widely known

beyond their colonies.

Really, the only one who has much of a reputation

beyond his colony is George Washington

because he achieved a reputation as a soldier.

But Jefferson, he's becoming famous.

He's becoming well-known

because of "A Summary View of the Rights

of British America."

Jefferson is the young talent

who's of the manor-born, who has the intellect

and the benefit of a formal education.

He is better than anybody talking about liberty

and pushing the Colonies towards independence.

But there was still more than a year

until he writes the Declaration of Independence,

but he's on the cusp of that.

It's this weird liminal moment when some people are saying,

"We're still loyal to the king,

even though we're trying to kill his soldiers."

It was a confusing period, but also a clarifying period

for a lot of people, including Jefferson.

For the first time, Jefferson meets the men

who will become his mentors, friends, and eventual rivals.

John Adams is one of the famous men

of Colonial America.

Adams knows Jefferson's reputation because he's told,

that's the guy who wrote "A Summary View."

Both of them pledge their admiration for each other

and say, you know, I hope we'll be friends.

Adams is big and bulbous and balding and outspoken

and funny.

And Jefferson is taller, thinner, younger, quieter.

Adams is a guy who does his best work

and his best thinking in the courtroom,

making the case.

But Jefferson doesn't like to speak in public,

and he doesn't like conflict.

He's very quiet in debate.

Jefferson is the synthesizer of different ideas.

He's passionate, he's romantic, he's more radical,

and he does his best work alone.

But they are both articulators of freedom.

Adams and Jefferson develop an enduring bond

and become allies despite their distinctly

different personalities.

The Founding Fathers toiled to decide

the fate of the colonies.

One of the largely forgotten but most important dates

in the American story is November 7, 1775,

when the Colonial Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore,

issues a proclamation calling on enslaved people

to take up arms against rebellious colonists,

and therefore, would gain their freedom.

Now, Lord Dunmore was not a great abolitionist.

Lord Dunmore was not bothered about slavery.

Lord Dunmore issued his proclamation

from the deck of a British warship

because his authority in Virginia

had completely collapsed.

So this is an act of desperation

to try and undermine the Patriot movement.

Many enslaved people choose to fight for the British,

but the Dunmore proclamation comes

with unforeseen consequences for the Crown.

In the end, it really served to alienate many people

in Virginia who were wavering between the Patriots

and the British

because many of the great Virginia planters,

and even smaller planters took up arms against the king

to protect slavery.

The threat of being killed by their own slaves is what says,

OK, I'm going to side with the American cause here.

And so patriotism was actually energized

and strengthened by Dunmore's proclamation.

Jefferson himself, as a lifelong slave-owner,

has a particularly visceral reaction

to Dunmore's declaration.

19 people leave his plantation

to fight for the British Army during this time.

Jefferson takes this as an affront.

He's utterly appalled, and he thinks that the British Army

is acting immorally because they are

using slaves as leverage here.

The ambient anxiety was that enslaved people

would take up arms against their masters.

Thomas Jefferson is one of those masters.

Many years later, he says, Blacks will never forgive

the things that we've done.

He feared retribution.

So the Dunmore proclamation takes a deep elemental fear

on the part of white colonists and marries it

with the deepening fear of imperial power.

So two of the things that they're most worried about

are suddenly allied, and it's an explosive moment.

On October 13, 1775,

the Second Continental Congress

authorizes funding for two ships

to intercept British forces, marking the birth

of what will eventually become the United States Navy.

Then, as 1776 begins, an incendiary document ignites

more revolutionary fervor.

In January of 1776, Thomas Paine,

who's a newly-arrived migrant from Britain,

published a pamphlet called "Common Sense."

It argues, it's common sense that we

should declare independence.

He says, don't worry about the future.

America will thrive as long as eating

is the custom in Europe because we can export food.

We'll be fine in the long-run.

It's the short-run, we have to declare independence

and win this war, and the publication of "Common Sense"

is a key part of mobilizing the public

in favor of independence.

But as the colonists moved closer to cutting ties

with Britain, 32-year-old Thomas Jefferson

is distracted.

His letters home have gone unanswered,

and he fears his wife Martha is ill.

They had lost their infant daughter Jane

in the fall of 1775, and in the winter of '76,

Martha is pregnant again.

Jefferson noted that pregnancy was not easy on her

and wishes he were in Virginia with her

because he has seen how frail she is.

Jefferson returns home to find Martha

has suffered a miscarriage.

He takes a few weeks to nurse her back to health.

He is ready to leave, but his mother, Jane Randolph,

passes away.

Talk about being in a time of turmoil.

He doesn't write a lot about that,

but he's dealing with a world

that is without one of the people

who's been there his entire life.

But in May of 1776, the Virginia House of Delegates

passes resolutions calling for independence.

And so back in Philadelphia, John Hancock appoints

a committee of five men

to draft a Declaration of American Independence.

And Jefferson, who is known for his writing,

goes back to Philadelphia to be on this committee.

So the famous Committee of Five,

we're talking famous Founding Fathers.

John Adams of Massachusetts,

Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania,

perhaps less famous, Robert Livingston of New York,

and Roger Sherman of Connecticut,

are also on this committee.

All of these men are older than Jefferson, all of them

are more experienced than Jefferson.

They're all accomplished writers, but some of them

are very accomplished and had published extensively.

So, they gather at Dr. Franklin's house

to decide who is going to take up that pen

and lead us in drafting this declaration.

Well, they all look to Franklin.

He's their mentor. He's their elder.

He's been to England.

Franklin, for a moment, thinks and finally answers,

"Gentlemen, as I grow older,

"I do not care to have anything else I may write receive

the scrutiny of a committee."

And it is Adams who says,

"Jefferson writes as well as anyone."

"Oh, no," Jefferson says, "No, you should write it."

"No," Adams says, "No, I cannot write it.

"I'm somewhat considered obnoxious and disliked.

They will not have this go through."

Everybody agrees that Jefferson is the best writer

of the group, and I mean, when you think

about Franklin and Adams,

that's a tremendous compliment to Jefferson.

This is all building up to, hey, you write pretty well.

Maybe we should give you a big job.

The glamorous work is giving the speeches, making the case,

getting your name in the papers.

The hard work is being delegated

to this younger Virginian who wields a great pen

and is known for that.

And so Jefferson gets drafted to be the draftsman.

Expectations are high.

Thomas Jefferson carries the weight of declaring

independence on his shoulders.

On June 11, 1776, Jefferson begins

writing what will become known

as the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson was definitely aware of the stakes.

They were challenging a system of government.

They were cutting themselves off from a great power.

That is a huge risk.

Anything could happen.

He has rented two rooms on the second floor

of a newly-built brick townhouse

on the southwest corner of 7th and High Street

in Philadelphia.

The front room is about, what, 15 feet by 10 feet,

a bedroom more or less half the size.

There's only candlelight.

It's a very intimate setting.

It's the ideal arena for a man

who is solitary in his nature, as many,

if not most, writers are.

You imagine this fire of the mind.

He sits in his Windsor chair searching for inspiration

because he has a great challenge.

How can you distill big ideas into something

clean and crisp and clear and direct

that can inspire people?

And because it had to accomplish

both a domestic purpose and a diplomatic purpose.

The Americans knew they couldn't take on

the British alone.

They needed the French, and they needed

the Spanish who might support a new country

against the United Kingdom.

And so this was an occasion for him

to make a broad pronouncement about the nature of mankind.

And that's why he went big instead of just saying,

"We're leaving."

Well, Jefferson takes this opportunity,

and boy does he make the most of it.

He writes a great document.

Even though he's borrowing from Enlightenment thinkers,

he's shaving words, he's tightening,

he's condensing, he's synthesizing.

It drove John Adams crazy that Jefferson

got so much credit for this.

Because there was nothing

in the Declaration of Independence

that had not been hackneyed

around revolutionary circles for years.

Absolutely true.

But somebody had to describe it,

somebody had to distill it, somebody had to frame it.

And that's the frame that we still pursue.

It's not easy to erase ink.

So he's crossing out that mistake,

he's writing the correction above or beneath.

At night, he transcribes all the mistakes

and makes it clear once again, and then the next morning,

he makes more mistakes.

What he comes out with, while not perfect,

it's all there.

On June 28, 1776, Jefferson takes his 1,500-word

first draft of the Declaration of Independence

back to the Committee of Five for review.

The first draft that's presented to the group

would be recognizable as the Declaration we know today.

He loses a climactic paragraph that's very grandiose

about people parting ways

and traveling down different roads.

The Committee of Five also removes

a controversial paragraph criticizing

slavery and holding Britain's king

responsible for its spread.

"He has waged a cruel war against human nature itself,

"violating its most sacred rights of life

"and liberty in the persons of a distant people

"who never offended him, captivating and carrying them

"into slavery in another hemisphere,

or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither."

What do we make of this allegation written

by a man who owned slaves, presented to a room

full of people, many of whom enslaved others,

that the king of Great Britain

was responsible for the transatlantic slave trade.

He's trying to basically wash his hands

of moral responsibility for slavery by blaming the king,

saying, in effect, that slavery was imposed

upon us here in the Colonies for your financial benefit.

What his actual thoughts were I just can't wrap my mind

around that he does propound this universal view

of what a person is, and what freedom is,

and what something even as subjective as happiness

looks like, but at the same time,

can't look at--won't look at the meagerest definition,

which is the definition of the word "all."

"All men, all people."

It's an interesting thing to think of him in that house

on Market Street with Robert Hemmings,

who is, at the time, 14 years old.

As Jefferson is talking about, all men are created equal,

he's there with his wife's enslaved half-brother.

People in Congress were smart enough to take that out,

realizing not only that some slaveholders

actually wanted slavery, but they didn't feel

it was a moral wrong.

And they knew the idea that the colonists did not

have any role to play in the slave trade

just wouldn't hold water.

The reasons why this passage is written and then removed

are some of the most contested in American history.

Look, on one hand, we can simply throw this out.

We can say, this is absurd.

This is a rhetorical excess.

Frankly, it's nonsense as history.

It's hypocrisy.

I have a lot of sympathy with this view.

However, I want to suggest a counterview.

The fact that the clause on the slave trade

mentions the rights of a distant people

that King George III has allegedly violated

suggests that the same natural rights

that white British colonists in America are fighting

to uphold and asserting that they have

in the Declaration of Independence

should indeed apply to those Africans

and descendants of those Africans

who they're enslaving.

Even if Jefferson does not realize,

that is what he's saying.

I wish it had stayed in because he

refers to them as people.

So there's no question, when people ask, well,

does he mean all men are created equal?

Does it mean Black people as well?

Well, this passage makes clear that he is talking

about people of African descent as people,

and they had been treated cruelly.

So I think it could have been useful later on

if it had remained there.

Had the Declaration of Independence

included dealing with slavery, what would the nation be?

Would it have been a different nation?

Part of the tragedy of American history

is that the trumpets are sounding,

you know, the troops are marching.

It feels as though we're entering this new epoch

in the history of the world.

And yet, it was so incomplete.

The fact that the core contradiction

of the idea that all men are created equal

and Jefferson being a slaveowner

and that original sin being baked in that cake

gnaws at us still.

But it ultimately doesn't reduce its power.

It remains something that we aspire to.

The Declaration of Independence is

the most concise articulation of the idea of America

and how we were different.

We're a nation based on an idea,

not a tribal identity, and that anyone who subscribes

to that idea, which is revolutionary,

can become a part of this country

and pursue your own American dream of life, liberty,

and the pursuit of happiness.

In the final week of June, 1776,

the Declaration of Independence sits

under careful review from the Committee of Five,

and then the whole Congress.

Its author, Thomas Jefferson, finds the process agonizing.

Like any good writer, he's a little resentful

about the changes.

He's so driven crazy by the rewriting and the criticism

that his knee is going up and down with anxiety.

And Franklin reaches over and puts his hand

on Jefferson's knee.

Franklin tries to calm the young man down by telling him

a story about a person who's been contracted to write

a sign for a hatmaker.

And the words keep getting whittled down

until there's just the sign and a picture of a hat on it.

Words are the essence, the DNA for a writer.

And when people edit you, when people question you,

they are, in many ways, questioning your very essence,

and Jefferson felt that keenly.

Here's someone who his whole life has

believed that his words could change

the direction of a society.

Here's someone who has been refining his definition

of the individual as outlined by his heroes

in order to create a society that stands on those things,

and someone who has already, in his previous writings,

been rehearsing this list of grievances against the throne.

So this is a culmination of everything

in his career so far.

Finally, after 21 days of editing and revisions,

the Congress approves the final draft

of the Declaration of Independence.

In the end, they keep most of Jefferson's draft intact.

He, for the rest of his days, believed his draft was better

and circulated it among friends and preserved his copy

so that his version would be available to posterity.

That opening paragraph, it's 52 words,

is close to perfect.

"When in the course of human events,

"it becomes necessary for one people

"to dissolve the political bands

"which have connected them with another,

"and to assume, among the powers of the Earth,

"the separate and equal station to which

the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them."

He writes that we are all endowed by our creator

with certain rights, including life, liberty,

and the pursuit of happiness.

He says, identity, the worth, the value of a person

is tied not to power or station or birth.

It's something that has to do with nature.

That's so powerful that it keeps reconstructing

the country down the line.

The wit of adding "happiness" always stuns me.

It's not a guarantee, but you're guaranteed

the pursuit of happiness, which implies freedom.

It implies joy.

It implies an individuated vision.

It's going to be a little bit different for everybody.

And it is, in part, to help mobilize people,

by appealing to their anxieties and emotions.

He makes Americans into victims.

Vulnerable, susceptible, their nerves shot.

It's a divorce decree.

The king is an abusive husband.

There's that long kind of bill of attainder

against George III, all those crimes

that he has allegedly committed.

"He has refused his assent to laws,

"the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

"He has dissolved representative houses

"repeatedly for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions

"on the rights of the people.

He has obstructed the administration of justice."

He has, he has, he has.

It's quite rhythmic.

"These united colonies are, and of right,

"ought to be free and independent states,

"that they are absolved from all allegiance

to the British Crown."

Those ideas continue to reverberate,

not just through the colonies and inspiring a revolution,

but centuries later, quoted by people around the world.

That's catching lightning in a quill.

In some ways, the Declaration overtakes

even the Constitution for emotional and spiritual

primacy in the country.

It's an address to a candid world.

It signals to other powers that the rebellious colonists

are not going to reconcile with Britain.

Our rights don't come because we're

British subjects anymore.

Our rights, they are natural rights.

These are universal rights.

We are here.

We are the United States of America,

and we're not going anywhere.

Despite its ironies and imperfections,

the Declaration of Independence remains

one of the most influential documents in human history.

It has enshrined its author indelibly into the fabric

of the American story.

Jefferson's words arguably are

the most powerful words ever originally

rendered in English.

And it's changed an immense number of lives

around the world.

People don't think of Jefferson

as a global figure, but he is.

We see many, many countries issuing declarations

of independence, some of which use the very language

of the Declaration

because Jefferson believed there would be

a global movement for liberty.

So it's the Declaration of American Independence,

not to celebrate American exceptionalism, actually,

on the contrary, to say it's the first of these,

but there are going to be more.

And there would be more.

On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress

decides to officially declare independence from England.

They're meeting in secrecy.

So the doors are shut and locked

and the shutters drawn.

On both sides of the statehouse,

there are horse stables.

That heat must have been so incredibly heavy,

and the flies are all over the place,

but also, they were smoking tobacco.

That was considered one of the methods to ward away flies.

After two more days of edits,

on the morning of July 4, 1776,

56 of the 60 delegates approved the final text

of the Declaration of Independence,

establishing the United States as an independent nation.

Adams famously predicted

that July 2nd was the important day

because it was the day that Congress

voted for independence.

He said, "Americans would always

"remember July 2nd as their day of jubilee

and celebrate with fireworks and banquets and so on."

Well, Adams got that wrong.

We celebrate on the 4th of July.

But he was right about the big thing, which is, OK,

this is something we're going to celebrate.

This is our national founding.

This is the thing, as he saw it,

that binds us all together regardless

of our political differences.

On July 4, 1776, Jefferson and Adams take the Declaration

to John Dunlap, a printer down the street,

to be copied and distributed.

And then they wait.

That evening, Dunlap prints up nearly 300 broadsides.

The majority were handed out to the people

on the sidewalks in Philadelphia.

And then you have it appearing front page news that next day.

And on the 8th of July, in the courtyard of the statehouse

in Philadelphia, a colonel of Pennsylvania militia

stands up and reads the Declaration formally

for the first time to nearly 4,000 individuals.

They tossed their hats up in the air.

The bells begin to toll, particularly that which

we refer to as the Liberty Bell at Independence Hall.

And July the 9th, General Washington orders

the Declaration of American Independence

to be read before his troops.

But as celebration settled, the nascent county

faces a harsh reality.

Signing the Declaration was signing

your own death warrant.

They were subjects of King George III,

and now they were rebels.

Now the hard work begins.

They need to win the war, an upstart group of rebels

from a small collection of colonies

an ocean away from the greatest empire

the world has seen since Rome.

All the smart money's against them.

And this is the beginning of hard times.

With a war to win, a debt to cover,

and a new government to build, the new nation struggles.

Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers

face a daunting task with the fate

of the young republic at stake.