What did the world really think about the Declaration of Independence?

For Americans today, it's a treasure. Scripture. The thing that made us. It wasn't always that way, though. This is the story of the Declaration of Independence before it was enshrined in our collective national consciousness. Back when it was a news headline and we had no control what others thought of it. Our guest is Emily Sneff, author of When the Declaration of Independence was News. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hannah McCarthy?

  This episode is part of our exploration of America and its 250th year as a nation. Why are we the way we are? What really made us? These are the stories of the choices, accidents, and discoveries that set us up to be the country we are today. The roots of the patriotism, nationalism, exceptionalism, and discontent that have driven the United States forward or held it back. How have we defined ourselves over two and a half centuries? And what does that mean for the future of this country? This is America at 250.

• 0:45Hannah McCarthy?

  This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

• 0:48Nick Capodice?

  I'm Nick Capodice.

• 0:49Hannah McCarthy?

  Nick, imagine you need to drop some major news. The biggest thing you have ever told the world. But the minute it gets into other people's hands, you have no control over it. They're going to take it and run with it, and they're going to decide what it means, and they're going to play it up, or they're going to use it to tear you down.

• 1:14Nick Capodice?

  See, this is why I am neither a politician nor a celebrity, Hannah, because that sounds terrifying. And that is what always, always happens. It's like less of a "imagine this" and more of a "duh, vulnerability at your own risk" kind of thing. The internet is a hall of funhouse mirrors.

• 1:36Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, well, 18th century news consumers, they're just like us.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  In terms of misinformation, when the Declaration first arrives in London, before it's printed in London newspapers, like the first week of August, when the news is there that the Declaration has arrived, it's not called a Declaration of Independence, it's called a Declaration of War.

• 1:58Speaker 03

  Colonists. They're now called the United States. We will now all hang together, or most assuredly, we will all hang separately.

• 2:08Speaker 04

  Why do you refer to King George as a tyrant? Because he is a tyrant.

• 2:19Speaker 05

  This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai/spotify.

• 2:48Hannah McCarthy?

  This is Emily Sneff.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  I'm an early American historian, consulting curator and author of When the Declaration of Independence Was News.

• 2:57Hannah McCarthy?

  Emily just published a book that takes us into the media and social maelstrom before and after the release of the Declaration of Independence, before it became a gleaming relic signed by America's heroes, before it had a legacy of any kind. Like, when Londoners got their hands on it and were like, oh, no, these little brats are gonna get what's coming.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  And the Continental Congress did not think of this as a declaration of war. They had been at war for 15 months. And, you know, the king had declared them to be in rebellion. A declaration of war also means something within the law of nations. Like, if you declare war, you're supposed to make them aware that you have declared war against them. So just that phrase and that sort of titling has all these implications that I think impact how the text was then received when it was printed in the London press.

• 3:52Nick Capodice?

  That would not be great. That's some sneaky business.

• 3:55Hannah McCarthy?

  Especially when you decide to let the cat out of the bag before you actually have a solid plan for, you know, being your own country at war with the most powerful military on planet Earth.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  You know, right up until July 1776, independence was not a foregone conclusion. There was still... Quite a lot of disagreement about whether and when independence should happen. Within the Continental Congress, there are delegates who are remembered as being against independence, but I think they're actually against independence first because independence was intertwined with confederation and foreign treaties. So the idea of tearing down something without a substitute in its place, like, you know, not having any connection formalized among the colonies and not having an ally like France, you know, on board, was really challenging for a lot of people at the center of the

• 4:54Speaker 02

  story of the Declaration, but also more broadly.

• 5:00Nick Capodice?

  You know, when Emily puts it like that, it actually makes the doubters seem pretty reasonable.

• 5:06Hannah McCarthy?

  Right? You would probably want to have some solid diplomacy and PR in the works before you assert yourself as a brand-new nation breaking off from Great Britain.

• 5:16Nick Capodice?

  Actually, that's a good point. Like, when we did this, did everyone, okay, maybe not Great Britain, but did everyone else say, "There they are, the United States of America"?

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Not as soon as the Continental Congress would have hoped. One of the chapters in my book is about Silas Dean, who was Congress's agent in France. And Silas Dean has a horrible time, the fall of 1776, because the Declaration of Independence is spreading all around him in the popular press in Europe, and he has yet to receive a copy from the Continental Congress. He doesn't know that they tried to send one to him. It was thrown overboard to prevent being intercepted by the British. They sent another one, but much later. So he ultimately doesn't get the Declaration from them directly until November, by which point it had become an old story, in his words.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  And so this issue of like the sort of diplomatic shortcomings in communication for the Continental Congress means that even though the Declaration uses the language of free and independent states... In European newspapers and in all of the diplomatic correspondence, no one is calling the colonies the United States of America. They're still the colonies for quite some time. And then they're slowly in France and then in the Dutch Republic. And among other folks, there's increased usage of states rather than colonies. But it's much more delayed than I think the Continental Congress probably assumed

• 6:52Speaker 02

  as soon as the declarations out there, we have a new name in the world. We will be the United States of America, and that is not what happens.

• 7:03Hannah McCarthy?

  Silas Dean, by the way, the one who is in France, trying to make sure we have France on our side. When he finally does get a copy of the Declaration, he's like, come on, guys. Paper? This is Bush league.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  And Silas Dean says this to them, that the courts of Europe demand more formality. So when he gets a paper copy of the Declaration, he's thinking, you know, it could have been on parchment, it could have had a seal, it could have had some gold thrown on it. Like, we have to stand up against the courts of Europe.

• 7:35Hannah McCarthy?

  Meanwhile, even in the United States, Congress's message did not look the same everywhere it appeared in print. The Declaration was published in newspapers with typos, sometimes with words missing, different formatting, different fonts. And this is a nation, even at this point, of many languages. So it's printed in translation as well, which is art as well as science. Translation can be, and often is, interpretation. Oh, and Nick, have you ever thought about the fact that when it was first printed, barely anybody, and certainly not the public, knew who was going to sign the Declaration of Independence?

• 8:11Nick Capodice?

  What do you mean, who was going to sign it? The Declaration is the whole reason we call a signature a John Hancock.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  We tend to, in the history of the Declaration of Independence, prioritize the signing, that the signers are the most important people, and the signing is the most important act. Second to that would be the drafting and the drafters, and of course, Thomas Jefferson as principal author. And all of that is informed by the fact that the parchment copy of the Declaration is on public view and is a, you know, Regularly used visual, you know, that visual is very identifiable for people. And we know who the drafters were and we know what Thomas Jefferson's rough draft looked like. None of that existed in July 1776.

• 9:01Hannah McCarthy?

  The Dunlap Broadside, the first printing of the Declaration for Public Distribution. It only has two names on it. And yes, one of those names is John Hancock, but it wasn't John Hancock's John Hancock. It was not his signature. It just says in typeface, John Hancock, President, and Charles Thompson, Secretary. The signing did not start until August 2 of 1776.

• 9:27Nick Capodice?

  Right, I actually knew that about the signing. I've told people that. It's just when I think about the Declaration, I think about all of those signatures. I think about that piece of parchment on display at the National Archives.

• 9:41Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, and that is the famous, classic image that comes to mind for a lot of people. But in July of 1776, the public did not see that, which to me, reveals the evolution of the Declaration from news bulletin to precious document.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  And that's an important part of its story because the signed parchment, it doesn't reflect the men who voted for independence itself on July 2, or who voted for the Declaration on July 4, or even the men who were in the Continental Congress on August 2 when signing began. It's an amalgamation of people who were there, but also people who came back after having been in their home colonies, and people who joined the Continental Congress after the Declaration of Independence.

• 10:30Hannah McCarthy?

  And going back to what London chose to do with it.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  The most common manipulation of the Declaration in London newspapers was simply censoring the words for king, tyrant, you know, just very light censorship, just, you know, the whole document is about the king. You can't really get away from it, but at least eliminating those words. One particular newspaper in London, the St. James's Chronicle, actually changed all of the pronouns in the list of grievances to "it."

• 11:06Speaker 02

  So instead of "he has," the declaration read "it has." "Now, whether it was Parliament or the British government at large, or all of Great Britain, very unclear. The process to change all those pronouns would have been very convoluted and time-consuming. So it took some real effort on their part. But that was the strategy for sort of avoiding any implications of sedition or printing something against the king by literally changing the text and actually giving us something that might resemble what the Continental Congress could have done by actually blaming Parliament and the British government rather than the king personally."

• 11:47Nick Capodice?

  Hang on. Blaming the king was hugely important to the declaration. The grievances, Hannah, the grievances are like the whole thing.

• 11:56Hannah McCarthy?

  And not something most British newspapers were interested in risking the printing of.

• 12:00Nick Capodice?

  So, British audiences are reading a declaration of war that avoids mention of the king? This is a total misrepresentation of the message.

• 12:12Hannah McCarthy?

  Which is not to say, Nick, that the message totally failed to resonate outside of the US.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Whereas the rest of British newspapers, by and large, printers are exhorting the text or printing it alongside misinformation or just kind of presenting a story that is very far from what the Continental Congress would have intended for an international audience. In Ireland, that's still all happening. They're copying from London newspapers. But we see more examples of commentary that is positive, or at least framed in the sense of "the king forced them to this point." And I think that's interesting in terms of the long fight in Ireland for rights that runs sort of parallel to the 13 colonies.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  So that's where you really see at least hope that independence might succeed. Whereas in the rest of Europe, it's much more sort of assuming that the British will win and probably soon, based on how things are going for the Continental Army.

• 13:20Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, things were not going great at this point. What were other countries thinking in terms of the war itself, by the way? Because if Europe isn't looking at us as the states, at least not at first, does this mean that people think we're going to lose this thing?

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Among the courts of Europe, there's not a ton of optimism, at least in 1776. There's still a sort of belittling of this rebellion and not treating it as a, you know, new sovereign nation making its appearance on the world stage.

• 13:54Hannah McCarthy?

  And Nick, while we don't necessarily have to call it a project of fits and starts, the Declaration of Independence was not even the first, well, declaration of independence that Europe had seen from the colonies.

• 14:10Nick Capodice?

  Say what now?

• 14:11Hannah McCarthy?

  I'm going to get to that after a quick break.

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• 15:29Nick Capodice?

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• 18:16Nick Capodice?

  We're back. We're talking about the Declaration of Independence, back when it was a message from a brand-new country that may or may not have stood a fighting chance. Hannah, before the break, you said that the Declaration was not even the first Declaration? What do you mean?

• 18:33Speaker 02

  There's documents and sort of, you know, ideas that are spreading that people are like, oh, is this it? Is this the Declaration? Do we have to wait? Like, when's it gonna happen? Internationally, certainly, there was anticipation that a Declaration of Independence was coming.

• 18:48Hannah McCarthy?

  Nick, what do you know about the May 15th resolution?

• 18:52Nick Capodice?

  Uh, not much.

• 18:55Hannah McCarthy?

  So, in early May, John Dunlap, John Dunlap of the Dunlap Broadside, published news of German mercenaries headed to join the fighting in North America. And just a little reminder that we were already in armed conflict with Great Britain at this point, though at this stage, of course, we are still technically a part of Great Britain.

• 19:16Nick Capodice?

  Hold on, German mercenaries? Are these the Hessians?

• 19:20Hannah McCarthy?

  They are. King George III had a German prince cousin from Hesse-Kassel who decided to send him a lot of backup. Anyway, Dunlap informs his readers that George is sending tens of thousands of mercenary soldiers.

• 19:37Hannah McCarthy?

  Now, this is not much more than a rumor at this point, but it would turn out to be true. And this is after, by the way, the king has rejected the colonists' olive branch petition and declared them to be in open rebellion. This is after Thomas Paine's Common Sense had been published.

• 19:53Nick Capodice?

  All right, I'm with you here. Hessians at the door, King George is letting us down, Paine's got everyone riled up, et cetera, et cetera.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Then, in May of 1776, the Continental Congress issues a resolution calling for new representative governments in each of the colonies. And that resolution, the preamble for that, is the first time that the Congress blames the king for what the colonists are dealing with. And that resolution is perceived by some people in the Continental Congress and outside of Independence Hall as a declaration of independence. John Adams remembers it was, you know, all but a formal declaration of independence.

• 20:34Nick Capodice?

  Why did I not know about this? John Adams himself saw it as a declaration of independence?

• 20:44Hannah McCarthy?

  Well, he knew it wasn't enough. As Emily explains in her book, only 12 of the 13 colonies were actually represented when the resolution was voted on. Also, Adams' preamble calls us the colonies.

• 20:57Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, but all this to do about calling out King George in the Declaration of Independence, and we had already kind of done it?

• 21:05Hannah McCarthy?

  Well, to me, looking at how American independence was rolled out, it sometimes feels closer to a soft launch than it does a single, isolated, carefully coordinated, political PR move. Independence didn't happen once and in one place. We were gesturing to it, testing its waters, watching to see what Great Britain was gonna do. I mean, the fact that George III had effectively rejected us, that was, to some people, his declaring us independent.

• 21:38Nick Capodice?

  Even so, Hannah, the capital D, capital I, Declaration of Independence was a huge deal. I mean, didn't people get super excited? Take to the streets?

• 21:50Hannah McCarthy?

  Oh, yeah. Plenty of people did. Not everybody, though.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  The stories that get reported are, of course, all celebratory about the Declaration of Independence. Public readings with hundreds and thousands of people shouting huzzah, cannons firing, tearing down the symbols of the king. You know, that's what gets in the newspapers. We see less of the perspective of people who are not so pleased about independence, but they certainly were out there. One of my favorite stories is from a teenaged girl on the island of Nantucket. Her name was Kezia Coffin. And when someone brings the Declaration from Cape Cod over to Nantucket, she reads it and she says it's horrible. And

• 22:35Speaker 02

  she wishes that the Continental Congress and all of their supporters had been hung 50 feet in the air before they had been allowed to issue this document. You know, she's a teenager and she understands the political stakes of this moment.

• 22:50Hannah McCarthy?

  And, you know, okay, sure, that is a loyalist perspective. But as Emily told me, it wasn't always as simple as pro-independence or pro-monarchy.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  There's this political spectrum that is much more complex than loyalist patriot. There are a lot of people, and I think this is a very relatable position, who just want to continue living their lives as they had been. And so any change, whether it's independence or reconciliation with Great Britain, they're thinking about, like, what does that impact my family, my farm, my business, you know, commerce, my church?

• 23:27Hannah McCarthy?

  Which is, I think, something that plenty of American voters can relate to today. When it boils down to it, are you making your political choices based on what's good for everybody? Are you making decisions based upon sweeping ideals? Or are you thinking about how the results are going to affect you and your family?

• 23:50Speaker 02

  That's where their minds are. They're not thinking so much in terms of, you know, super radical support for independence or, you know, diehard support for the king. And I think that that, you know, perspective is something in the lived experience of the Revolutionary War that we tend to lose sight of. Being in the Philadelphia area, a lot of people were able to remain sort of ambivalent until the war comes here. And then they're forced to make decisions about whether or not to support one side or the other, whether to associate, to be part of the actual fight for independence or not. But up until that point, they really just kind of want to hang back and not, you know, claim support either way.

• 24:39Nick Capodice?

  I mean, I guess that's smart, isn't it? Hedging your bets a little bit. And as you've said, Hannah, we are fighting with the most powerful empire on planet Earth. Independence was not a guarantee just because we had declared that we have it.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  And there are also people who think independence might be temporary and not permanent. You know, the Continental Army is not looking so great in the summer of 1776. And so there are people, you know, in particular, I have a chapter in the book about Anglican ministers who swore an oath at their ordination to the authority of King George III, not only as a political ruler, but as the head of the Church of England. They're not necessarily willing to go against that oath for something that might just be a temporary political change. So when the Book of Common Prayer is altered and prayers for the king are changed to prayers for the Continental Congress or the provincial governments, some of those ministers feel

• 25:39Speaker 02

  obliged to shut their churches or, you know, leave their congregations rather than change for what might be a momentary blip in the otherwise, you know, long history of the British Empire.

• 25:54Nick Capodice?

  That's really a sobering idea. I mean, I say that, of course, as an American, as a citizen of the country that won. But that this all could have been a blip. And you don't want to be on the wrong side of that blip.

• 26:08Hannah McCarthy?

  And it is only because it was not a blip, only because we did win, that the Declaration of Independence is this sacred American text. Because even those who celebrated it in 1776 had no idea whether it would stick. And they had other things to worry about.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  It's just different sort of understandings of the legitimacy of this document. And it's something that, you know, 250 years later, it's, you know, scripture, right? American scripture, that's what Pauline May calls it. It is this treasured document. And yet, in 1776, there's a lot of questions about how legitimate it was, what it really meant. And even like, you know, on this side of the Atlantic, the Continental Army, you know, hears the Declaration read aloud at different locations. And one soldier at Fort Tecuhonteroga said, "The Declaration made a little buzz and was soon forgotten." You know, they had to move on to the next thing. So there's this like ephemeral nature to the Declaration that is very unsettling for

• 27:13Speaker 02

  especially Americans today. But that's my favorite thing about studying it.

• 27:19Nick Capodice?

  Hannah, when did the Declaration of Independence become, as Emily puts it, scripture?

• 27:25Speaker 02

  You know, the Fourth of July becomes a day, a day of celebration, the following year, 1777. But it's kind of separate from the Declaration. The Declaration as a text and copies of the Declaration as archival treasure, that takes some time. And really, things solidify in the 1790s when the Declaration becomes politicized. So as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams are competing politically, the Declaration is honestly weaponized by the Democratic-Republicans to talk about Thomas Jefferson as the author of independence, even though John Adams was there too.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  And it kind of baffles Adams that Jefferson has this apotheosis around the Declaration when Adams was part of the process. And so I think that politicization of the Declaration then makes it more sacred and more valuable. And you start to see more conversations about which was better, the draft, which no one knew what was in the draft at that point, or the final version. The draft must have been better because Thomas Jefferson wrote it. You know, there's all of this sort of dialogue that makes the Declaration seem more exceptional.

• 28:40Nick Capodice?

  Wait, what did Jefferson do here? He weaponizes the Declaration?

• 28:45Hannah McCarthy?

  So he's campaigning against Adams for the presidency. Suffice it to say, that campaign was nasty. Jefferson basically said, "Listen, I stand for liberty. Remember this thing I wrote? I stand for states' rights. This Adams guy wants a strong central government, so he's essentially one crown short of a monarchist."

• 29:05Nick Capodice?

  Adams, the guy who wrote that May preamble, the guy who repeatedly called for independence. By the way, is this the campaign where Jefferson also called Adams a hermaphrodite?

• 29:15Hannah McCarthy?

  No, that was four years later. This is the campaign where Jefferson called Adams overweight. He called him "his rotundity." But the point is, Jefferson is calling up these principles of freedom and reminding everyone that he was the one who authored those principles.

• 29:32Nick Capodice?

  But Hannah, Adams is the one who convinced Jefferson to write the Declaration.

• 29:37Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah, this particular barb just feels really mean on Jefferson's part. But it does get people thinking and talking about that document from a few years ago. It reinforces the Declaration as this founding essential text. And perhaps it is in part this document that made and makes us the United States.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  So I would say in the 1790s and through Jefferson's presidency is when the Declaration sort of takes its place on a pedestal. And then by the 1820s, that's when John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State orders the engraving of the signed copy to be made. But we also, before that, see commemorative copies starting to be printed so people can have the Declaration on view in their own house. That happens in the 1810s, 1820s. And then, of course, 1826 with the first major anniversary of the Declaration. And although no one celebrating on that day knew it, the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, all of those events kind of culminate in the Declaration having this

• 30:43Speaker 02

  really sacred place in our nation's history.

• 30:47Nick Capodice?

  Died on the same day, those two.

• 30:49Hannah McCarthy?

  Died on July 4th, those two, which, come on. And yet, by that point, after decades of reminders from the people who worked on it and the politicians who came after them, the Declaration of Independence itself had gone from being something, as Emily puts it, ephemeral, to this precious, physical object. Speaking of Jefferson and Adams, by the way, did you ever read the letters they wrote after they became friends again?

• 31:17Nick Capodice?

  I have not, but I have a sneaking suspicion you have, Hannah.

• 31:20Hannah McCarthy?

  Yep, sure have. So they're talking again, and they're writing letters about politics and philosophy and aging. And in the same letter where he talks about becoming a great-grandfather, Jefferson says, quote, "A letter from you calls up recollections very dear to my mind. It carries me back to the times when, beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his rights of self-government. Laboring always at the same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us, and yet passing harmless under our bark, we knew not how.

• 32:00Hannah McCarthy?

  We rode through the storm with heart and hand and made a happy port." And I love this quote, Nick, because Jefferson is saying, hey, remember when we were just scrappy revolutionaries and somehow it worked?

• 32:16Nick Capodice?

  Actually, I really love that. I really love that idea.

• 32:19Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah.

• 32:21Nick Capodice?

  Back before we were the heroes of liberty and the original leaders of the free world, and we had no idea what was going to happen, just riding around on a skiff made of paper.

• 32:32Hannah McCarthy?

  Yeah. And Adams writes back that he is as anxious about the Union today as he was about independence back then.

• 32:42Nick Capodice?

  Wow. So the United States is still not a foregone conclusion to him.

• 32:48Hannah McCarthy?

  It is not. Adams knows that the piece of paper that said we were independent is not, in fact, what made us independent. And that calling ourselves the United States of America is not what makes us the United States of America. The Declaration was not a guarantee, nor was the country it named. Not for Adams then, and not for us now. What makes it a treasure, what makes it scripture, is the work of fellow laborers in the same cause.

• 33:38Hannah McCarthy?

  This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Capodice. Marina Hanke is our producer, Dana Cataldo is our digital producer, and Rebecca Lavoy is our executive producer. Music in this episode comes from Epidemic Sound. This is just one of many episodes we have made about the Declaration of Independence. You can check the rest out at civics101podcast.org. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

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• 35:23Speaker 10

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• 35:42Speaker 07

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