suspicious that in fact la deux was nervous that he was about to be uncovered and deliberately set her up to be the spy who could be convicted and blamed and executed in hopes that they one get onto what he was doing:

>> so it's such a pleasure to be at l politics and prose, a thriving independent, which is more or less an oxymoron in these times, but here we are and it's happening and it's such a treat. i'm going to start by taking you through a journey that i've tikkanen to the 18th century. people say i sort of entered the 18th century about 15, 16 years ago at the age of 50 and people say in the revolutionary community that once you enter the 18th -- late 18t 18th century, you pretty much never fully return and much to my wife marie's chaff greg, that has -- ghagrin, that has happened to me too. i started working on curriculum for the schools and i wasn'ted to bring to the fore common experiences of -- life experiences of the common people, and poor farmers, the fighting men and boys, women, african-americans, native americans, and i compiled the

great wealth of scholarly literature into a form that i think was accessible to the general public and that's what the history of the american revolution was, but when i was researching that, i came across peculiar reference, people occasionally would refer to let's say rural unrest in massachusetts, a bit of rural unrest, so i said, well, that sounds kind of interesting, what was actually that unrest. very secondary resources had anything about it and that sent me back to the archives and what i found and i'm going to find some of the rural unrest. what happened is in the wake of the tea party, boston tea party, we know a lot about the boston before that and supposedly everybody helped boston and somehow that act of generosity, everybody helping boston, led to a revolution. and that's kind of the official story and i'm not quite sure of

the lastibility of that story. there was another act that parliament passed which was much more harsh. it actually revoked the 1691 charter or the constitution of massachusetts, new england town meetings, in place for more than a century, outlawed. you could meet once a year, and that one time all agenda items had to be approved by the governor, the royal governor. your representatives had absolutely no power. the people who they used to appoints were all appointed by the king. basically, it was total political disenfranchisement. now the revoke of that constitution triggered the "rural unrest." here's what happened, in every local county seat, she called them shire towns in 1774, as soon as the local government was slated to convene, that is the local government upped british authority, the people would gather and they would actually, in the town of worcester, for instance, the people said ok, we're not going to let this

government happen. this -- because as soon as they meet under the new government, that's kind of the thing, this new act kind of sanctions it, so in the town of worcester, there's only 300 actual citizens, and they send out word through the committees of correspondence throughout the whole county and on the appointed day, 4,622 militiamen, from actually in the militia companies from 37 townships throughout worcester county, all the way from new hampshire to the connecticut border, this represents fully half the adult male population of worcester county at the time. convenes in one time, in one place, ride willing up to 60 miles each, to get there and unseat british authority. and how they have do it is this. there's 25 court-appointed officials and the patriots take over the courthouse, and the 25 officials are kind of forced to huddle in daniel hayward's

tavern halfway down main street and what's they work out the details, what they do is force each one of these, one at a time, to come out of the tavern, hat in hand, and start walking the gauntlet between these militia men who are all lined up in their companies and reciting their resignation, first one for this group, there's no microphone there, so then they recite it again, and each one of them had to do this hover 30 times and not content with the officials, they gathered all the torys in town, that was the end of british authority in worcester. this happening every shiretown in massachusetts. in plymouth, the people got so pumped up after this -- after doing a similar event, they went down to plymouth rock and said, we could move this thing, and they all kind of gather around and like, you know, lifted and were going to bring it up to the courthouse. they probably had the brute strength, but couldn't get the logistics out, so my rock is

where it is, but that gives you an idea of the power here and in the wake of this, in the town of worcester, they instruct their representative to the new provincial congress, which is taking the place of the old assembly, this by the way is before lexington concord, so they instruct him to say, it is time to form a new government as from the ashes of the phoenix of the old. in other words, independence. and no matter what our enemies might say about it, so they were ready to take the big step. this is to the day, 21 months before the congressional declaration of independence. ok. that's the short version. the longer version is in my second book, the first american revolution. but now, that obviously, you know, people are kind of like, what's going on, the first question everybody is thinking, what, how come i don't know this? this was certainly my question. how can you tell the story of the revolution without not only -- not just not featuring, but not even mentioning the actual overthrow of political

and military authority. it makes absolutely no sense. and so i'm wondering, like, what happened to that story. who decides these stories that have kind of filtered down, who is the gatekeeper here? you know, because we have this grand wealth of history, of the revolutionary time and generation after generation after generation has kind of like narrowed it down until we get to seven people and that's it, usual crowd, the founders and that's kind of what we have. so i asked that and i say who's the gatekeeper and that led to my third book "founding myths" and i take 13 of the myths, the stories we know, valley forge, paul revere's ride and i say when did this story really develop in the way that we hear it and it turned out in all cases, they developed during the 19th century, not at the time. they were added after. and here's the danger of it. let's take paul revere's ride.

the lone rider from boston comes and wake up the sleepy eyed farmers and then they kind of like, they're ok, they're walking and then they go with their shotguns and take pot shots at the british and that's the beginning of the war. ok, the sleepy eyed farmers. now, i've just told you about who these farmers were and they were not that sleepy eyed. they did not need a one man from boston to awake them and as a matter of fact, the whole paul revere ride, the story we know, was invented by long fellow in 1861. which is, you know, 86 years avenue of the fact beings and he's trying to rouse the people in the beginning of the civil war, but to do so, he wants to tell a children's story and as a matter of fact, a lot of the early histories of the revolution are all about telling children's stories to give models that the people can then -- that the children can then emulate, so these stories got reduced, these grand wealth of information to single, individual tales of heroism, as

in palm revere. of course, paul revere, he never waited for the signal lanterns, that was another fellow who waited and another fellow waited. that other fellow was never heard of again. one by land, two by sea, that threat of the story in actual fact leads nowhere, you know, paul revere, by the time he started in on his ride, the people in lexington had already been alerted, they were already gathered at the tavern there, so you know, the story -- and it's not that paul revere wasn't important. he was one of many people who were involved in this amazing patriot network, because after that revolution that i told you about, the previous summer, the whole -- all the -- all towns in massachusetts, they is that righted -- they came together in a provincial congress, they raised taxes, they said, no longer do any taxes get paid to the british, pay it to us. they harmed. they have of the shopping list. they is that righted to get cache and powder, artillery, weapons, they trained, that's when the minutemen started.

the minutemen started in worcester two weeks after of the overthrow, because they know the british are going to counterattack. they work on this great intelligence network. so revere is a part of. that's the full story. it's an awesome story, an amazing story and it's not told. i go through in "founding myths" 13 of such dear elevations, not only how the story was created but deeper stories at times, but that natural suggests another. each one of these books leads to another one, and that suggests in my mind, i see why the stories are created. they're created to partly kind of build a certain version he nationalism in the 19t 19th century and they stick because they are good stories. see, that's the thing. i mean, that's a great story. and all these stories, they're great stories, even down to george washington and the cherry tree. it sticks because it works. there's no basis in anything, but hey, kids like it.

so you kind of play to the market, and the market likes a good story. so i'm thinking, well, wait a second, the nature of a good story is like individual heroes, maybe david and goliath, and -- but this masks the true nature of an actual revolution. revolutions can by definition never be made by individual heroes. that could be maybe a coup or something, i don't know what it is, but it's certainly not a revolution. and this was. the american revolution was the greatest and most successful social movement and political movement and that termed the movement. it's the most success if one in our nation's history. it's certainly the only one that unseated a government and put in a new one and yet we don't treat it as a movement. we don't treat it that way. so i'm saying can you treat it as a movement with all the interdid a cities and interwoven

web of communication and internal bickering that goes on, that rich texture of history, can you do that and simultaneously tell a good, clean story and have the same mode of power as the simplistic stories. so that's the challenge. i say oh my gosh, how am i going to do this? i say what we need to do is people like their history in terms of biography, they like to identify with people and for good reason, because ultimately in the long run, it is individual mode of action that has -- it has to be the atomic block of everything. without individuals choosing to do this as opposed to that, nothing happens. but can we break it down and choose representative individuals, that are not only coming from, like, a certain kind of 5% of society, but really represent of the great diversity of revolutionary america. and if so, who would those individuals be and can they kind of tell the whole story? so i have this idea, i took it

to my agent, and he says, hey, that's a great idea, so choose three people. and i said, you know, i don't think i can get three people to really kind of get that far, you know, and so i talked him in to five, and i delivered seven and once i had the book, what could he say? so i did. i chose seven people, and seven. why seven? well, i figure seven bores, and supposedly, we can all remember, you know, seven -- presumably, we all remember them and late at night when you try to remember the seven dwarfs, you can never quite get them. but then there's seven deadly sins, seven brides for seven brothers. and actually i like that because you can get to 14, because one of my characters, his son comes in for the ride and it's really about both of them and it's really one story because it's about the relationship but i

bring up other people and in fact i do this, because each of these characters that i bring in, they come with their kind of entourage. because they come with the people that -- you know, they're acting with, see. so you're following their story, but any time you follow an individual's story, you're following lots of people's stories, you know. and it's kind of a six degrees of separation thing going on. and the characters that i chose actually were able to -- i chose -- these are my parameters. i said first of all, we need a written record. i mean, obviously we can't do anything outside. i don't trust oral history in this. any oral history that's gone through the 19th century distortion filter, i mean, probably any time, but that's where i notice it when i see the stories getting tweaked in the 19th century, i need a written record and that written record has to follow this person from a good portion of this whole amazing founding era, think i in my book, i cover from basically

1761, the beginnings of unrest, to 1791, the passage of the bill of receipts, and so i need these people, that if i want them to anchor the story, they have to appear over and over in their written record and they have to hey peer kind of at key events, because i want this book to actually touch all the key events, but in the narration of the key events, isn't it so much better to have a protagonist and the protagonist can act in various ways, but once i have a protagonist, i can tell the story of the event and it sort of flows into their lives. so we need that continuous record. we need a diversity. diversist means social class, geography, a little gender variation. you know, and something that's a little more subtle and that's kind of political cultural orientation. people fought the revolution, they tried to create that new nation for, you know, for many different reasons and that's what i want to bring out. the patriots all wanted this,

the founders wanted that. but there's hardly anything that they all wanted. there are a couple of themes i'll highlight in a minute that did bring them together, but they had all these diverse perspectives, so i want to create this diversity, and ideally, i would like these diverse perspectives and also the characters themselves to actually interact with each other. and so we can really see the kind of, you know, the dialectic of how all these things are happening. actually, i will sort of mention -- this is not a post-modern reduction into chaos, where everybody has their own individual revolution, because honestly, revolutions don't happen that way either. i've never seen a post modern, everybody doing their own thing revolution. we tried it in the 1960's. >> and so, there is.

basically, there's a theme. there's certain common themes. there's a -- basically, it's all about popular sovereignty. that's what's happening. it's like the people control their hone government. very simple, very basic, but everybody has to embrace that hand everybody has to embrace that with a passion in order for the revolution to happen, so when you see hall these diverse people, the characters in my book, the characters by the way that i'm going to ask you to add, perhaps, they're all in their own way relating to that. you know, we're creating a government of the people for the people by the people. which by the way, the tradition version doesn't really do. i mean, we all think, of the people for the people, by the people and then we create a national narrative which is of the people, for the people and by a few special wise men who met once together in a room and decided what the rest of us should do. that doesn't have that same full ring. the fact is it was by the people. the nation was founded by a generation of revolutionaries,

and revolutionaries just defined as they defined in many different ways and that's what this book is. ok. so who would i choose? hock. now, before i go on with my choice, now, actually, if this washing classroom, this is what i would do, take out your pencil and paper and before i say anything, write down your choices and actually in my other talks, usually we pause right now. we pause right now and before i kind of say like who i want to talk about, we open it up for nominations, and we all -- and people nominate, short nominating speech, you know, and then we kind of interact and that -- but the thing is, and that's really fun and i'd love to do it here, but actually we're doing this in a kind of confined network, like a network, fortunately being c-span here tonight too, and we can do that and we will, but we're going to do it in more of the q & a and opening up the cast of characters during that

time if you wish to do that, for the q & a time. so for now, just kind of imagine who you might want to put in. ok. and now, you know, i'll reveal who i did. now, there is no set. there are only two people who i think are set, who you have to include. ok. one of them is george washington. i honestly think -- i want this to be a full narrative of the founding moment, you know, moment, 30 years of the moment, but it is a historic moment. i want this to be the full narrative of that. and honestly, if you're doing a personal treatment of the full narrative, you've got to include washington. it just doesn't work otherwise. people have suggested, well, you can get by with henry knox, he was there at most of the things, and he would be a great addition too, but washington is critical, certainly in hall the military years, and then as an iconic force later on as well. he's also fortunately critical in the very opening of it,

because it was george washington who literally starts the french and indian war when he attacks a french scouting party in 1754, and that's his -- it's his decision to do that. he's doing a preemptive strike on this french party and then they strike back, and then the british support him in the militiamen and that leads to the french and indian war and that leads to the empire, you know, the acquisition, more than doubling british north america, taking over for its french and then how do they pay for the war and how do they additur that empire of course raises huge economic and political issues, which lead directly seamlessly into the revolution, and certainly kind of logic that if you could ever think of the war having a logic, that's what happens, so anyway, washington, he's there from the start and he's also there for one of the main reasons, which is a movement into western lands. that's his main ambition. he sees -- he's a tobacco farmer, who is never getting what he wants for his tobacco

and his agent in england is always tobacco too low and charging him too much for all the luxury goods that he wants. so that's his kind of motivation, but then he really gets into it. so you know, anyway, washington is key in so many ways. if i have washington, wouldn't it be great to have private general washington, you know, the commander-in-chief, and a private in the army. fortunately, we have of the most amazing narrative, classic of american literature, joseph plumb martin, who many years after of the vote, wrote an absolutely entertaining and historically very accurate narrative of his participation, literally from the ground up. i mean, this is the -- he expense most of the war trying to feed himself, and it's the -- honestly, it's just -- it's kind after a laugh a minute in this kind of ironic way. he's got this way of understanding the true issues

but he's kind of almost like a john stewart character in that way. he gets to the point, but he gets to it and by, you know, in these kind of like ironic ways, but he's actually living within it, as opposed to stewart, who is commenting on it. so these two balance each other, and now there's one other character that i think has to be in. and he's the most powerful civilian in revolutionary america. by far. if irsaid in 1781, at the battle of yorktown, if i held a poll, ok, history is going to talk about people, ok, and let's say they were going to choose three people, who would those three people be? who were the most powerful figures in revolutionary america? washington, a bunch might say franklin, although franklin had very little power, but he was kind of a cultural icon and had a loot of influence that way. he could either come or go that way, but there's one other individual they would all say

has to be in the narrative. robert morris. the financier. everybody hear about robert morris? well, maybe some people here do, it's an educated crowd, but i'll tell you no more than one in 100 americans are going to another outside of this philadelphia kind of region who robert morris was. he was a merchant in philadelphia, he profited greatly during the french and indian war, by profiteering and supply the army and when the revolution came on, he continued that, profiteering, supplying the army and he started as a congressman and served on one committee and then another and another until he was on all the committee the. secret committee of commerce, committee of correspondence, all of them. at one point, ben franklin said -- congress was wondering, we've got all these committees, how are we -- isn't anybody keeping track, how do we coordinate all of this stuff and ben franklin says, not to worry,

robert morris is on all the commit these, he's got it under control and sure enough, he did, and for instance, when congress -- when they had to -- with washington was crossing the delaware and congress retreated to baltimore, one person stayed in philadelphia, to conduct all the affairs of congress, and that was robert more -- morris and when washington said my army is about to evaporate on me, before they crossed the delaware, he said i need money or they're all going to leave. morris said i hear you, it's 5:00 a.m., i'm awake and i'm going to send you your $50,000, but i can't do it this minute because nobody else is awake ye but i will rouse them shortly and you will have their money and in the future, anything you want in a private or public capacity, you can have. one of the ways robert morris raised money was to basically porous scarce goods, so this

didn't make him very popular. although he wasn't popular, when the nation became bankrupt, in 1781, and they said a dollar couldn't buy a penny's worth of goods, literally, they said, there's only one man, in annapolis, robert morris. everyone called him a financiers, he basically ran congress all by himself, and he delivered the goods. he said ok, nobody will take continental currency, i'll back it. so there's notes on the treasury, payable by the u.s. treasury, countersigned by robert morris and it worked. he was so rich, that people trusted robert morris, so the big question is, where is robert morris today, right? and another question that i address, we can talk about that later, is where is he in our narrative, right? so here you have like -- do you

notice that the stories are -- i just told you a great bottom up story and that's gone and here still is a great top down story and that's gone. where are these people? we can talk about that in the interchange. other characters. i have this revolutionary who spreads revolution all over the place, new york, connecticut, boston, a long time in boston, his name is dr. thomas young, he's kind of a bit of a huxter body, he's kind of ream sam adams, when we think of adams out on the street raising ruckus. that wasn't sam adams. first of all, there wasn't a sam adams, he was samuel adams and he was an immensely effective politician and he was not out on the streets on a soap box like we think, but thomas young was and he's also in the adams and kind of the inner circle of patriots. he was of the fist one who

suggest dumping tea into boston harbor, for instance, but then he flees boston, because when the british take over the town, because literally the soldiers are going to just eat him up and his wife is terrified, so he goes to newport, he comes to philadelphia and he goes head to head with morris in the constructing the state constitution and he actually helps with thomas paine and others, he helps overthrow the pennsylvania assembly in a big mass meeting on may 20, 1776, the pennsylvania assembly was reluctant to vote for independence and so that gave them the kind of the inroad, and at a mass meeting outside the state house, they called it the state house yard. we always think of what's in independence hall and the state house, outside a meeting of 4,000 people creates a new government. they safe we need a constitutional convention and they go out and it happens and meanwhile, robert morris is opposing this. we're back in 1776 now. you see in the story, these guys

are going head to head. another person who really went against robert morris was the high priestest of the revolution, and these very puritanical, from new england, actually, her great, great grandfather came on the may flower. she's the brother of james otis who is the first well known patriot. he's the one who organization the writ of assistance case and she becomes a patriot in other own right, she's very close with john adams, until john adams starts in her mind, betraying the revolution, by getting too much into power and when she writes her history years later, she disss her best friend john adams no end, and these two older patriots go at it. this woman writer, who wrote until her history, did everything anonymously, she was a very prominent anti-federalist, but had to right anonymously and she wrote

these scathing satires anonymously. finally comes out under her own pen and diss her friend, john adams, who by then was a president of the united states and she won't back down an inch. she says you have betrayed the revolution by usurping too much power. anyway, she hates robert morris, because she's into pure republican virtue and morris is a high liver. the hunt is to be followed by the feast. so they go at it and they literally go at it because robert morris, who has to approve every single person who wants employment in the government, won't approve her son. we get all these little personal things going on. timothy bigo low, a black smith from worcester, who anchors the whole first evolutionary story is one of my characters. and finally, so often, really always, who do we know from south of virginia, who was involved in the revolution? there's three colonies. north carolina, south carolina, georgia. who do we know from them?

south carolina was very significant. charleston was like the -- among the four top cities, and huge economy. so we know no one. so i have a fellow who is really the most conservative the lot. this guy starts out, his name is henry lawrence and he starts out as a government man, purely, that's what they call people who really supported the monarch government. and -- so during the stamp act riots, for instance, he -- the rioters riot his house. we think of them being the stamp act, you know, protest, unpatriotic, they're after him, they think he's harboring stamps, and he has an 8 month pregnant wife who is standing there shrieking and ringing her hands. he has nothing but foul words to say about these people who mobbed his house and until the customs inspector, he's a rich guy, he sells slaves, he owns

slaves and he's got a lot of fleet of boats, he's actually a trading partner of robert morris, until the customs inspector can have skates two of his ships. ok. and anyway, so they confiscate his ships, and then morris gets very upset. oh, the reason he can have skates them is because morris won't pay the extortion. he's trying to extort money from them. morris is a man of honor, winds up literally tweaking his nose. first time i saw that, i thought what are they talking about, tweaking his nose and then i see it several more times in the revolutionary ear a. it's like the first insult that's supposed to be answered with a duel. once you tweak the nose of the chief customs inspector, you're sort of just like default a patriot, because he writes all this stuff justifying it. he actually rises to become the president of congress. and actually saved -- saves george washington's job when people are trying to overthrow washington during valley forge, he's the president in congress

who rallies behind him and they share somebody in common, namely henry lawrence' son john, who is -- was -- who's washington's aide de camp and hamilton's best friend. hamilton and lawrence are like that tight and we see this whole relationship between father and son and the son is very full of bravado and a reckless warrior and he throws himself into the battlefield, much to the chagrin of his father, who says everybody should fight, but please don't be careless. so we get all this personal dimension. henry lawrence, comes up with a scheme to arm the slaves in the south. and that's pretty radical. he's a southerner, he's from south carolina, he says, we should arm the slaves in the south. we need their power, i will lead them, he says, and then after the war for their services, we will free them. so this guy as an emancipation scheme for the southerner in of the revolution. well, it doesn't take in the

south, but this also -- hone rip and john lawrence give me access to this whole african-american experience, which is huge. because i tried and tried and tried to find an african-american patriot, who actually -- i'm only dealing with people on the patriot side and there are plenty of african-americans who fought with the british and some who fought with the patriots, but for none of the ones who fought for the patriots do we have really extensive knowledge of where they were, how they participated in all these events, so i had to go about that obliquely and several, you know, african-americans appear in many contexts through here, as do native americans, but they kind of come via these other characters. almost kind of reflected images, but they're there because they have to be there. so those are -- those are my choices, and what i've done here is i've tried to basically -- you see how i've opened the inquiry. we have pure idealists, we have somebody who is is into free trade commerce, we should all get rich and it's all about free trade, that's robert morris. basically, a national

expansionist, washington, we have somebody who is a pure democrat, the body of the people, the people should rule everything. and all these things -- all these different perspectives and then we have somebody from the hinterlands, timothy bigelow. 95% of the people were from the hinterlands and yet we never hear about them. we're getting to all these different layers and that's my experiment. my experiment, i think it actually does create a web, much deeper and more personal -- it's both sweeping and intimate, and that was of the talent they had. i have to make this both sweeping and intimate and i think the way these characters interact do that. that is certainly my hope, because the reason a lot of us are so interested in the founding and i am, how we view the founding is so key, because it's kind of our self-definition. and when we view, you know,

ourselves as us being created by this very small cadre of people, we lost the full force, what i consider an american and patriotic force that we are a government for and by the people. by the people as well and that's hour history. so that's -- that's of the definition. so really, until all the stories are told, you know, everyone counts and until all the stories are told, we can't get at who we are, what that meaning is, so this is my attempt to get at that by suggesting seven characters. now, kind of open this up for discussion and in this discussion, feel perfectly free to come up with your own nominations. like i said, ok, i have such and such a character, and here's -- here's the perspective this person would give, because basically, it's all about open inquiry. my meta issue is open the inquiry, because it's just been closed off by successive layers

of filtration and it's time to just reverse that process, so anyway, that's my appeal to you. open the inquiry and let's open this inquiry, to nominations for other candidates for patriot of the year, or questions, interactions, comments, and i think logistically we have a microphone here and it's important so that the people on the television audience can actually hear the question, if you could stand at the microphone, and just, you know, stand up and say your peace. >> ok. i have two questions and i've only bill clinton waiting 40 years to ask them. i was trying to study them in college but that little movement that you described sort of intervened in my intellectual endeavors. >> that can get in the way sometimes. >> it did. so one question -- they might quote me about philadelphia, i'm not 100% sure.

one is about the pennsylvania anti-federalists, i noticed in your index, you had one of the guys i was trying to learn about, timothy matlack, so who are these people? >> the anti-federalists? >> people who wrote the radical constitution in 1776. >> that's a little different than the anti-federalists. >> there you go. i'm already off. >> anti-federalists usually refers to people in the great ratification debate on the constitution. by the way, i certainly -- you know how people always say the founders in the constitution, you know, whoever wrote the constitution are the founders? that would have been just one of tens of thousands of resolutions that came out of the revolutionary era, had it not been ratified by people. so obviously, i concluded -- but also the intense ratification debates, which include the other anti-federalists, figure very large. that's really where the action is out there on the ratification.

ok. now you're referring to the 1776, pennsylvania constitution. as the states started to basically -- well, with no government, the british government structure is gone, every state had to come up with their own government, right? and what's that going to be? and in pennsylvania, the assembly is very conservative, so thomas young and payne and matlock and others are involved in the creation of this new government. independence and creation of government are going side by side and they actually create a constitutional convention and at that convention, they pass this constitution, with hugely democratic measures. there's only one legislative body, because they regarded the upper body as not of the people, just to check, they say only the people should have a say, that's the legislative body. there's no real executive body other than what's appointed by that legislature as the

representatives of the people, but you have to check them somehow, so who checks them? well, you have certain rules, such as any law that you propose cannot be enacted until after the next election. so if you were guy, you know, isn't supporting it, it's almost like it turns everything into a referendum. and you have to have open meetings and you have to have public record of everything. and also you have a complete franchise. you have both been franchised. of the idea is anybody who can serve to defend the country can also be in the government as opposed to property restrictio restrictions, so -- no, because they're not deeing the country -- defending the country and by the way, most of of the states had property requirements, so like in worcester -- usually they were quite minimal, so included most of the people, most of the men and included a few women,

because if you were a widow and you owned property, you did have a vote. so 300 voters in worcester, about seven were women and about four were dead people, because they owned property. if your he is state hadn't been distributed, your estate had a vote. so anyway. it wasn't quite women's lib is what i'm suggesting. that was an idea eye head of its time. ok. and does that satisfy you? >> well, can you say more about, like when i was trying to learn about these people, they were described as back woods democrats, which if my memory is correct, back woods was to philadelphia as basically we are to downtown washington. but who are these people? and why did they -- >> there's a huge movement in philadelphia and in the revolution, in philadelphia, it's called the committee of privates, and basically, these are militiamen who are tired of being ordered around by superiors and basically taken on my their own militia hand engage

in these very radical politics. they are very much -- the people in the western regions are very much in sympathy with them, because they are basically trying to get rid of kind of the restrictive control of what they considered to be a narrow ruling class but it's a very complicated revolution. that's why i'm not giving you too much more. the reason i can deal with it is because one of my characters is in it, you see, and so he appears, scene by scene. you'll see this revolution develop, so that's really all -- i mean, honestly, it would take the rest of the time here to do more. >> anybody else want to contribute and have a nomination or -- >> while you're coming up, what about what you might call industrial workers, seamen, you know, how did they fit in? >> the seamen are certainly part

of the story in the big cities and we know this, like in boston, you know, in boston and philadelphia, and the seaport towns, newport and charleston, the seamen are definitely figuring in it as are the artisans, and they can do this, because basically because they're geographically contiguous and also they have a press there and so they're very involved in this kind of like ongoing -- their ongoing characters through the whole revolutionary movement, and in philadelphia, for instance, they really become very articulate. and the whole movement of 1776 is very involved in the artisans and seamen and in boston. yeah. >> i want to know what happened to all the founders that we learned about. >> what happened to them? >> jefferson, adams. you haven't talked about them. i assume they're part of your story. >> yeah, because they're hall in

there, and -- but they come -- and they come in as participants. who you choose to focus on is somewhat arbitrary. as i say, if -- my idea was i wanted to have -- back up one second. history flows two ways. it flows bottom up, and it flows top down. the trajectories, up and down power hierarchies, are true in all ages. and in our founding moment, the declaration of independence, huge bottom up, you know, from thomas payne and the common sense to people debating it in every tavern, to coming together in their committees, in local committees, county committees, and each of these giving instructions to next body up, provincial committees and eventually instructing congress, comes with the declaration of independence. constitution, you know, behind those -- and down. so i want to have people who are

representing the bottom and the top, so these folks who you're talking about, the top, you know, the traditional founders, they are participants in my book. john add amounts comes in often when i'm talking about warren, because they're very linked up. their histories are very linked up. jefferson, of course, appears several places, certainly in the declaration of independence, but he is not a major player in declaring independence, there's a committee of five and they -- to draft the declaration, and they -- and they do draft, and he gifts the first draft and that's very eloquent and it's refined and that's the declaration. that wasn't -- the declaration, they read it at the time, people celebrated it, but that was of the declaration. the document. independence was voted on on july 2. it was the vote that counted, not the declaration. during his time, nobody ever quoted the declaration. four state constitutions quoted george mason's declaration of

rights, all men are born equal, free and independent, which jefferson was reading in the philadelphia paper when he was writing the declaration, and which had been -- mason had said two years earlier, so mason is a character by the way, because he's washington's neighbor and political cohort, and also then they fall out during the constitution, washington is a federalist and mason an anti-federalist. jefferson is a character in all of that, but -- and so he comes in and out of the narrative. hamilton is definitely in the narrative and partly because he's john lawrence's best friend and another reason hamilton is in the narrative, because he starts being the one who is actually implementing -- well, he's supporting robert morris' idea for a stronger -- and the farmer's idea, john dickinson's, it was their idea for a stronger

central government. hamilton comes on board their program, starts supporting it in 1780, supports is again during the constitutional period and when robert morris is -- turns down the obvious offer to become first secretary of the treasury, and the issue is open, his protege, alexander hamilton, is given the job, to implement robert morris' program. so these people don't disappear from the narrative. they're in the web. it's just that the emphasis is changed. >> quick. if -- term polling at the time -- if there were polling at the time like there is today, who would be the five, six, seven 10 people that most people in america would have known? would they have -- would they have included hamilton -- washington, i assume, but more like morris than like jefferson or adams? >> yeah. i would say, if you're polling at the end of the war, who most people who would known, who most politically active people would

have for example its top three would have been franklin, because franklin would have been number one in name recognition before the war, washington equaled him, and then morris was running of the government and anybody who had any cognizance of what was going on, knew about the financier, so those would have been the top three. you know, after that, things would get very diffuse and regional. everybody in massachusetts knew both john and samuel adams. everybody in virginia knew patrick henry. not so much because of his liberty or death speech, biobase he was the governor and running the place for a long time. they knew jefferson not nationally. they knew him because he was its governor of virginia and all these local figures. you know, it wasn't a really unified story at that moment. the unified story is what we have, you know, successive filtrations have created. yeah. >> this is really fascinating and i applaud your attempt to open the inquiry. i think we all grow up basically studying the history of great

men, and great -- great an men, and i'm interested in your strategy of these seven characters. and i think that's one way to choose seven different people, but i'm -- this is sort of a literary question in some ways. are there other things that you do in your book that get beyond the history of people who manage to become famous, and dig down into the history of lots of people who are just ordinary, and like everybody else, which i think is a very important part of history as well? can you talk a little bit about some of -- >> several of my people in the book were totally unknown at the time. well, certainly one was absolutely unknown, except through his friends, that was joseph plum martin, nobody had a clue. he was just a private in the army. in fact, the book starts with him getting born. he's a kid and that's where i start my book. i have said what was everybody else doing on november 21, 1760, and i go kind of set up what

everybody's life is and i'll tell you what joseph -- and on that date, you know, sarah plum wag giving birth to joseph plum martin. 15 years later, he's a private in the army. but nobody knew about him. to get to the heart of your question, it's the relationship of individuals' action to group action and where is the mode of force of history. the person who i really addressed that most with is this kind of revolutionary thomas young, because he is very involved in the people, the body of the people, his whole concept, when he moves to boston, he's already a rebel in these other circumstances, like he -- he inoculates ethan allen with smallpox vaccine on the meeting house steps. this is way before the revolution. as an act of civil disobedience. this is the kind of guy ethan allen and thomas young were. but he moves to boston and the first thing he does, they're building a gallery around the assembly, so people can watch and that ex sites young so much,

he says, they shouldn't just build a gallery, they should tear down the state house and build a grand theater so all the peep can participate -- can look at what's going on, and then as he's in boston, he actually works, the body of the people, and that's -- that's actually a technical term, the body of the people, he helps transform, he and others, it's -- it starts being the society for -- it's a merchants and trade, and then they call it -- than they extend it to all the artisans in town, somebody had a question about artisans, and then they extend it to the entire town, because anybody who lives in boston has hand interest in trade, and this local trade society becomes the body of the trade, and then it's just simplified into the body and thomas young is very involved in this and they have these big meetings about a thousand people each at faneuil hall and when they get more than 1,000, they move hover to old south and so you have leaders

and then you have people on the streets and this is all being -- you know, you're seeing all that interaction. you're seeing, you know, and young is a perfect person, because what makes him so special is he goes in both worlds. he's in the inner circumstance emand literally on the streets. he's on the streets carrying flags, he's beating drums, he's getting into fights and he's in the inner circles writing, he's a very good writer and writing pay -- developing strategies, such as the committee of correspondence. the revolution doesn't just come from the masses and then a couple of leaders. it comes from all these intermediary groups, kind of groups of activists and the commit these of correspondence and then later the committees of safety and the committees of inspection. and you literally have thousands of these committees running of the government in this kind of hodgepodge way in the revolutionary era and they are kind of the interface that i think that you're asking about.

>> hi. looking forward to reading your book. you mentioned henry lawrence and south concern. -- south carolina. it's been my understanding, correct me if i'm wrong, that south carolina actually declared independence from great britain several months before the rest of the gang did. i don't know how accurate that is, but i was just wondering, who was -- who the people were, that were behind that action and was henry lawrence the main guy or were there some other players? >> that's an exaggeration. they did not declare independence. in fact, lawrence was against independence. where that rumor comes from is south carolina was, i think, actually the first was new hampshire or south carolina, but before -- they were the first ones to establish new governments, but the government that they established, they were

very clear was provisional government until the disputes were settled. and so in that sense, it didn't really differ than all the other provincial congresses, which were doing the same thing. they just made it more formal. provisionally, until the dispute is settled and this is before the declaration, this would be our government, and then -- and they actually put a six-month time limit on it, so it's hardly declaring independence. but that's the rumor -- that's the beginning of, you know -- >> what i was in south carolina, a lot of people liked to think that. >> they liked to think that. in fact, on the vote of independence, south carolina was lagging. on july 1, 1776, you all know july 4, 1776, july 1, the motion for independence came on june 7. they said, we don't have the votes now. people should go back to their -- to their states, they're not calling them states yet, but they're provinces,

whatever, and see if they can drum up the votes, because at that point, there were only seven votes in favor, and that wasn't enough. you needed pretty much a supermajority to be a separate nation. you couldn't have seven saying yes, six saying no. so they come back three weeks later and they take it up on june 1, and june 1, on june 1, nine have now signed on. ok. south carolina is lagging. and as is i think it was delaware and -- oh, the big -- pennsylvania and new york, and south carolina and delaware, and delaware was only lagging because one of the representatives hadn't arrived, so he arrived in town the next day. :

a new way of doing business, the monarchy and everything, it is amazing in utah, patriotic messages, imagine the whole edifice was so heavily weighted with the people of. and how that story gets lost is frankly personally frustrating to me as a movement activist from the '60s and i see that our country was treated by that kind of movement. and on an official level, they

are actually getting official instructions from the people so new york was under instructions to not vote for or against but until the convention meets again on july 19th you can pass the vote so they are out, they are in limbo. and also there are very conservative people in new york, john j. and livingston who will probably push against so what all hinges on pennsylvania because of pennsylvania goes with that new york is not going to stand alone. no one state wants to do it. but a pennsylvania stays out you have the two giant stays right in the middle with and the colony's, pennsylvania exerted huge influence over delaware, new jersey and stomachs than maryland and certainly delaware and new jersey would have gone switched over and not all of pennsylvania. until i first the vote is 43

against independence. the next day these other results come in. maryland is switched over on the day from june 30th through july 1st, they switched over because a writer came in to town and saying they had voted formally against independence and have all these county conventions that all said no, change your vote for it, and john adams receives a letter from chase saying, thank god for county conventions and instructions. [laughter] we turned out for independence. the letter exists and adams is receiving that letter on july 1st so it is all 43 pennsylvania. robert morris, and two of the delegates are robert morris and the former -- anybody know who was the farmer is? the farmer was dickinson and he had written a letter called letters from a pennsylvania

farmer. who said the most famous questions? dickinson, we would have been in the top five but he would not have been called dickenson, you'd have been called the farmer does like morris would have been called the finance year. sans like some kind of novel. but anyway, dickenson and just given all the speeches against independence, taken up half the day before but morris won't very strong in dickenson to the of the recent morris didn't want independence is he thought that was distracting from the real issue which was this kind of developing of free commerce and somehow the notion of independence had on people apart was his concept. imagine this dilemma, he doesn't want it and the reason is putting the nation -- a few