#1710 President Jefferson Reads the Declaration

David Horton (0:00)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's special edition of Listening to America podcast. I'm David Horton. I get the pleasure of being the host of this program. And sitting across from me virtually is the great Clay Jenkinson. We had a wonderful time with President Thomas Jefferson as we recorded a show about the Declaration of Independence for the 4th of July. What'd you think, Clay?

Clay Jenkinson (0:23)

Well, you kind of tricked me, let's put it that way, because I knew we would be talking about the 4th of July. I knew we'd be talking about Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. I knew we would be talking about America at 250, and to what extent the preamble of the Declaration is the mission statement of America and how well we've done and so on. I mean, this is like something I talk about in my sleep to myself if nobody else will listen. But then you said, well, why don't you read the entire Declaration of Independence? And I thought, well, that is the first time in more than 25 years of the Jefferson Hour and now Listening to America that any hostess ever asked me to read the Declaration of Independence. So of course I did and I'm reading it cold. So I didn't rehearse for three days and I'm thinking, wow, that's interesting. We have a parallel of that today. We're doing some of the same abuses. And then I would think, why did Jefferson say that? I mean, stirring up the natives and the merciless savages in the West and so on.

So we went through it. I think it's really, really healthy. I hope everyone will. And by the way, when I talked to Joe Ellis around the 4th of July for a program, he said, I asked him, what would you ask people to do on the 4th of July? And he said, I want you all to read at least the preamble out loud to your neighbors of the declaration. Then I want you to talk about it. I want you to talk about what does it mean? Does it still apply? How we doing?

Would it be adopted by Congress today? What's not finished yet in American life? And I said, Joe, Joe, Joe, if there's not bratwurst in there, yeah, good luck getting the American people on the 4th of July, 2026 to step back and say, shall we have a little seminar before we start our swimming and our jet skis and our fireworks?

David Horton (2:14)

Well, we kind of do that for them if they listen to the program and they can participate, because it was great to hear Mr. Jefferson kind of go through these things that we know, but we don't revisit very often. And to review some of that and have a conversation about why did Jefferson say this? What was the point then and what's the point today?

Clay Jenkinson (2:33)

Yeah, so the main thing about that, David, is that when we think of the Declaration of Independence, we go straight to the preamble. When in the course of human events, we go straight to the preamble. But in Jefferson's time, the preamble was just sort of introductory boilerplate. We say that stuff, then let's get on to it. The substance of the Declaration of Independence is this 27-point indictment of the behavior of George III and the Parliament of England, quartering troops in our house and taking us across the sea to be tried, not by our peers, but in a star chamber and stirring up natives in the West to attack frontier settlements and urging African Americans to escape from their plantations and join the British Army, etc., etc.

That was the point. I didn't say this on our show together, but the Declaration of Independence is a kind of medieval syllogism. Sillogism goes like this. Jefferson, under certain conditions, people have a right to rise up and overthrow their government. Number two, those conditions have been met and over met.

Number three, we therefore are rising up and overthrowing this government. It's a persuasive piece for the world, for England, and especially for France, and partly for the American people, to say, we're not hotheads.

We just want to get along. If they would just treat us as full English citizens and respect our rights, this never would have happened. It's the pettiness of George III, it's the blindness of Parliament. They forced us into this very, very unhappy position of having to do, and it's true. That's exactly how the colonists felt. They weren't just supporting to break with England. They were the proudest identity you could have in 1775 was that you were a citizen of the British Empire. You were British. You would say that before France, before Germany, before Italy, before Finland, before Sweden, before anybody, that I am a British citizen. The founders said, yeah, start treating us like full British citizens, or we're going to have to quit, which is what happened. I thought it was really fun to talk about it in that way. Of course, I talked about it first as the author of the Declaration of Independence, thanks to you. Then at the third segment of the program, I broke character and we talked about Jefferson's place in all of this. What I've said to Lindsay, it almost chokes her when she has to admit it.