America250 Part 1: 1776 — Beyond the Founding Fathers

**Kenneth C. Davis** (0:00)
This was the great contradiction in American history, that a nation conceived in liberty was also born in shackles.

**Erica Mandy** (0:08)
Today is Wednesday, July 1st. And instead of our regular news roundup today, we're taking a look back at what life was really like in 1776 It's part of our America 250 special series this week, examining the past, present and future of America. As the country marks its 250th birthday this weekend. Our guest today is Kenneth C. Davis, the New York Times bestselling author of Don't Know Much About History and America's Hidden History. He helps us step into the realities of daily life in the 13 colonies, from farmers to enslaved people, to the Native American nations of the time. We talk about the radical ideas at the heart of the Declaration of Independence, the contradictions that came with them, and why an honest look back matters as America thinks about its next 250 years.
Kenneth C. Davis, thank you so much for sending us here on The NewsWorthy.

**Kenneth C. Davis** (1:00)
Pleasure to be with you, and let's pursue happiness.

**Erica Mandy** (1:03)
So first, just help us set the scene. When Americans picture July 4th, 1776, they might think about the founding fathers in Philadelphia. But who was actually living across this land at the time, and what did America mean then?

**Kenneth C. Davis** (1:18)
America didn't mean certainly what it means to us today. Most Americans at that time would have probably associated themselves more with the colony in which they lived. Pennsylvania thought about being from Pennsylvania. Virginians certainly thought about being Virginians. And so that collective identity that we think of as American had not yet been created. Of course, you don't have an exact census data. But the estimates are there were about two and a half million people in the 13 colonies at the time. One of the most important things is that one in five of those people was enslaved.
That's an astonishing number. And I think it catches a lot of people by surprise. These ideas that Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration, all men are created equal. We are endowed with the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
But of course, that only applied to some people. This was the great contradiction in American history, that a nation conceived that liberty was also born in shackles. I believe we're still struggling with the aftermath of that long history today.

**Erica Mandy** (2:34)
So with some of those different perspectives and realities in mind, can we imagine what it was like to wake up on an ordinary morning in July 1776? Can you paint that picture for us? What would home feel like? And what would be the first things we really notice that are obviously completely different from life today?

**Kenneth C. Davis** (2:52)
I go back to Thomas Hobbes, who wrote that life without government could be nasty, brugish, and short.
And that's pretty much what it was for most American colonists at the time. Close to 95 percent of the people probably were still farmers. They were certainly better off in many ways than they would have been had they still been back in Europe. But it was still a hard, difficult life. When we think of Philadelphia in 1776, and we see John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, these were America's elites. Most of them were lawyers. If they were farmers, they were really wealthy landowners with large plantations. And certainly the wealthiest of them tended to be men like George Washington. Washington at the time of the Revolution was one of the largest slave holders in the United States. 41 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were either enslavers themselves or involved in the slave trade. For an enslaved person, the expression was from sun up to sun down. You work from dawn to dusk. So there was no wealth in America without slavery. There are people who would like to not remember that. And there's a movement afoot now to try and erase some of that history. I think it's very dangerous and I hope that historians, there are many, will fight hard to make sure that these pieces of our history are not erased in favor of some bedtime story narrative that's patriotic and inspiring but is not true.

**Erica Mandy** (4:37)
Yeah. I mean, and to expand on that, what do you feel the dangers are of not remembering the accurate history?

**Kenneth C. Davis** (4:45)
We cannot understand how America grew and developed without understanding this piece of our history. There was no sense of racial disparity really in the world until slavery is created, and especially American racial slavery.