We tell the story of 1776 as if it were inevitable. It was not. Historian David Barton, founder of WallBuilders, explains to Jenny Beth Martin how close American independence came to failing. When Richard Henry Lee moved to separate from Great Britain, Congress did not rush to agree — it tabled the motion for a month and appointed a committee of five to study whether a document should even be written. During the test votes that followed, more than half the colonies at one point did not want to separate, and Pennsylvania had to recall delegates and send new ones who would vote yes.
Barton tells the story of the Delaware delegation, split one for and one against, with its third member home sick in bed. That delegate rose from his sickbed and rode 80 miles through lightning storms to break the tie and make Delaware a yes. And he describes the two-hour speech by John Adams that is credited with converting more than half the delegates — proof, Barton notes, that their minds were not yet made up. Independence hung in the balance, debated hour after hour, until the very end. It is a founding lesson in real deliberation, and a pointed contrast with the debates we settle in five-second sound bites today.
Get David Barton's book at wallbuilders.com. Watch more at jennybethshow.com, and learn about Tea Party Patriots Action at teapartypatriots.org.
00:00 — They Weren't United
00:20 — The Motion for Independence Was Tabled
01:20 — The 80-Mile Midnight Ride
01:53 — The Two-Hour Speech That Turned the Vote
#JennyBethShow #DavidBarton #DeclarationOfIndependence #July4th #America250 #FoundingFathers #WallBuilders #AmericanHistory