1776

Glossary and Comments

• Glossary
• Timeline of events of 1775 and 1776
• The Lees of Old Virginia; short bios of some of the Lees mentioned in the song and some not mentioned
• Short bios of the declaration signers
• List of delegates to the Continental Congress
• Read “the offending paragraph” denouncing the slave trade:  “He has waged cruel war . . .”
• Read the Declaration as edited by Congress
• Read the Declaration with commentary

Glossary

Scene 1—The Chamber of the Continental Congress—May 8, 1776

• The British National Debt had greatly increased during the Seven Years’ War (1756-63; in America known as the French and Indian War, 1754-63). To the British, it seemed only fair that the colonists should “pay their fair share.” The response was the Stamp Act, Townshend Acts, Sugar Act, and Tea Act. But the colonists saw it differently. One of the things that made Englishmen free was they could not be taxed without consent of their elected representatives. They saw the attempts by Parliament to tax them as “taxation without representation.” Making these taxes doubly obnoxious was that Britain insisted that they be paid in gold or silver coin, which was always in short supply in the colonies. Britain forbade the colonies from minting coinage.
• A second flood: the flood of Noah is described in Genesis, chapters 6, 7, and 8.
• The Bible describes more than one plague of locusts. The eighth plague on Egypt is in Exodus 10:1-20. Another plague of locusts is found in the book of the prophet Joel, particularly the 1st chapter. Locusts are also mentioned in the Iliad and the Quran.
• Dysentery is a type of gastroenteritis that results in bloody diarrhea. It was historically known as the “bloody flux.” It is caused either by a bacterium or an amoeba, and occurs mostly in areas with poor sanitation.
• Measles, also called rubeola, red measles, or English measles is a highly contagious disease caused by a virus. (German measles, or rubella, is caused by an unrelated virus.) The first measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, so many children born before then had to suffer through it.
• The word flu is first recorded in English in 1832, so Abigail’s use in the song is anachronistic. The word influenza, though, came into the English language in the 18th century.
• Smallpox is an infectious disease caused by a virus. Inoculation started in China about 1500 A.D., and spread to Europe and North America in the 18th century. Edward Jenner introduced the modern smallpox vaccination in 1796. In 1967 the World Health Organization made a determined effort to eliminate the disease, and declared it eradicated in 1980. In 1776 Congress issued a proclamation forbidding army surgeons from administering the smallpox innoculation, but in 1777 General Washington decided to all members of the army; this was successful, and prevented the disease in the Continental Army.
• Saltpeter (also spelled saltpetre), also called niter (or, chiefly British, nitre) is the mineral form of potassium nitrate (KNO₃). Historically, it was one of the ingredients for gunpowder, also called black powder, the other ingredients being sulfur and carbon (usually charcoal). Gunpowder was probably invented in China in the 9th century. Since the middle of the 19th century, black powder has been replaced with various smokeless powders. Since then saltpeter has been used primarily in making fertilizer.
• An egotist is “one who makes too frequent use of the first-person singular pronoun,“ first attested by Addison in 1714.
• Framingham is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, about 23 miles from Boston. It was incorporated as a town in 1700, and as a city in 2018. It was named for Framlingham, Sussex, England; what happened to the “L” is not known.

Scene 2—The Mall

• [King] George has declared us in rebellion—The king issued the Proclamation of Rebellion on August 23, 1775, in response to the Battle of Bunker Hill. In this, he ignored the Olive Branch Petition, authored primarily by John Dickinson and passed by Congress on July 6, 1775, and arrived in London on August 21. (John Adams had sent a letter to a friend saying the Petition was useless, and that war was inevitable; his letter was intercepted by the British and arrived about the same time as the Petition. This gave many in Britain that the Petition was insincere.)
• Sandro Botticelli (1445?-1510; given name Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi) was an early Italian Renaissance painter, known best for Primavera, The Birth of Venus, and The Adoration of the Magi. After his death his reputation suffered until revived by the Pre-Raphaelites who appeared in the last half of the 19th century, so it is unlikely that Adams would make reference to him.
  
• Common Sense is a 47-page pamphlet published by Thomas Paine, January 9, 1776 in Philadelphia. In clear language it articulated a case for American independence from Great Britain. In proportion, it is the best-selling book written in America, and is still in print.
• F.F.V. = “First Families of Virginia”; refers to those families that made their fortune in Virginia in the middle of the 17th century, mostly as tobacco growers; many were refugee cavaliers during and after the English Civil War, including the Randolph, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and Lee families. They were not necessarily the first families to arrive in the colony, but the most prominent by weath and social standing. Many were “second sons” of aristocratic families in England: the laws of primogeniture and entail prevented all but the first son from inheriting the family estate. Primogeniture and entail were maintained in Virginia until independence.
• And may my blood stop running blue: “blue blood” refers to aristocratic birth, and is a translation of Spanish sangre azul; the upper classes lived either indoors or on horseback with long sleeves in contrast to peasants who worked outdoors in short sleeves, and thus had tanned arms; the aristocrat would show his arms, where his superficial veins would appear blue; the peasant’s arms would be tanned and not show as easily.
• A cakewalk (also called a prize walk) was a kind of dance contest held among blacks on Southern plantations both before and after emancipation. The prize was usually a cake. It became part of minstrel shows, where white performers made fun of the strutting dance steps they saw being done by the blacks. But originally it was the blacks who were making fun of the way their white masters or neighbors strutted around!
• The 13 colonies were generally grouped as New England (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut), the middle colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware), and the South (Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia).  Sometimes the South was divided into the Upper South (Maryland and Virginia) and the Deep South (the Carolinas and Georgia).  But because Virginia was both the oldest colony and the most populous, it was sometimes considered a region in itself, with four colonies in each of the other three regions

Scene 3—The Chamber—June 7

• Rum was the most important distilled alcoholic drink in the American colonies. Boston, Newport (R.I.), and Staten Island were important early producers. At one point, rum accounted for about 80% of colonial exports. When the French barred the production of rum in their Caribbean islands (so as not to compete with French brandy), New Englanders started buying their excess supply and producing less expensive rum than that produced in the British sugar colonies (Barbados, Jamaica, &c.). This led to the Molasses Act of 1733, which levied a prohibitively high tarriff on molasses imported to the colonies from outside the British Empire, which was not well enforced and was largely ignored by the colonists. In response, in 1764 the British Parliament passed the Sugar Act, which cut the tarriff (they actually expected to collect it!). But the colonists had developed a habit of smuggling, and tended to ignore the Sugar Act as well, despite British attempts to enforce it. But it cost four times as much to enforce the act than could be collected, and created resentment in the colonies. Later in life, John Adams said that “rum was an essential ingredient in the American Revolution.” After Independence, American rum production declined as whisky production rose.
• Gout = a disease found usually in males characterized by inflammation of the joints, usually beginning with the big toe. (See the entries at Dictionary.com.)
• In the 18th century, watches for men were always pocket watches.  Wrist watches had been considered lady-like until they became common for men in World War I from the need to keep precise time in artillery firing. The men returning from the war sported wrist watches, and no one would consider a WWI vet to be unmasculine! Beaumarchais, the author of The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, created a clock so small it could fit into a lady’s ring.  He gave one to Mme de Pompadour, the mistress of King Louis XV, and soon he had orders from every lady at the French court!
• Tria juncta in uno:  Latin for “three joined in one,” used here in reference to the three members of the Delaware delegation: Caesar Rodney, Thomas McKean, and George Read, ironically, since the latter two didn’t agree most of the time. But all three represented Delaware in both the first and Second Continental Congresses, and all signed the Continental Association: October 20, 1774; the Petition to the King: October 25, 1774; the Olive Branch Petition: July 5, 1775; and the Declaration of Independence: July 4, 1776, albeit not on that date. (Tria juncta in uno is the motto of the Order of the Bath: it may refer to the crowns of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland; or perhaps Great Britain, France, and Ireland, as the British monarchs included the style of “King of France” in their title until 1800; the motto may instead refer to the Trinity; or the three Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity; or, conceivably, the three offices of Christ: prophet, priest, and king. Admiral Nelson was a knight of the Bath, and so the motto appears on his arms. Other famous knights of the Bath include the Duke of Wellington and Lord Kitchener.  In Gilbert & Sullivan’s H. M .S. Pinafore, Sir Joseph is of that order, as is Captain Corcoran in Utopia, Limited.)
• Committee of the whole refers to the whole membership of a legislative house sitting as a committee and operating under informal parliamentary rules, in order to debate a measure that is not fully digested, which would not be possible under the stricter parliamentary rules of the house. The committee of the whole has its own presiding officer, and reports its action in the form of recommendations, which are then acted on by the same body, but under the stricter rules.
• Battle of Hastings, 1066, in which England was conquered by William, Duke of Normandy, making Norman French the court language of England instead of Anglo-Saxon, creating a new landowning class (William’s followers, whom he called barons), and making England a major player in European wars.
• Magna Carta, 1215, Latin for “Great Charter,” which King John was forced to sign, agreeing that the Royal power had limits; considered the founding document of English (and hence American) liberties.
• Strongbow: Both Gilbert, Earl of Pembroke (died 1148), and his son Richard, Earl of Pembroke, were known as “Strongbow”, because of their skill in the use of the Welsh longbow. Richard took the side of King Stephen against the Empress Matilda (who had been designated heiress to the throne by her father, King Henry I [1100-35]) in the civil war lasting most of King Stephen’s reign [1135-54].  But toward the end of the war, King Stephen seized his lands, fearing he would switch sides.  In the next reign, Henry II [1154-89], son of Matilda, Richard Strongbow conquered much land in Ireland, but yielded it to King Henry and received much of it back again, but as vassal to King Henry. (More info)
• Richard Lionheart, king of England, 1189-99, one of the leaders of the third Crusade; failed in his quest to retake Jerusalem; on his return captured by the duke of Austria and held for ransom; considered (not completely deserved) as a model of chivalry.
• Francis Drake, English seaman and privateer, ravaged the Spanish Main (1570-72); circumnavigated the globe (1577-80); led expedition against Cadiz, destroying 33 ships and escaping unscathed (1577); as vice-admiral helped to defeat the Spanish Armada (1588) off Gravelines; pursued Armada to north of Scotland; on expedition to West Indies, died aboard his own ship, 1596.  Known to the Spanish as El Draque, the Dragon.
• General John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, was one of the greatest military commanders of history. Son of the first Sir Winston Churchill (1620-88), a member of the gentry. John supported King William and Queen Mary in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and was created Earl of Marlborough. With the death of King William (1701) he became commander of all English and Dutch armies in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-15). He won the battles of at Blenheim (1704), Ramillies (1706), Oudenarde (1708), and Malplaquet (1709); in fact, he never lost a battle! After the battle of Blenheim, Queen Anne made him Duke of Marlborough and gave him her estate at Woodstock, where he built Blenheim Palace, considered to be the English Versailles. When his only son died, a special act of Parliament was passed to allow the dukedom to continue through his daughter. Sir Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965), is descended from him by eight generations, though he being the son of a younger son, did not become Duke.
• Tudors, Stuarts, and Plantagenets—Some of the royal houses of England and Scotland.  The Tudors ruled England 1485-1603, the Plantagenets 1154-1485.  The Stuarts (spelled Stewart until c. 1543) ruled Scotland 1371-1714 and England 1603-1714.
• Your taxes are too high.—Actually, taxes in America were quite a bit lower than in England. Adams complaint is not so much that his taxes are too high, but they are being imposed by a Parliament that does not represent Americans. One of the things that differentiated the English from most other nations was the principle that they could only be taxed by the vote of their representatives. (However, the British did not see the irony that this did not apply to Ireland!)
• His Majesty’s ships—The ships whose cargo was dumped into Boston harbor in the “Boston Tea Party” belonged to the British East India Company, rather than to the Crown.
• We’re rotting for want of [independence].—These words are given to Hopkins in the play, but they come from the writings of John Witherspoon. But in the drama, Witherspoon has not yet entered.
• Incendiary means “tending to cause fire”; hence, “inflammatory.”
• A demagogue originally was simply “a leader of the people”; but now it means “one who leads the people by impassioned appeal to emotion or prejudice.”
• Spartacus, a Roman gladiator and slave from Thrace; led a slave revolt (bc 73-71, the Servile War); defeated Roman armies several times; defeated by Crassus and killed in action.  (Pompey didn’t want Crassus to have all the glory in the Servile War, so he got involved and captured many of the slaves and had thousands of them crucified.)
• William Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s bastard son, the Royal Governor of New Jersey, was a staunch loyalist, and died in London in 1813.
• A fribble is a trifle, or thing of no significance, or a frivolous person.
• The Pennsylvania proprietors really should refer to the Penn family, which began with King Charles II (1660-83) granting Pennsylvania to William Penn.  His heirs continued to be the proprietors of the colonies of Pennsylvania and Delaware.  After independence was achieved, the legislature of Pennsylvania in the Divestment Act bought out the remaining proprietary rights of the Penn family for £130,000.  The last proprietor, John Penn, was allowed to retain their estates and proprietary manors.  Adams probably is referring to the upper class of Pennsylvania, which were the descendants of the original Quaker settlers. As a general rule, the Quaker aristocracy, including John Dickinson, were quite satisfied with the Penn proprietorship. Delaware, however, was also owned by the Penn family and had the same governor as Pennsylvania. The people of Delaware were tired of being dominated by Philadelphia, and thus were in favor of independence.
• Mark of Cain—Hancock is referring to the curse laid by God on Cain for murdering his brother Abel (Genesis 4:1-16). By setting colony against colony the new nation would be under a curse. (The mark of Cain actually was for his protection.)
• France in 1776 was the strongest military power in the world at the time. But the French were smarting from their defeat in the Seven Years’ War (1756-63), in which they lost Canada, and, from their point of view, lost prestige. The French aided the Americans in their struggle for independence, secretly at first, and openly after the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. The French fleet was critical in the American-French victory at Yorktown (1781). But the cost of both wars essentially bankrupted the country, and was a major cause of the French Revolution.
• Spain had been in decline for about two centuries. The French persuaded them to join in the fight against the British in the War of American Independence, on the condition that neither would make peace until the British returned Gibraltar to Spain. (Gibraltar was not returned; the British and Americans signed a preliminary peace agreement. Then the French, feeling that they had humiliated the British enough, told the Spanish that those perfidious Americans had made peace already, in order to end the war. Gibraltar remains in British hands to this day.) However, Spain came out of the war a winner, even though they did not get back Gibraltar, but they did recover Florida and Minorca. A Spanish attempt to exchange Puerto Rico for Gibraltar failed because sugar interests in Jamaica and Barbados did not want competition into the protected British market.
• Congress created the committee of five to write the Declaration of Independence on June 11, 1776. The next day congress appointed a committee to draft a form of government for the thirteen colonies, with John Dickinson as chairman; their work became the Articles of Confederation.

Scene 4—Jefferson’s Room, Above High Street

• The Franklin stove is a heating stove, rather than a cooking stove. At the beginning of the 18th century, people heated their homes by fireplaces, which were fairly inefficient, since most of the heat went up the chimney. (Cooking was generally done in the fireplace too.) Ben Franklin designed a stove, which he called the Pennsylvania Fire Place that was freestanding, and was more efficient.  However, his design was flawed, in that he had the smoke go out the bottom, which meant that the stove didn’t stay lit long.  It was redesigned by David R. Rittenhouse, and called by him the “Rittenhouse Stove”.  By 1790 it was in wide use, but called ever since the Franklin stove.
• Quincy (pronounced Kwin-zy) is a family from which Abigail Adams was descended; her grandfather was Col. John Quincy. Both John Adams and John Quincy Adams as well as John Hancock were born in the town of Braintree; the area where they were born was separated in 1792 as the Town of Quincy. (Since 1888 it has been the City of Quincy; Braintree was originally part of the Town of Dorchester, but separated in 1640. Dorchester was annexed by Boston in 1870.)
• The waltz became popular in Germany around the middle of the eighteenth century, but was first introduced in English court balls in 1816, so in 1776, it was certainly a new dance!

Scene 5—The Chamber—June 22

• Before the 20th century, Yeast meant the froth or sediment of a fermenting liquid that could be used to leaven bread [1], or make beer or wine. This could be obtained from a miller or brewer. (Wine was not made in the colonies.) Yeast was sold in blocks, or cakes, starting in 1825. Granular yeast was first available in 1872. During World War II Fleischmann’s developed active dry yeast that did not require refrigeration, to make bread for U. S. forces, because it had a longer storage life, and was faster acting than cake yeast. In the 1970s rapid rise yeast was produced.
• Plato (4th century BC) was one of the greatest philosophers in ancient Athens, along with his teacher Socrates, and his student Aristotle. Franklin is referring to his work Πολιτεια (Politeia; in Latin De Republica; in English The Republic).
• They ought to be here any minute: The British captured Philadelphia in October of 1777, but their defeat at the Battle of Saratoga (September 1777) the French allied with the United States, and in order to protect New York and their Caribbean colonies, they evacuated Philadelphia in June of 1778. During the British occupation, Congress moved to Lancaster (for one day) and then to York, Pennsylvania.
• Kidneys are usually served as part of a mixed grill, or in steak and kidney pie, particularly in Britain.
• Samuel Chase was indeed known as Old Bacon Face from the time he was a member of the Maryland bar. He was also known as Demosthenes of Maryland. (Demosthenes was an Athenian stateman and orator. His orations against Philip of Macedon were not heeded until it was too late.)
• The minuet was a slow stately couples pattern dance in triple time popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, so called because of the short steps of the dance.
• The gavotte is a somewhat difficult couples pattern dance in duple time popular from the 16th to the 18th centuries.
• The terms right and left (referring to political alignments) as well as the terms liberal and conservative date from the period of the French Revolution, and thus are anachronistic in 1776.
• The crown refers to the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of Great Britain and the Commonwealth realms and their subdivisions. Originally it consisted of the king and his council, but in modern times is the cabinet, speaking in the name of the king. In a criminal trial, the prosecution is The Crown. (In California, the prosecution is The People of the State of California.)
• A half-crown is (now) a demonetized unit in Great Britain worth 2/6 (two shillings and sixpence, or 2s 6d); a crown naturally was worth 5/– (5s), or one quarter pound sterling.
• The dollar had not been established as the legal tender in the colonies at the time, but could refer to money in general, but more likely, to the Spanish milled silver dollar, worth 4/6 (4s 6d; four shillings and sixpence).  This was the most common coin in the colonies; the British forbade the importation of gold and silver to the colonies, so there was always a shortage of specie (gold and silver).  But the British also demanded payment of taxes in gold and silver, which further infuriated the colonies.  In Massachusetts, a (Spanish) dollar was counted as 6 shillings, and in New York, as 8 shillings, which further west became 8 bits. This also meant that a New York pound of account was worth about half of a pound sterling. After independence, when the dollar was defined as the money of account in the United States, one dollar was defined as a unit of pure silver weighing 371 4/16 grains (24.057 grams), which was the weight of the Spanish dollar. In 1873, silver was demonetized, and the dollar was defined in terms of gold.
• French disease = syphilis Syphilis is believed to have originated in the New World, and was probably brought back to Spain on Columbus’s voyages. The Spanish then brought it to Italy, and the French picked it up on one of their invasions, which began in 1494. It was called Syphilis, sive Morbus Gallicus (Syphilis, or the French Disease), 1530,  in a poem by Girolamo Fracastoro (1478?-1553).  The French referred to it as the Italian disease, or the disease of Naples, and it has also been called the Spanish disease (by the Italians), the German disease, or the Polish disease (by the Russians).

Scene 6—An Anteroom off the Main Chamber

• The bald eagle was adopted as the national bird of the United States by the Continental Congress in 1782. The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is a native of North America, and its range includes all of the contiguous 48 states, much of Alaska and Canada, and some of northern Mexico. (There is no evidence that Franklin proposed making the (wild) turkey the national bird of the United States, but he did not like the choice of the bald eagle. And there is no evidence that Jefferson proposed the dove.)

Scene 7—The Chamber—July 1-4

• The character Witherspoon says that the declaration draft does not mention the Supreme Being. However, in the first paragraph has “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”; the second has “from that equal creation they derive in rights inherent and inalienable”; changed to “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. . . .”
• Trial by jury was an important part of English common law. But in the admiralty courts, which tried cases of smuggling, there were no juries, which would prevent colonial juries from acquitting their friends. Also, standards of proof were lower than “beyond a reasonable doubt,” required in criminal courts. To enforce the Sugar Act, defendants were tried in a Vice-Admiralty court in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This led to abuses, because the judge received a percentage of the confiscated good if a defendant was found guilty, and naval officers were paid for bringing “successful” cases.
• Rights that came from [the king] in the first place: Did Dickinson believe that rights came from the king? Jefferson certainly did not. As he wrote, “they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.”
• It is surprising that the colony of North Carolina would bring up fishing rights.  The right to fish on the Grand Banks would be far more important to Massachusetts, and was made a part of the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the war for independence.
• A shilling is now a demonetized unit of money in Great Britain. There were 20 shillings to a pound, and the shilling was divided into 12 pence (12d). It is now equivalent to 5 new pence (5p). Because of the shortage of coins in North America, the British silver shilling continued in circulation in the United States into the 19th century. (British money was decimalized in 1971.)
• Antigua (pronounced An-TEE-ga), in the Leeward Islands, was settled by the English in 1632. It is now part of the nation of Antigua and Barbuda.
• Barbados was the most valuable of the English sugar islands, more valuable to the English than any of the continental colonies.
• Angola is now an independent country, which in 1776 was Portuguese West Africa. But the term Angola probably was not used as precisely as it is now, and could refer to the coast, from Namibia north to the Congo.
• Guinea is also a country in west Africa, but the term, a corruption of Ghana, referred to the African coast from Gambia to Angola. Sections of the area from the Bight of Benin westward were known to early traders as the Slave, Gold, Ivory, and Grain Coasts.
• Ashanti (or Asante): both a region of present-day Ghana (which was known in 1776 as the Gold Coast) and a name for the people who lived there. The Asante Empire traded with Europeans, mainly the Dutch, but sometimes the British, for gold, ivory, and slaves. Thus today there is an Asante diaspora, mainly in the English- and Dutch-speaking West Indies.
• Ibo, or (properly) Igbo, refers to a people of southeast Nigeria.  In 1967 they attempted unsuccessfully to secede from Nigeria as the state of Biafra, leading to a bloody civil war (1967-70). Many of the slaves sold to Europeans were Igbo. 
• The triangle trade was system used especially by the merchants of Newport, Rhode Island, and other ports. They would purchase molasses from the Caribbean sugar islands (Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, &c), bring it to Newport, where it was distilled into rum.  Rum was then taken to the Gold Coast to trade for gold, ivory, and slaves, which were brought to the Caribbean and the southern continental colonies to be sold.  Rum produced in Newport (called “Guinea Rum”) was especially prized. And the merchants of Newport came to dominate this traffic, far more than Boston, so that the delegates from Rhode Island were as strident as the Carolina delegates about removing the “slavery” clause from the Declaration of Independence.
• Matthew 16:26 reads: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
• To cross the Rubicon: to take decisive, irrevocable action. In Roman history, in the first Triumvirate, Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus had divided the Roman world between them. Caesar had Gaul, and the boundary between Cisalpine Gaul and Italy was the small river Rubicon. The triumvirs were not allowed to bring an army into Italy without the permission of the Senate. So in bc 49, after the death of Crassus, Pompey controlled the Senate, Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and he is reported to have said “Ālea jacta est”: the die is cast; knowing that he was provoking a civil war, a war in which he was eventually victorious and became dictator of Rome. (And I believe Caesar crossed the Rubicon by wading across, so he didn’t have to burn the bridge behind him; that would make a mixed metaphor!)
• Edmund Burke was an Irishman, a member of Parliament and a brilliant writer, on the order of Jefferson and Madison. He was born in Dublin, educated at Trinity College in that city, moved to England, and was in Parliament for most of 1765 to 1794. He supported the Americans’ grievances against the British government, yet stopped short of supporting independence. He also supported Catholic liberation and Ireland’s grievances against the British, but did not support the French Revolution.
• Harvard College, founded in 1636, is the oldest institution of higher education in the United States. (Recognized as a University in 1780 in the new constitution of Massachusetts [whose principal author was John Adams]; officially became a university in 1782 with the founding of the Medical School; first admitted women to the Harvard Annex in 1879, which became Radcliffe College in 1894; Radcliffe College merged with Harvard College in 1999.) The College of William and Mary, founded in 1693, is the second oldest. (William and Mary became coed in 1918.) The premier academic honor society in the US, Phi Beta Kappa, was founded at William and Mary. Both Adams and Jefferson received an honorary doctorate from Harvard. (For reference, Yale College, the third oldest, was founded in 1701, and Princeton, the fourth, was founded in 1746 as the College of New Jersey. The University of Pennsylvania (known as the College of Philadelphia at the time) was founded by Benjamin Franklin and others 1749-51, and was the first college not founded specifically to train clergy.)
• King George III (reigned 1760-1820) was the first British monarch since 1715 whose first language was English. He was well meaning but stubborn and ignorant; he felt it was his calling to “be king,” not only in Britain, but in the colonies and Ireland as well. (His great-grandfather George I [1715-27] spoke only German, and made it clear that he was doing his British subjects a favor to serve as king. George I was succeeded by his son George II [1727-60] who was bilingual and was the last British monarch to lead an army in battle. George III was his grandson.)
• The signing of the Declaration did not take place on July 4, 1776. The text was agreed to on that date (whether inalienable or unalienable is not known) and sent to be printed. The engrossed copy, carefully written on parchment, was prepared and ready by July 19. This is the copy on display at the National Archives. The delegates signed over a period of months, the largest number on August 2. All the delegates to Congress depicted in the play, including George Read, but not John Dickinson, eventually signed. Thomas McKean had not signed by January 1777, though.
• The phrase a skiff made of paper is spoken by Hancock in the play, but the words are Dickinson’s.
• On July 4, 1776, after approving the declaration, Congress appointed a committee, consisting of Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson, to design a great seal for the United States. The committee reported to congress on August 20. Their design was not accepted. Congress formed two more committees, whose designs were also not accepted. Then July 13, 1782, congress asked Charles Thomson to design a seal. He used elements from the three committees and submitted his design on July 20. Congress accepted his design the same day. This is essentially the great seal today.

• The events of 1776 took place in the summer in Philadelphia.  Congress met in the state house, which was next to a stable, which explains the flies.
• The Articles of Confederation, the first constitution of the United States, were adopted during the war. Most states ratified in 1778. Maryland held out until 1781 until Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut agreed to give up their claims to western lands northwest of the Ohio River.
• It may seem curious that the Declaration declares independence from the king, and not from Parliament. That is because the colonies believed that the British parliament had no jurisdiction over them, and could not legislate for them, because they had been founded with charters from the king only. By 1776 three colonies were proprietary (Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland), two were self governing under a royal charter (Connecticut and Rhode Island), and the rest were crown colonies.
• From the time of independence the legal name of Rhode Island was “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.” (Rhode Islanders used to boast that they lived in “the smallest state with the longest name.” Now the longest state name is “Commonwealth of Massachusetts”; three other states are called Commonwealth: Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.) In November 2020 voters approved changing the name to “State of Rhode Island.” (The word plantation had become so associated with slavery that the feeling was that it should be removed. However, in this context, plantation meant “colonial planting”: the colony of Rhode Island was formed from Roger Williams’s colony called “Providence Plantations” and two settlements on the actual island of Rhode Island, Portsmouth [founded by Anne Hutchinson and others] and Newport [founded after disagreements with the other settlers].)
• The slogan no taxation without representation originated in the north of Ireland where Presbyterians (the majority in the northern six counties of Ireland, which today form the country of Northern Ireland) and Catholics were denied the right to vote for members of Parliament (the Parliament of Ireland at that time; and the Parliament of the United Kingdom after the Union in 1801). This was repealed in 1829.
• In 1786, there were two candidates proposed for King of the United States. Someone proposed that George Washington become king, which Washington firmly refused; another candidate was Prince Henry of Prussia (Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig; brother of Frederick the Great); he also refused. The majority of Americans were opposed to monarchy by that time.
• There were proposals to make some other language (other than English) the national language of the United States, including German (spoken by about 20% of the population), French (the language of Britain’s enemy), or Hebrew, Greek, or Latin (all three of which were required at most colleges). Since the majority spoke English, and most important trading partner of the United States was still Great Britain, English remained, and remains, the national language. (Interestingly though, there is no law making English the official language of the United States; however, about 30 states have made English their official language.)
• Abolition of slavery in the United States
• A bibliography of American history
• Pictures from the 2005 performance
• [1] McGee, Harold, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. New York: Scribner, 1984, 2004.

• For corrections, additions, suggestions, or comments, please email me: tf_mcq <at> yahoo.com.
• Revised May 14, 2016; November 12, 2022; Original version October 20, 2009; Updated: October 02, 2017; February 18, 2023.