1776 (1972)

There might be a temptation to discount 1776 just because it is a musical, a genre that hasn't fared well in the United States the past several decades. This is unfortunate, since 1776 takes its subject matter with more respect and intelligence than a number of other well-known American historical productions. Building onthe premise of detailing the origin of the Declaration of Independence, the film also extends into the debates and clash of personalities that shaped the Second Continental Congress. More than a history lesson via musical, 1776 is an argument that the United States wasn't simply created through a war, but because the sharpest, boldest minds of a generation worked together (and sometimes in spite of each other) to truly put their principles into practice.

Of course, this probably sounds ridiculous, since 1776 does have a deserved reputation for being a silly, almost Disneyish romp. The idea that Thomas Jefferson needs sex with his young wife to end his writer's block over the Declaration of Independence is, besides being extremely inaccurate, too cutesy to stomach. The musical numbers, while well-done and well-performed, occasionally overstay their welcome. And while the film's depiction of the “founding fathers” is firmly rooted, many might recognize that the portrait of Jefferson is idealistic to the point that he looks like an elementary school student's image of Jefferson, rather than a reasonable recreation of the real deal.

Just beneath the musical and dance numbers and the hammered-in romance subplot, however, is a film with a compelling and worthwhile view of history. On the whole 1776 is more reverent toward its source and offers a less black-and-white assessment of its protagonists than “serious” films such as The Patriot. Whether that demonstrates how even a “light-hearted musical” can have substance or how utterly empty many patriotic historical epics are is up to the viewer.

History vs. 1776

Was George Washington's army in such a bad state in 1776?

Yes and no. March of that year George Washington and the Continental Army succeeded in forcing British soldiers to evacuate Boston, which was both a blow to the British military since Boston was one of the major ports on the North American east coast and a major morale booster for Washington's troops because Boston was difficult to capture and easy to defend, thanks to the topographical features of Boston Harbor. However, the darkest hour of the Continental Army did come just one month after the Declaration of Independence was adopted with the Battle of Long Island, which put Washington on the run and which the film strongly foreshadows. The Continental Army did not have a position of strength again until January of 1777 with the decisive Battle of Princeton. While I think the chronology of military events might be a bit skewed, certainly, as the film strongly suggests, the members of the Second Continental Congress had reasons to be skeptical and to believe that they would all end up on the run or in the gallows.

John Adams is kind of a prick and no one likes him. Franklin even says, “You are obnoxious and disliked.” Burn!

The question of what made John Adams tick is interesting enough that an entire book, Peter Shaw's “The Character of John Adams,” was written on the subject. Adams was a founder who defied sainthood. He suffered from depression and panic attacks, was blazingly jealous of Benjamin Franklin's superstar status, had a cynical view of more or less everything and everyone, was blunt to the point of rudeness and tactlessness, and had been a demanding and cold father who bullied his sons over every mistake (infuriated by his children's failures, Adams once wrote to Abigail, “Oh, happy [George] Washington! Happy to be childless!”). But he was also devout in his belief in the Revolution and its ideology (perhaps more so than many, since he promoted the philosophy behind the American Revolution and didn't simply want to put an end to British taxation) and really did share a loving, companionate marriage with his wife Abigail.

In short, the film's depiction of him is accurate; certainly more accurate in its two and a half hours than the hagiography written by David McCullough was in 736 pages. Anyway, John Adams' unpopularity did exist in his life and it continued unabated after his death. Traditionally he hasn't been one of the most admired or studied of the founding fathers and even now he doesn't really welcome the same amount of attention as Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin, even though he contributed as much, if not more, to the ideological and intellectual side of the revolution as they did. The film does play down the fact that Adams was also intensely ambitious, but contrary to popular belief one can be both very ambitious and a sincere believer in a political movement.

Was John Adams pushing the concept of independence from the start?

As Gore Vidal put it in “Inventing A Nation”, “during 1775, there was no coherent political movement for independence, much less for the establishment of a republic like glorious Athens or imperial Rome.” From early on, the radical voices in the Continental Congress were louder than their conservative and loyalist counterparts. Adams was among them, arguing from early on that the colonies had a right to independence established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter, which arguably established the existence of a new nation.

Franklin says that “no colony ever broke away from the mother country in the history of the world.”

I don't know if Franklin ever said this or not. Regardless, it all depends on what you mean by “colony.” If “colony” is defined as any foreign territory with its own history and language brought under the sovereignty of a nation with which it does not share a border, then it is not true. There are numerous examples, but probably the one with the most parallels to the American experience is the Dutch Republic's declaration of independence from Spanish sovereignty in 1581. Another interesting example from European history is the establishment of the Commonwealth of Iceland by Scandinavian settlers in the tenth century, although by the thirteenth century Iceland accepted Norwegian sovereignty. If “colony” is restricted to overseas communities established by a mother country and populated almost exclusively by citizens of that country, then as far as I know the film's Franklin is right. The success of the thirteen colonies in overthrowing British rule certainly did inspire a series of revolutions in the New World, the soonest being the Haitian Revolution that went from 1791 to 1804.

Did Benjamin Franklin cut off his son for being a loyalist?

Whatever their relationship was before the war (and even if Franklin was a distant father, as some biographers believe, they did at least travel together to London and once worked together in pursuing land deals in the Midwest), Franklin's son William's loyalty to Britain during the Revolution wrecked it beyond repair. When William was put in a Connecticut prison for two years as a result of refusing to relinquish his post as royal governor of New Jersey, Benjamin refused to intercede for him in spite of the pleading of William's wife Elizabeth. By 1782 William Franklin left for England and only met his father once again. In his will, Franklin left him nothing. Even more damning, the only mentioning of his son in Franklin's autobiography is a newspaper article Franklin includes that happens to have William's name in it.

Did John Adams and John Dickinson get into a actual fight in the middle of the Continental Congress?

John Dickinson was Pennsylvania's delegate to the Continental Congress and, although he argued that the British Parliament had no right to tax the colonies simply to raise revenue, was a firm opponent of independence, believing that the only just and sensible course was reconciliation. I couldn't find any evidence that they actually dived into a physical fight, but, given that Adams had a bad temper and loathed Dickinson, it's not an outlandish scene to write in.

Did Richard Henry Lee really leave the Congress because he was called to be governor of Virginia or because of his ill wife?

Just as the film relates, Richard Henry Lee was the one who actually submitted the proposal, called the Lee Resolution, to declare independence from Britain. He would have probably been the one enlisted to write the Declaration of Independence, if he did not have to leave the Second Continental Congress. However, he was never called to serve as governor of Virginia, but actually did leave because of his wife Anne's illness. In fact, Lee never was governor of Virginia. The “closest” he came in the revolutionary period was serving as a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1778.

Oh, and don't confuse him with his contemporary Henry Lee III, who was an officer in the Continental Army and the father of the famous Robert E. Lee.

Did Thomas Jefferson really want to leave for the sake of his wife?

The film strongly implies that Thomas and Martha Jefferson were still newlyweds by the time of the Second Continental Congress. In reality, they were married in 1772.

Did Martha travel all the way from Virginia to visit Jefferson?

No, this part of the film is pure fabrication. Even if Martha wanted to visit him, she would have been unable. She was very ill at the time the movie takes place.

That showoff bastard...did Franklin invent the stove too?

Sort of. He did create the Franklin stove, but it was used for heating, not cooking.

Dickinson sings a song with the lyrical refrain, “Right and to the right, never to the left.” Was right and left even a term then?

The interesting thing about this song is that Richard Nixon allegedly pressured his friend, producer Jack Warner, to take the song, “Cool Considerate Men”, out of the theatrical release because it could be interpreted as a parody of the Republican Party.

At any rate, the terms “right” and “left” derive from the National Convention of the First Republic of France, where the representatives of the lower classes, who tended to be more radical, would sit on the president's left while the more traditionalist representatives of the nobility and the clergy sat on the right. Since the National Convention did not come into existence until September 20, 1792, the concept of a political “Right” and “Left” would have been unknown to the founding fathers. Still, Dickinson, in supporting British sovereignty and by upholding the interests of the colonial upper class, can be said to be right-wing before there was ever such a thing as a right-wing.

Dickinson and his anti-revolutionary supporters are termed “men of property.” But weren't all the founding fathers “men of property”?

It is true that the loyalists tended to be wealthier than those who supported the Revolution, which certainly makes sense, as revolutions are notoriously bad for business and property values. However, the founding fathers, particularly the three that are the focus of his film, were hardly everymen. John Adams was from what we would today call the upper middle-class and his mother was practically from New England nobility. Though Thomas Jefferson hated the concept of pedigree, Jefferson had notable English and Welsh ancestry (one biographer has suggested that Jefferson was a direct descendant of the medieval kings of Wales), his family had ties to Virginia's elite, and his father was a rich planter. Franklin had the humblest origins by far, but by the time of the Continental Congress he had long been quite wealthy. Still, Dickinson was, at least, rich by even their standards.

Was it really John Adams' idea to make the national bird an eagle?

I've seen no evidence of that. The version of the national seal with the eagle wasn't adopted until June 20, 1782. While Adams was on the first committee commissioned to design the national seal, his suggestion had no trace of the bald eagle; instead he suggested an image of Hercules choosing the difficult, rugged path over the easy, gentle one. As the movie has it, Ben Franklin actually did want the turkey to be the national bird, but he didn't express this opinion until 1784 and even then it was only in a private letter to his daughter.

Did Rev. Witherspoon really recommend adding Divine Providence to the Declaration of Independence?

From what I can tell, yes. Naturally, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams wouldn't have been the originatorsof the idea, since they were both Deists, believers in a non-interventionist God.

Wait, Thomas Jefferson pushed for the abolition of slavery?! And John Adams supported him?! Incidentally, did the slavery issue really almost undermine decisions?

John and Abigail Adams both supported the abolition of slavery and neither kept slaves, although Abigail was related to Southern slaveowners. And while Jefferson owned slaves, he did write into an early draft of the Declaration of Independence a charge against King George III for allowing the slave trade: “He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the person of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.” Needless to say, the opposition of Southern delegates prevented that section from making it into the final draft.

The attitudes of the founding fathers toward slavery is too complex a topic to tackle here, but I'll try to fire off a summary. For starters, Adams was much more willing to compromise over slavery than he is depicted here, but he did believe it was a bad idea that slavery be allowed to continue, famously predicting that the matter of slavery would lead to a civil war in a hundred years. As for Jefferson, he apparently was sincere in his opposition to slavery (in 1769, he even tried to abolish slavery in Virginia), but, in contrast to what the film's Jefferson says he will do, he kept his slaves during his lifetime because he relied on them financially. When he died, he emancipated only five of his slaves, selling the rest to pay off his debts.

Like a number of other abolitionists, however, Jefferson still held the view that blacks were inferior and incapable of being productive members of any Anglo-European nation. If abolition had occurred in Jefferson's lifetime, he undoubtedly would have proposed sending black populations to Africa. Late in life he abandoned this view, at least according to a letter he wrote to a French correspondent in 1809. Nonetheless, the film arguably gives a more sympathetic view of Jefferson and American blacks than the naked facts do.

As for Benjamin Franklin, the film is correct that Franklin established an organization dedicated to the cause of abolition, but that was only after the events of the film. Like Jefferson, Franklin at one time opposed slavery but believed in black inferiority, until he observed a classroom of black and white children and noticed that all the children were equally capable of learning. All in all, the film is fairly accurate, if a bit simplistic, in its treatment of the debate over slavery among Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson. At the least people like themwere fully aware of the very same thing bright high school students notice off the bat: the hypocrisy in declaring the existence of a republic based on an idea of natural rights and keeping institutional slavery legal.

Did they get Pennsylvania to vote by taking the vote to the Pennsylvania delegation, instead of just Dickinson?

Yes, although the delegation was comprised of only three people, not ten, and Dickinson abstained from the vote. However, just as the film portrays, Dickinson did leave the Continental Congress to fight against the British once independence was declared.

Wasn't the document signed at once?

No, sadly. All the signers did not sign at once, but over a period of weeks. Since having them sign at once does make for a good scene, I won't complain for once.

The Moral –Historical films where people don't go off killing other people just aren't "serious."

Recommended Reading

Ellis, Joseph. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson.

It's not exactly a biograpy, but an elaborate analysis of who Thomas Jefferson was and how that shaped his politics and philosophy and, ultimately, United States history.

Grant, James. John Adams: Party of One

If you're in the market for a detailed biograpy of John Adams, this is your choice, no matter what the bestseller lists say.

Zall, Paul M. Benjamin Franklin's Humor

Throw a nickel in a library and there's a good chance you'll hit yet another biography of Franklin, so instead let me recommend a book entirely on Franklin's wit (which this movie goes to great lengths to recreate) and how his sense of humor shaped early American literature.