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Talking Texas History
Talking Texas History
Reflections on America's 250th Brithday
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As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the US, July 4th gets marketed as a party, but the history underneath it is sharper, stranger, and more relevant than the fireworks. What are we celebrating on Independence Day, and why is it the Fourth that gets the spotlight?
Gene and Scott reflect on the meaning of the US in this episode. Our nation's anniversary should be about more than food and fireworks, but what it means to be an American.
Disclaimer And Quick Welcome
SPEAKER_02This podcast does not sponsor by and does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It is sold our thoughts and ideas based upon our professional training and study of the past. Welcome to talking to podcasts. Not only of course, welcome to course. All of us and welcome to another Dexter Coffee Text history.
Checking In From Rome
SPEAKER_02I'm Keith Freut.
SPEAKER_00I am Scott Suspee. We ought to tell everybody, James for Germany, this is a monumental podcast for having it's the first one where something is ever happening on foreign soil. Tell everybody where you are.
SPEAKER_02I'm actually in Rome, Italy. I'll say Italy because it's, you know, somebody thinks I'm in Roma, Texas.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Actually over in Rome. And and what are you doing there? What's the main thing you're doing?
SPEAKER_02Well, we're uh I'm there's a uh class that's being taught, and uh I signed up to take it uh with the University of St. Thomas, and uh I've been here for two weeks and going on a third.
SPEAKER_00Are you on at the top of your class? You're making the best grades out of everybody. Let's just say that I am. Okay, that's fine with I mean who's to know, right?
SPEAKER_02That's what I'm gonna tell you. Who'll ever who will ever know?
SPEAKER_00And if you and if you finish at the top of the class, it's will Pope Leo come and give you a special award?
SPEAKER_02I I I think so. If not him, uh one of his delegates, and I think that there's like one of those squeaky toys.
SPEAKER_00Send send one of the lesser cardinals out to to congratulate you. That's right. Uh who's the lowest on the top? Who's got the who's got the the the the very whose red uh cape is almost pink, right? Let's send him out to see G price. That's right.
Fireworks Abroad And Summer Heat
SPEAKER_00Um which is just what we're gonna talk about today. The fact is that you're in Roma actually is good, right? Because you know, it's the 4th of July almost.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, uh funny thing is, is we just watched fireworks. Uh uh the 29th um is uh Feast of St. Peter and Paul. And so the uh the uh building, the Roman, the fellow the Rome building, it's a state building, uh not connected to the Vatican. They had a big fireworks show, and they're right next to us. So we got to go see it. It was pretty awesome. Uh, you know, we've got dogs, and and and you do too, and you know, dogs and fireworks don't often go to yeah. So this is the first time I've actually seen a fireworks show up close in a long time. So it was enjoyable. And uh it wasn't for the 4th of July, but it was they they try to get close. Now, I I tell you this, I've been wearing a Bucky's t-shirt around. Everybody wants one, huh? Everybody wants one, yeah. And people stuck. I uh uh uh we ran into a couple from Austin uh the other night and uh sitting out eating. You know, they eat late around here, like nine o'clock.
SPEAKER_00It's the Mediterranean culture.
SPEAKER_02It is. That's when they start eating.
SPEAKER_00I am don't go, it's like if you're ever in Spain, don't go start looking for supper at five or six o'clock because no place will be open.
SPEAKER_02No place is open this way. It's the same thing over here, too. And I tell you what, it's not like I never left Texas because it is a scorching, it's 95 degrees.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Europe's in a terrible heat wave now. One thing when you're in Italy now, Gina, I have to warn you about don't go ask any of the Italians how the World Cup is going for them, since they're not here.
SPEAKER_02Well, people are watching it. We we've run across a couple of people watching, you know, from I'm enthralled.
SPEAKER_00I am totally enthralled with it.
SPEAKER_02So who are you voting for? Or who you who are you rooting for?
SPEAKER_00Well, I was rooting for well, you know, I gotta, I mean, I've got to root for the USA, but you know, Scotland, I was, you know, really into that. Of course, the Scots didn't make it to the knockout round, so they're out of it. So, you know, I guess I'm just left with the USA. My my friend Phil Catton has me watching wanting to root for England, but you know, I can't quite get to that rooting for England thing, you know, because of the July, right?
Shifting From Texas To US History
SPEAKER_02Well, let's talk a little bit about this. So normally, you know, it was just talking Texas history, and we talk about Texas history. And we're gonna do something a little bit different is we're gonna talk about U.S. history. Scott and I, while we do teach a lot of Texas history and wrote our dissertations on Texas history many long years ago, we are American historians and a lot, you know, academic historians at a university, your bread and butter, your bread and butter is teaching US survey one and two.
SPEAKER_00That's correct.
SPEAKER_02And we haven't taught that.
SPEAKER_00I haven't taught the second survey in a long time. Uh you teach most of the sort of always do the first survey, yes.
SPEAKER_02I I just started, you know, I I did the first survey many years, and I just got into the second half, and uh I'm just now going back to the first half. So uh we're gonna be talking about a little bit of, you know, what do we teach our class? What is it that we what is the Fourth of July all about? It's not just barbecue, although that's mighty fine. It's not just you know a cold lone star beer. That may or may not be fine depending on your taste. Well, um, and then you've got fireworks, and that's what everybody kind of associates it with, right? Picnics and that kind of stuff. But what does the fourth of July really mean? Let's let's talk a little bit about the the fourth. Why why is it the fourth that we celebrate anything? Why is the fourth important?
Why July 4 Gets The Glory
SPEAKER_00Well, of course, of course, if we're going to talk about why we celebrate the fourth, the first thing we should point out probably is only two men actually signed the declaration of independence on the fourth of July. And they thought it was the third of July, as the which should have been the big one, because you know, that was when the the Congress actually ratified the Continental Congress actually ratified it, was on the third. Uh, but it came out to be the fourth of July, uh, that uh we celebrate as the independence uh project, uh and as independence day. You know, first off about that, I would point out you know a lot of people, you know, I think have the thing. The war between England and the colonies had been going on for over a year when independence was declared. I don't know how many people actually realize that, but you know, war began essentially at Lexington Concord in April of 1775. Uh, and the war had been going on for over a year when the delegates finally all got together enough to actually declare independence. I also think I mean we celebrate, we have all these, you know, celebrate, as we should. But uh perhaps what we one thing we should, I don't know if we actually realize with the reverence what the men who were signing the Declaration of Independence were actually putting their names to at the time. I don't know that they even knew what they were putting their names to at the time. I mean it really was it was a bold thing for them to do because they were essentially committing treason against the King of England of Great Britain.
SPEAKER_02Uh and basically they were signing their own death sentence by signing the Declaration of Independence.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, which is, I mean, okay, we that very brave for them to do, uh, of course. But also, I don't know if it's ever been, I kind of tell my students this had never really been done before. Nobody had ever said we're just gonna strike out on our own, away from the mother country and all its things, by declaring their intentions in such a document.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, if we look at the history of of nations, you know, how does a how does a nation become a nation? Usually, you know, I'm over here in Europe and we're looking at we've been on tours
Declaring Independence As Treason
SPEAKER_02of buildings that are almost 2,000 years old, you know, 1,500 years old. Um I didn't know this. We just went on a tour of the Vatican, and I thought the Vatican was named by the church, right? The church says, oh, this is Vatican. No, the Vatican, the Vatican name was there long before the church was it was it was the original name of the hill, Vatican. And so I was I was talking to the tour guide, and I said, Well, you know, is what's the you know, because I I go back to having taken, you know, world history or or uh you know uh European Western Civ back a long time ago. And uh I knew about the truscan the Etruscans being the indigenous people of of this Italian peninsula. And she said that Vatican is not really a Roman name, and it may date back to the times of the Etruscans. So that's so that's how long we've got now, snap to the United States. There were people in the United States, what's now the United States, long before there was the United States, right? Um, so when Europeans began settling more and more here and and began you know thriving and and doing well and and replacing the indigenous people, uh, which is a whole other story, but uh they created a new form of government. Most other nations, like in Europe, you had these tribes and these civilizations that just grew up and they had language groups and all that. But the way the United States formed itself as a country, no country had ever done before.
SPEAKER_00No, it was a unique way of declaring, I mean it wasn't uh I mean, a country in Europe, and all these things, of course, were largely an ethnic of people,
A Nation Founded On Ideas
SPEAKER_00and there were some borders drawn, and they went back to ancient kingdoms and stuff. But what the United States was trying to do was found a nation, and that's different. That's somewhat different. You know, you talk about when the nations happen in Europe, that might be different than when the country was founded, you know, because a nation, a nation means something else. A nation is something that evolved with commonality and things. And so the United States was trying to create a nation based on an idea, not on a people, not on an ethnicity, not on a language, not on a culture, based on an idea. And it was this that enlightenment idea of, first off, that there are inalienable rights that human beings were born with, endowed, as Jefferson stole it from John Locke and said, endowed by our creator, and things. But that was what the United States was going to be founded on. And it's this idea of equality uh and this whole concept of running a nation in which everybody is equal under the rule of law. The United States, from the time it was founded, did they actually practice that idea? No, they did not. We know there are enslaved people at that time, with very uh less than 20% of the people at the time could vote. Uh at the time won't waste up. But at least it was this idea to work towards. We probably are not even there yet. We're probably not to this whole concept of equality under the law. Yeah. But at least there is something to shoot for, and it also starts a world idea, right? And this is the United States to some extent. I mean, the people in Scotland and England and what became Great Britain might argue with you, ironically, the people that uh the American economists were revolting against, that the United States is the first Enlightenment nation, the first country put the Enlightenment principles into practice on this. And that's a bit, you know what? That is a big thing, not just in American history, but in world history, because it influenced the rest of the world. There's no American revolution, there is no French Revolution.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00That doesn't happen.
SPEAKER_02Right. So you get, yeah, it started the uh, in fact, you know, there was a uh New American Nation, you know, uh or the New European History series many, many long years ago, uh called the Age of Revolutions, uh starting with the American Revolution.
Reading The Declaration’s Preamble
SPEAKER_02Scott, I I want to the, you know, talk about the Declaration of Independence being a very important document. Of course, it is, it's a bounding document of our nation. But let me read a little bit of it, right? The the first, the preamble. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a people to dissolve the political bands with which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them. A decent respect to the opinion of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the government, that wherever, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.
SPEAKER_00That's I mean, talk about an enlightenment thought crystallized in, I mean, what is it, two paragraphs? That's the preamble, essentially. Uh that is, and the rest of it is just you know, the rest of the decoration basically goes on and said, This is why we're pissed off. Uh is what they've done. And all of it is crystallized in that one that that one passage there. I have my students always when I when I teach this, we parse it. We go through it and we parse it and say, What does this mean? No, what does this mean? You know, the very first thing whenever you read that, to me, it always strikes me. Every time I hear it, it strikes me, God, nobody writes like that anymore. That is a language that no one writes like that anymore. Right. It was in a certain period and a certain time.
SPEAKER_02It's it's it sounds quite, I mean, it's profound writing. And um it's yeah, I mean, we we don't we don't write like that anymore. Uh in fact, I I've got to tell you, um, I've been grading uh student essays. Uh I none of them.
SPEAKER_00No, I've been doing the same, and they're not they're they're not done like that. None
Who Wrote It And Why It Lands
SPEAKER_00of we we have I don't think I have any budding Thomas Jeffersons going on in in my freshman class right now.
SPEAKER_02And this is the thing, you know, who wrote it? Thomas Jefferson wrote it, but I was reading something, and and maybe you know this, that he really didn't get credit until much later. Yes, that's right for writing it. That's right. It was not 1790s.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was pretty much of a I don't know if they did it, I don't know if they did it on purpose, uh, that not giving Jefferson the full credit amongst your living. The committee was Franklin and Adams and Jefferson, and it was generally, you know, I mean, I always tell my students it's kind of it's it's kind of a joke and it's kind of not. Benjamin Franklin was was was elderly and wise, and I think Ben looked at John and said, hey, let's make this young guy, Jefferson was the youngest of them, let's make him stay up all night long and write this thing. We'll have some more drinks and go to bed early, and then we'll we'll we'll edit his writing in the morning, and then they looked at it with hangovers and said, Looks good, Tom, uh, and let it go. Uh actually they did a little editing on it, not much. But yes, that it was it didn't come out, they it wasn't signed by them as the authors, uh, because it was presented as a document in the Continental Congress, uh, and it was considered a collaboration. Yes, and Jefferson was not praised to the Ivans and exalted until I mean it became he was he was serving in Washington's administration uh when it really became up that, yeah, oh yeah, by the way, old Tom wrote the Declaration of Independence. Uh you know, and that's the thing, too, when you parse the document and you look at it, that think about the words that they're talking about on this. And this I like to say this too. And if you look at the document and the declaration of independence and how it reflects the ideas of the revolution, you know, revolutions by definition you would think are radical, right? It involves a tearing of the bond of the mother country, somebody
The Revolution’s Practical Argument
SPEAKER_00revolting against the established government, uh, and usually for reasons of you know being radical. But the American Revolution was not a radical revolution. It was a consumer revolution. Because what they're essentially saying is see, these are the rights that people have, these are the what a government is supposed to do, and you're not doing it. And that's why we are severing these bonds, because you're not living up to your side of the bargain. And then when you read that and go on with the grievances, that's what he's they're essentially saying. We have no choice but to create our own, you know, break the bonds of government. We have no choice but to separate ourselves as a uh as a colony of Great Britain because uh you're not honoring what a nation is supposed to do, you're not honoring what a country is supposed to do, what a government is supposed to do. And it's very clear on that document that there are certain things that you're supposed to do. That if people are going to live together, they have to honor these ideas. And it's eloquent, it's much more eloquent than what I'm coming up with right now about it.
SPEAKER_02You know, and these are and and you know, these are not new ideas. And we talk about the Enlightenment, but but actually the idea uh that a government's role is to take care of the people for the common good really goes back to ancient Greek times. Uh Plato, Socrates, Aristotle wrote about this is that government should be for the common good. It should not for the good of any one person, but for the good of all the people. And um, and that we we have maintained that kind of idea and what we expect, you know, and and and look, we all we all get behind political parties, right? We like this party, we don't like that party, we like this policy, we don't like that policy. But in the great scheme of American history, for the most part, despite and and and not all the time, right? Because history's full of exceptions, but for the most part, regardless of which party wins the election, they still looked after the common good. And I think that is a unique thing. You know, we look at elections, look at changes of government throughout history and other, you know, when there's bloodshed and bloodletting, and you know, this this group is in, that group is out, and so that means their followers don't get anything or starved or or or murdered. The American system of government for the most part has has been a very smooth transition. And that's what Jefferson, that's what Washington, that's what the founding fathers wanted, is is not you know uh civil wars and and bloodshed and animosity. They wanted to take care of the people, even those who didn't vote for them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that's essentially that's what Jefferson is saying in that document. Yeah, that this is why we established this nation on these principles, on these ideas, and and never getting away from the fact that government is only legitimate as long as it is established by the people. And that you know, the people in the nation that that you govern at their consent.
Peaceful Power Transfers And Legitimacy
SPEAKER_00You know, when it came out, they said there's you know the people in in Great Britain, and the King's Court of George III, uh, there's many times that they read the Declaration of Independence and they basically laughed at it. They weren't, you know, they said, what's wrong with this won't work? What the hell is wrong with these people? What do you mean? You're not going to have this symbol of power and the executive symbolic power ahead in a king that's doing these things. You know, England voted. Not very many people got to vote, but there were no vote. Right. But they had an idea of representation, but they had this king and they had this whole mechanism of someone who is the head of the government that is always there, that serves by divine right and stuff. And the United States is not going to do that. And they laughed. They said it'll never let, you know, when the revolution was over with, uh, essentially at the Treaty of Paris, a lot of the British uh negotiators essentially said, eh, we'll sign this because they'll be back. They'll want us back. This won't, this won't, this won't work. This nation, new nation, won't work. And it looked like it was going to fall apart in 1800 with the election of 1800. Everybody predicted that you can't have this change of power from the Federalists to the Democratic Republicans, but it did. The revolution of 1800, of course, as it's called, it worked. We changed the, we changed who was in charge of the government without malice, without bloodshed, and it proved that you could do this. Now we didn't live up to our principles and we didn't establish the nation fully. And we know it was the way the government was established in 1776 didn't work. First, the Articles of Federation didn't work, but even the Constitution didn't work because we had to fight a civil war. There were still unanswered questions. You know, this is an intriguing question I ask quite often as we're all talking about the nation, the founding of the nation.
When A Country Becomes A Nation
SPEAKER_00When did the United States become a nation? It was a country. We founded a country in 1776, but when did we when did we become a nation? I always say, I don't think we became a nation until World War I. When we found some unifying factor to come about and move towards that. Before that, we were probably just a country of competing little sections and regions and parties and partisanship, and we didn't have a whole lot uniting us. World War I penny.
SPEAKER_02You know, that's a that's an interesting observation. And I uh I would I would I would agree that that's a good argument. Um I I I you know, yeah. We tried to we tried to get along, and we and we have gotten along. We've had problems, we've had arguments, we worked things out, but I you're I think you're right that after what maybe even after World War II, when the nation became much more solid, solidified uh and and more national um in its uh you know we didn't we didn't have a common law. I mean we okay people spoke English, but not everybody did. Here in Texas, right? It wasn't until 1923 that we passed laws for in schools to make schools more English. So we had all these little schools, these little rural schools that were teaching in Czech and Polish and um German, German Spanish, yeah, and and then we changed it in 1923. Now, has it always been has everybody always had a fair share? Has everybody always had uh equal input? No. But but you know what I always find interesting is every Thanksgiving, every November, I uh ask my students, what is your family's Thanksgiving? Because most everybody celebrates Thanksgiving, first of all. 99% of the students celebrate Thanksgiving, and that's great. You know, I I'm all for every holiday. I'll Turkey and football. I mean, come on. Yeah, and and what is it they that you eat, I say. And it's astounding at how many people, even from immigrant families, turkey dressing, and dressing, and they they adopted that. Except for now, let's let's be sure here, Gene.
SPEAKER_00There are some well, okay, tamales, you should too. But also, yeah, let's just make sure we everybody knows it's dressing, not stuffing. All right, okay. I mean, that we don't want any Yankees coming around with the stuffing stuff and putting apples and things like that in it. It's cornbread dressing.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So it it it people, whether or not, and it's it's what you said being. The American nation, all men are created equal, endowed by the creator, certain inalienable rights. It
Immigration And The American Promise
SPEAKER_02may not have always been the case, but it's always been the aspiration.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02That's why that's why people come here, that's why people migrate to this nation. That's why people want to become Americans because of the promise.
SPEAKER_00And and I worry that in today's times we're might be forgetting what that promise is. We may be forgetting about some of this, and also maybe it could be we're taking the promise in a direction and not supposed to go, uh being, you know, violently anti-immigrant and various other ways of ideas. And so maybe it's good that we maybe we needed to need to have more of a focus on the founding and more of focus on the decoration, and really report what it was about. Uh, you know, it's not about fireworks, it's not about hot dogs. I love all those things. It's about founding a nation on that idea and that idea of equality, equality above the wall uh before the law. All men are equal before the law. But also diversity. Look, one of the big founding things is anybody can become an American. You can come here and be an American. That's something we can't lose. We've got to keep that. You know, because that's a big part of who we are as a nation. And the declaration says that declaration doesn't spell out Jefferson didn't go to, now, if you want to be in this nation, you gotta be this, this, this, the. He didn't do that, did he? No. He basically says you got to believe in that idea. That's all you have to do, is believe in that idea, and you can be an American.
SPEAKER_02How long was it before uh you had a truly American-born president?
SPEAKER_00Martin Van Buren, I believe, was the first one. Is that uh uh some reason that's in my mind that Van Buren was the first one born after their after 1776?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And the first, yeah, I mean, even even if they were born here in the United States, they were still rep citizens of Great Britain. Um and so yeah, I think Van, I think it was Van Buren. Um so I I you know, there every once in a while we need, as you're saying, to go back and look at our roots. Where is it that we are? Because we might find that we ventured off track a little bit. Um, and I think we do that. I mean, I think that's one of the things that the Fourth of July gives us the opportunity to do is to go back and really let's look at where what the founding fathers said. Let's look at their at their ideals, their goals, their aspirations. And are we still being true to what they wanted? I think that's a good good thing to do.
SPEAKER_00I think that's since we come to the end of this, that's a good thought to leave. If we were to ask the question, what do you know? That would be a good thing to end on. But you know what? I want to do some all this nice high fluid and stuff. Let's leave people with, I want to leave people
Hot Dog Math And Farewell
SPEAKER_00with this fact. I I I read yesterday. That's amazing. There are 330, a little over 300, getting close to 340 million people in the United States. Do you know that on the 4th of July, those 300, almost 340 million people will eat over 175 million hot dogs?
SPEAKER_02That sounds like a hot dog eating contest.
SPEAKER_00There's a reason why we're fat. We can take that for Independence Day, right? I don't know how many, you know, how many hamburgers it'll be, but uh over almost 175 million hot dogs. That's a lot of hot dogs, Gene. That is. Well, Scott, happy 4th of July. Happy 4th of July to you in Italy. When do you come back? July 12th. July the 12th. Gene will be back. So everybody, you know, set your calendars. Gene's coming back on July the 12th. He'll be back in the United States at that point. So uh we can all welcome him back then.
SPEAKER_02Well, Scott, you have a good 4th of July. You do too. Goodbye.
SPEAKER_00And you will still be in in Italy. Are you gonna you're gonna tell them to shoot off some fireworks for you on the 4th of July on there? I I think I can probably talk them into doing that.
SPEAKER_02They seem to like them, so right. They do. Yeah, that 4th of July show we saw show we saw was really good as not for an American 4th of July.
SPEAKER_00There you go. It's good there you go. It's good as stuff for the 4th of July as we go. That's right. All right, G. We'll see you next time, and everybody else, next time. Thanks. Have a good day.
