Lives Fortune Sacred Honor And The People Behind The Declaration

A Declaration of Independence signature looks heroic from 250 years away. In real time, it can put a target on your back. We dig into what that kind of courage actually costs, why the signers weren’t instantly celebrated, and how a nation’s memory changes once the fighting ends and the stories finally get told.

We’re also marking the run-up to America’s 250th anniversary by sharing practical ways to celebrate Independence Day with purpose: get your friends, family, or church together, read the Declaration out loud, and sign it as a public pledge to preserve liberty for the next generation. Along the way, we talk about our new book, Lives, Fortune, Sacred Honors, built around short, story-rich biographies of all 56 Declaration signers so you can stop thinking of them as a faceless group and start seeing them as men with specific risks, careers, families, and convictions.

You’ll hear standout stories like Oliver Wolcott hauling the torn-down King George III statue from New York back to Connecticut, melting it down, and turning it into tens of thousands of musket balls. We also spotlight James Wilson, a signer of both the Declaration and the Constitution, a key voice for the rule of law, and a founder whose fight in Pennsylvania shows what happens when people throw off tyranny but forget to build lasting order.

If you care about American history, the American Revolution, constitutional principles, and the role of faith in public life, share this with someone who’s skeptical, curious, or simply tired of shallow takes. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: which Declaration signer do you most want to learn about next?

Transcript

Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's The WallBuilders Show, taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. Taking on those topics from all over the country this year as we continue to do the program from the road for the three of us. We're just really blessed to be involved in the 250th and just see so many celebrations across the nation. If you haven't started getting ready for one in your community, be sure to go to wallbuilders.com today, get you some good materials, get you a blown-up copy of the Declaration. And plan on that weekend of July 4th, which is coming up in just a few days. We're just a little over a week away. Get together with your friends and family. If you're not already planning to get together at your church or at your county courthouse or wherever the folks in your community are getting together, maybe you should be the one to invite everybody over and break out the Declaration of Independence, read through the whole thing, sign it together and pledge your lives, fortune, sacred honor to preserving this for the next generation. There is so much you can do to be a part of the solution. And there's lots of great activities right there at wallbuilders.com. And then wallbuilders.show if you need to catch up on any of the radio programs from the last few weeks or months, they're all right there and you can share them with your friends and family from wallbuilders.show. We appreciate you being a listener. I'm Greg Green here with David Barton and Tim Barton. And again, you can learn more at our website, wallbuilders.com 

Tim Barton [00:01:22] And guys, also worth noting while they are there, wallbuilders.com, we have a new book Lives, Fortune, Sacred Honor that went live for sale yesterday. It actually was number one on Amazon for American Revolution section. Now, in fairness, I don't know how many sections they have on Amazon.com. You know, I feel like sometimes they create new sections just to help people feel like winners, but that's not the case for us Yesterday, it is available at wallbuilders.com or amazon.com. And guys we've talked about this some last week. I think we probably talked about it maybe even on Monday of this week. I don't even remember now what all we were doing. I was traveling so long yesterday. I got back so late last night but as we have for years talked about the Founding Fathers and saying instead of just kind of having a generalized understanding that we think we know, with no specific details and stories. We know some names, but we really couldn't break down who they were, what they did, or who sacrificed their life, fortune, and sacred honor. We wrote brief bios on all 56 Signers of the Declaration. Of course, in WallBuilders fashion, we tell a lot of stories. We try to make it as entertaining as possible for short little vignettes that are two, three, four, five, six pages on each one of the 56 Signers. So, it really is a short, fun, easy read, a high-level overview, but when you get to know them more, you appreciate so much more that not only did they pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, that they followed through on that. Every one of them, it cost them for the cause of liberty, but they paid it nobody back down, and we are free today because of them. So we would highly encourage it. This is something that not only for everybody listening, we want you to get, this is something that if you have friends and family and they're critical and skeptical and they don't know. This is a great way to introduce them to those people that really should have statues erected in their honor, not torn down because a woke generation can only see maybe a sin or fault in their life and not recognize that in spite of their sin, God used them to birth freedom in this nation. And in this Nation, we've had more freedom, stability, prosperity, and been more benevolent than anywhere else in the world for the last 250 years. It is remarkable. So... The book is Lives, Fortune, Sacred Honor, available at wallbuilders.com or also on Amazon if you'd prefer to go there. But that, I think, would be a great thing to look for when you go to walledbuilders.com. 

Rick Green [00:03:52] Timing could not be more perfect, guys. So, the 250th, as David pointed out months ago, really is the whole year between July 4th, 2026 and July 4, 2027. So I'm thinking, like you get the book now and then you just read one of them a week, then you can spend the year of the 250th getting familiar with the guys that actually made it possible for us to be celebrating this. So, folks, it's a perfect time to do that. Wallbuilders.com, of course, and then maybe even break it out on the fourth this year, share it with your friends and family, open up and read about somebody you don't have any idea who they are, right before you sign the document. Cause you know, you need a copy of the Declaration, blow it up and lay it out for your celebration. Sign the document, pick a name. Just look up there. One of those scribbles of a name and then go look them up in your new book from wallbuilders.com I know you guys had to have a lot a lot of fun doing this even though I mean you've got the library with so many of their writings. You got the only collection on display of original; you know signed documents by all these guys. But you still probably learned some things as you were doing research for the book on maybe some of them well-known ones, but certainly, some of the more obscure guys 

David Barton [00:04:56] Well, yeah, it was that, but it's also learning individuals, learning not only as a group. We know them as a group, the signers, and we can go across the picture and point out the guys and who they are, but it just hadn't dawned on me that there are so many of their individual stories that I didn't know. I knew something about nearly every one of them, but when I got into the stories and Tim and I were writing this thing, there were so much of the parts of their stories I'd never even heard before. So it was kind of like being reintroduced to friends you haven't seen in a number of years, even though you had pictures on your walls for a long time, they show back up at the house and you go, oh my goodness, you guys have been doing what? And I kind of felt that way going back over the Signers, just kind of reacquainting with some of them that there were stories I'd never even heard before. 

Tim Barton [00:05:43] And Dad, in the midst of even stories of guys that we did not know, which is absolutely true, and as kind of an illustration of that, I remember more than once, you texting or calling and being like, you're not going to believe what we just found out about this person. Even in the midst of that there were some guys that knew, there were sacrifices that we already had some level of familiarity with, but getting into the details really gave a lot more perspective. Some people, for example, we knew we're wealthy, we-we knew... that they gave a lot for the cause of liberty, but when you start going through guys like John Hancock, a wealthy guy who funded so much all along the way or a guy like Sam Adams, who was so poor that his entire friend group basically is taking up a collection to get him all of the things he needs, new clothes, new stocking, a wig. 

David Barton [00:06:35] Was that the first GoFundMe campaign we had in America? 

Tim Barton [00:06:38] You know, it kind of was. Almost like a Give, Send, Go, because, hey, that's what they're doing, giving, sending, and you go and do this thing. But what's, what's worth noting is like you have, you have Sam and John Adams who are working so intimately closely together in this thing with Sons of Liberty, all the things they are doing. And these guys are connected on deep and high levels because of their patriotism. But they're very disconnected financially. And so one of the things, again, we've talked about before, the Founding Fathers, Dad, as you mentioned, were individuals. They weren't a group that was kind of like the mold, the cookie cutter. Everybody looks the same. Some of them were very wealthy. Some of the were very, very poor. Some of them were doctors. Some were farmers. Some were lawyers. Some were school teachers. Some were musicians. You go down the list and there was great diversity in the group, but where they found common ground, the common bounds, it's what John Adams described in a letter in Thomas Jefferson in 1813. He said it was the general principles of Christianity. They found common groundbreaking to come together and ultimately it was that the cause of liberty, those principles of liberty that brought them together and being able to highlight some of those stories really were a lot of fun. 

Rick Green [00:07:56] All right, well guys, so out of all of those signers, 56 of them, like we said, you know, folks can get the book and, and do one signer a week and make that their 250th between July 4th, 2026 and July 4, 2027. But I'm gonna pick one to ask you guys about because I finally started my collection, I know you guys have this amazing collection of signatures and written documents and all that and it inspired me so I have my first one down 55 to go for the Signers of the Declaration. The problem is I know nothing about the guy I got. So it's all Oliver Wolcott. And it just happened that there was an estate sale close to where I live and a guy from my church knew, you know, I was really into all this. And so he told me about it and it wasn't that much. So, I got it. And so, I've started my collection, but I just don't know anything about Oliver Wolcott. So, I know we got a lot of these guys, we don't have time to cover all of them, but I thought that'd be a fun one to just get you to tell us some random things about him. 

David Barton [00:08:47] Now, Rick, I'm really curious as to how severe the infection is of this bug you caught. If it's gonna produce another bunch of Signers that you're gonna put with this or is this gonna be a standalone orphan that you got out there with Oliver Wolcott? So, are you thinking about adding more to it? 

Rick Green [00:09:05] Well, it depends on if I can do, what was the guy's name that worked for Clinton that left the national archives or wherever it was with stuff rolled up and stuck in his pants. So, I'm just thinking every time I visit the WallBuilders Museum, what could I, what could, I sneak away? No, I'm kidding. But seriously, I love, I loved what y'all have done so much. And so I want to have some of that at the campus and, you know, so who knows, I got this one on the, uh, in the office and, and I did get a Frederick Douglas too, I think I sent you a picture of it and it's a, it's one of his handwritten deals, not a Signer, of course, but just a great American in American history. So I don't know, we'll see. I've been around you long enough that if I haven't caught the virus bad yet, then I probably never will, but I think I have. 

David Barton [00:09:45] That's good. So, do you know anything about Oliver Wolcott? What do you? 

Rick Green [00:09:49] He's Connecticut, right? And I think that's about all I know. 

David Barton [00:09:55] Do you know how many signers there were from Connecticut? 

Rick Green [00:09:58] I'm thinking three, but I don't know if that's even close. 

David Barton [00:10:02] Again, very good. It was four. So, he's one of the four Signers from Connecticut. He's kind of one of, in some ways, one of older guys that was involved, at least by the time he signed. So I mean, he's not all that old. He's in his fifties when he signs, but he started way back at Yale and he graduated top in his class at Yale, which is no easy thing to do. So he comes out a really, really smart guy and lo and behold, and by the way, his father was one of the colonial governors of Connecticut back before the war. So his father was a British governor of Connecticut, which kind of says, oh, this is interesting. You got his dad being a British governor, and he ends up being the American governor of Connecticut. So, you've got both kind of countries represented there, father and son, which happened decades after his dad was there. But he ends going from college into the military, and he ended up being part of the colonial militia on the British side. And he's in King George's War. I don't know if you know anything about King George's War, but that was kind of the run up to the French and Indian War. And so, it was the British still fighting the Indians and fighting the French. And the French would come in, the French wanted America, the British wanted America. They would take whatever tribe would help them. And so, the tribes would be on one side or then the other tribes. Tribes, many of them enjoyed fighting and they just had somebody to fight. And so in this case, it was King George's war was fighting France. It was England fighting France in America over some control inside America. And so, after King George's war was over, he then becomes a 25-year-old sheriff. So, he gets into law enforcement and he's in law enforcement. And he goes on and he gets married and they have several kids and he stays involved in politics. And so, during that time, he went into the Continental Army when it started. So, when we start getting close to the army, before he did that, while he was still in England, he became the military leader over all of Connecticut's forces. So, before we get in the War, he's already in the military. He's had the experience with King George's War, and now he's in the army, and then we do the Declaration of Independence, and so he's- 

Rick Green [00:12:24] And would that be, David, would that be the military? So he was over the military for the king or that's, or you're saying private or the, uh, um, militia? 

David Barton [00:12:33] It was, it was over the British military, but it wasn't the British regulars. It was the British militia. 

Rick Green [00:12:39] Interesting. Okay. 

David Barton [00:12:39] He's over the Connecticut militia, which is British and, and the British didn't necessarily to, I think to our benefit, the British, didn't really have any forts over in America at all because Americans were British and so we built our own forts and we had Fort Oswego and other force that we had. So, the British doesn't send their professional troops over, but we were the, we were the British troops on the ground. And so, he's commanding those troops. But then when we declare independence, of course, that all changes. And so, Congress then sends him as a negotiator to go negotiate with the Iroquois Indians to keep them from going to the British. And that kind of worked and it kind of didn't. Several of the tribes went with the British and fought the Americans. And so, it's just the kind of thing where the tribes would change back and forth in their sides, which side they fought for. So. What happens is when we signed the Declaration and getting ready to sign the Declaration, the I guess you would say the anti-British sentiment was growing in America. And so, one of the things they had in New York in the state of New York, which is the most loyal British colony of all the 13 colonies. That's where when the war started all the British, I guess you would say refugees, went to New York to be safe there. And that's a place where the American army did very, very little. Lost the big battle there in New York City, and then the British held New York for the rest of the war. But in the lead up to the War, there was this big statue of King George III. And of course, he's the king from which we declare independence in the Declaration. And the citizens there in the New York, the patriots got tired of that statue, and they tore the statue down. I mean, they tore it down. And so, what happened was Oliver Wolcott went to New York, he took that statue, he loaded it on his wagons and he brought that statue back to Connecticut, 60 miles back to the home in Connecticut. And there he melted that down and made musket balls for the Revolution. 

Rick Green [00:14:40] Oh wow, really? 

David Barton [00:14:42] Yeah, he turned the statue of King George into American musket. 

Rick Green [00:14:45] Oh, I love it. 

David Barton [00:14:46] 42,000 musket balls he made out of that statue. So, it's so. He then used that to help win the battle of Saratoga, which is our first major American victory. So it's really fun. 

Rick Green [00:14:59] Oh, really? I love that. 

David Barton [00:15:00] It's a cool story, you know, it's just the, it's the irony of it. So he goes on to become governor. He's a really strong Christian guy. We've got proclamations from him calling the state of Connecticut to times of prayer and fasting. And, and he's just a very outspoken Christian guy, but he, he, he was really good as a military guy as well. So. That's kind of what he's known for. But that, that statue story is pretty cool. That statue and coming back and using that to force the British to surrender at Saratoga is pretty good. 

Rick Green [00:15:32] Oh, that's I'm gonna remember that one. That's fantastic. Hey, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show. 

Rick Green [00:16:45] Welcome back to The WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us, getting some of the stories from the Signers of the Declaration as we're getting super close to the 250th birthday coming up in just a few days, I guess we're about eight days, nine days away from it now. And we were just talking about Oliver Wolcott, one of the signers, of the Declaration. And, and David, I was curious, just generally speaking, were these guys in the Founding Era, well-known because of signing, or was that something that came later? And I mean, like, I'm, I mean obviously if they were governor or something like that, they were well known, but was the fact that they signed the Declaration, was that already, you know, a really cool badge of honor to wear or did that not come till later?  

David Barton [00:17:23] No, that came much later. The first badge of honor it was, was a badge of honors of traitor and signing the Declaration means you're on the top of the hit list. And so that was not a place anybody wanted to be, but they weren't gonna back down. They had put, again, they pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, and that put them right on the top of the British hit list. So, the British are looking for these guys and- nobody knew how that was gonna turn out. And for the first several years, it looked like the British were gonna win. And so, there was no real badge of honor to other Americans. They were already patriot leaders because they were being elected as governors or military leaders or soldiers or school teachers or whatever. And so, they had the respect of citizens. They've already been elected and a lot of them never been elected and were elected after the war gets started. So, there was nothing really legendary about them signing the Declaration at that time, that came years later. And so, after the peace, after we signed the peace treaty and we say, hey, we really pulled this off. We really are a nation. This is unbelievable. And then as these guys start dying off, then people start saying, wow, they were some of the guys who helped start this. And so, it took, it took it a while for it to come. I mean, they weren't really, except for George Washington and John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, they weren't really legendary in their lifetime. And even with Adams and Jefferson, they weren't quite legendary. They were well-known, but there were a whole lot of Founding Fathers who didn't like Jefferson or who didn't like Adams. And that's where the real partisanship gets started. I mean, the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, the Federalists lined up behind John Adams and they'd just as soon shoot Jefferson as look at him. That's an exaggeration. They weren't gonna shoot him, but they didn't like him and they thought he was the enemy. And so that's one of the dirtiest campaigns that ever occurred in American history. Was that election between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson where Americans are vilifying Jefferson or Adams depending on who they like. So those guys really weren't heroes yet. It really took another generation. It was their own kids who started venerating and respecting their forefathers. And it just, so all the celebration we do now and these guys are legendary, that wasn't where they were yet. It's kind of like divided over Trump right now. There's a lot of people who think he's a great leader and there's a lotta people who think he is the worst guy that's ever existed and a generation from now there'll be a whole different overall opinion of him as there has been when you look back on George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. You know Reagan's legendary now but at the time he was fighting the Democrats back then he wasn't legendary. He's just a governor that used to be an actor who has no business being in politics and now we look back and say wow what a great president Ronald Reagan was but that wasn't going on when he was president. 

Rick Green [00:20:09] And you, I think you said something about this last week, maybe on one of our programs. I know you talk about it in Constitution Alive when we filmed that years ago, but these guys were, I mean, pretty varied backgrounds and not all of them, what we would consider to be what you would, you would think of as the, you know, the, the quote unquote politician or the, or the... I mean they came; they were farmers, they were business people. Tell us a little bit more about just their, the you know just where they came from and how they ended up in this incredible position. 

David Barton [00:20:37] You know, it's just like looking in Congress today. If you look at Congress today, you got farmers, you got entrepreneurs, you've got inventors, you got business guys, you get scientists, you got professional military guys, you got Navy SEALs that are the top military. You've got everything there, including some deadbeats. You know we've got all sorts of people in Congress and that's pretty much what Congress was like back at that point in time. Not that we had any deadbeats at that point and cause, America just, we didn't have that mentality of that kind of we owe you something or I mean, you had to earn your way. But some of the guys were barely literate. I mean they were not well educated. If you take a Davy Crockett kind of guy, the next generation, he's not very literate at all. And yet he becomes a congressman because he has common sense and represents the people. So in some ways there's not really that much difference between then and now except. These guys, I think, were more willing to make great sacrifices, and they were more principle-driven, and as a result, they're willing to take on their own party or anybody else if it violates what they believe were the founding principles. And I think that's part of the difference we had now is they held higher expectations for themselves than the people did for the citizenship as well. We had a very educated, very literate citizenry, which is not necessarily the case today. 

Rick Green [00:21:58] Okay, I have a tough question for you. So, I'm going to make you not be able to use Benjamin Rush as your answer. And it's not necessarily your favorite Founder. But as you did this new book and went back to some of these writings and different things that you've had in your library for three decades and probably read before or seen before, was there any Founder that jumped out at you as, okay, if there was one guy that I want the American people to know about that they may not know about yet, this is the guy?. I gotta tell the audience why I had to take Benjamin Rush off the table for those that don't know, David already wrote a whole book on Benjamin Rush and often talks about him as one of his favorites. So, I had taken that one off the tables and that one is at WallBuilders.com. Go ahead. 

David Barton [00:22:39] There were several Founders who really went up in my estimation in several ways. I think James Wilson is a cool guy. I like James Wilson. He hadn't always been high on my list. Not that I had anything against him. He just wasn't like a Benjamin Rush, well, I wanna write a book about this guy. But then I find that what he had to fight in Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania as it turns out really was, how do I wanna say this? Pennsylvania, when they separated from Great Britain, they didn't really think through their original state constitution of 1776. And they just so threw the baby out with the bathwater and they sewed throughout the British system that they really threw out law and order without realizing it. And so, Founding Fathers and other states wrote and said, do you guys realize what you just did? Yeah, I mean, you've taken the rule of law away, but the way you've created your government, you've made a democracy. You're no longer a republic. You're not even part of the monarchy. You've gone to a raw democracy and you're going to have riots and mobs and et cetera. And so go back to James Wilson who is one of only six guys who signed the Declaration and the Constitution and James Wilson is actually put on the original U.S. Supreme Court by George Washington. He was the second most active member in the Constitutional Convention. He starts the first law school in America. The guy's awesome. But what happened was when they made that that state Constitution, 1776 Pennsylvania, he's one of the ones who said this is a terrible document. You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You're thrown out every form of government because you just don't want government because you don't with the British over us. And so he actually ended up being attacked by citizens. And he and a bunch of the patriot foreign friends had to get in his house and they forwarded up inside the house and had to hold off part of the city, attacking them for several days. They actually called his house Fort Wilson. And so in some ways, it became a civil war because, by overthrowing the British government, you've allowed the lawless to come in and do whatever they want, and they hadn't prepared for the rule of law, and they haven't trained people for the rule of law. I just think, man, what an amazing guy. He is an academic, he's a real thinker, he is a political guy, and he's willing to go to fight. He's not a soldier, not in any way that way, but he went to fight to defend his friends and defend the principles, and they ended up winning that thing. But he went up in my estimation just thinking, I don't know who would pick the day, the high school janitor that goes out and gets a medal of honor's kind of what it seems like. Somebody you would not expect to do that. And James Wilson stepped up to the task. And I just saw several examples of guys I did not anticipate doing that, and I didn't know they had faced the situation they did. And he just really impressed me and went way up in opinion. And by the way, I like the guy anyway for lots of other reasons. I think we mentioned a few weeks ago. He's the guy that back in 1791 started talking about how wrong abortion was. You know, he's on the Supreme Court doing law lectures, teaching students that abortion's wrong. That's back in1791. People think, well, that was 1973, Roe v. Wade. No, no, no. There's nothing new under the sun. You know they had nearly 50 cases dealing with abortions in the 1600s in America. And so, I'm just really impressed by the guy, how well-rounded he was in so many areas. 

Rick Green [00:25:59] Well, you may not have intended for this to be one of my takeaways, but, um, I feel so much better about some of the inter, you know, the intro, the, the fighting within our own side sometimes. Those people that, you know, they've had the boot of government on their neck and they're, and they are tired of it. And they just pushed too far the other way. And, and, and you know what's the nature of man I guess it's not a new story. We, we see it happening in our own culture now sometimes. And so, I guess we could get a lot of wisdom from those Founders that, that stuck it out and understood those principles. And especially, with a biblical perspective of the rule of law. Incredibly, incredibly important. Oh, we got so many more stories to tell. Hopefully we'll get some more in before July 4th. Make sure you tune in tomorrow for Foundations of Freedom Thursday and then of course Good News Friday coming up in a couple of days. Thanks so much for listening to The WallBuilders Show.