April 25, 2024 • 10 mins
There are some threads that go throughout colonial American history – things like liberty and justice. Here are a few to keep in mind!
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
This is the FCB podcast network.They bring us at the Charny for start
of the thing, and they thoughtso when we were in America. And
(00:32):
welcome back to the Growing Patriot podcastAmerican History for Kids. Before I start,
this is just a reminder that youcan find more resources for this episode
and every episode at Growingpatriots dot comslash podcast. As you know, we're
at the end of the Revolutionary timeperiod. And in the last episode I
(00:54):
told you about seven events I hopeyou remember, and in this episode I'm
going to tell you about five bigthemes I hope you remember. So first,
what's a theme. Think about itlike an idea that comes up over
and over again. And there area few that just came up over and
over again the whole time we weretalking about the founding period, and those
(01:17):
were the idea of the individual beingso important, liberty, fairness and justice,
compromise and improvement, not perfection,but improvement. So let's dive in
as we talk about how each ofthem was a theme throughout our entire founding
period, from the very first settlers, through our difficulties with English rule,
(01:40):
the Revolution, and as we becameour own independent country. First up is
the individual. From early on,this is what America was all about.
Pilgrims came here so they could worshiptheir individual faith safely, rather than be
(02:02):
forced into the religion their king orqueen told them they had to follow.
Colonies had their own charters, whichwere kind of like many constitutions protecting certain
rights. And while those were inspiredby the Magna Carta, which was an
English document that went way back totwelve fifteen, with the king so far
away, these were something different.They were really governing themselves and had far
(02:24):
more rights as individual human beings ratherthan just subjects of a certain king or
queen. And it's when the Kingof England tried to interfere with those rights
as individual people that colonists had aproblem. They told the king he couldn't
do that, and they were willingto fight a war about it, because
every person is born with certain inalienablerights to things like life, liberty,
(02:50):
and the pursuit of happiness. Andwhen the American colonists won, they set
up a constitution that was set upto protect every single individual from the government
to protect the rights of those individuals, knowing that it's the best way to
protect the rights of everyone overall,and in our new country. Without ranks
(03:10):
and titles and kings and queens,people could make their own way in the
world, prove themselves through hard work, and succeed on merit as individuals.
The second theme is liberty. Ourentire founding period was a fight for liberty.
First, it was the story ofpeople finding liberty in the American colonies,
(03:32):
and then when Britain made that impossible, the colonies themselves had to find
liberty from Britain. Many of theearliest colonists needed a safe place to live
because there was no liberty in theirhome countries. I mentioned religious freedom before,
but they might not have had freedomof speech, the ability to choose
where to live, who they couldmarry, what they could read, what
(03:52):
their job was, or any ofanother million decisions we enjoy every day and
don't think about. By coming toan a new colony that was chartered on
liberty, they could build a newlife. There still wasn't as much choice
as there is today, but itwas more than they could have dreamed of
otherwise, And they knew their children, grandchildren and every generation to come would
(04:13):
have even more than they did.And that's why any threat to liberty was
taken very seriously by the colonists.Did attacks in Boston really matter to a
colonist in South Carolina? Not really. It didn't cost them any money,
and they could have ignored it.But it wasn't just a tax. It
was Britain saying that America wasn't freeto govern itself, that they didn't have
(04:34):
liberty like they had agreed to,and that was a threat to every single
colony. So they all worked togetherto fight back and protect liberty in all
thirteen colonies, knowing that it couldbe a huge deal, and it was.
It ended up causing the Revolutionary War, but that ended up creating America,
(04:55):
a country founded in liberty. Thethird is the idea of fairness and
justice. We've talked about liberty andindividuals, so it's important that we talk
about fairness and justice. After all, liberty doesn't mean much if it's not
fair for every single individual, andour founders worked really hard to make sure
(05:15):
everyone was treated equally. One ofmy favorite examples of this is what happened
after the Boston massacre. Let's goback to seventeen seventy for a second.
A British soldier named Hugh White wasguarding the custom house in Boston and American
colonists were yelling at him and causinga big fuss. He hit one with
his bayonet and the colonists started throwingstuff at him, snowballs, rocks,
(05:39):
ice, you name it. SoWhite called for help. It turned into
a big fight and the British firedtheir guns. Five colonists were killed and
six others were hurt. But insteadof just hanging the eight British soldiers who
were arrested John Adams, and you'veheard of him, right he became president
later, he said they had tohave a fair trial. He was a
(06:00):
lawyer, so he defended them himself. He even convinced the judge to bring
in people from outside of Boston tobe jurors, so the people who decided
if the soldiers were guilty or innocentcould be as fair as possible. He
wanted a fair trial for a coupleof reasons. For one thing, he
wanted it to look fair. Hedidn't want to give the British any excuse
to get revenge. They had tobe able to say they did everything right
(06:24):
in the American colonies. But therewere also a lot of colonists still loyal
to Britain, and he had toshow them that the quote unquote rebels were
good people, that they were forlaw and order, that they respected justice
and being fair was the only wayto get justice. And in the end,
no one was found guilty of murder. Two were found guilty of something
(06:45):
else called manslaughter, which is alittle bit less. And when we talk
about the Constitution and the Bill ofRights on this podcast, we talked a
lot about our system of justice,but we didn't really talk about the word
justice. If something is just,it is fair or right. So that's
built into the system if it's builtright, and ours is. But justice
and fairness in this time period canalso be tricky because in the founding period
(07:09):
we still had slavery in America andthat's not fair and it's not just and
a lot of our founders knew that. And that brings me to our fourth
theme, and that fourth theme iscompromise. I've heard people say that a
good compromise leaves everybody mad, andthat's because that means that the two sides
that disagree each have to give upsomething of what they want and agree on
(07:32):
something they can both live with.So when it came to slavery, a
lot of our founders knew what waswrong. They also knew that to win
our freedom from Britain and get theConstitution passed, we needed every single colony
working together. And there were somecolonies that just wouldn't agree to end slavery
quite yet, so in the shortterm they had to compromise, and they
(07:54):
knew slavery would come to an endbefore long. Compromise happened on a million
things in our history, and itall comes together in our Constitution, which
is all about compromise. The wayour country is set up, no one
can have their own way all thetime. The different branches of government all
want different things and they have towork together. And the final theme is
(08:16):
improvement over perfection, because nothing isperfect, but we can always keep making
it better. In the preamble tothe Constitution, we did an whole episode
about that. If you want togo back and listen, Thomas Jefferson wrote
the phrase in order to form amore perfect union, and I love that
phrase. I think it's something weall need to spend more time thinking about.
(08:39):
Jefferson wasn't saying that a free Americawould be perfect, just more perfect
than it was under British control.It would care more about the individual,
focus on liberty, center itself onjustice and fairness, and work through compromises.
But it wouldn't be perfect, becausenothing ever is. So he couldn't
promise that, but he could promisethat we could try to keep making things
(09:03):
better. We can keep making thingsmore perfect every day. Still, if
you try to make things better inyour house, your neighborhood, or your
school, that makes America more perfect. So instead of thinking about how impossible
it is to be perfect, let'sbe like Thomas Jefferson and try to make
things more perfect. I think heset a pretty good example. Thanks for
(09:35):
joining me for this episode. It'sthe last one in our founding timeline.
From here we're going to start gettingto know our founding fathers a little bit
better and I am so excited.You can find out more about the Growing
Patriots, me, the podcast,the books, everything at Growingpatriots dot com
or Growing Patriots on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Until next Time agreed
(10:03):
us out Jeanny through stand the Thingand they thought so well would be America.
This has been a presentation of theFCB podcast network, where Real Talk
lives visit us online at Fcbpodcasts dotcom.
This is the FCB podcast network.They bring us at the Charny for start
of the thing, and they thoughtso when we were in America. And
(00:32):
welcome back to the Growing Patriot podcastAmerican History for Kids. Before I start,
this is just a reminder that youcan find more resources for this episode
and every episode at Growingpatriots dot comslash podcast. As you know, we're
at the end of the Revolutionary timeperiod. And in the last episode I
(00:54):
told you about seven events I hopeyou remember, and in this episode I'm
going to tell you about five bigthemes I hope you remember. So first,
what's a theme. Think about itlike an idea that comes up over
and over again. And there area few that just came up over and
over again the whole time we weretalking about the founding period, and those
(01:17):
were the idea of the individual beingso important, liberty, fairness and justice,
compromise and improvement, not perfection,but improvement. So let's dive in
as we talk about how each ofthem was a theme throughout our entire founding
period, from the very first settlers, through our difficulties with English rule,
(01:40):
the Revolution, and as we becameour own independent country. First up is
the individual. From early on,this is what America was all about.
Pilgrims came here so they could worshiptheir individual faith safely, rather than be
(02:02):
forced into the religion their king orqueen told them they had to follow.
Colonies had their own charters, whichwere kind of like many constitutions protecting certain
rights. And while those were inspiredby the Magna Carta, which was an
English document that went way back totwelve fifteen, with the king so far
away, these were something different.They were really governing themselves and had far
(02:24):
more rights as individual human beings ratherthan just subjects of a certain king or
queen. And it's when the Kingof England tried to interfere with those rights
as individual people that colonists had aproblem. They told the king he couldn't
do that, and they were willingto fight a war about it, because
every person is born with certain inalienablerights to things like life, liberty,
(02:50):
and the pursuit of happiness. Andwhen the American colonists won, they set
up a constitution that was set upto protect every single individual from the government
to protect the rights of those individuals, knowing that it's the best way to
protect the rights of everyone overall,and in our new country. Without ranks
(03:10):
and titles and kings and queens,people could make their own way in the
world, prove themselves through hard work, and succeed on merit as individuals.
The second theme is liberty. Ourentire founding period was a fight for liberty.
First, it was the story ofpeople finding liberty in the American colonies,
(03:32):
and then when Britain made that impossible, the colonies themselves had to find
liberty from Britain. Many of theearliest colonists needed a safe place to live
because there was no liberty in theirhome countries. I mentioned religious freedom before,
but they might not have had freedomof speech, the ability to choose
where to live, who they couldmarry, what they could read, what
(03:52):
their job was, or any ofanother million decisions we enjoy every day and
don't think about. By coming toan a new colony that was chartered on
liberty, they could build a newlife. There still wasn't as much choice
as there is today, but itwas more than they could have dreamed of
otherwise, And they knew their children, grandchildren and every generation to come would
(04:13):
have even more than they did.And that's why any threat to liberty was
taken very seriously by the colonists.Did attacks in Boston really matter to a
colonist in South Carolina? Not really. It didn't cost them any money,
and they could have ignored it.But it wasn't just a tax. It
was Britain saying that America wasn't freeto govern itself, that they didn't have
(04:34):
liberty like they had agreed to,and that was a threat to every single
colony. So they all worked togetherto fight back and protect liberty in all
thirteen colonies, knowing that it couldbe a huge deal, and it was.
It ended up causing the Revolutionary War, but that ended up creating America,
(04:55):
a country founded in liberty. Thethird is the idea of fairness and
justice. We've talked about liberty andindividuals, so it's important that we talk
about fairness and justice. After all, liberty doesn't mean much if it's not
fair for every single individual, andour founders worked really hard to make sure
(05:15):
everyone was treated equally. One ofmy favorite examples of this is what happened
after the Boston massacre. Let's goback to seventeen seventy for a second.
A British soldier named Hugh White wasguarding the custom house in Boston and American
colonists were yelling at him and causinga big fuss. He hit one with
his bayonet and the colonists started throwingstuff at him, snowballs, rocks,
(05:39):
ice, you name it. SoWhite called for help. It turned into
a big fight and the British firedtheir guns. Five colonists were killed and
six others were hurt. But insteadof just hanging the eight British soldiers who
were arrested John Adams, and you'veheard of him, right he became president
later, he said they had tohave a fair trial. He was a
(06:00):
lawyer, so he defended them himself. He even convinced the judge to bring
in people from outside of Boston tobe jurors, so the people who decided
if the soldiers were guilty or innocentcould be as fair as possible. He
wanted a fair trial for a coupleof reasons. For one thing, he
wanted it to look fair. Hedidn't want to give the British any excuse
to get revenge. They had tobe able to say they did everything right
(06:24):
in the American colonies. But therewere also a lot of colonists still loyal
to Britain, and he had toshow them that the quote unquote rebels were
good people, that they were forlaw and order, that they respected justice
and being fair was the only wayto get justice. And in the end,
no one was found guilty of murder. Two were found guilty of something
(06:45):
else called manslaughter, which is alittle bit less. And when we talk
about the Constitution and the Bill ofRights on this podcast, we talked a
lot about our system of justice,but we didn't really talk about the word
justice. If something is just,it is fair or right. So that's
built into the system if it's builtright, and ours is. But justice
and fairness in this time period canalso be tricky because in the founding period
(07:09):
we still had slavery in America andthat's not fair and it's not just and
a lot of our founders knew that. And that brings me to our fourth
theme, and that fourth theme iscompromise. I've heard people say that a
good compromise leaves everybody mad, andthat's because that means that the two sides
that disagree each have to give upsomething of what they want and agree on
(07:32):
something they can both live with.So when it came to slavery, a
lot of our founders knew what waswrong. They also knew that to win
our freedom from Britain and get theConstitution passed, we needed every single colony
working together. And there were somecolonies that just wouldn't agree to end slavery
quite yet, so in the shortterm they had to compromise, and they
(07:54):
knew slavery would come to an endbefore long. Compromise happened on a million
things in our history, and itall comes together in our Constitution, which
is all about compromise. The wayour country is set up, no one
can have their own way all thetime. The different branches of government all
want different things and they have towork together. And the final theme is
(08:16):
improvement over perfection, because nothing isperfect, but we can always keep making
it better. In the preamble tothe Constitution, we did an whole episode
about that. If you want togo back and listen, Thomas Jefferson wrote
the phrase in order to form amore perfect union, and I love that
phrase. I think it's something weall need to spend more time thinking about.
(08:39):
Jefferson wasn't saying that a free Americawould be perfect, just more perfect
than it was under British control.It would care more about the individual,
focus on liberty, center itself onjustice and fairness, and work through compromises.
But it wouldn't be perfect, becausenothing ever is. So he couldn't
promise that, but he could promisethat we could try to keep making things
(09:03):
better. We can keep making thingsmore perfect every day. Still, if
you try to make things better inyour house, your neighborhood, or your
school, that makes America more perfect. So instead of thinking about how impossible
it is to be perfect, let'sbe like Thomas Jefferson and try to make
things more perfect. I think heset a pretty good example. Thanks for
(09:35):
joining me for this episode. It'sthe last one in our founding timeline.
From here we're going to start gettingto know our founding fathers a little bit
better and I am so excited.You can find out more about the Growing
Patriots, me, the podcast,the books, everything at Growingpatriots dot com
or Growing Patriots on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Until next Time agreed
(10:03):
us out Jeanny through stand the Thingand they thought so well would be America.
This has been a presentation of theFCB podcast network, where Real Talk
lives visit us online at Fcbpodcasts dotcom.
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