The play was written by Peter Stone with music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards and was first produced in 1969. The play and the 1972 film were directed by Peter H. Hunt. The show was nominated for five Tony awards and won three: Best Musical, Best Featured Actor in a Musical and Best Direction of a Musical. It ran for 1217 performances and was revived in 1997. Many of the original actors also appeared in the film.

 

Much of the play is historically accurate, including the character traits of the historical characters, and the fact that Jefferson did indeed play the violin. Of course, there were many more delegates to the Continental Congresses than appear in the play. Some inaccuracies include the fact that Martha Jefferson did not travel to Philadelphia to visit her husband as she was actually quite ill during the summer of 1776. Also, the polling of delegates in the final scene is not as it happened and the signing took weeks, not minutes, after the final vote.

 

Peter Stone (1930-2003) was a writer for television, theater and the movies. He attended Bard College starting in 1947 and received a Masters Degree from Yale University in 1953.

 

Sherman Edwards (1919-1981) was a song-writer born in New York City. He earned an undergraduate degree in history at New York University and did graduate work at Cornell. He even taught history at a high school in New York. He began working as an actor and as a pianist, playing for a number of well-known singers and in the bands of the likes of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong. In the late 1950’s he began to write songs including some that became hits. 1776 was his only Broadway score.

 

The following material is from a study guide produced to accompany a performance of 1776 at West End Theatre in Alexandria, Virginia. It includes some information about the causes of the Revolution and the formation of the Continental Congresses, an essay on the slave trade, and a chronology of events surrounding the formation and signing of the Declaration of Independence.

 

The American Revolution had its roots in grievances caused by changes in the relationship between England and its 13 American colonies. From the beginning this relationship was based in mercantilist principles. The colonies provided English manufacturers with raw materials as well as markets for English goods. The large merchant force needed to handle all the trade between the colonies and the mother country could easily be converted into a naval force, thus increasing the military strength of the mother country. Between 1660 and 1672, the English Parliament passed number of Acts of Trade and Navigation which ruled a) that all trade between England and the colonies had to be conducted in ships built, owned and manned by British subjects; b) that all European goods imported into the colonies had to pass through England first; and c) that certain colonial goods were "enumerated articles" and had to first be shipped to England or another British colony before going to other European buyers. One effect of the laws, which were not strictly enforced, was a thriving smuggling business centered in New England. Soon the colonies were providing England with many valuable products, including tobacco, sugar, rice, vegetables and lumber, as well as the ships to carry the goods. Between 1699 and 1750, another series of laws prohibited the colonies from exporting products which competed with English products, such as woolen cloth and beaver hats. During this period the King’s chief minister, Sir Robert Walpole, believed in letting the colonies govern themselves without political interference from England. This enabled the colonies to become accustomed to self-government.

 

The French and British fought four wars for European and colonial dominance between 1689 and 1763. The last of these wars, The French and Indian War, ended with British victory, but left England with huge debts. King George III, who had ascended the throne in 1760, believed the colonies should provide much of the needed revenue. In 1764, Parliament passed the Revenue Act of 1764, which lowered tariffs on West Indian molasses (used to make rum, a very important colonial export). It also called for very strict enforcement, which crippled the lucrative New England shipping and smuggling business.

 

 In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, requiring the colonists to buy revenue stamps for legal and commercial documents, playing cards, newspapers and liquor licenses. The colonists protested by boycotting British goods and asserting that they could only be taxed by their own representatives.

 

The Stamp Act was repealed in 1766, but in 1767 Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which taxed imports of glass, paper, paint and tea. Part of the tax went to pay the salaries of the royal governors, whose pay had previously come directly from the colonial assemblies, giving the colonists some control over the governors’ policies. The Townshend Acts were vigorously enforced and violators were tried in military courts where the accused had no right to a jury. However, in 1770, colonial opposition forced Parliament to repeal all the taxes, except for the tax on tea.

 

The seven years of turmoil between England and the American colonies had produced a small group of radicals who organized resistance to British policies. This group formed "committees of correspondence" throughout the colonies. These committees became an established communication and coordination network for resistance to the British.

 

Parliament enacted the Tea Act of 1773, which lowered the price of English tea, thereby causing financial ruin to American tea merchants. In New York and Philadelphia ships carrying English, tea were turned back, but in Boston, radicals, disguised as Native Americans and led by Samuel Adams, boarded British ships and dumped all the imported tea into the harbor. This incident became known as the Boston Tea Party. Parliament responded to what they perceived as outrage civil disobedience with a series of measures, called the "Intolerable" Acts of 1774 by the colonists. These Acts closed Boston harbor until the destroyed tea was paid for, permitted the quartering of British troops in any town (providing a ready force to deal with any colonial opposition) and severely curtailed self-government in Massachusetts.

 

The First Continental Congress, with delegates from every colony except Georgia, convened in Philadelphia in 1774 and sent a "Declaration of Rights and Grievances" to King George III, asking for repeal of the Intolerable Acts. The Congress also adopted a complete boycott on importation of British goods and a ban on exportation to England. “Committees of safety” in each colony enforced the ban.

 

England sent troops to Boston to crush the radical movement there. On April 19, 1775, the British moved to seize arms and gunpowder supplies in Concord and to arrest the radical leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams; Paul Revere warned Adams and Hancock, and also alerted the Massachusetts “Minutemen”, farmers from Concord and Lexington who had pledged to be ready at a minutes’ notice to resist the British. Though no one know who fired the first shot, a battle began, the first in the Revolutionary War. The battle resulted in 273 dead and wounded British soldiers.

 

On May 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia and appointed Virginia’s George Washington the commander of the rapidly forming Continental Army. The Congress also became the meeting ground of those who sought independence from England and those who desired redress for their grievances but who did not want separation.

 

 

The modem slave trade, involving the importation of captive Africans to the shores of the New World, began in 1517. Spaniards immigrating to the New World were allowed to import 12 Africans each. The decision to meet the growing labor demands in the new European colonies in the West Indies and South America by using slaves encouraged the fairly rapid development of the trade. Royal monopolies were granted for control of the trade and over the next 200 years, control shifted among Dutch, Portuguese, French and English trading companies and independent traders. The defeat of the Dutch and French in a series of conflicts gave English traders control of the slave trade by the early eighteenth century.

The growing English colonies in America faced a constant labor shortage, which they tried to address by using white and Native American indentured servants, who were contracted to servitude for a limited amount of time. Additionally, some Native Americans were enslaved. In 1619, a Dutch frigate brought 20 Africans to Jamestown, Virginia; they came as indenture servants. However, the use of African indentured servants ended by the 1640s. Indentured servitude proved an insufficient source of labor: there simply weren’t enough whites, blacks and Native Americans in the colonies willing to replace those whose contracts expired. Native American slavery was also a huge failure for the colonists. By the mid-17th century the English colonists had settled on importing Africans as "perpetual servants" for a number of reasons: they looked different, which made finding runaway slaves easier; they did not have long-standing tribes and nations to disappear into, as did Native Americans; and patterns of prejudice against dark-skinned people already existed, which allowed whites to justify their enslavement of another people.

 

By the early 18th century, most of the 13 colonies had accepted slavery and enacted a series of laws, called slave codes, to regulate and protect the slave system. These codes determined rules for conduct between the races and helped legitimate the system.

The huge influence of the Puritans on life in New England, combined with the prevalence of small scale farms (for which slavery was financially impractical), produced religious and economic pressures against the slave system in New England. However, the huge shipping industry in New England, centered in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, provided many of the ships for the 18th century slave trade. In a similar fashion, the anti-slavery beliefs of the Quakers prevented the large-scale growth of slavery in Pennsylvania. It was on the tobacco and rice plantations in the Southern states of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and after 1750, Georgia that the system had the deepest roots. Economic success in those colonies provided a strong force that resisted religious or intellectual objections to the slave system.

 

By the time of the American Revolution there were almost 750,000 blacks in the 13 colonies, most of them slaves and most located in the Southern colonies.

During the War there was much debate on whether enlisting in the Continental Army meant automatic freedom for slaves. Some colonial legislatures prohibited blacks from fighting just to avoid this issue. In the fifteen-year period after the War the New England states, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey, abolished slavery and prohibited the slave trade. However, during the Constitutional Conventional of 1787, Congress protected slavery in the United States Constitution in three ways: by declaring that, for the purposes of taxation and representation, five blacks equaled three whites; by requiring the return of runaway slaves; and by forbidding Congress to debate the abolition of the slave trade for 20 years. Slavery was not abolished in the United States until 1863, when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all the slaves in the Confederacy.

 

June 7 -- Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, receives Richard Henry Lee’s resolution urging Congress to declare independence.

June 11 -- Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston appointed to a committee to draft a declaration of independence. American army retreats to Lake Champlain from Canada.

June 12 - 27 -- Jefferson, at the request of the committee, drafts a declaration, of which only a fragment exists. Jefferson’s clean, or "fair" copy, the "original Rough draught," is reviewed by the committee. Both documents are in the manuscript collections of the Library of Congress.

June 28 -- A fair copy of the committee draft of the Declaration of Independence is read in Congress.

July 1 - 4 -- Congress debates and revises the Declaration of Independence.

July 2 -- Congress declares independence as the British fleet and army arrive at New York.

July 4 -- Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence in the morning of a bright, sunny, but cool Philadelphia day. John Dunlap prints the Declaration of Independence. These prints are now called "Dunlap Broadsides." Twenty-four copies are known to exist, two of which are in the Library of Congress. One of these was Washington’s personal copy.

July 5 -- John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, dispatches the first of Dunlap’s broadsides of the Declaration of Independence to the legislatures of New Jersey and Delaware.

July 6 -- Pennsylvania Evening Post of July 6 prints the first newspaper rendition of the Declaration of Independence.

July 8 -- The first public reading of the Declaration is in Philadelphia.

July 9 -- Washington orders that the Declaration of Independence be read before the American army in New York -- from his personal copy of the "Dunlap Broadside."

July 19 -- Congress orders the Declaration of Independence engrossed (officially inscribed) and signed by members.

August 2 -- Delegates begin to sign engrossed copy of the Declaration of Independence. A large British reinforcement arrives at New York after being repelled at Charleston, S.C.

 

January 18 -- Congress, now sitting in Baltimore, Maryland, orders that signed copies of the Declaration of Independence printed by Mary Katherine Goddard of Baltimore be sent to the states.

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There is no shortage of information about the American Revolution and the events surrounding the creation of the Declaration of Independence. An extremely useful and easily navigated Web site with concise information is www.ushistory.org. The portion which deals specifically with the signers is www.ushistory.org/declaration/signers, but there are other informative portions of the site. The part on the signers gives short biographies of almost everyone in the play (plus many who are not). There is extensive information about John Dickinson elsewhere on this site, under www.ushistory.org/declaration/related (see “People”).

 

Otherwise:

Andrew McNair was actually the congressional custodian. A member of the Masonic order, he was employed as the official “ringer of the bell” from 1759-76.

 

Charles Thomson was an Irishman who was prevented by the Pennsylvania conservatives from being a delegate, because of his more radical views. He was allowed to serve as secretary of the Congress from 1774-1789. He signed the original declaration, which was lost “in the fever of freedom,” and was then not allowed to sign the second one. He kept detailed records of the events of Congress and even ran it when the delegates returned to their home states. Among his many accomplishments is the designing of the Seal of the United States.

 

Abigail Adams – there is much information about her on the Internet, which is easily accessed, including many short biographies.

 

Martha Jefferson – the best site for information about her is www.whitehouse.gov/firstladies

 

 

 

King George III – reigned from 1760-1820 the third of the House of Hanover (the other two had German as their first language). How much he was directly responsible for the loss of the colonies is a matter of debate. He was opposed to the Independence but did not develop the policies which led to the various tax acts which brought on colonial unrest. In his later years he was unfit to rule due to growing mental illness. Good sites for more information about George II are www.royal.gov.uk and www.britannia.com/history/monarchs

 

German mercenaries – during the Revolutionary War, the governor of the principality of Hesse-Kassel and other German leaders hired out thousands of conscripted subjects as auxiliaries to Great Britain to fight the revolutionaries. About 30,000 of them were hired and came to be known as Hessians. Some were actually direct subjects of George III (the House of Hanover having originated in Germany). They were not mercenaries in the modern sense of professional soldiers, but were debtors or even petty criminals.

 

saltpeter – potassium nitrate, used for fertilizer and as an explosive

 

Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) – Renaissance artist, one of his two most famous paintings is The Birth of Venus (ca. 1483)

 

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense – published in 1776, it challenged the authority of the British government and the royal monarchy and was the first work to openly suggest independence. Many of the common people of America responded to its plain language.

 

F.F.V. (First Families of Virginia) – an informal association of families in the state most of whom trace their origins to the original colonists. Most did not land in Jamestown, as these were tradesmen and the women did not arrive until much later, after which many of them had died. Large numbers of royalists and wealthy Englishmen arrived later. The list of family names is very long and does indeed include the Lees, whose many prominent members are known for their accomplishments in politics and the military.

 

Quaker hat – the Quakers are a religious sect founded in England in the 17^th century. Known as a peace religion, they settled in a variety of areas around the world. In this country, many were in Pennsylvania. The hat has a wide flat brim.

 

“tria juncta in uno” – “three joined in one;” Rutledge is no doubt referring facetiously to the three delegates from Delaware. This is the motto of the Order of the Bath, an English military regiment.

 

gout – a disease of the cartilage and tendons, caused by a buildup of uric acid crystal deposits on the joints. Pain is caused by the deposits and by the resulting inflammation. It usually does attack the big toe, but also other joints can be affected. The causes are dietary and an inability to manage the acid in the body.

 

Royal Governor of New Jersey – William Franklin was the son of Benjamin Franklin. He was educated in England and became governor at the age of 32. At a time when relations with England were becoming strained, public opinion was not with him, and his relationship with his father was not good. At the end of his life, Benjamin forgave his son any debts owed, but did not will him any money, noting that if his England had won the war, there would have been no money to bequeath.

 

“New England has been fighting the devil for more than a hundred years” – reference most likely to the witch trials, mostly in Massachusetts, during the 17^th century.

 

Spartacus (ca. 120-70 B.C.E.) – gladiator/slave from Thrace who became the alleged leader of an eventually unsuccessful uprising against the Roman Republic. This story has been an inspiration to writers (and filmmakers) since the 19^th century.

 

mark of Cain – Hancock is referring to the biblical story of Cain and Abel in which Cain was marked by God after killing his brother.

 

Thomas Jefferson, “Declaration of the Causes and the Necessity of Taking Up Arms” – this piece was written in 1775 as a justification for war with Britain. It was co-authored by John Dickinson.

 

Plato – among his many writings was a critique of democracy as a form of government, which he felt would lead to: “mob rule” by pleasure seekers, rule by the stupid, and to disagreement and conflict.

 

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) – one of the foremost political thinkers of 18^th century England, he was a lawyer and a writer of essays and speeches.