#211: A Founder Who Sealed the Principles of a New American Era

Thank you to the guests who joined our show in the past year! Here's to another incredible year of content in our 7th season of podcasting!

Before our Constitution was even drafted, the Founding Fathers wanted to create a seal that represented the new country and its ideals. How easy or difficult was it to create the famous design? Learn how a largely forgotten Founder Charles Thomson helped finalize the Seal of the United States that has been a fixture representing our country and principles for about a quarter of a millennium!

Music credits: 

Strauss, Johann.
“Blue Danube" 2017. YouTube Music. https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=5F--6fDrE-o&si=A8F_V8dt1w8BVfIz.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:00

Patriotism, faith, national unity, education, physical responsibility, civility, the values that define America. Fascinating stories and talks from America-loving patriots dedicated to preserving freedom, opportunity, and justice. Welcome to the Friends and Fellow Citizens Podcast. Greetings, everybody. Welcome to Friends and Fellow Citizens. I am your host, Sherman Taloski. Thank you all so much for joining me for this solo episode. I hope you are well. First of all, a big shout-out and thank you to our most dedicated Patreon supporters. They're our best supporters helping to keep this show going. And I just want to always, always thank them for their support and for their help as always. You can be part of this group and help support the Civics podcast by becoming a Patreon member. Just check out the link down to show notes below with benefits including podcast merch and early release of episodes. So be sure to check that out if you are interested in becoming part of our Patreon community. And of course, I would also like to welcome our new listeners to this podcast. Thank you for joining us for this whole episode. We have interview and solo shows for you all to choose from. This episode is going to be in two parts. The first part is all about reflecting on the past year. If you can believe we've now hit six years of friends and fellow citizens, we're closer to a decade of podcasting than when we started. It truly is amazing. And as I always express on this show, I'm so incredibly thankful every time I get to be here in front of the microphone to speak to you all. And I hope that this experience is going to continue. And I know there's going to be some really incredible episodes coming up. And we've also, of course, just had a great past year of amazing episodes. We've had more uh interview episodes than ever before in one year. And that's because we started to add some more thematic elements to our episodes with bonus episodes. And that means not just more content for all of you, but also to be able to reflect on some of the days that might just pass by as holidays or as anniversaries. But with another podcast episode, we get to reflect that even more. Maybe appreciate some of the little things about each of these special episodes and and special days. Uh from our interview episodes. Let's roll those highlights right now.

SPEAKER_20 3:26

Stephen Douglas literally says the majority determines what's right and wrong. That's a rejection of the idea of natural law. And Lincoln says, no, no, there are some things majorities can never do. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. All men are created equal, not because we say they're equal, but by nature they're equal.

SPEAKER_11 3:49

You put all these female athletes into the same room who are going through the exact same phase or just kind of the same exact, you know, just situation. And so you just kind of get to talking and it opens your eyes to see you have a whole entire team of female athletes coming to you. You all have the same drive, you have the same passion, and you want to compete amongst your own.

SPEAKER_22 4:32

But 1,200 Americans, that's a lot of people. That's like a small little town.

SPEAKER_18 4:37

So he was very interested in the Supreme Court as an institution and obviously very proud of the Supreme Court as an institution, but also distrustful of some of the decisions that were coming down from the Warren, the Warren Court during that period. And some of them touched him personally.

SPEAKER_14 5:08

They act against those who want to simplify our lives. In this regard, moderates appear to me as opposites of ideologues.

SPEAKER_17 5:20

The Declaration of Independence has always been right at the center of those public debates and those deliberations. So, in a sense, divide.

SPEAKER_16 5:48

So those sort of things exist across societies and they determine what people are good at. Kendi and all these people just sort of refuse to recognize this. The race alone model just doesn't work. It doesn't predict anything.

SPEAKER_07 6:03

Both the opportunity and the challenge for the US government is converting that like theoretical recognition into action. That war isn't a military one. It's playing out in the battlefield of international industry and technology, but it is a war, and we need to treat it as such, which means it's zero sum. They're our adversary. We need to extract them from our systems.

SPEAKER_13 6:24

Technically, each school who is federally funded should be celebrating Constitution Day in some way or another. But we don't see everybody following that, obviously. And so Constitution Day was a way to emphasize that here in Nevada, specifically for our public school systems. I think it really just encourages that civic discourse specifically for that one week. Um, and it allows teachers to engage with these lessons in a way that does satisfy their curriculum standards, but then also further promotes that civic discourse for younger students.

SPEAKER_19 6:51

Those who believe in one or those who bel who uh lean more toward the other, that they better understand uh the other side, and sort of to put them on equal moral footing, because I think they each do have something to contribute to our understanding of society and social processes.

SPEAKER_12 7:11

I just remember just being so like fulfilled from talking to both kids and parents at the same time about something that is so beautiful and so special in a country on country. Like a lot of countries are not even allowed to adopt like for you know from foreign countries. So the fact that America can adopt almost from anywhere is amazing.

SPEAKER_09 7:33

Another kind of myth about Dickinson is that he was just, you know, completely opposed to uh war and things military and and was just trying to avert war, you know, uh regardless of like what that might cost America. And that's not true either. He was a really a master strategist. Um, and and this is something that's very much unappreciated about him.

SPEAKER_21 8:01

Once you understand the various things that gender can be used to mean, there's really no danger of confusing sex, i.e., the biological categories of the two great reproductive classes of male and female with gender in these these multiple these multiple senses.

SPEAKER_08 8:26

We've been trying to figure out, well, if independents vote just like partisans, why do they call themselves independents? Like what's the problem? Why are they hiding? And it really does cut does come down to this um this disdain for bickering and arguing. Independents hate the constant fighting going on between Democrats and Republicans.

SPEAKER_15 8:47

I'm looking to the left and about six blocks away, I could see the top of the North Tower has about 10 to 12 floors of fire. Now I have to make an impromptu decision. What do I do? Do I make a right and go up to Rockefeller Center to the press conference, or do I make a left and make my way to that little firehouse across the street from the World Trade Center where I started my career? And I knew all the firefighters from that firehouse would be the first one in the tower.

SPEAKER_04 9:15

The important part of the story is how you and I persuade each other before we go to the ballot box. And we all aim toward agreement and consensus. You have to vote to settle remaining disagreements, but what you're voting on is not really what you want most and what's best for you, but what you think would be best for us as a society.

SPEAKER_03 9:42

The founders reflected deeply on what it means to be a human being. And so they started with the question: what does it mean to be human? And to be human is to have different points of view, to have different interests. And to be human also means that you are going to factionalize. You have to think then, what kind of a regime do you want that respects that difference, doesn't try to drive it out, and can find strength in that. Today we might call it pluralism.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

We are truly, we call ourselves citizen legislators, and we truly are, I believe. And that's the part of the uniqueness of Nevada. And to me, part of why Nevada represents, when I say represents, we truly represent uh the citizens of Nevada.

SPEAKER_05 10:31

We have these uh big geographic regional divides um in American elections, why so many states and and counties and congressional districts are sort of safely Democratic and safety Republican compared to say 40 or 50 years ago is because our politics is more defined uh by the culture war uh than it was in the past.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

I coach volleyball as well, and I have so many young cousins, nieces who also play sports and have hopes of you know going to a D1 school, getting a free education. For me, that was what it was mostly about going into advocacy because I know one day if they were go toe-to-toe with someone who obviously had biological advantages, they would have their dreams crushed. And that's just something that I would never want them to go through.

SPEAKER_06 11:22

If there's any job that the president has, it's being in charge of that huge bureaucratic system. Roosevelt completely transforms the State Department in this time, too. All of those are established under him. So the first people that are studying language, the first foreign service officers that are gonna be, you know, fully fully paid and not, you know, not just rich uh patricians who are are, you know, are paying for a pink tea party overseas. This was the professionalization of American diplomacy.

SPEAKER_10 11:50

And the civic engagement part of it was the thing that made me the most excited of seeing we all have been discouraged by does my vote actually matter? And in this case, there was the process of which Ohioans of all ages could vote. This is a a lengthy, lengthy undertaking that states and and um the legislators and volunteers that are involved have to undertake. So it's it's a it's a big process.

SPEAKER_02 12:31

Thank you again to our guests from the past year. We look forward to another year of Friends and Fellow Citizens content. So stay tuned. Obviously, make sure you subscribe to our podcast if you haven't already. Make sure to check out our YouTube page as well, down in the show notes below, because we're planning to have more video episodes. I think that'll be one of our big goals here, not just uh increasing, of course, our viewership and everything, but to uh ensure that we are delivering not just more but better content for you all. So I think having those video episodes is gonna be really exciting, another initiative that we're planning to really build on over the next uh several months and years. For our second part of the solo episode, we're gonna talk about a founder whom you never heard of before, but one in is not a founder who signed the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution in the same way that we would recognize John Hancock or Thomas Jefferson. And so this is quite unusual. I I I there's no universal definition of a founding father, as you probably can tell. But I do think this founder should deserve his credit. And the founder we're going to talk about today is Charles Thompson. Thompson was the secretary of the Continental Congress. The Continental Congress can really be split into three peers, the first and the second, and of course the Congress of the Confederation, which basically was the Congress that was created under the Articles of Confederation. I would say that that was a very, very rocky time, and certainly not easy to log uh all these uh different debates and all the records. And so Congress and Confederation, it's it's based again the the the governing body that that existed before the what we now know as uh the federal government. And so these three eras, each of which is so key with all these different again, all these different points of contention, and you need somebody, of course, to write the all these down, at least to the best of his ability. And this is where we get the journals on the Continental Congress. These are the official records from those three different Congresses. I'm putting in quotes because they're not the same Congresses as we understand our Congress today. So first I want to start a little background with Charles Thompson. So Thompson was born in 1729, so definitely one of the older uh founders, and he actually lived quite a long time. I don't know if he's got some Chinese medicine going on or a great workout program, whatever what, but uh Thompson lived until 1824, and he was 94 years old when he passed, uh, which is pretty remarkable. And you can imagine how much he had seen in throughout his career. And so I think the first thing is that with someone like Thompson who was able to live out those Congresses and to witness the birth and the beginnings of the country, you can imagine how what kind of a perspective he had on the United States. Now, as Secretary of Continental Congress, I mean this is where Thompson's really wearing a lot of hats. And so he is not only keeping the records, he is also helping with the general order of the business within the Continental Congress, which was not easy because you imagine this was a very different time period. And I read somewhere that that even though one could see him as taking on a relatively neutral position, but you know this is politics. And so it Thompson was not immune from criticism. I read that there was a gentleman by the name of James Searle. He was a delegate in the Continental Congress, uh, apparently was also friends with John Adams, and I don't know how that would come out because Searle and Thompson actually got into a fight. And so uh there was uh a lot of that again, that conflict and that there was divides between members of the Continental Congress. It was not all pretty uh during those times. Uh I believe that the reason why there was confrontation was that there was a claim that the one of them was misquoted, and so it just resulted in that. I I don't want to imagine Ben Franklin trying to break up a fight like that. I I might maybe John Hancock came in and some others, uh but that that's that's quite unruly by James Searle. So again, it goes to show that we even with such a clerical seeming position, there's also the way that the signers wanted to be remembered. And and I imagine and and um and I say signers, I really mean the delegates here because not everybody who attended the Continental Congresses were signers, so and James Sarle was not a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Now, I I like to focus in on one element of his contributions. There are a number of contributions I made, which I'll talk about towards the end, but the one I want to focus on today is something that you have seen, and it's particularly in this time with America 250 that just passed back in July 4th of this year, and the year of the episode airing, and that is the seal. No, not the seals that you see in San Francisco. Not those seals. We love those seals out there in one of those piers in San Francisco Bay, but uh we're talking about the seal of the United States. Uh the seal of the United States, as you have seen uh quite a few times with the eagle, with the arrow, and the arrows in the olive branch. Very, very symbolic, right? And and uh luckily there is an interesting story to it. It started off pretty simple. Uh the Continental Congress won in a seal, and they picked the three gentlemen whom I'm sure you've heard of before Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. They were so uh selected to be part of a committee. And so I I would think that if if there was Las Vegas at the time, I'm sure a lot of the signers would have gone to Vegas and and bet on that they're gonna get a seal, and it's probably gonna be quite good because you've got the three uh the three of the big MVPs, big dogs in that that Congress to come up with a seal. Well, it wasn't simple at the end. Uh it took a total of six years uh and thank goodness there was no AI uh to use because one, this is the seal of the United States, but two, this is one that really takes a lot of uh crafting and a lot of imagination and really think of the symbolic nature of what a seal represents. We didn't want a seal that reminded us of the uh the English monarchy. We wanted something that represents the new ideas, right? The new ideas that have come about with regards to the Declaration, what ultimately lead to the Constitution, then the Bill of Rights. And this is looking back, it really does seem like our seal represents how new and how game-changing our founding was and how and what an impact it has made on the evolution of our country and the evolution of our entire world. So the th three of the of the assigned uh the of the original uh drafters of the declaration were tasked to do this seal. Now they did not do this by themselves, of course, because well they you do need help with uh with do with putting together the whole design. And so the first committee uh brought in uh uh uh effectively the uh very an artist. So they brought uh a French artist and call uh his name was uh Pierre Eugene du Simitier. Uh cimitier helps put together uh uh something here where it includes the eye of providence, date of independence, e plebus unum, which of course is very, very essential. And so they come up with an original design and they submit it uh in August 1776. Congress looks at it and it says uh not n not great. So we can do better. So that's the first attempt. And so the second time, this is uh you gotta fast forward to seventeen eighty. Uh and uh obviously a lot is happening at that time. I imagine some of the signers are saying, look, it's great to have a seal and everything, but we got a war to fight here. And we have some of our uh our minute men you know requiring supplies. I don't think they really care about how amazing a seal looks at this time. So it could be that the this was just placed on that back burner. Uh I'm I'm a bit surprised that they were already thinking of designing something like this uh right in the middle, literally just weeks after the adoption of the declaration. But in 1780, Congress comes back and says, okay, let's let's start out, let's have a new committee. So they put a few people in, uh a guy named James Lovell, John Moran Scott, and William Churchill Houston. I believe it's sitting it's pronounced Houston and not Houston, because on my dad's side were New Yorkers, and if you ever go to New York City, it's not Houston Street, it's Houston Street. So I just want to clarify that. And they uh this committee asked uh one of the fellow Philadelphians there uh named Francis Hopkinson uh to help with the uh the seal. And so this is where okay, we've got a new committee, and so they put together something here where they uh include ideas about the uh 13 colonies, including the red and white stripes, including 13 stars. So again, uh harping on the theme of the original 13 colonies. This did not work either. Uh I there in on here in this document here from the State Department, which provides a really interesting history of the seal, doesn't say what Congress said or didn't say, but uh the next part of the sec section here says the third committee. So we're just gonna assume that Congress just like uh and then it's okay, well, we can do better. And so the third committee comes along. Okay, this is 1782, so let's let's get some new people in, let's give them a shot. So three people come in, and two of them are part of the the signing founders, if you like. So that's John Rutledge and Arthur Middleton, and there's another gentleman named Elias Bodinon. Uh, I I have to be honest, I don't know who Bonart really is, other than that he's serving on this committee, probably one of the delegates of uh this uh in the continental congress. So they were tasked to form this third committee, and guess what they did? They basically did nothing. So they went to a gentleman named William Barton. Okay, and so Barton is someone who is uh is gonna have that skill to be able to take on. So they said, Okay, Barton, you're gonna take on this project for us. And the the Barton adds to this design, and the main thing that he adds to this design was the eagle. Now, it is not the uh bald eagle that we know of, uh, it was a different one, and he redid some of these designs, and I would think that at this point with the third committee, given that you started off with the Jefferson Adams and Ben Franklin, you would think that you would get somewhere. And the seal design was turned in to Congress, and Congress was not satisfied. They say, no, I don't think so. So I imagine there's some pretty frustrated members of the Control of Congress are thinking about themselves, man, we're we're already fighting this war, and we're making some progress here and there, and we still can't design a seal. Uh it's not to excuse any bureaucracy in our country, but we did have some pretty bad bureaucracy back in those days. And so, June of 1782, uh, there there is now a call to say, okay, let's really get this done. And so, lo and behold, here comes Charles Thompson, who is the, as I mentioned, the secretary of the Congress. And uh the what what it says here in this uh really interesting document from the State Department is that Thompson was uh someone who really wanted to get things done, a very practical, and uh I think it was someone who looked at the work, right? And it's easy to just say, gosh, these these guys, why what were they doing, right? What were they thinking? But Thomson decided that it was important to put together these key elements of the past designs and put them all together, and that's exactly what he did. And he did make some big changes. The first is that he replaced Barton's Eagle with the American Bald Eagle, which we now know of, and he included the arrows and the olive branch. And so the the final seal, as you can imagine, was the finally approved. Um, this was actually the uh this is a really, really interesting design, as you can imagine, with all these different components, again, with including features as part of designs that were already rejected. But finally, Congress decided, you know, this looks good, and uh the Thompson and Barton, I think, should be credited, and that was uh what happened. In fact, uh Congress uh said uh Thompson and Barton, quote, brought in a device, unquote. And this will be the final device. And I'd like to read to you what Thompson says uh as part of the design. And I think it was it's worth reading. I think it's very, very well written. I think it gives that different dimension that you might have seen for for and might not have seen for the seal of the United States. The fur uh before I start though, he does say the escutcheon that that's basically a shield with a coat of arms on it. So if this I I did not know the word before I uh uh looked this up, so just uh give you a heads up. So here we go. Quote The Escutcheon is composed of the chief and pale, the two most honorable ordinaries, the pieces pale represent the several states all joined in one solid compact entire, supporting a chief which unites the whole and represents Congress. The motto alludes to this union. The pales in the arms are kept closely united by the chief, and the chief depends on that union, and the strength resulting from it for its support. To denote the Confederacy of the United States of America and the preservation of their union through Congress. The colors of the pales are those used in the flag of the United States of America. White sim signifies purity and innocence, red hardiness and valor and blue the color of the chiefs signifies vigilance, perseverance, and justice. The olive branch and arrows denote the power of peace and war, which is exclusively vested in Congress. The constellation denotes a new state taking its place and rank among other sovereign powers. The Escutcheon is born on the breast of an American Eagle without any other supporters, to denote that the United States of America ought to rely on their own virtue. Reverse The Pyramid signifies strength and duration. The eye over it and the motto allude to the many signal interpositions of providence in favor of the American cause. The date underneath is that of the Declaration of Independence, and the words under it signify the beginning of the new American era, which commences from that date. What a great passage, not a long passage, but even shorter pieces can tell us a lot about what something represents. Even though the seal took many attempts, and I imagine there was a lot of frustration in between, it just means so much that we now understand these different components, and there's so much that goes behind something like this. And perhaps that long journey represents the long journey that it takes to make a positive impact. It takes that much more effort to make ideas a reality. I also think that with some of these things, whether it's the values of perseverance, of vigilance, of purity, innocence, valor, those ideals are ideals we can live up to. And of course we're referencing the the all-seeing eye. And thinking about that date, July 4th, 1776. I also think it's interesting that there's a lot about Congress, even though it does allude to the chief, in this case the presidency. But remember that this seal was created in 1782, before we had the Constitution. Even though they didn't know what Congress looked like or would look like, but there is so much emphasis on Congress because it is the people's house. And I think regardless of what your political stripes are, we have to get back to this idea of Congress taking control of a lot of things. The President of the United States is important. But over the past several decades, we've seen time and time again that Congress is not interested in doing something, or that it just defends to the executive branch. I think that would run contrary to how the founders envisioned our government. I think there's there's a space for the executive and the legislative branch to work together, but to allow this absolute deference, I think really hurts uh rather framing of our government, regardless of which party is in power. Maybe returning to these fundamentals, reminding us that Article One is is kind of a big deal. I say kind of a big deal, really a big deal. Maybe that's something we can remember when we look at the seal and realize that Congress created that seal. It was a different kind of Congress, looks very different than the one we have now, but maybe in that it it is important to go back and realize that the the pe the people's representation really is at the most when the representation is within the Congress's actions, within Congress's resolve to provide solutions to our country's issues. Thompson took on a lot of different duties. I think just some of the fun facts here. When Washington was officially elected as president, Thompson was actually sent to go to Mount Vernon and to notify that Washington became the first president. Thompson was also a big part of uh uh really the the early parts of what you would call the abolition movement. Uh he certainly understood the importance of going back to the roots of being a Quaker himself. He even called slavery, quote, a sickness on this new country, unquote. Calling it a cancer we must get rid of, unquote. Certainly one who understood that through his own uh uh upbringing, uh he he knew that that there had to be prospect for change. I think it's something that was also shared by a few other other signers, even though there were certainly a number of hypocrisies that were among the uh some of these signers, and yet they still believe that there that slavery could and should eventually be eradicated. Thompson also on top of just the handful of responsibilities he had as a secretary of the Congress, he even translated the Old Testament and published that in 1808 and spent almost 20 years working on that. Coming back to that value of faith, Thompson believed in the concept of having good moral values and an understanding of what it means to do good. And so all these things coming together even though Thompson is not as well known as some of the other founders, and he was certainly he was not one of the delegates to that that second continental Congress. But without Thompson's work, so much of our country's history would not even be around. It was someone like him who knew that that history needed to be recorded, not just for the purposes of his occupation, but for the purposes of posterity. And so whenever history is made in all different forms, maybe we can look to Thompson as a source of inspiration for preserving our civic history and our values. Thank you all so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Make sure to check out the links down in the show notes below. Have a great rest of your day and rest of your week. And remember a day in America has always been. We are with our friends and fellows.