It’s the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and no one wants to celebrate. If the Bicentennial in 1976 felt like a moment when our nation was grappling with its history, the Semiquincentennial fifty years later has been co-opted by a far-right ruling party that wants to turn away from history in favor of nationalist mythmaking propaganda. The right has for decades claimed the iconography of the American Revolution and the American flag as theirs alone and branded anyone who opposes conservative values as “un-American.” Furthermore, the Trump administration turned the official Semiquincentennial celebrations into a partisan issue when it diverted millions of congressionally appropriated funds to plan a series of tacky events with miserable turn out. No one who isn’t firmly MAGA knows quite how to celebrate the Fourth of July this year.
Yet, the Fourth of July is my favorite holiday. I love the Fourth the way I do in large part because I love watching 1776 every year. It’s sincerely one of my favorite films, despite its distinct lack of cinematic flair. The sometimes maligned 1972 film works best if you think of it less as a movie adaptation and more as a filmed version of the Tony-winning stage musical. This can make the film a tough sell for those who aren’t musical theater nerds; but a significant part of the movie’s charm is how it preserves, in so many ways, the spirit of the original stage production. Both iterations of 1776 can straightforwardly be understood as products of the Bicentennial mania, which makes revisiting the film this year especially intriguing.
Lately, I think I’m so fascinated by 1776 because it’s an ostensibly triumphant story about the birth of the United States, but it’s structured like a tragedy. The lead character, John Adams, serves as the semi-tragic hero. As any tragic hero must be, Adams is virtuous. Peter Stone and Sherman Edwards’ musical figures Adams as the show’s upright moral compass and true visionary. Adams is constantly disappointed by his colleagues’ failure to do what he knows is right. Adams also has a tragic flaw—several, in fact: he’s self-righteous, stubborn, impatient, proud, and imperious. He’s so “obnoxious and disliked” that it becomes a running joke. Adams successfully rallies the Congress to support American independence by reluctantly putting up with negotiation; but that compromise, specifically on the issue of slavery, is Adams’ tragic downfall. 1776 isn’t exactly a celebration of the power and necessity of compromising to get things done. Instead, the show, and by extension the film, offers a far more ambivalent perspective on the value of compromise by valorizing a character who is almost constitutionally incapable of accepting it.
It’s a truism to say that the United States is a nation built on compromise. Even in 20-fucking-26, some politicians still point to bipartisanship as the only proper way to get anything done. Compromise is seen as a virtue, because it keeps the country united and moving forward together. Frequent calls for “unity” draw on this tradition that figures bipartisan compromise as the thing that will keep our country strong. But after several decades of increased political polarization, bipartisan cooperation has become more difficult than ever to achieve on a practical level. Far right Republicans have seized minority rule and refused to cooperate with anyone who disagrees with their fascist agenda. Elected liberals’ compulsive need to “meet in the middle” has left them with very little to work with.
This is to say nothing of the moral dilemmas that arise when one side of the political equation implicitly and, increasingly, explicitly encourages racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, and xenophobic hatred. Many Americans on the left, including myself, don’t see compromise with a party that accommodates and panders to a sizable white nationalist contingent as an ethically viable option. As much as unity might be a worthy objective, we don’t want it without a moral reckoning. Americans have only to look at our own history to see where that road leads. To believe in the supreme rightness of compromise as an American political value, one must ignore (or approve of) the fact that political compromise in this country has, historically, almost always been reached at the expense of the rights and freedoms of oppressed people. Upholding systems of oppression—especially those rooted in anti-Black racism—in the interest of “keeping the peace” has been the name of the game in American politics for centuries.
The roots of our current era of political polarization might be traced back to the birth of modern American conservatism, in the late 1960s and early ‘70s. Conservative backlash against the countercultural and liberatory movements that gained momentum during the ‘60s had arrived in force by the end of the decade. Most accounts of the Republican party’s steady drift to the right mark Richard Nixon’s election to the White House in 1968 as the first significant sign of this reactionary trend. 1776 debuted on Broadway in 1969, and it doesn’t ignore the political realities of its own moment. The ‘60s exposed new divisions in this country that couldn’t easily be papered over, and 1776 didn’t argue that they should be.
The musical takes notable shots at conservatives, including the song “Cool, Cool Considerate Men,” which Nixon successfully pressured producer Jack L. Warner to cut from the film adaptation against director Peter Hunt’s will.* The show posits that the most “radical” member of its cast of characters—John Adams—is the most righteous. There’s even an anti-war song, the quiet and anomalous “Mama, Look Sharp,” sung by a minor character during an interlude between debates. Many of the creatives involved in the show and the film, including its cast, were politically active liberals.
The musical doesn’t aim to be politically neutral. In this context, positioning Adams as the lead, rather than the seemingly more obvious choice of Thomas Jefferson, makes sense. The real John Adams, a notably early advocate for America’s separation from Britain, had a long, distinguished career as a public servant in the new country he helped build. He secured his place in the history books when he served as America’s first Vice President, under the Revolution’s premiere hero George Washington, and went on to be elected as the nation’s second President. Adams was never forgotten after his death, certainly, but his status as an American icon was never as stable as that of his occasional friend Jefferson’s.
Adams and Jefferson, evocatively referred to by Joseph Ellis as “the odd couple of the American Revolution” in his book Founding Brothers, are sometimes figured in the annals of history as equally important opposites. Their lives were intertwined, they famously died on the same day (on July 4, 1826) within hours of each other, and their historical legacies remained linked long after their deaths. As Adams’ political philosophies put him out of step with prevailing trends in the nineteenth century, Jefferson’s reputation fared better.
In the second half of the twentieth century, however, Adams reemerged as a subject of both scholarly and popular interest. Adams’ carefully preserved correspondence, particularly the letters to his wife Abigail, provided historians with plenty of material with which to reevaluate the influence of Adams’ contributions to the early republic.** In the twenty-first century, David McCullough’s best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Adams (which also served as the source material for a starry HBO miniseries) helped increase popular awareness and estimation of our country’s second President. Just as Adams was undergoing a positive reappraisal, Jefferson was undergoing a more negative one, in which historians grappled with Jefferson’s many complications and contradictions.
If you don’t look too closely, the real John Adams is the Founding Father whose principles match up most readily with twentieth-century liberal mores. Of his Founding peers, Adams was the least suspicious of a strong federal government, which got him wrongly branded as a monarchist by his rivals in his day. We know from his letters that he deeply respected his proto-feminist wife, Abigail, and treated her as an equal and a trusted advisor. And, crucially, John Adams never owned slaves. (Of America’s first twelve Presidents, only John Adams and his son, John Quincy, were never slaveowners.***) Although it would be a stretch to call John Adams an abolitionist—he opposed calls for the immediate end of the slave trade—he and Abigail did vocally disavow the institution and did not personally participate in it. If you disregard nuance, Adams is the only Founding Father who could call the others hypocrites without being, well, a hypocrite.
1776, the musical, stood at the vanguard of this wave of renewed Adams appreciation. Jefferson, the man who wrote the damn declaration, might seem like a more natural fit for the lead of a show about the writing of the Declaration of Independence. But instead, we have as our hero the irascible Adams, played by an incomparably condescending William Daniels, reprising the role he originated on Broadway. Daniels absolutely blazes through the movie, playing Adams as a man on fire with purpose—that purpose being the formation of an American democracy, free from the tyranny of King George III.
Adams has no doubt that American independence is the right path forward for the thirteen colonies represented in the second Continental Congress. As written by Stone and played by Daniels, Adams is unyielding and unbending. He’s not a smooth-talking politician willing to cut a deal with his opponents to get what he wants. No, he’d rather contemptuously shout at them about how they’re short-sighted and cowardly for hesitating to break ties with England. Unsurprisingly, this has won him few friends in Philadelphia. Indeed, the film begins with a song in which the members of the Congress exasperatedly plead with Adams to shut up about the question of independence. “For God’s sake, John, sit down!” the refrain goes.**** Adams has brought up the subject of independence, yet again (“John, you’re a bore, we’ve heard this before” the chorus complains), and he’s entreating his colleagues to at least consider the prospect (“I say vote yes!” Adams repeatedly bellows). Congress eventually hounds Adams out of the hall, refusing to “vote yes” on his proposal. “Will someone shut that man up?” one delegate sings. “Never! Never!” vows Adams as he leaves.
“Sit Down, John” sets the tone for the remainder of the movie. It’s John Adams versus the rest of the Congress, his allies included. Even as the idea of independence gains traction, Adams remains in a defensive posture. His staunch ideal of what independence can and should mean gets sorely tested as he is forced to make compromises at every turn. He nearly reaches his breaking point when practically every delegate in the Congress requests changes to the Declaration of Independence, the document that Thomas Jefferson (Ken Howard) has written to help clarify the stakes of the vote. “We have endured, by my count, more than eighty-five separate changes and the removal of close to four hundred words,” Adams frustratedly exclaims after days of debate over the draft. “Now, would you whip it and beat it ‘til you break its spirit?”
Adams is never the one to propose compromise. More often than not, it’s the pragmatic Benjamin Franklin (Howard Da Silva) who urges Adams to accept the terms laid out by their political adversaries in order to achieve the larger ambition of independence. Da Silva’s wily Franklin might be the ideal embodiment of how the musical humanizes its subjects without ever making them into caricatures or punchlines. The musical presents the historical figures of our national imagination as decidedly imperfect people. The film is quite funny in parts, often making jokes out of the characters’ foibles.
1776 also wants you to know that the Founding Fathers fucked. Seriously, every character in this thing is horny. Thomas Jefferson, the horniest of all, can’t write the Declaration until his wife, Martha, comes to visit Philadelphia to give him some relief. After she and Tom get it on, Martha (Blythe Danner) emerges from Jefferson’s apartment to serenade Adams and Franklin with “He Plays the Violin,” an extended musical double-entendre about how good Thomas Jefferson is in bed. It is, to use Adams’ favorite word, incredible. Elsewhere in the film, John and Abigail Adams (Virginia Vestoff) sing a handful of duets, meant to represent their epistolary correspondence, that brim with love and longing. In case it was unclear that John and Abigail still have sex, during the song “But, Mr. Adams,” Adams curtly assures Jefferson: “I am only forty-one, I still have my virility/ And I can romp through Cupid’s grove with great agility.”
The musical and its film adaptation refuse, however, to absolve the Founding Fathers of their mistakes. Stone doesn’t take an “it was a different time” apologist stance. Centering Adams is key to this approach. 1776 holds everyone in the film to John Adams’ high standards, and each compromise he makes to further his goal of Independence ends up feeling like a loss. According to Stone’s imagining, compromise is, indeed, foundational to the establishment of American democracy, but not in a completely positive way. The majorly unforgivable compromise, and the only instance in which Adams truly betrays his own beliefs, comes in the final third of the film.
Just as it seems that the Congress has raised every possible objection to the Declaration and that the debate has worn itself out, Edward Rutledge (John Cullum) of South Carolina stands up. He asks Jefferson about a particular passage in the document that criticizes King George for allowing the slave trade. Adams flatly decries chattel slavery as immoral, defending Jefferson’s criticism of the practice in the Declaration. Rutledge is quick to point out Jefferson’s hypocrisy. “You are a practitioner [of slavery], are you not?” Rutledge demands. He’s eager to point out the North’s hypocrisy on the issue as well.
In a stunning display of bothsidesing, Rutledge reminds the Congress that New England merchants profit by transporting kidnapped Africans to be sold as slaves as part of the trans-Atlantic triangle trade. Cullum proceeds to ferociously deliver “Molasses to Rum,” a deeply disturbing number. Rutledge sings about the complicity of the North in the dirty business of slavery, purposefully discomfiting Adams and his fellow Northerners. The song crescendos as Rutledge obscenely acts out a slave auction. “Hail Boston! Hail Charleston! Who stinketh the most?” Rutledge sings before storming out of the hall with the rest of the Southern delegates.
The Congress previously agreed that the vote for independence must be unanimous. Adams needs Rutledge’s vote. The rest of the film hinges on Adams’ willingness to compromise on the issue of slavery to see his dream of American independence realized. He agonizes over the decision, and in “Is Anybody There?” Adams reminds himself what he’s fighting for. “Does anybody see what I see?” he sings to the empty hall. “I see Americans, all Americans, free forevermore!”
Before he casts South Carolina’s final vote on the matter of independence, Rutledge asks Adams one last time to remove the “offending passage” from the Declaration. If the passage is removed, South Carolina will vote yea for independence. When faced directly with the request, Adams initially refuses. “If we did that [removed the passage], we would be guilty of what we ourselves are rebelling against,” he protests. Rutledge remains unmoved, presenting Adams once again with the choice: the anti-slavery sentiment or the vote. It’s Franklin who, once again, urges Adams to be pragmatic and consider his choice. “Mark me, Franklin, if we give in on this issue, posterity will never forgive us,” Adams argues.
But give in on the issue they do. The moment of Adams’ tragic downfall is certainly this moment when he decides that commitment to the cause of American independence means conceding the slavery issue to Rutledge and the South—when he decides that the immediate freedom of white (male, land-owning) Americans is worth sacrificing, for the foreseeable future, the freedom of enslaved, Black Americans.
The vote proceeds, and the motion passes unanimously. The film should end on a triumphant note. The second Continental Congress signs the Declaration, the colonies declare independence, and the rest is history. By the time every member of the Congress steps up to sign Jefferson’s manifesto, however, it never quite feels like a victory. There’s something deeply mournful about the scene, arriving as it does on the heels of Adams’ biggest failure in the film. The Liberty Bell solemnly rings, and the secretary of the Congress calls each delegate forward one at a time. Independence has arrived, marred by compromise. It’s left to us, in the present day, to make up for the Founding Fathers’ deficiencies.
When 1776 first took Broadway by storm, it seemed like maybe our nation was finally on its way to living up to the promise set out in the Declaration of Independence that all people are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights. Landmark civil rights advances had been made for African Americans in the 1960s. Women fought for rights beyond the right to vote as second-wave feminism continued its momentum into the 1970s. 1776 premiered in March of 1969; in the summer of that year, in the same city, Stonewall set off an unprecedented wave of gay rights activism around the country. Today, we live in a country shaped by those movements. We benefit from their successes, but Americans now live with the fruits of the vitriolic conservative backlash to those successes in ways most of us never imagined we would have to. Many of the civil rights gains of this era are under very real assault. I mean, we’re literally watching the Supreme Court dismantle the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before our very eyes.
1776, far from being a self-congratulatory Bicentennial relic, reminds me that the American experiment has always been a set of ideals that have, as of yet, never truly been fulfilled. John Adams and the second Continental Congress failed to get there, but maybe new generations can make it. Each year when I revisit the film, I’m inspired over again by its suggestion that perfection has yet to be reached and that there’s work to do. On Independence Day, I don’t always feel like celebrating what America is, or what it has been. But I believe in the promise of American democracy and the ongoing project of perfecting it until it works for all the people who live here. I believe that American democracy can work better.
1776 reminds me that the work doesn’t start with compromise. It starts with righteous anger. It starts with revolutionary spirit. It starts with moral clarity. It starts with the courage to demand something new. It starts with the refusal to be quiet.
And that makes me feel, dare I say it, a bit patriotic.
*The number was restored to the film when it received a DVD release. Now, the most widely available version of the film is the “director’s cut,” which includes the “Cool, Cool Considerate Men” sequence.
**While a selection of John’s letters to Abigail were published as early as 1840 in a popular volume, the Adams Papers Editorial Project, begun in the 1950s, is widely credited with uncovering and making available the vast majority of John Adams’ correspondence. The Project’s first volumes were published in 1961.
***It’s worth noting that while it’s true that neither John nor his son John Quincy ever owned slaves, there is evidence that both men may have had enslaved people laboring in their households while they were each President.
****In a deliberate nod to 1776, there’s a wonderful moment in Hamilton where the lead character exclaims, “Sit down, John, you fat motherf—!” after getting fired from his cabinet post under the Adams administration. Adams does not appear on stage as a character in Hamilton, however. I like to think this is in deference to 1776, which Miranda has frequently cited as an inspiration and a precedent for Hamilton.
