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Lindsey Thurber Feb. 3rd, 2014 History 1770 Film Assignment 1776 Film Assignment 1776, directed by Peter Hunt was a great way for me to learn more about what was going on in 1776 besides the battles because most of the time there is a lot more going on besides the battles but they never get talked about in depth very much. This was a musical rendition of the year of 1776. This movie focuses more on what was going on in the continental congress meetings while George Washington was out battling the British. John Adams kept proposing the idea that the colonies should become independent from the British Empire but no else in congress would ever let them debate it. John Adams goes to Benjamin Franklin to help me get the congress to start talking about independence so they get someone other than John Adams to suggest independence. Richard Henry Lee, a Virginian, proposes that the colonies should become an equal nation in the world. The colonies need to break away from England and become Independent. John Dickenson was very against it and would not let this happen. Before this proposal could be voted on Adams suggest that we must create a declaration of some sort that gives reasons why we should become Independence. John Hancock then creates the committee of the five, which included John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman. The committee makes Thomas Jefferson come up with the declaration of independence. When they present the Declaration to parliament every state had a lot of things that wanted to change. The declaration was finally signed on July 4th 1776.

This film was pretty accurate about what was really going on in congress. The only things that I could really tell that werent true were that it didnt take one day for all the signatures to get on the Declaration of independence, it took about one month. In 1776 the movie, they show us that John Dickinson was the only one who did not sign the document but by doing some research I found that Robert Livingston (a committee of the five member) also did not agree with what the document said so he refused to sign it.(A History) The film suggested that only Thomas Jefferson was the one who wrote the Declaration of Independence, but according to what was said in class was that Ben Franklin and John Adams also contributed to the writing of the historic document because Roger Sherman went home to his wife who just had their baby. Also, the movie said that Richard Henry Lee was persuaded or tricked into going to Virginia and getting the idea of going Independent and presenting it to the congress by Ben Franklin and John Adams but according to the book Experiencing History Richard Henry Lee did it on his own without having any help to being pushed into it from an outside force. The singing did not happen either. I found some of my research from class because we only briefly went over what was happening in congress. But we only talked about the Declaration of Independence. We did talk a lot about Ben Franklin and how outgoing and eccentric he was and this movie preserved him to be that way very well. The theme I want to present for my tie in to our class is the bravery that was shown because all these men that signed this document were committing treason. And I would like to tie this in with the bravery that our nation has taken such as a young 21 year old farmer from Virginia taking on the task of holding down forts and staying and fighting against the British even when he knew that they did not have any weapons to out shine their weapons but he still took the chance and was brave for doing so. Bravery was also shown when the Bostonians did not like that King George III were making them only buy tea from British ships,

they took a stand on not letting the ships unload their tea into Boston and then sneaking on the ship and dumping over $700,000( in todays currency) worth of British tea into the Boston harbor. Another example of such bravery was when Christopher Columbus took the chance of going against what everyone else said and convincing the queen to let him sail across the ocean because he believed that he would make it India. These were all equal value of great bravery that has already been taken before 1776 and the signing of the Deliration of Independence.