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''Good God, sir, was that fair?'' }}
''1776'' is the name of both a 1969 Broadway play
Daniels plays [[John Adams]] (later the first-ever Vice President), a Boston revolutionary who spearheads the American effort to turn from a British Crown Colony into its own nation. All sorts of reasons are brought up for this, including taxation sans representation and the alienation that the Atlantic Ocean brings. With the help of Yoda-esque [[Ben Franklin]] and a reluctant [[Thomas Jefferson]], who is so homesick he can barely write the Declaration of Independence, he puts forth these reasons... which are almost immediately savaged. It takes a minor miracle just to get the whole thing to a
Though light-hearted in many parts (it's almost impossible to get through the number about who will write the Declaration without laughing), it also contains poignant looks at how difficult decisions had to be made (the South viewed slavery as an economic necessity and walked out en masse upon hearing Jefferson, a fellow Southerner, condemn it). In addition, a report from a soldier on the front (the haunting "Look Sharp" number) drives home just how much (and yet how little) the piece of paper will mean.
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* [[Big Damn Heroes]]: The arrival of Reverend John Witherspoon (and the rest of the New Jersey delegation) in Congress before the resolution on independence is struck down.
** Caesar Rodney riding eighty miles in failing health to show up just in time for the vote (a real event, famous enough that it's on the Delaware quarter).
* [[Big "Never!"]]: Adams does a few of these.
* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: The film ends with the Declaration signed and an independence declared -- and years of a turbulent and desperate war that did not look winnable ahead of them. As Washington had mentioned, his army was in terrible shape, his money and credit were all gone, and the British had the strongest navy in the world. That bit in the Declaration about pledging "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" wasn't just emotionalism.
* [[Blood on the Debate Floor]]: Adams and Dickinson calmly talking out their differences. With [[Cane Fu|canes]].
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