Nightmare Fuel / 1776

• "Molasses to Rum."
  • Edward Rutledge describes out the slave trade quite brutally, acting out an auction to show the Northern colonies their hypocrisy—it is, after all, Boston ships that sail to Africa. It horrifies the Congress, and it'll probably horrify the viewer at home, too, given what we know about how utterly inhuman the industry was. Especially the film version, which is sung by John Cullum.
    "Who sails the ships out of Boston, laden with bibles and slaves? Who drinks a toast? To the ivory coast? Hail Africa, the slavers have come..."
    "And it's off with the rum and the bibles, and on with the slaves, clink-clink."
    "Gentlemen, do you hear? That's the cry of the auctioneer!"
  • Rutledge pantomimes slave transport ("stuff them in the ships!") and a slave auction, admonishing imaginary prospective buyers to "Handle them! Fondle them! But don't finger them!!!" Orchestras will often break out whip sound effects to make the characters and the audience flinch. The effect is even more pronounced if you're watching it live in the theater, where you are just as trapped as the rest of Congress as Rutledge's pantomime of a slave auction becomes more and more intense (especially as it includes lyrics cut from the film where he sings about the faces of the traders in the same auctioneer's tone he used for Angola and Ashanti.
• The terrifyingly long odds that the Continental Army faces in winning this precious independence loom offstage like all-devouring shadows throughout the ENTIRE DRAMA, and there's no letup by the end - the military situation is every bit as grim as it had been in the beginning- with no real hints as to how it can possibly improve. The Continental Army seems to have no hope of winning this precious independence ... or even winning a decisive battle against the British army ... or even offering a decent fight against them ... or, at some points during the show, even keeping itself together and in the field for another week. The never-ending mood of hopelessness isn't just pointed out by the anti-independence faction - it's pointed out by the army's own Commander-in-Chief with every headquarters dispatch! Someone who came to the show with no knowledge of American history might come away with the notion that they'd just watched a group of men argue and fight for an absolutely hopeless cause.
• Audiences who are handy with a history book know that Washington's last dispatch details him prepping for the Battle of Long Island / Brooklyn Heights. The battle will be a disaster for the Americans and Washington will come close to losing the entire war - and American independence with it. None of the nightmare scenarios that anti-independence faction have been warning against are exaggerated or far-fetched - the British forces are about to make them all too real.
• In the finale, the delegates involved in the signing slowly freeze in place mirroring the Robert Pine painting, "Congress Voting Independence", as the Liberty Bell chimes. Notably, the bell's tolls are incredibly eerie paired with the building score, rather than a triumphant unanimous call to independence, since even taking into account the Foregone Conclusion that they'll win the Revolutionary War, if they didn't, every one of those men would be ''branded as traitors and hanged."
• There's also the knowledge, in the same scene, that this is imperfect. We know that the compromises Adams, Jefferson, and the rest of our heroes have agreed to have sold out millions of African Americans, and that these same contradictions will eventually rip America apart in civil war.