|
| |
|
THE AMERICANS WHO RISKED EVERYTHING |
|
|
The
Americans Who Risked Everything |
 |
"Our
Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor" |
|
It
was a glorious morning. The sun was shining and the wind was from
the southeast. Up especially early, a tall bony, redheaded young
Virginian found time to buy a new thermometer, for which he paid
three pounds, fifteen shillings. He also bought gloves for Martha,
his wife, who was ill at home.
Thomas Jefferson arrived early
at the statehouse. The temperature was 72.5 degrees and the
horseflies weren't nearly so bad at that hour. It was a lovely room,
very large, with gleaming white walls. The chairs were comfortable.
Facing the single door were two brass fireplaces, but they would not
be used today.
 The moment the door was shut, and it was
always kept locked, the room became an oven. The tall windows were
shut, so that loud quarreling voices could not be heard by
passersby. Small openings atop the windows allowed a slight stir of
air, and also a large number of horseflies. Jefferson records that "the horseflies were dexterous in finding necks, and the silk of
stockings was nothing to them." All discussing was punctuated by the
slap of hands on necks.
On the wall at the back, facing the
president's desk, was a panoply -- consisting of a drum, swords, and
banners seized from Fort Ticonderoga the previous year. Ethan Allen
and Benedict Arnold had captured the place, shouting that they were
taking it "in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental
Congress!"
Now Congress got to work, promptly taking up an
emergency measure about which there was discussion but no
dissension. "Resolved: That an application be made to the Committee
of Safety of Pennsylvania for a supply of flints for the troops at
New York."
Then Congress transformed itself into a committee
of the whole. The Declaration of Independence was read aloud once
more, and debate resumed. Though Jefferson was the best writer of
all of them, he had been somewhat verbose. Congress hacked the
excess away. They did a good job, as a side-by-side comparison of
the rough draft and the final text shows. They cut the phrase "by a
self-assumed power." "Climb" was replaced by "must read," then
"must" was eliminated, then the whole sentence, and soon the whole
paragraph was cut. Jefferson groaned as they continued what he later
called "their depredations." "Inherent and inalienable rights" came
out "certain unalienable rights," and to this day no one knows who
suggested the elegant change.
A total of 86 alterations were
made. Almost 500 words were eliminated, leaving 1,337. At last,
after three days of wrangling, the document was put to a
vote.
Here in this hall Patrick Henry had once thundered: "I
am no longer a Virginian, sir, but an American." But today the loud,
sometimes bitter argument stilled, and without fanfare the vote was
taken from north to south by colonies, as was the custom. On July 4,
1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted.
There were
no trumpets blown. No one stood on his chair and cheered. The
afternoon was waning and Congress had no thought of delaying the
full calendar of routine business on its hands. For several hours
they worked on many other problems before adjourning for the
day.
|
Much To Lose |
What kind of men were the 56 signers who adopted the Declaration of Independence and who, by their signing, committed an act of treason against the crown? To each of you, the names Franklin, Adams, Hancock and Jefferson are almost as familiar as household words. Most of us, however, know nothing of the other signers. Who were they? What happened to them?
I imagine that many of you are somewhat surprised at the names not there: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry. All were elsewhere.
 Ben Franklin was the only really old man. Eighteen were under 40; three were in their 20s. Of the 56 almost half - 24 - were judges and lawyers. Eleven were merchants, nine were landowners and farmers, and the remaining 12 were doctors, ministers, and politicians.
With only a few exceptions, such as Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, these were men of substantial property. All but two had families. The vast majority were men of education and standing in their communities. They had economic security as few men had in the 18th Century.
Each had more to lose from revolution than he had to gain by it. John Hancock, one of the richest men in America, already had a price of 500 pounds on his head. He signed in enormous letters so that his Majesty could now read his name without glasses and could now double the reward. Ben Franklin wryly noted: "Indeed we must all hang together, otherwise we shall most assuredly hang separately."
Fat Benjamin Harrison of Virginia told tiny Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts: "With me it will all be over in a minute, but you, you will be dancing on air an hour after I am gone."
These men knew what they risked. The penalty for treason was death by hanging. And remember, a great British fleet was already at anchor in New York Harbor.
|
|
|
|
They
were sober men. There were no dreamy-eyed intellectuals or
draft card burners here. They were far from hot-eyed fanatics
yammering for an explosion. They simply asked for the status
quo. It was change they resisted. It was equality with the
mother country they desired. It was taxation with
representation they sought. They were all conservatives, yet
they rebelled.
It was principle, not property, that
had brought these men to Philadelphia. Two of them became
presidents of the United States. Seven of them became state
governors. One died in office as vice president of the United
States. Several would go on to be U.S. Senators. One, the
richest man in America, in 1828 founded the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad. One, a delegate from Philadelphia, was the only real
poet, musician and philosopher of the signers. (It was he,
Francis Hopkinson not Betsy Ross who designed the United
States flag.)
Richard Henry Lee, a delegate from
Virginia, had introduced the resolution to adopt the
Declaration of Independence in June of 1776. He was prophetic
in his concluding remarks: "Why then sir, why do we longer
delay? Why still deliberate? Let this happy day give birth to
an American Republic. Let her arise not to devastate and to
conquer but to reestablish the reign of peace and law.
 "The eyes of Europe are fixed upon
us. She demands of us a living example of freedom that may
exhibit a contrast in the felicity of the citizen to the
ever-increasing tyranny which desolates her polluted shores.
She invites us to prepare an asylum where the unhappy may find
solace, and the persecuted repost.
"If we are not this
day wanting in our duty, the names of the American
Legislatures of 1776 will be placed by posterity at the side
of all of those whose memory has been and ever will be dear to
virtuous men and good citizens."
Though the
resolution was formally adopted July 4, it was not until July
8 that two of the states authorized their delegates to sign,
and it was not until August 2 that the signers met at
Philadelphia to actually put their names to the Declaration.
William Ellery, delegate from Rhode Island, was
curious to see the signers' faces as they committed this
supreme act of personal courage. He saw some men sign quickly, "but in no face was he able to discern real fear." Stephan
Hopkins, Ellery's colleague from Rhode Island, was a man past
60. As he signed with a shaking pen, he declared: "My hand
trembles, but my heart does not." |
|
|
|
Even
before the list was published, the British marked down every
member of Congress suspected of having put his name to
treason. All of them became the objects of vicious manhunts.
Some were taken. Some, like Jefferson, had narrow escapes. All
who had property or families near British strongholds
suffered.
· Francis Lewis, New York
delegate saw his home plundered -- and his estates in what is
now Harlem -- completely destroyed by British Soldiers. Mrs.
Lewis was captured and treated with great brutality. Though
she was later exchanged for two British prisoners through the
efforts of Congress, she died from the effects of her abuse.
 · William Floyd,
another New York delegate, was able to escape with his wife
and children across Long Island Sound to Connecticut, where
they lived as refugees without income for seven years. When
they came home they found a devastated ruin.
· Philips Livingstone had all his
great holdings in New York confiscated and his family driven
out of their home. Livingstone died in 1778 still working in
Congress for the cause.
· Louis
Morris, the fourth New York delegate, saw all his timber,
crops, and livestock taken. For seven years he was barred from
his home and family.
· John Hart of
Trenton, New Jersey, risked his life to return home to see his
dying wife. Hessian soldiers rode after him, and he escaped in
the woods. While his wife lay on her deathbed, the soldiers
ruined his farm and wrecked his homestead. Hart, 65, slept in
caves and woods as he was hunted across the countryside. When
at long last, emaciated by hardship, he was able to sneak
home, he found his wife had already been buried, and his 13
children taken away. He never saw them again. He died a broken
man in 1779, without ever finding his family.
· Dr. John Witherspoon, signer, was
president of the College of New Jersey, later called
Princeton. The British occupied the town of Princeton, and
billeted troops in the college. They trampled and burned the
finest college library in the country. |
|
·
Judge Richard Stockton, another New Jersey delegate signer,
had rushed back to his estate in an effort to evacuate his
wife and children. The family found refuge with friends, but a
Tory sympathizer betrayed them. Judge Stockton was pulled from
bed in the night and brutally beaten by the arresting
soldiers. Thrown into a common jail, he was deliberately
starved. Congress finally arranged for Stockton's parole, but
his health was ruined. The judge was released as an invalid,
when he could no longer harm the British cause. He returned
home to find his estate looted and did not live to see the
triumph of the Revolution. His family was forced to live off
charity.
 · Robert Morris, merchant prince of
Philadelphia, delegate and signer, met Washington's appeals
and pleas for money year after year. He made and raised arms
and provisions which made it possible for Washington to cross
the Delaware at Trenton. In the process he lost 150 ships at
sea, bleeding his own fortune and credit almost dry.
· George Clymer, Pennsylvania signer, escaped
with his family from their home, but their property was
completely destroyed by the British in the Germantown and
Brandywine campaigns.
· Dr. Benjamin
Rush, also from Pennsylvania, was forced to flee to Maryland.
As a heroic surgeon with the army, Rush had several narrow
escapes.
· John Martin, a Tory in his
views previous to the debate, lived in a strongly loyalist
area of Pennsylvania. When he came out for independence, most
of his neighbors and even some of his relatives ostracized
him. He was a sensitive and troubled man, and many believed
this action killed him. When he died in 1777, his last words
to his tormentors were: "Tell them that they will live to see
the hour when they shall acknowledge it [the signing] to have
been the most glorious service that I have ever rendered to my
country."
· William Ellery, Rhode
Island delegate, saw his property and home burned to the
ground.
|
|
·
Thomas Lynch, Jr., South Carolina delegate, had his
health broken from privation and exposures while serving as a
company commander in the military. His doctors ordered him to
seek a cure in the West Indies and on the voyage, he and his
young bride were drowned at sea.
 · Edward Rutledge,
Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., the other three
South Carolina signers, were taken by the British in the siege
of Charleston. They were carried as prisoners of war to St.
Augustine, Florida, where they were singled out for
indignities. They were exchanged at the end of the war, the
British in the meantime having completely devastated their
large landholdings and estates.
· Thomas Nelson, signer of Virginia, was at the front in command
of the Virginia military forces. With British General Charles
Cornwallis in Yorktown, fire from 70 heavy American guns began
to destroy Yorktown piece by piece. Lord Cornwallis and his
staff moved their headquarters into Nelson's palatial home.
While American cannonballs were making a shambles of the town,
the house of Governor Nelson remained untouched. Nelson turned
in rage to the American gunners and asked, "Why do you spare
my home?" They replied, "Sir, out of respect to you." Nelson
cried, "Give me the cannon!" and fired on his magnificent home
himself, smashing it to bits. But Nelson's sacrifice was not
quite over. He had raised $2 million for the Revolutionary
cause by pledging his own estates. When the loans came due, a
newer peacetime Congress refused to honor them, and Nelson's
property was forfeited. He was never reimbursed. He died,
impoverished, a few years later at the age of 50. |
|
|
|
Of
those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died
of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and
imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost
wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two
wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another
the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve
signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost
everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on
his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed
so much to create is still intact.
 And, finally, there is the New Jersey
signer, Abraham Clark.
He gave two sons to the officer
corps in the Revolutionary Army. They were captured and sent
to that infamous British prison hulk afloat in New York Harbor
known as the hell ship Jersey, where 11,000 American
captives were to die. The younger Clarks were treated with a
special brutality because of their father. One was put in
solitary and given no food. With the end almost in sight, with
the war almost won, no one could have blamed Abraham Clark for
acceding to the British request when they offered him his
sons' lives if he would recant and come out for the King and
Parliament. The utter despair in this man's heart, the anguish
in his very soul, must reach out to each one of us down
through 200 years with his answer: "No."
The 56
signers of the Declaration Of Independence proved by their
every deed that they made no idle boast when they composed the
most magnificent curtain line in history. "And for the support
of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of
divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives,
our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
|
|
|
|