By Mark Carpenter
People’s Defender
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
When Nicholas Cage isn’t trying to steal it, the original signed Declaration of Independence is located in the Charters of Freedom exhibit at the Nation Archives in Washington DC, viewed by over a million people each year. The Declaration of Independence states the principles on which our government, and our identity as Americans, are based and the amazing work of 56 men in Philadelphia 250 years ago is the reason why all of America this year is celebrating what is being called “America 250”.
What an amazing group of characters gathered in “foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia”. From the loud and persistent John Adams, the gruff Stephen Hopkins, the respected Caesar Rodney, the ever-diplomatic Benjamin Franklin, the quiet and lovelorn Thomas Jefferson, the enigmatic Richard Henry Lee, to the youngest delegate Edward Rutledge, they were a mixed group of lawyers, merchants, farmers, doctors and two future presidents that somehow would have to put their individual interests aside and achieve a common goal, all literally committing treason during a war that seemed hopeless in July of 1776.
It had been over a year since the shots fired at Lexington and Concord and in that time, the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia had accomplished little. That began to change on June 7, 1776 when Richard Henry Lee of Virginia made the motion that Congress finally declare independence from Great Britain, his motion stating that the 13 colonies ought to be “free and independent states” and that any reliance on Britain should be totally dissolved. The motion was seconded and the spirited debates began.
Over the next month, fighting the irrepressible Pennsylvania heat and each other, the Congress went back and forth and back and forth on the issue of independence. Arguments seemed to follow sectional boundaries and after numerous votes and the decision that the vote for independence had to be unanimous, another motion was made to take some time for the writing of some sort of document stating the reasons for the break from Great Britain. As Congress recessed for three weeks, a Committee of Five was appointed to write that document- John Adams from Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin from Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman from Connecticut, Robert Livingston from New York and Thomas Jefferson from Virginia.
Years later, Jefferson wrote that, “the other members of the committee unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught. I consented; I drew it; but before I reported it to the committee I communicated it separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams requesting their corrections… I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the committee, and from them, unaltered to the Congress.” Jefferson’s rough draft with changes made by Franklin, Adams, and Congress now rests in The Library of Congress.
Congress reconvened on July 1, 1776 and adopted Lee’s resolution then began to debate Jefferson’s declaration. Many different members of Congress chimed in with their ideas for additions and deletions and by all accounts, the major sticking point was the matter of slavery. Simply, the southern colonies would not vote for the declaration if the clause that would end the institution of slavery, “their peculiar institution”, remained in the document. After much heated debate, the slavery clause was removed and on July 2, Congress approved the Declaration and on July 4, the first signatures were attached, including perhaps history’s most famous autograph, John Hancock (President of Congress) affixing his signature large enough for King George to read “without his glasses”. All 56 signatures were not affixed to the document until August 2, but July 4 became the day that Americans have celebrated as Independence Day. since Congress declared it as such in 1870.
The exhilaration of the good works in Congress was often dimmed by the reports from the battlefield from General George Washington, who had been assigned the nearly impossible task of taking a rag-tag group of untrained volunteer and militia men and facing off with the world’s strongest military force, the British army. Some accounts say that Washington had the Declaration read to the troops as a form of inspiration to continue the fight. Defying all odds, Washington managed to turn his troops into a fighting force that was able to somehow, with some valuable assistance from the French, trap the British at Yorktown and force the surrender that changed forever the direction of the world.
At that surrender ceremony, the band played “The World Turned Upside Down”, nothing could have been more appropriate. The world had been turned upside down and now the story of America was beginning. For the past 250 years, America has been a story of ingenuity, bravery and heroism that have brought us to the nationwide celebrations that are marking “America 250”.
Over 250 years, the quest for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness have not changed, just the methods to get there. Those 56 men who braved the storms to create the Declaration could not have imagined America as it looks today, but they would all most certainly agree that this still applies 250 years later, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Signers of the Declaration
Massachusetts- John Adams, Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine
New Hampshire- Josiah Bartlett, Matthew Thornton, William Whipple
Rhode Island- William Ellery, Stephen Hopkins
Connecticut- Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York- William Floyd, Francis Lewis, Robert Livingston, Lewis Morris
New Jersey- Abraham Clark, John Hart, Francis Hopkinson, Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon
Pennsylvania- George Clymer, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, John Morton, George Ross, Benjamin Rush, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson
Delaware- Thomas McKean, George Read, Caesar Rodney
Maryland- Charles Carroll, Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone
Virginia- Carter Braxton, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Jefferson, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Nelson, Jr., George Wythe
North Carolina- Joseph Hawes, William Hooper, John Penn
South Carolina- Thomas Heyward, Jr., Arthur Middleton, Edward Rutledge
Georgia- Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton