1776

Each one of them knew as he dipped his pen in the ink bottle that he was effectively signing his death warrant should they fail in their quest.

“Anything but celebratory. That’s how Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania remembered the atmosphere in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia when delegates affixed their signatures to the Declaration of Independence: A ‘pensive and awful silence pervaded the house as we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress,’ Rush said, to sign ‘what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants.’ The British government considered the Declaration of Independence a treasonous document. And treason was a capital crime.

Benjamin Harrison, a portly delegate from Virginia, tried to lighten the mood with gallows humor. Standing at the table beside Elbridge Gerry, a skinny delegate from Massachusetts, Harrison said, ‘I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead.’

The witticism did little to ease the sense of foreboding shared by the 56 signers of the Declaration. By appending their names to the document, the famous and the obscure; the old, young and middle-aged; the planters, the farmers and the businessmen; the recent arrivals to America and the scions of old American families were all risking not only their lives but also loss of property and impoverishment of wives and children.

Independence Day is now a time for family relaxation, patriotic parades and unabashed celebration. Amid the displays of red, white and blue and the dazzling fireworks, it is easy to forget the real-life sacrifices the signers of the Declaration made for the sake of American liberty”.

William Hogeland, www.historynet.com