[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 86 (Friday, June 30, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6245-S6247]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              REMEMBERING THE SACRIFICES MADE FOR FREEDOM

  Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, too often we take our independence for 
granted, forgetting that countless individuals paid high prices for the 
privilege of living in a free Nation. Many lost their lives and their 
families, not to mention their way of life. Recently I received some 
information from Major George Fisher, Georgia National Guard, regarding 
the men who signed the Declaration of Independence. Upon having the 
Congressional Research Service obtain the entire article, I was 
informed that it had previously been entered in the Record by 
Congressman William L. Springer, Illinois, in July of 1965. The 
original article was written by T. R. Fehrenbach, an American 
historian.
  In light of the upcoming anniversary of the signing of the 
Declaration of Independence, I believe that this article is worthy of 
printing again as a reminder of the sacrifices made for our freedom.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, ``What 
Happened to the Men Who Signed the Declaration of Independence.''
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Congressional Research Service]

  What Happened to the Men Who Signed the Declaration of Independence?

                         (By T. R. Fehrenbach)

       On the 7th of June 1776, a slender, keen-eyed Virginia 
     aristocrat named Richard Henry Lee rose to place a resolution 
     before the Second Continental Congress of the United Colonies 
     of North America, meeting in State House off Chestnut Street, 
     in Philadelphia. Lee had his instructions from the Virginia 
     Assembly, and he would fulfill them, but this was one of the 
     hardest days of his life. The 13 British Colonies of America 
     were already far gone in rebellion against what they 
     considered the tyranny of the English Parliament. The shots 
     heard round the world had been fired at Lexington and 
     Concord; blood had flowed at Breed's Hill in Boston.
       Lee still believed there was time to compromise with the 
     British Government. But, acting on instructions of his State, 
     he stood and proposed: ``That these United Colonies are, and 
     of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they 
     are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and 
     that all political connection between them and the state of 
     Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.''
       This was no longer opposition to Parliament. It was 
     revolution against the Crown.
       American histories sometimes gloss over the fact that 
     passage of the Declaration of Independence was by no means 
     assured. Many of the men assembled in Philadelphia were at 
     best reluctant rebels. There were many moderates among them, 
     men desperately aware of, and fearful of, the fruits of war. 
     Immediately after Lee made his proposal, a majority of the 
     Congress stood against it. It took 4 days of the passion and 
     brilliance of the Adamses of Massachusetts and other patriots 
     such as Virginian Thomas Jefferson to secure a bare majority 
     of one--and then, on a South Carolina resolution, the matter 
     was postponed until the 1st of July.
       Many men hoped it had been postponed forever. But John 
     Adams shrewdly gave Thomas Jefferson--unquestionably the best 
     writer in Congress, and perhaps the man with the fewest 
     political enemies--the task of drafting a declaration of 
     independence, and, meanwhile with his fellow Massachusetts 
     man, John Hancock, set to work. What happened between then 
     and the evening of July 4, 1776, when a vote for adoption of 
     one of the world's great documents was carried unanimously, 
     has filled many books. Some of the story--the quarrels, 
     compromises, controversies, and backroom conferences--as 
     Adams admitted, would never be told.
       What happened was that in the course of human events the 
     hour had grown later than many of the gentlemen sitting in 
     Philadelphia had realized. State after State instructed 
     delegates to stand for independence, even though some States 
     held back to the last, and finally four delegates resigned 
     rather than approve such a move.
       After 4 world-shaking days in July, Thomas Jefferson's 
     shining document was adopted without a dissenting vote, and 
     on July 4 John Hancock signed it as President of Congress, 
     Charles Thomson, Secretary, attesting. Four days later, July 
     8, ``freedom was proclaimed throughout the land.''
       The Declaration of Independence was ordered engrossed on 
     parchment, and August 2, 1776, was set for its formal signing 
     by the 56 Members of Congress. The actual signing of such a 
     document, under British or any other law of the time, was a 
     formal act of treason against the Crown. But every Member 
     eventually--some were absent on August 2--signed.
       What sort of men were these, who pledged their ``lives, 
     fortunes, and sacred honor,'' with a British fleet already at 
     anchor in New York Harbor?
       For rebels, they were a strange breed. Almost all of them 
     had a great deal of all three things they pledged. Ben 
     Franklin was the only really old man among them; 18 were 
     still under 40, and three still in their twenties. Twenty-
     four were jurists or lawyers. Eleven were merchants, and nine 
     were landowners or rich farmers. The rest were doctors, 
     ministers, or politicians. With only a very few exceptions, 
     like Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, whom well-wishers 
     furnished a new suit so he might be presentable in Congress, 
     they were men of substantial property. All but two had 
     families, and the vast majority were men of education and 
     standing. In general, each came from what would now be called 
     the ``power structure'' of his home State. They had security 
     as few men had it in the 18th century.
       Each man had far more to lose from revolution than he had 
     to gain from it--except where principle and honor were 
     concerned. It was principle, not property, that brought these 
     men to Philadelphia. In no other light can the American 
     Revolution be understood.
       John Hancock, who had inherited a great fortune and who 
     already had a price of 500 pounds on his head, signed in 
     enormous letters, so ``that His Majesty could now read his 
     name without glasses, and could now double the reward.'' 
     There was more than one reference to gallows humor that 
     day in August.
       Ben Franklin said, ``Indeed we must all hang together. 
     Otherwise we shall most assuredly hang separately.''
       And fat Benjamin Harrison, of Virginia, told tiny Elbridge 
     Gerry of Massachusetts, ``With me it will all be over in a 
     minute. But you, you'll be dancing on air an hour after I'm 
     gone.'' These men knew what they risked. The penalty for 
     treason was death by hanging.
       William Ellery, of Rhode Island, was curious to see the 
     signers' faces as they committed this supreme act of courage. 
     He inched his way close to the secretary who held the 
     parchment and watched intently. He saw some men sign quickly, 
     to get it done with, and others dramatically draw the moment 
     out. But in no face, as he said, was he able to discern real 
     fear. Stephen Hopkins, Ellery's colleague from Rhode Island, 
     was a man past 60 and signed with a shaking hand. But he 
     snapped, ``My hand trembles, but my heart does not.''
       These men were all human, and therefore fallible. The 
     regionalism, backbiting, worries, nepotism, and controversies 
     among this Congress have all had their chroniclers. Perhaps, 
     as Charles Thomson once admitted, the new nation was ``wholly 
     indebted to the agency at Providence for its successful 
     issue.'' But whether America was made by Providence or men, 
     these 56, each in his own way, represented the genius of the 
     American people, already making something new upon this 
     continent.
       Whatever else they did, they formalized what had been a 
     brush-popping revolt and gave it life and meaning, and 
     created a new nation, through one supreme act of courage. 
     Everyone knows what came of the Nation they set in motion 
     that day. Ironically, not many Americans know what became of 
     these men, or even who they were.
       Some prospered. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went on to 
     become Presidents. Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Josiah 
     Bartlett, Oliver Wolcott, Edward Rutledge, Benjamin Harrison 
     and Elbridge Gerry lived to become State Governors. Gerry 
     died in office as Monroe's Vice President. Charles Carroll, 
     of Carrollton, Md., who was the richest man in Congress in 
     1776, and who risked the most, founded the Baltimore & Ohio 
     Railroad in 1828. Most Americans have heard these names.
       Other signers were not so fortunate.
       The British even before the list was published, marked down 
     all Members of Congress suspected of having put their names 
     to treason. They all became the objects of vicious manhunts. 
     Some were taken; some, like Jefferson, had narrow escapes. 
     All of those who had families or property in areas where 
     British power flowed during the war which followed, suffered.
       None actually was hanged. There were too many Britons, like 
     William Pitt, the old Earl of Chatham, who even during a 
     vicious and brutal war would not have stood for that. But in 
     1776, the war had almost 8 grueling years to run, and the 
     signers suffered. Their fortunes were caught up in the 
     fortunes of war.
       The four delegates from New York State were all men of vast 
     property, and they signed the Declaration with a British 
     fleet standing only miles from their homes. By August 2, 
     1776, the government of New York had already evacuated New 
     York City for White Plains. When they put their names to the 
     Declaration, the four from New York must have known that they 
     were in effect signing their property away.
       The British landed three divisions on Long Island on August 
     27. In a bloody battle, Washington's untrained militia 
     was driven back to Harlem Heights. British and Hessian 
     soldiers now plundered the mansion of signer Francis Lewis 
     at Whitestone; they set it afire and carried his wife way. 
     Mrs. Lewis was treated with great brutality. Though she 
     was exchanged for two British prisoners through the 
     efforts of Congress, she died

[[Page S6246]]

     from the effects of what had been done to her.
       British troops next occupied the extensive estate of 
     William Floyd, though his wife and children were able to 
     escape across Long Island Sound to Connecticut. Here they 
     lived as refugees for 7 years. Without income, and eventually 
     came home to find a devastated ruin ``despoiled of almost 
     everything but the naked soil.''
       Signer Philip Livingston came from a baronial New York 
     family, and Livingston himself had built up an immensely 
     lucrative import business. All his business property in New 
     York City was seized as Washington retreated south to Jersey, 
     and Livingston's town house on Duke street and his country 
     estate on Brooklyn Heights were confiscated. Livingston's 
     family was driven out, becoming homeless refugees, while he 
     himself continued to sell off his remaining property in an 
     effort to maintain the United States credit. Livingstone died 
     in 1778, still working in Congress for the cause.
       The fourth New Yorker, Lewis Morris, of Westchester County, 
     saw all his timber, crops and livestock taken, and he was 
     barred from his home for 7 years. He continued fighting as a 
     brigadier general in the New York militia.
       As Washington's men commenced their painful retreat across 
     New Jersey, it began to seem that the Revolution would fall. 
     Now American Tories or Loyalists to the Crown began to make 
     themselves known, helping the advancing British and Hessians 
     to ferret out the property and families of the Jersey 
     signers. When John Hart of Trenton risked coming to the 
     bedside of his dying wife, he was betrayed.
       Hessians rode after Hart. He escaped into the woods, but 
     the soldiers rampaged over his large farm, tearing down his 
     grist mills, wrecking his house, while Mrs. Hart lay on her 
     deathbed. Hart, a man of 65, was hunted down across the 
     countryside and slept in caves and woods, accompanied only by 
     a dog.
       At last, emaciated by hardship and worry, he was able to 
     sneak home. He found his wife long-buried. His 13 children 
     had been taken away. A broken man, John Hart died in 1779 
     without ever finding his family.
       Another New Jersey signer, Abraham Clark, a self-made man, 
     gave two officer sons to the Revolutionary Army. They were 
     captured and sent to the British prison hulk in New York 
     Harbor--the hellship Jersey, where 11,000 American captives 
     were to die. The younger Clarks were treated with especial 
     brutality because of their father. One was put in solitary 
     and given no food. The British authorities offered the elder 
     Clark their lives if he would recant and come out for King 
     and Parliament. Over the dry dust of two centuries, Abraham 
     Clark's anguish can only be guessed at as he refused.
       When they occupied Princeton, N.J., the British billeted 
     troops in the College of New Jersey's Nassau Hall. Signer Dr. 
     John Witherspoon was president of the college, later called 
     Princeton. The soldiers trampled and burned Witherspoon's 
     fine college library, much of which had been brought from 
     Scotland.
       But Witherspoon's good friend, signer Richard Stockton, 
     suffered far worse. Stockton, a State supreme court justice, 
     had rushed back to his estate, Morven, near Princeton, in an 
     effort to evacuate his wife and children. The Stockton 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. Then he was thrown 
     into a common jail, where he was deliberately starved.
       A horrified Congress finally arranged for Stockton's 
     parole, but not before his health was ruined. Finally the 
     judge was released as an invalid who could no longer harm the 
     British cause. He went back to Morven. He found the estate 
     looted, his furniture and all his personal possessions 
     burned, his library, the finest private library in America, 
     destroyed. His horses had been stolen, and even the hiding 
     place of the family silver had been bullied out of the 
     servants. The house itself still stood; eventually it was to 
     become the official residence of New Jersey's Governors.
       Richard Stockton did not live to see the triumph of the 
     Revolution. He soon died, and his family was forced to live 
     off charity.
       About this same time, the British sent a party to the home 
     of New Jersey signer Francis Hopkinson at Bordentown, and 
     looted it, also.
       By December 1776, Washington's dwindling band of patriots 
     had been pushed across the Delaware, into Pennsylvania. The 
     Revolution had entered its first great period of crisis. One 
     by one, the important people of Philadelphia were mouthing 
     Loyalist sentiments, or concocting private ways of making 
     their peace with the Crown. But signer Robert Morris, the 
     merchant prince of Philadelphia, was not among these. Morris, 
     who had honestly and sincerely opposed the Declaration of 
     Independence because he felt the colonies were unready but 
     who had signed in the end, was working his heart and his 
     credit out for the Revolution. Washington's troops were 
     unprovisioned and unpaid; the United Colonies' credit, such 
     as it was, had collapsed.
       Morris used all his great personal wealth and prestige to 
     keep the finances of the Revolution going. More than once he 
     was to be almost solely responsible for keeping Washington in 
     the field, and in December 1776, Morris raised the arms and 
     provisions which made it possible for Washington to cross the 
     Delaware and surprise the Hessian Colonel Rall at Trenton. 
     This first victory, and Washington's subsequent success at 
     Princeton, were probably all that kept the colonies in 
     business.
       Morris was to meet Washington's appeals and pleas year 
     after year. In the process, he was to lose 150 ships at sea, 
     and bleed his own fortune and credit almost dry.
       In the summer of 1777 the British, who were seemingly 
     always near the point of victory and yet were seemingly 
     always dilatory, landed troops south of Philadelphia, on 
     Chesapeake Bay. These marched north, to defeat Washington at 
     Brandywine and again at Germantown. Congress fled to 
     Baltimore, and Lord Howe took Philadelphia on September 27. 
     On the way, his men despoiled the home of Pennsylvania signer 
     George Clymer in Chester County, Clymer and his family, 
     however, made good their escape.
       The family of another signer, Dr. Benjamin Rush, was also 
     forced to flee to Maryland, though Rush himself stayed on as 
     a surgeon with the Army. Rush had several narrow escapes.
       Signer John Morton who had long been a Tory in his views, 
     lived in a strongly Loyalist area of the State. When Morton 
     had come out for independence, it turned his neighbors, most 
     of his friends, and even his relatives against him, and these 
     people, who were closest to Morton, ostracized him. He was a 
     sensitive, troubled man, and many observers believed this 
     action killed him. John Morton 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 ever rendered to 
     my country.''
       On the same day Washington retook Trenton, the British 
     captured Newport, R.I. Here, they wantonly destroyed all of 
     Signer William Ellery's property and burned his fine home 
     to the ground.
       The grand scheme to separate New England by General 
     Burgoyne's march from Canada was foiled at Saratoga in 1777; 
     this victory eventually brought the French into the war on 
     the American side. But after desultory fighting here and 
     there, by 1779 the British seemed to have the war well in 
     hand. Washington had held a small, professional Continental 
     Army intact, and with European instructors like von Steuben 
     and Lafayette it was being drilled into a compact, 
     disciplined force. Washington was seemingly too weak, 
     however, openly to challenge the heavily armed British forces 
     again. The seaports were captured or blockaded, and American 
     shipping driven from the seas. The northern colonies seemed 
     neutralized, and the British turned their main effort south.
       Like the men from New York, the South Carolina signers were 
     all landed aristocrats. They had, as a body, reflected 
     Carolina's luke-warm attitude toward independence. The 
     Carolinians were all young--average age, 29--and all had 
     studied in England. But in the end they had joined the 
     majority in the interest of solidarity, and after signing 
     they had all entered military service.
       While serving as a company commander, Thomas Lynch, Jr.'s 
     health broke from privation and exposure. His doctors ordered 
     him to seek a cure in Europe, and on the voyage he and his 
     young wife were drowned at sea.
       The other three South Carolina signers, Edward Rutledge, 
     Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., were taken by the 
     British in the siege of Charleston. They were carried as 
     prisoners of war to St. Augustine, Fla., and here they were 
     singled out for indignities until they were exchanged at the 
     end of the war. Meanwhile, the British roaming through the 
     southern countryside had made a point of devastating the vast 
     properties and plantations of the Rutledge and Middleton 
     families.
       The 2 years beginning in 1779 were the ugliest period of 
     the war. There was sharp fighting in the South, which 
     sometimes devolved into skirmishes and mutual atrocities 
     between Americans for independence and Americans who still 
     stood with the Crown. There had always been strong Loyalist 
     sentiment in the South, as in the Middle Atlantic States; 
     plantations and homes on either side were raided and burned, 
     and women, children, and even slaves were driven into the 
     woods or swamps to die.
       The British soon conquered all the thin coastal strip which 
     was 18th century Georgia. Signer Button Gwinnett was killed 
     in a duel in 1777, and Col George Walton, fighting for 
     Savannah, was severely wounded and captured when that city 
     fell. The home of the third Georgia signer, Lyman Hall, was 
     burned and his rice plantation confiscated in the name of the 
     Crown.
       One of the North Carolina signers, Joseph Howes, died in 
     Philadelphia while still in Congress, some said from worry 
     and overwork. The home of another, William Hooper, was 
     occupied by the enemy, and his family was driven into hiding.
       By 1780 the fortunes of war had begun to change. Local 
     American militia forces defeated the King's men at King's 
     Mountain. Realizing that the war was to be decided in the 
     South, Washington sent Nathanael) Greene dance, as the saying 
     went, with Lt. Gen. Lord Cornwallis, the British commander. 
     Cornwallis did not like the dance at all, and slowly 
     retreated northward toward the Chesapeake. At Yorktown, a 
     Virginia village surrounded on three sides by water, 
     Cornwallis established what he thought was an impregnable 
     base. No matter what happened on land, Cornwallis felt he 
     could always be supplied and rescued, if need be, by sea. It 
     never occurred to the British staff that Britannia might not 
     always rule the waves.

[[Page S6247]]

       Now began the crucial action of the war, the time 
     Washington had been waiting for with exquisite patience. A 
     powerful French squadron under Admiral de Grasse arrived at 
     the mouth of the Chesapeake from Haiti and gained temporary 
     naval superiority off the Virginia coast. Under carefully 
     coordinated plans, Washington and the French General 
     Rochambeau marched south from New York to Annapolis, where De 
     Grasse transported the allied army across Chesapeake Bay. At 
     the same time, General the Marquis de Lafayette was ordered 
     to march upon Yorktown from his position at Richmond.
       By September 1781, Cornwallis and the main British forces 
     in North America found themselves in a trap. French warships 
     were at their rear. Regular forces--not the badly armed and 
     untrained militia the British had pushed around on the 
     battlefield for years--closed in on them from the front. By 
     October 9, Washington's and Rochambeau's armies had dug 
     extensive siege works all around Yorktown, so there could be 
     no escape. Now the bombardment began. The greatest guerrilla 
     war in history was coming to a classic close.
       Murderous fire from 70 heavy guns began to destroy 
     Yorktown, piece by piece.
       As the bombardment commenced, signer Thomas Nelson of 
     Virginia was at the front in command of the Virginia militia 
     forces. In 1776 Nelson had been an immensely wealthy tobacco 
     planter and merchant in partnership with a man named 
     Reynolds. His home, a stately Georgian mansion, was in 
     Yorktown. As the Revolution began, Nelson said, ``I am a 
     merchant of Yorktown, but I am a Virginian first. Let my 
     trade perish. I call God to witness that if any British 
     troops are landed in the County of York, of which I am 
     lieutenant, I will wait for no orders, but will summon the 
     militia and drive the invaders into the seas.'' Nelson 
     succeeded Thomas Jefferson as Governor of Virginia, and was 
     still Governor in 1781.
       Lord Cornwallis and his staff had moved their headquarters 
     into Nelson's home. This was reported by a relative who was 
     allowed to pass through the lines. And while American cannon 
     balls were making a shambles of the town, leaving the mangled 
     bodies of British grenadiers and horses lying bleeding in the 
     streets, the house of Governor Nelson remained untouched.
       Nelson asked the gunners: ``Why do you spare my house?''
       ``Sir, out of respect to you,'' a gunner replied.
       ``Give me the cannon,'' Nelson roared. At his insistence, 
     the cannon fired on his magnificent house and smashed it.
       After 8 days of horrendous bombardment, a British drummer 
     boy and an officer in scarlet coats appeared behind a flag of 
     truce on the British breastplates. The drum began to beat 
     ``The Parley.''
       Cornwallis was asking General Washington's terms.
       On October 19, the British regulars marched out of 
     Yorktown, their fifes wailing ``The World Turned Upside 
     Down.'' They marched through a mile-long column of French and 
     Americans, stacked their arms, and marched on. It was, as 
     Lord North was to say in England when he heard the news, all 
     over.
       But for Thomas Nelson the sacrifice was not quite over. He 
     had raised $2 million for the Revolutionary cause by pledging 
     his own estates. The loans came due; a newer peace-time 
     Congress refused to honor them, and Nelson's property was 
     forfeit. He was never reimbursed.
       He died a few years later at the age of 50 living with his 
     large family in a small and modest house.
       Another Virginia signer, Carter Braxton, was also ruined. 
     His property, mainly consisting of sailing ships, was seized 
     and never recovered.
       These were the men who were later to be called 
     ``reluctant'' rebels. Most of them had not wanted trouble 
     with the Crown. But when they were caught up in it, they had 
     willingly pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their 
     sacred honor for the sake of their country.
       It was no idle pledge. Of the 56 who signed the Declaration 
     of Independence, 9 died of wounds or hardships during the war
       Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal 
     treatment.
       Several lost wives, sons, or family. One lost his thirteen 
     children. All were, at one time or another, the victims of 
     manhunts, and driven from their homes.
       Twelve signers had their houses burned. Seventeen lost 
     everything they owned.
       Not one defected or went back on his pledged word.
       There honor and the Nation they did so much to create, is 
     still intact.
       But freedom, on that first Fourth of July, came high.

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