When news of the fighting at Concord & Lexington in April 1775 reached Patrick Henry in Virginia, he rose in the House of Burgesses, knowing that many still did not want to break with Great Britain and exclaimed: “Gentlemen cry ‘peace, peace,’ but there is no peace! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here…idle?”
Yet it would take another 15 months of bloodshed at Boston and Bunker Hill, as well as rebuffed ‘peace initiatives’ to King George III, before the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia finally exhausted all reasons to remain under a seemingly cruel and unsympathetic monarch 3,000 miles away.
Washington had taken command of a rag-tag ‘army’ of roughly 14,000 men and moved it from Boston to Long Island, awaiting the expected arrival of both the powerful British navy and the troops in the transport ships.
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin all were gifted writers, and one of them must draft a declaration for the congress to sign.
Who would draft it?
John Adams headed more than 13 committees and so he begged off, adding he was not liked enough to be the author. Franklin refused because, “I never write anything where a committee could edit it to death.” So it was left to 33-year-old Jefferson to write the document that would either give birth to a new nation or be a collective death sentence for all the signers if captured by the British.
Jefferson begrudgingly accepted Adams’ and Franklin’s change and the Declaration of Independence was approved July 3rd but declared valid as of July 4th.
July 4th inspired winds of change all over
What the world would take years to fully realize was that Jefferson’s words would go on to inspire the abolitionist movement as well as women’s suffrage. And hundreds of revolutions and uprisings of people around the world. These 55 words changed the course of history, far beyond our declaring independence from Great Britain.
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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. —The Declaration of Independence
A birth certificate or a death warrant?
Jefferson ended this remarkable document by reminding us all that the new Americans were not signing a mere piece of paper with few consequences; they were giving King George III and his armies legal justification to hang every one of the signers and plunder and burn all their property.
“…..we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
Eight days later, General Washington looked eastward through a spy-glass to see the entire horizon filled with white sails. More than 130 ships would soon land 33,000 trained and well equipped enemy soldiers (including 10,000 Hessian mercenaries) onto the beaches of Staten Island.
Their goal was to “kill the infant of independence in its crib” before winter.
Washington and his ‘rabble-in arms’ would see to it that that would not happen.
We are grateful to historian Glen LeBoeuf for this uplifting post and for all his stirring lectures on American history. Share his post if it inspired you as much as it did us. He wants to add: clean your grill!