Happy Birthday America! 236-years-old today!
As the delegates to the Continental Congress discussed the radical idea of independency, many were concerned about the advisability of attempting to wrest independence from the British Crown. After all, they were British citizens. They were revolting against their own government. Had the war gone a different way, all could have been (and undoubtably would have been) shot or hung as traitors. According to Benjamin Franklin, never in the history of the world had a subjected colony broken from her mother state successfully. Therefore, this was not a walk in the park for these men. These issues were hotly debated for months before the document was drafted and signed.
Five men sat on the drafting committee: Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston. All contributed ideas, and the final document was penned by Thomas Jefferson. The purpose of the Declaration, according to Jefferson was "to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent."
56 men signed the Declaration. They were farmers, lawyers, doctors, and businessmen, the brightest and best of their individual colonies. (See a list at the end of this post.) They were also men who had strong moral convictions. They were Anglicans, Congregationalists, Deists, Espicopalians, Presbyterians, Quakers, Roman Catholics, and Unitatians. Even those who were not professors of a specific religious denomination, had a "firm reliance on the protection of divine providence." In a day when many seem to revel in disclosing the signers' human frailties, we who believe in the divine inspiration of this foundational American document should never lose sight of this fact.
The Declaration contains many brilliant ideas, accepted today as a matter of fact, but truly revolutionary in an 18th Century world:
- All men are created equal
- All men have God-given and unaliable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
- Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
- When such governments become destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it
The second point is that when government runs amok, it is not only the right of the people to alter it; it is the responsibility of the people. In my mind, we don't need to do anything so radical as abolish our government. We have a great foundation in another inspired document: the Constitution of the United States of America. Our government has run amok whenever it has deviated through legislation, administration, or interpretation, from that framework. What we need to do is return to those principles by studying the issues and voting for honorable men and women who believe in Constitutional government as it was instituted among men. We need to let our voices be heard.
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President of the Congress and Delegate from Massachusetts: John Hancock Connecticut: Roger Sherman Samuel Huntington William Williams Oliver Wolcott Delaware: Caesar Rodney George Read Thomas McKean Georgia: Button Gwinnett Lyman Hall George Walton Massachusetts: Samuel Adams John Adams Robert Treat Paine Elbridge Gerry Maryland: Samuel Chase William Paca Thomas Stone Charles Carroll New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett William Whipple Matthew Thornton New Jersey: Richard Stockton John Witherspoon Francis Hopkinson John Hart Abraham Clark |
New York: William Floyd Philip Livingston Francis Lewis Lewis Morris North Carolina: William Hooper Joseph Hewes John Penn Pennsylvania: Robert Morris Benjamin Rush Benjamin Franklin John Morton George Clymer James Smith George Taylor James Wilson George Ross Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins William Ellery South Carolina: Edward Rutledge Thomas Heyward, Jr. Thomas Lynch, Jr. Arthur Middleton Virginia: George Wythe Richard Henry Lee Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Harrison Thomas Nelson, Jr. Francis Lightfoot Lee Carter Braxton |
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