56 Patriots, Signing the Declaration of Independence and Their Death Warrant, Gave Birth to America

Americans today are honoring, among others, 56 patriots for signing the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago. That act of rebellion against George III is history’s greatest victory for self-government, and their true stories are more inspiring than the myths that seek to deify or denigrate their accomplishments.“With a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence,” the parchment that 56 men scribbled with quills on July 4, 1776, stated, “we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” All paid a price for their treason. Nine didn’t live to see independence.David O. Stewart, author of “The Democracy We Must Keep: Seven Founders, Nine Documents, and the Ideas that Framed America,” told The New York Sun that “a bunch of the signers were ruined.” He singled out Richard Stockton of New Jersey, dragged from his bed by Loyalists and marched in irons 20 miles into captivity.“Stockton was not a young man,” Mr. Stewart said of the starvation and torture he endured. “It was grueling. His property was ruined. There were a bunch of signers like that.” Stockton’s health was ravaged, his home looted and his library torched. He sticks in Mr. Stewart’s mind thanks to the New Jersey Turnpike rest stop named in his honor.Mr. Stewart noted that some accounts say Stockton was hanged, but that’s untrue. A popular list of the signers’ fates contains many such errors. These mistakes have been used to dismiss their real sacrifices, denying Americans a chance to draw inspiration from the price they and their families paid for liberty.Dr. Josiah Bartlett of New Hampshire, ancestor of the fictional president on “The West Wing,” had his house torched. A Georgian signer, Lyman Hall, fared worse: The British incinerated his entire hometown of Sunbury. The speaker of New Jersey’s assembly, John Hart, was forced to hide in the mountains when his farm was raided.Francis Lewis of New York’s home was destroyed in the Battle of Brooklyn and his wife, Elizabeth, was captured. The brutality she endured led to her death a few years later. Two of Abraham Clark’s sons were POWs on an infamous British prison ship. His fellow Jerseyman, Reverend John Witherspoon, lost his eldest son in combat.Charles Peale of Virginia was wounded in battle and, like Thomas Heyward of South Carolina, taken prisoner. During his 11 months in captivity, Heyward rewrote “God Save the King” into “God Save the States.” The crown confiscated everything he owned and the press dubbed him “a martyr of the Revolution.”Robert Morris of Pennsylvania, “Financier of the Revolution,” went bankrupt funding the Continental Army. He died in 1806 with only his father’s broken watch to his name. Like a fellow signatory who paid for guns and butter, Charles Carroll of Maryland, Morris had once been called America’s richest man.When the British threatened to sack Philadelphia and the Continental Congress, Morris stayed to face them with a Pennsylvanian, George Clymer, and a Georgian, George Walton. The British trashed Clymer’s home. A musket ball would later tear through Walton’s thigh at the Battle of Savannah, resulting in his capture.Dr. Joseph Warren dispatched a messenger, Paul Revere, to warn another wealthy colonist, John Hancock, that a British force was moving to seize him and the future president, John Adams. Hancock, a militia colonel, resolved to fight. But Adams convinced his fellow signatory that America needed him more as a political leader than a soldier.Revolutionaries tend to be starving, powerless people with nothing to lose. But the signers of the Declaration were well-fed, privileged men, many with huge tracts of land. They benefited from the status quo and yet they revolted against it. Liberty mattered more than living out their days in comfort under the king’s thumb.After signing the Declaration, an apocryphal story recounts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania told Hancock, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Some of the 56 signers lost their lives. Some lost their fortunes. Yet 250 years later, their sacred honor — and the nation they created — endures.

56 Patriots, Signing the Declaration of Independence and Their Death Warrant, Gave Birth to America

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