Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 2, 1995 TAG: 9507030152
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RALPH VIGODA KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
``I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary Festival,'' he wrote to his wife, Abigail, from Philadelphia. ``It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parades, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.''
Right on the mark, huh? Well, Adams had more to say on the subject: ``The Second Day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha in the History of America.''
So much for the prescience of one of the age's great leaders.
With the dust of more than two centuries has come a patina of sainthood and omniscience for the signers of the most significant document in American history.
Some, then, might find it comforting to know that the Founding Fathers were often no more farsighted, and no less human, than the crowd that now occupies the Capitol.
Some were scoundrels; others, preening peacocks. A few wound up in prison. More than a few had nothing to do with the act that ultimately cemented their place in history.
As for the Declaration of Independence, it shared the front page of a leading journal of the day with the tale of a runaway cow.
Back to Adams for a moment.
July 2 got him all astir because it was the day the Second Continental Congress, meeting at the State House in Philadelphia, adopted a resolution ``That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States ...''
But it wasn't until July 4 that Thomas Jefferson's heavily edited version of the Declaration of Independence was approved, leading to great praise for the Founding Fathers, who gave Americans another day off from work.
In reality, some of those guys were absent Fathers; a half-dozen signers had nothing to do with the declaration, having been elected to Congress weeks or months after the business was done. A seventh - William Williams of Connecticut - likely didn't arrive in Philadelphia until late July after a long journey from home. But when the official copy was ready for signing Aug. 2, they were among the men who didn't hesitate to take quill in hand.
``The only reason the signers are famous is because they happened to be there, they got their names on the document, and the Revolution succeeded,'' said Randall Miller, a professor of history at St. Joseph's University. ``We've invested these people with greater significance than they deserve.''
One could ask, of course, how famous the signers actually are. Quick: Name 10 of them. Nine? Six?
Sure, everyone knows John Hancock, the pompous Bostonian so taken with himself that other delegates derisively called him ``King Hancock.'' He liked to parade around the streets of Philadelphia dressed in finery and trailed by servants.
Jefferson's name is familiar for writing the document - but not for sitting in the back of the room next to Ben Franklin, fuming, while his fellow delegates spent July 3 and 4 blue-penciling his somewhat turgid prose.
Franklin, at 70, was the oldest man present. Two of the colonies' best-known politicians from the Adams family (Sam and John, not Gomez and Morticia) were there.
The majority of the 56 signers, though, faded rather rapidly into obscurity.
That is not to deny their courage in essentially committing treason, putting their lives and fortunes - and nearly all these guys were very wealthy - on the line.
The work of Congress was super-secretive; it's believed that, despite the sweltering heat of early July, the windows of the State House were kept closed to prevent the debate from filtering out. Some of the words - both those uttered in the room and those written afterward - were harsh. This was, by no means, one big, happy family charting a course for freedom.
Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, for instance, the youngest delegate at age 26, had a reputation for being outspoken and sticking his nose in other people's affairs. John Adams had this to say about him: ``... a perfect Bob-o-Lincoln - a swallow, a sparrow, a peacock, excessively vain, excessively weak ... jejune, inane and puerile.''
Adams wasn't too fond of fellow Massachusetts delegate Robert Treat Paine either, calling him ``an impudent, ill-bred, conceited fellow.''
Maryland's Charles Carroll was sick of the whole lot. ``We murder time,'' he wrote, ``and chat away in idle, impertinent talk.'' Members of Congress, he complained, were too ``fond of talking, and not much addicted to thinking.''
Two of the signers from Pennsylvania - Robert Morris and James Wilson - spent time in debtor's prison later in their lives. Wilson, in fact, fled to North Carolina, where he died in a shabby room above a tavern. Or in a comfortable room in a friend's home. It depends on which account you read.
Georgia's Button Gwinnett may not have been imprisoned, although documents suggest he could have been. He owned St. Catherine's Island off the Georgia coast, but large debts forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1773. ``Undaunted,'' writes historian David Freeman Hawke, ``he tried to sell off parts of the island, although he no longer owned it, to innocent immigrants.
Gwinnett got his less than a year after leaving Philadelphia. He became chief executive of Georgia and was embroiled in a controversy with the military. In May 1777 he paced off with pistols against Brig. Gen. Lachan McIntosh.
Whoever started it, it finished Gwinnett. Both parties were shot. McIntosh recovered, but Gwinnett died three days later.
Another jailbird was New Jersey's Abraham Clark. In 1756, Clark broke into a copper mine along the border of Essex and Somerset counties and roughed up a tenant there.
A March 1756 letter from John Stevens to James Alexander - both New Jersey landowners - described Clark's agitated day in court. ``Mr. Clark came in and in a great flutter begs the justice to hear him, and then read a plea, traversing the floor.''
Two decades later, Clark took his seat in the Second Continental Congress.
Five Pennsylvanians whose names are on the Declaration of Independence did not have seats in the State House in early July: Benjamin Rush, George Taylor, George Clymer, James Smith and George Ross. None was elected to the Continental Congress until July 20. Matthew Thornton of New Hampshire didn't get to Philadelphia until November after a September election.
Then there's the man whom Wake Forest University professor Edwin Hendricks calls ``the signer who didn't get to sign'': Pennsylvania's Charles Thomson, the secretary of the Continental Congress.
``The names of the signers were not released until February of 1777, so for that entire period from July on the only two signatures made public were Hancock's and Thomson's,'' said Hendricks, who has written a biography of Thomson.
His point is that those two men were the only ones who were initially in danger of being arrested by British authorities.
``He was not a voting delegate; he did not actually sign the finished document,'' Hendricks said. ``His signature on the first printed version is to attest to the authenticity of John Hancock's.''
The document we marvel at today went through a pretty stringent editing process by the delegates 219 years ago. Some of the changes were grammatical: Jefferson continually wrote ``it's'' when using the possessive form, which does not take the apostrophe. The longest paragraph, one in which Jefferson indicts King George for the institution of slavery, was excised completely.
Some were for brevity and clarity. One of the most famous lines was originally written: ``We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable ... '' In all, nearly 500 words were eliminated.
Jefferson was not pleased. ``I was not insensible to the mutilations,'' he wrote.
``He resented them,'' said Miller, of St. Joseph's. ``The delegates start picking away at it, he's sitting there chafing. He was very possessive of what he's done. Franklin had to calm him down.''
Which he obviously did.
The rest, as they say, is history.
by CNB