We’ve all heard about the American Declaration of Independence, but it’s likely that very few of us have spent much time asking: Who declared independence? Who empowered them to make that declaration? Why did anyone pay attention to that declaration?
University of Pennsylvania history professor Richard Beeman helps answer those questions in his latest book, Our Lives, Our Fortunes, & Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774-1776. Beeman’s topic is the work of the Continental Congress, a group first formed in 1774 to help a group of British colonies decide how they could work together to battle what they perceived as oppressive actions from the British parliament. Beeman helps explain how that Congress came to be transformed into a de facto government.
Among the more interesting facts: Members of the Continental Congress did not line up — one by one — to pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor by signing the Declaration on July 4, 1776. Signing actually took place nearly a month later.
On August 2, most, but not all of the members of Congress signed the document, with those who happened to be absent on that day trickling in over the course of the next few weeks to add their signatures. The delay, although it may have lessened the drama of the moment, had some salutary effects. Pennsylvania’s Robert Morris, perhaps America’s wealthiest merchant, had deliberately absented himself in order to avoid casting a negative vote on independence on July 2. By August 2 he had come around and affixed his signature to the document, an enormously important act, for he would be primarily responsible for overseeing the financing of America’s revolutionary war effort. Similarly, George Read, the Delaware delegate voting against the resolution for independence on July 2 (thereby necessitating Caesar Rodney’s overnight ride to break the tie in the delegation and move it on the side of independence), had by August 2 also come around and signed the parchment document. The fact that men like Morris and Read had initially opposed independence, but eventually signed the Declaration, speaks volumes about the anguish that many delegates to the Congress, and many throughout America, felt about the decision for independence. “Reluctant revolutionists” they may have been, but, like John Dickinson, who refused to sign, they were not reluctant patriots. Although they had continued to advocate reconciliation rather than revolution on July 4, once the country had decided on revolution (and, in Morris’s case, after he had time to think about the consequences of not endorsing the decision), they worked tirelessly to make sure that that decision would prove to be the correct one.
