Tag: declaration of independence

What Happened To The 56 Signatories Of The Declaration Of Independence

While July 4 marks the day Thomas Jefferson’s revised draft of the Declaration of Independence was adopted, it would take months for the document to be signed by all 56 men who would eventually affix their names to it.

Several key figures in American history – George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, among others – don’t appear among the signatories of the Declaration of Independence at all, having been serving in military roles or other capacities at the time.

None of the 56 signers died as a result of their signature, but before the war was over, five would be captured, 12 would have their homes destroyed, and 17 would lose their entire fortunes. None of the 56 signatories ever renounced the cause of independence of their own free will.

Here’s what happened to the men who pledged “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” to the cause of American independence, on the basis of “self-evident … Truths” that not even a global empire – or a king – could deny.

‘The Sage Of Monticello’: Thomas Jefferson

Easily the most well-known of the Declaration’s signatories – as well as its author – Thomas Jefferson enjoyed several benefits later in life from his role in the document’s drafting.

During the war, Jefferson nearly faced capture by the British during his tenure as governor of Virginia, forcing him to flee from his Monticello estate. That led to accusations of “cowardice” that eventually prompted Virginia legislators to launch a formal inquiry, in which Jefferson was acquitted.

Later, Jefferson served in a series of key posts, first as the U.S. ambassador to France, then as secretary of state under President George Washington and vice president under President John Adams.

After he was elected president – an event dubbed the “Revolution of 1800” – Jefferson’s egalitarian vision expressed in the Declaration of Independence came to be viewed as one of the most critical documents of the American founding.

‘The First American’: Ben Franklin

While Jefferson often gets the lion’s share of the credit for drafting the Declaration, Ben Franklin is credited with one critical edit to the document.

Widely recognized as a multi-disciplinary polymath, Franklin has been dubbed “the First American” by history for his early and long-running calls for American colonial unity.

In the preamble to the Declaration, Jefferson had originally written, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.”

Franklin – who served on the drafting committee – replaced this with the revision: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

Franklin later served as ambassador to France and lead negotiator on the deal to end the war with Great Britain, was the “president” – or governor – of Pennsylvania from 1785 to 1788, and served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

Shortly before his death in 1790, Franklin made his last political statement with his support of a petition calling on the federal government to abolish slavery.

‘The Atlas Of American Independence’: John Adams

John Adams, the future second president, was one of the first delegates to the Continental Congress to call for independence. He was also among the most outspoken in its defense, leading him to be dubbed by some as “the Atlas of American Independence.”

In February 1778, Adams was nearly captured by British warships while leaving on a diplomatic mission for Paris with his son. Adams took up a musket to fight the British vessels, but it took a mix of skillful navigation and a fortuitous storm to shake the pursuers. Had he been captured, Adams likely would have faced imprisonment in the Tower of London and execution for treason.

In one of the most remarkable coincidences in history, Adams and Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826 – 50 years after the Declaration’s adoption day. Adams’s final words, “Jefferson still lives,” were in fact mistaken: the third president had passed away at Monticello hours earlier.

‘The First Founding Father’: Richard Henry Lee

Less well-known than either Jefferson or Adams, the Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee was no less instrumental in bringing about independence, authoring the part of the Declaration stating the 13 colonies “are, and of Right ought to be, free and independent States.”

On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted this “Lee Resolution.” Adams famously predicted incorrectly that July 2, rather than July 4, would be celebrated as the American Independence Day, and would be commemorated with, “pomp and parade … from one end of this continent to the other.”

During the war, Lee faced military attacks on his property, chronic stress that took a toll on his health, and a severe hit to his finances as the war hit international shipping and the tobacco trade he relied on.

He later served as the first Virginia senator alongside William Grayson, joining the anti-Federalists in opposing a national government. Lee died in June 1794 at age 62.

The Midnight Rider: Caesar Rodney

A lesser-known but critical signatory of the Declaration was Caesar Rodney, who rode 80 miles to Philadelphia while suffering from facial cancer to cast a tie-breaking vote for Delaware’s delegation in favor of independence.

Unanimous support from all colonies was required to authorize the Lee Resolution – meaning Rodney’s vote was critical to final adoption.

Rodney later served as “president,” or governor, of Delaware until 1781, and died in 1784 of facial cancer at age 55.

The First Signer: John Hancock

John Hancock’s signature on the Declaration – the first – was so large that his name became an American idiom for one’s signature.

The Massachusetts revolutionary leader had been serving as president of the Second Continental Congress since May 24, 1775.

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Mamdani Gives 250th Anniversary Speech, and Boy, Does This Guy Hate America

New York City’s Communist Twelver Shi’ite Mayor Zohran Mamdani has bestowed upon a waiting world his speech commemorating America’s 250th anniversary, and it is just as small, petty, grievance-laden, fantasy-based, and angry as you’d expect a speech from a man who hates America to be.

The visual effect was even worse, as Mamdani delivered the speech while seated at a desk that seemed to be turned the wrong way around, while surrounded by a social studies-book array of glum-looking, unsmiling, unhappy people, all black and brown and hijabed and whatnot and all forlornly holding small flags of the country their mayor despises, with a single grim-faced white guy standing in the back (as is his place). But even if one didn’t avail oneself of the joys of watching Mamdani, who was just as grim as his prop companions, what the young Commie mayor said was bad enough.

America, in Mamdani’s view, is a sad place where heartless, racist, xenophobic plutocrats rule the roost and oppress the rest of us to the degree that you wonder why anyone from elsewhere would want to immigrate in the first place. Mamdani does hold out some hope in the end, saying that the foes of these cruel tyrants can throw off their yoke and remake this unhappy land in their own image. And that, of course, is just what Mamdani has set out to do.

Mamdani began by painting a verbal picture of the “land, lush and teeming with life” to which newcomers arrived, only to encounter “men waiting at the docks to take them into bondage” and “tenements rife with squalor.” As you’d expect, he claimed that the Declaration of Independence established “the ideals our nation still strives to fulfill,” with no indication of how marvelously it has fulfilled them already, or how it has inspired the world in doing so.

The mayor goes on to fill in all the expected blanks, telling the story of how a freed slave made a new life for himself, thereby showing America to be “a place each of us has the power to make.” Immigrants poured into America, not yet seeing “the nativism they would face — the jobs they would be refused, the landlords who would not rent to them, and the abject labor and living conditions they would withstand.” Still, they kept coming.

Mamdani goes on to mock and misrepresent the idea of American exceptionalism, and here he begins to claim that “we are told” a series of things that few people, if any, have ever been told. “We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else.” On the contrary, in less fractious days, we were told that we were “richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else,” because we were a uniquely just society in which anyone could make something of himself.

Mamdani, however, couldn’t possibly admit that without betraying his Marxist ideas, which tell him that America is inherently oppressive, and his Islamic beliefs, which tell him that only a Sharia society is truly just.

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Democrat Nominee Chris Rabb Trashes Declaration of Independence: ‘This Is a Nation Born on Stolen Land and Stolen Labor’

Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb, the Democrat nominee for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, denounced the Declaration of Independence, capitalism, billionaires, and what he called “American exceptionalism.”

Rabb made the remarks during the “America at 250 — Trump Fascism, Historical Erasure, and the Battle Over Truth” panel, held June 26 at People’s Plaza on Independence Mall in Philadelphia. Rabb is running unopposed in Pennsylvania’s heavily Democrat 3rd Congressional District and is widely expected to win election to Congress in November.

During the discussion, Rabb argued that the Declaration of Independence did not deliver freedom to everyone and instead helped preserve the power of a privileged class.

“Those screeds that were very lofty but were notoriously catering to a performative aspect of collective genius that purposely erased indigenous and black peoples,” Rabb said.

“It created distance from an empire to help very privileged people continue that privilege and ultimately institutionalize that through the U.S. Constitution many years later. But it certainly did not provide independence to indigenous and black peoples. And we cannot talk about anything today without acknowledging that this is a nation born on stolen land & stolen labor.”

Rabb also said reparations would be one of his priorities if elected to Congress, calling himself “one of the few unapologetic reparationists going to Congress.”

According to Rabb, reparations are not simply about compensating black Americans but about reshaping society as a whole.

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CNN Host Complains Declaration of Independence is ‘Soiled’ With ‘Racism’ and a ‘Slur’ Ahead of Nation’s 250th Birthday

CNN anchor Victor Blackwell used his Saturday morning show to attack one of America’s most sacred founding documents, calling the Declaration of Independence “soiled with a slur” against Native Americans.

The segment aired as Americans prepare to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary on July 4.

Blackwell focused on a specific passage in the Declaration’s list of grievances against King George III, which states that the king “has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

The host told viewers it is important to remember that the Declaration contains this “slur.”

Blackwell admitted he was not familiar with that section until recently and stressed the need for more people to acknowledge what he described as historical racism against Native Americans.

Native American activist and writer Rebecca Nagle joined the segment as a guest and criticized the idea of celebrating the Declaration’s “lofty ideals” without also confronting what she called the founders’ “deep hatred for indigenous people.”

Nagle suggested that many Native Americans have difficulty embracing the anniversary because of the country’s history with indigenous tribes.

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A Republic or an Empire?

The Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, embraces two value sets. The first is natural rights, and the second is limited government. After 250 years, neither value has survived, and the opposite of each currently prevails in America.

Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration in three days while staying at a rooming house in Philadelphia. He had been greatly influenced by the British philosopher John Locke. Locke is the godfather of the theory of natural rights, which he extrapolated from the natural law teachings of Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) did not argue that humans have inherent natural rights, but rather that the concept of justice demanded by human nature should be “naturally just” when addressing claims for protection of persons and property, whether those protections were legislated or not. The “whether legislated or not” is the first known articulation of a higher civil law, higher than the government’s own laws.

St. Augustine (354-430 A.D.) also did not define explicitly the existence of natural rights, but he did argue that norms of human behavior are knowable from the exercise of reason aided by revelation. He is the seminal thinker to express the view that right and wrong is knowable to all persons, whether legislated or not; and this knowledge — because it is common to all — is itself a higher law. He called this universal knowledge the natural law.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 A.D.) did not articulate natural rights, but he did proceed deep into the ideas of Aristotle and Augustine and taught that all human beings possess innate moral claims and innate moral obligations to honor the moral claims of other persons; and these claims and obligations are knowable by the exercise of reason.

John Locke (1632-1704), whose writings Jefferson read at the College of William and Mary, and which James Madison read at Princeton, drew upon all three philosophers to argue that Aquinas’ moral natural law claims are really natural rights, and these, too, just like knowing right from wrong, are inherent in our humanity and are superior to the government.

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Justice Clarence Thomas: Progressivism, Declaration of Independence Cannot ‘Coexist Forever’

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas used a speech at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law on Thursday to contend that progressivism has increasingly conflicted with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, telling students that the movement cannot permanently coexist with the founding ideals of natural rights and limited government.

Thomas, 77, was speaking at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The justice, who was appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1991, is the longest-serving current member of the Supreme Court and the second-longest-serving justice in the Court’s history.

During the address, Thomas traced the rise of progressivism in the American mainstream to the beginning of the 20th century and identified President Woodrow Wilson as its most prominent advocate.

Thomas said progressivism had “made many inroads into our system of government and our way of life” since Wilson’s presidency and asserted that it stood in opposition to the Declaration.

“It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration because it is opposed to those principles,” Thomas stated. “It is not possible for the two to coexist forever.”

Thomas maintained that Wilson and other progressive thinkers believed that “America needed to leave behind the principles of the founding and catch up with the more advanced and sophisticated system of relatively unimpeded state power, nearly perfect, perfected.”

“Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government,” Thomas explained. “It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government.”

Quoting Coolidge, Thomas said: “If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with unalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.”

Thomas argued that Wilson’s distrust of popular government reflected his preference for European-style systems of centralized state power. According to Thomas, Wilson described Americans as “selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn and foolish,” complained that they did “too much by vote and too little by expert rule,” and praised Germany because its people were “docile and acquiescent.”

Thomas contended that those ideas produced disastrous consequences in the 20th century. “The century of progressivism did not go well,” Thomas said. “The European system that Wilson and the progressives scolded Americans for not adopting, which he called nearly perfect, led to the governments that caused the most awful century that the world has ever seen.” Thomas pointed to the regimes of Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Mao Zedong, saying they were intertwined with the rise of progressivism and opposed to natural rights.

Thomas linked progressivism to Supreme Court decisions such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Buck v. Bell. He argued that Wilson’s claim that natural rights must give way to historical progress helped justify segregation in Plessy. Thomas also observed that progressives embraced eugenics and believed Darwinian science had shown the superiority and inferiority of different races, leading Wilson to resegregate the federal workforce and later contributing to sterilization programs upheld by the Court in Buck v. Bell.

Near the end of the speech, Thomas remarked, “In my view, we must find in ourselves that same level of courage that the signers of the Declaration have so that we can do for our future what they did for theirs.”

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Public School Slaps ‘Does Not Endorse’ Stickers on US Constitution, Declaration of Independence

Only in today’s education climate could a public school district accidentally label the Constitution and Declaration of Independence as materials it “does not endorse.”

Yet that is exactly what happened in Anchorage, Alaska, earlier this month.

Anchorage Daily News reported that the Anchorage School District placed non-endorsement stickers on booklets containing the founding documents.

A parent posted a photo of the label on Nov. 3. The sticker read, “The Anchorage School District does not endorse these materials or the viewpoint expressed in them.”

The picture spread quickly across social media. Too many parents to count were rightly outraged that such a warning appeared on the most essential texts in American civic life.

District representative MJ Thim said the label was placed on the booklets erroneously.

Thim explained that the stickers are normally used for flyers and posters from outside organizations.

“This was our mistake,” he wrote in an email.

Thim said the stickers were used because that is standard practice for items that are not official district publications.

He said the district will review its procedures to make sure this does not happen again.

Thim also emphasized that the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are taught in every school. He said these documents “reflect the values we want every student to understand.”

Parents, however, found the incident troubling.

Karen Waldron, who posted the image on Facebook, said she was “honestly stunned.” She noted that these are not controversial documents, but the very foundation of our government.

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Tim Kaine’s Constitutional blasphemy

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) this week warned the American people that a Trump nominee for a State Department position was an extremist, cut from the same cloth as the Iranian mullahs and religious extremists.

Riley Barnes, nominated to serve as assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, revealed his dangerous proclivities to Kaine in his opening statement when he said that “all men are created equal because our rights come from God, our creator; not from our laws, not from our governments.”

It was a line that should be familiar to any citizen — virtually ripped from the Declaration of Independence, our founding document that is about to celebrate its 250th anniversary.

Yet Kaine offered a very surprising response in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

“The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator — that’s what the Iranian government believes,” he said. “It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia (sic) law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. They do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”

The idea that laws “come from the government” is the basis of what is called “legal positivism,” which holds that the legitimacy and authority of laws are not based on God or natural law but rather legislation and court decisions.

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Tim Kaine shockingly compares the Declaration of Independence to Iran’s theocratic regime: ‘Extremely troubling’

Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia failed to understand one of America’s basic founding principles and instead likened it to the Iranian regime.

In a Wednesday committee hearing, Kaine insisted that our natural rights are derived from the government, not from God. Kaine went on to say that the notion that our natural rights come from the Creator is “extremely troubling” and compared it to Iran’s theocracy.

Unfortunately for Kaine, the founding fathers disagree with him.

“The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator. That’s what the Iranian government believes,” Kaine said. “It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia law [sic] … and they do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator.”

“The statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”

Unfortunately for Kaine, the founding fathers disagree with him.

The Declaration of Independence makes very clear that our natural rights come from God and not from the government, as Kaine suggested. In the second paragraph, the Declaration states that “all men are created equal” and that “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Prominent conservatives and politicians were quick to correct Kaine’s misunderstanding of our nation’s core values, even suggesting that he is “not fit to serve.”

“This is a remarkable moment from Tim Kaine,” the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh said in a post on X. “He just announced that the core foundational principle of our country, affirmed in the Declaration of Independence, is ‘extremely troubling’ and ‘theocratic.’ He should be immediately removed from office. Anyone who rejects our nation’s foundational principles is obviously not fit to serve.”

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Renewing a Desecrated Declaration of Independence

In 1776, Thomas Paine set a revolutionary tone rejecting the King: “But where, say some, is the King of America? … as far as we approve of monarchy… in America the law is king.”

The American Revolution replaced the authority of a sovereign with the authority of a written Constitution and a people who govern themselves. Paine’s vision was the bedrock of the American Revolution, a declaration that no person — not a king, not a president, not a general — would stand above the law. 

Today, nearly 250 years later, that vision is dimming, not because the words have faded, but because the institutions meant to uphold them have withered. And at the heart of this erosion is a truth too many fear to speak: we are witnessing the collapse of the implicit moral principles of the Declaration, the American promise of liberty under law.

The conduct of America’s current chief executive recalls the cadence of the usurpations of George III, iterated in the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence. We have arrived at a George III moment.

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