Of the 56 men who signed the ‘Declaration of Independence’ in the summer of 1776, some names are still common among us: Franklin, Jefferson and Hancock. But the remaining 53 have been largely forgotten. What kind of men were they? What did they stand to gain from this Revolution?
They ranged in age from 23 (Edward Rutledge of South Carolina) to age 80 (Ben Franklin of Pennsylvania). 24 of them were lawyers or judges, 11 of them were merchants of various kinds, nine were farmers, and the remaining members were ministers, doctors, and statesmen.
With just a handful of exceptions, these were all men of substantial education, property and public standing. As compared with the rest of the populace of the 1700s, they had blessings, eases, and pleasures in life enjoyed by very few. All of them had more to lose, than they had to gain.
John Hancock, who already had a bounty of 500 pounds on his head, was one of the wealthiest of the signers. From a family of considerable wealth, he inherited his mercantile fortune from his Uncle, Thomas Hancock. He was educated at Harvard, and had all that life could give him at the time. Yet he signed his signature with such size and flourish, that “it might be read without spectacles.”
He was not alone. The fever of liberty was running at a high pitch. Yet each of them knew the risks. Treason was punished by hanging. And the consequences did not end with themselves, but extended to their families as well. And there was already a massive English fleet docked in the harbor at New York.
And Hancock’s actions did not go unnoticed by the British. Nor did the those of the other suspected signers. All of them became ferociously hunted. Delegates from New York, William Floyd, Philips Livingston, Louis Morris, and Francis Lewis, each had their homes destroyed. Mrs. Lewis was captured and brutalized. Though later exchanged for two British prisoners, she never recovered. The Floyds were able to flee from New York into Connecticut, where they lived as refugees for the next seven years. Upon their return, they found nothing left of their estate. Livingston, whose large possessions were confiscated, died two years later still working in Congress. Morris was deprived of his family for the next seven years.
Delegate John Hart of New Jersey, attempted to come home to see his dying wife, but was turned back by soldiers. As she lay dying, soldiers destroyed his livestock and burned his farm. He was hunted from pillar to post. When the manhunt finally relented, he returned to find his wife dead and buried. His 13 children had been taken away. He died three years later absolutely broken, never seeing his family again.
Judge Richard Stockton rushed home from Philadelphia to evacuate his wife and children. Betrayed by a sympathizer to the Crown, he was torn from his bed where they were hiding in the middle of the night and subjected to a brutal beating. He was jailed, starved, and finally released after becoming an invalid. He did not see the end of the war or its victory, and his family was required to live off of the charitable help of friends and strangers.
The list goes on and on. One heartbreaking, gutwrenching story after another. Each of sacred honor, fortunes sacrificed and lives lost or forever altered. Yet not one recanted. Not one relented. Not one failed to deliver on his pledge to the others.
And most remarkably, there was one man...a man who had the chance to see his family spared. A man who could have saved his two sons if only he had rejected the colonial revolution and supported the King. He was Abraham Clark of New Jersey. Clark had two sons who fought for the new nation. They were eventually captured and taken to the notorious British prison ship Jersey, where more than 11,000 American soldiers died. The two suffered most severely for the “crimes” of their father, brutally beaten and starved.
Clark was offered his two son’s lives if he would just come out in support of the King. To those of us who live so soft and comfortably 200 hundred years in their wake, it must seem astounding that with a broken heart, he said, “No.”
Life. Fortune. Sacred Honor.
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