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Show E FOURTH OF JULY -- -r - By Frederic J. Haskin I hundred thirl.v-oiifi years apo , hclf-"nllU,rc1 earnoal. hion rep-nr rep-nr thirteen oppressed and rost onics declared those nolouies fid; jjpponflcnl Sl:ilcs. H was a Id) to lake. England 's lciiij,' rced it mi tliom hy conliuucd ot of oppressive measures, and fcardinp Hie rights Hint (.lie Charts pua ran teed all subjects falm. On June 7 Richard Henry .prcfentinp: inn people of Vir-hc Vir-hc Jeadinpr colony of the Now rose in H'c '(' State House in Ipliia where Congress was sit linn ,vcd, as instructed by the Gen-pscinbly Gen-pscinbly of his colony, 'Mhnt. iiitcd Colonies are, and of right; to be, free and independent that they are absolved from glance to the British crown; "t all connection between them Stttt'c of Great Hritain is, and o be. totally dissolved; that. 5 should be immediately taken tiring the assistance of foreign and a confederation be formed the colonies more closely to-r to-r had he finished reading before dams of Massachusetts, for ars an advocate of American jence. rose to second the mo- f&?!2txl nay mr ihulhim wjis uikcii jonsideration and referred to a Htfc of the wlrole. On June 10 I voted that the consideration of resolution be set for Monday, 1, and a committee be appointed ift a declaration to the effect of Solution On June .11 the eom-i" eom-i" jras named. It consisted of u Jefferson, ehairman; John j, Benjamin Franklin. Roger Shcr-aud Shcr-aud Robert Livingston. Since ii Henry Lee had made the rcso-,. ije should have been named as un of this committee, but bis frewinc suddenly ill, he was called tbe evening before. Some hint Itre wns politics back of it, too. trjon wis appointed by the other jtsof the committee to write tbe tint document which would set flp tho world thi' specific reason ie colonics should throw off tho if England. Ue repaired to tho d Mr. Gratz. on the corner of Id Seventh streets. Philadelphia, tftcr a small wooden desk was for him. began the task of voicing folimentfi of the people of the Kin as brief a paper as possible, ffprson worked in a front room tsocond floor of the Gratz resi-?n resi-?n was from .June 1 1 to Juno priting and revising this mcmora-Knmcnt. mcmora-Knmcnt. When completed the stion contained 2012 words. ! ' " " is. a simple, powerful document, iold these truths to be sclf-evi-Ihc wrote, "that all inon are d equal that they arc all cn-:;by cn-:;by their Creator with inherent aalicnable rights: that among ire life, liberty and the pursuit. ppiDes?." Enemies of Jefferson jnlondcd tlint it lacks originality, "claimed no originality for it. lie embodied in it the "crystallized i ts anil Fentimoiiis of tlic masses I (.colonics, voicing the spirit of find rcsentinerit against the un- J ucs, the writs of assistance, tho t of mercenaries to lv quartered ' Sjtolonists. and other like wrongs, tira of Tom Paine have arisen to iat the instrument so revered by 4ns is nothing moro nor less than St of Paint's "Commonsense,'' pi Jefferson was merely a copy-hen copy-hen the instrument had been Id or Jefferson ho submitted it i o .Adams and Franklin, who re- to some extent, (-hanging or; 12 wit about one hundred words. I Linen offered the rest of the com- j t'.who took it as thi? three hail J -?Bfe"M ?S the Declaration of lode-fW? lode-fW? ,fas presented In Congress, ordered to lie on ihc table, "yr' Cougrcss resolved itself into a committee nt the whole and re-umed Ha consideration. There was son " Sfi 1$ ?,,?,h Lh motion of C-ledge C-ledge of Somh Carolina further voting was postponed. On Jnlv 2 KiehA??! m"?!,.,;00, S m0t",V1 ,T?S '"'opted, mak-rtiv mak-rtiv Ir ,t Indopendenee independenee was formally declared. I Jin J"m 4-Mas Wc" nu,c" of the night ot the Jd. wore spent in discussing discuss-ing the paper that the eominilt.ee had ,f",,iC,1"...AL2 V',0l,k 0,1 Uie afternoon of the -Mi the declaration, with sundry amendnionts, was adopted. There are many pretty traditions eon-neetcd eon-neetcd with this that have to be' shattered. shat-tered. Ihomas Jefferson declares that as soon as it was passed all the delegates dele-gates gathered around and signod it except Mr. Dickinson." while the .lournal e.lrarly shows that it was signed only by John Hancock as President and attested by Charles Thomson as clerk, the signatures being affixed .Tulv .1. This contradiction may be explained bv the tact that .Mr. Jefferson made his "notes many years after, when he was an old i man, and his statement is doubtless a mistake, due to lapse of memory. There was no gathering of overjoyed' citizens to hear the news, nor did a small boy run to an aged grandfather waiting .-it the Liberty Bell and crv ''Ring, grandfather, grand-father, ring'. ' There" was a rumor abroad that Lee's resolution had been carried, but the sessions had been in secret and the Philadelphia papers of the 5th made no mention of the great fact. The bell r.mg on July 8, 177(5. when the first celebration ot" Indcpondenco day was held. On that dav the great document was first publicly read by John JCixon of the Council of Safely of Pennsylvania, the reader standing in the observatory in the state house yard. On July (.) the document, was read to Washington's army ip Now York by an aide, and enthusiastic citizens overthrew over-threw the statue of George IU and ordered or-dered the lead made into bullets to fight the British. On July 17 it. was rend in Boston. On July 25 in Williamsburg, Wil-liamsburg, Vn.: on August o in Charleston, Charles-ton, and August 10 in Savannah. The programme of the first celebrations consisted of reading the great paper, building bonfires and ringing bells. In 1776 tho population of the embryo republic re-public was approximately 2,700,000. On July 9 Congress ordered that a copy of the Declaration of Independence Independ-ence be engrossed aud presented to every member of the Congress for signature. sig-nature. This was done aud on August 2. 1776. tho signatures as they aro known to all patriotic Americans were affixed. Congress then had fifty-four members, some of whom had not been present at the time of the adoption of the paper, but vrhosc sentiments were found sound and -whose signatures were ordered placed with the rest. John Hancock wrote his name larger even than usual, "so John John Bull can read it without his spectacles,' he explained, ex-plained, "There go many millions." some one said when Charles Carroll wrote his name, for he was then the richest, man in America. Some oneelse called attention to the fact that there. were maii3' Charles Carrolls and that the King of England might seize on the wrong one to be hanged for tren-son. tren-son. "Then there shall bo no doubt," said Carroll, and after his name wrote "of Carrollton." It was on this occasion occa-sion that Hancock remarked that all must hang together, and Franklin naively naive-ly responded, "Assuredly, or we shall certainly bang separately." Jefferson declares thai the signing was greatly hastened because of tho swarms ol "llies that harassed tho Congress. Con-gress. A stable was near the state bouse and great swarms of flies came in to settle upon the silk-clad legs of the delegates and .bite through tho thin material. JclFcrson intimates that treason were preferable to fly biles and hot. weal her. and that there was quito a rush to have the document signed and gel out to pleasanter piar ters. Matthew Thornton of New Hampshire Hamp-shire was out of Philadelphia at the time with his arinv, and so signed in November. Thomas McKean of Delaware Dela-ware was not then a member, but signed in the fall of 177li. becoming the fifty- (if lb signer. Georgia lost one signer, Houston .having been sent post -haste to lollow Dr. Zublev of Georgia, a Ton-wlio Ton-wlio was hurrying baek to Savatinali lo toll the Crown Governor what tho roloiunl delegate? were doing in Phila-lcJphia. Phila-lcJphia. Ilouston did not caleh Ihc wily physician, but beeuuso of his chanc Georgia had only three signers. Many businesses aud professions wen: ; represenied among t,o siners. A9 some who had studied law or theology later went to fanning, and as ninny who had been lawyers went into merchandizing, mer-chandizing, the lists often conflict -when an all c-nipt is made to elassifv their call nigs However, a fair estimate may auirm hat there were twenty-four lawyers, law-yers, eight merchants, seven farmers, six physicians. I wo mechanics, one clergyman. cler-gyman. .John V.'itherspoon of New .Jersey; .Jer-sey; one surveyor, .John Morton of tonnsylvania; one shoemaker, lloger bhenuan of Connecticut: one ' printer, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania; ami one sailor. William Whipple of -onnceticut. The oldest, rdgner was I'l-ankJin. who was then 70, tbe voung-est, voung-est, Ldward 17ut ledge, 27. The first to die was .John Norton, Jr., and the last, was Charles Carroll of Carrolltou. who died in IS;-)-: nt the age of P(5, outliving outliv-ing .Joflersou and Adams six vears. thev having died July 1S215. fhc desc.cn-i desc.cn-i i s ,of, A'1030 'llost rions signers aro today holding a reunion at, Jamestown in commemoration of the great event, i - The original document as drafted by .fefTerson is still readable. The engrossed en-grossed copy, now preserved in tho blate Dcpartmont in a hermetically sealed case and exhibited onlv on special spe-cial occasions, is hopelessly faded. On January 2, JSLM. 200 copies of the engrossed en-grossed copy were ordered made by Congress, Con-gress, and about a dozen photographs have also been made of it. W u Much controversy has arisen over the nret expressions of independence in America Massachusetts claims that. Christopher Gadseu urged independence when speaking against tvrannv under the old Liberty Tree in 1761. Virgiuia claims that Patrick Henry first voiced it when making his famous spoech in oIdSt, John's at Richmond in March, U'; "ortl1 Carolina presents her Meckclenberg resolutions of Mav 20, 17.-), and points to the first armed re sisfance against, England in tho battle of the Alamance in 1771. when North Carolina Regulators went out against Tyron s men: The first step to advocate advo-cate a general Declaration of Independence Inde-pendence was made bv North Carolina when, on April 22, 1776, she instructed her delegate to Congress "to concur with thoso in the other colonies in declaring de-claring independence.' July I'ourth has been observed as a national holiday ever since the first Independence Da;. Even tho men of Washington's army observed it throughout through-out the remaining years of the war. With tho passing of the years the patriotic pa-triotic sentiment has been often submerged sub-merged in a spirit of vandalism and rowd3-ism that decrees much noise and often the sacrifice of many lives. Ft would be interesting to. ' know flic amount, of our national bill for explosives explo-sives today. In 1905 over 400 persons died of the effects of explosives and of lockjaw. n J 900 over 2.000 were injured, in-jured, many fatally. Today's results arc yet lo .be known . |