INDEPENDENCE: The Birth of a New America

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The various changes on the whole improved the document by making it more austere and spare. Nonetheless, Jefferson's pride of authorship seems to have been wounded. After the Congress adjourned last week, he sent copies of his original document to several friends, patently assuming that they would see for themselves that it was superior to the one finally adopted. At one point during the session, the mellow Franklin attempted to console Jefferson by telling him an anecdote about a Philadelphia hatter named John Thompson who had a sign made for his shop that read: JOHN THOMPSON, HATTER, MAKES AND SELLS HATS FOR READY MONEY, with a picture of a hat underneath. But before hanging the sign. Thompson showed it to friends, each of whom criticized some word or phrase ("Sells hats!" cried one. "Why nobody will expect you to give them away"). At last, said Franklin, the sign showed merely JOHN THOMPSON with the figure of a hat beneath his name.

Finally, on July 4, the Congress adopted the Declaration and ordered it "authenticated" and printed. As President of the Congress, John Hancock signed the Declaration, and the congressional secretary, Charles Thomson, attested to his signature. Oddly, no member of the drafting committee seems to have gone along to John Dunlap's shop to supervise the printing—which accounts, perhaps, for the caprices of punctuation, capitalization and spelling that occur in the printed document. On July 5 and 6, the Declaration was sent out to all the colonies, and one copy was inserted into the Congress's "rough" (secret) journal.

Thus last week the dangerous enterprise of American independence began. Besides Hancock, none of the members of Congress signed the Declaration —that will perhaps come later and may depend somewhat on the American fortunes in the war: if they sign, the members could be hanged for treason.

John Adams observed last week: "I am surprised at the suddenness as well as the greatness of this Revolution. Britain has been filled with folly, and America with wisdom, at least this is my judgment. Time will determine ... I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these states." Thomas Jefferson, too, understands the immense stakes of the American gamble. To him, "all eyes are open, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs." For all Americans, Jefferson wrote at the end of the Declaration, it is a matter of "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honour."