Matthew Thornton

Roughly 50 of the eventual 56 signers put their names to the document that day, arranged not by any lottery or drama, but by simple colonial geography.

Running from New Hampshire's delegation at the top down through George's at the bottom, the same North to South ordering this book's earlier chapters on Thornton and Jerry have already had occasion to describe from the inside.

It was, by most surviving accounts, a subdued affair rather than a triumphant one.

Men who understood perfectly well that adding their name to that particular parchment was an act of treason under British law, punishable by death if the rebellion failed.

Benjamin Rush, one of the Pennsylvania signers, later recalled a heavy, deliberate silence in the room as the parchment made its way down the table, each man taking his own private measure of what he was about to commit to before picking up the pen.

The remaining half dozen or so signed later still, for reasons this book has already told at length.

Matthew Thornton, not even elected to Congress until September, chased down his own signature in November after riding south through a collapsing military situation.

Elbridge Gerry, worn out by a year of committee work, signed alongside Richard Henry Lee and Oliver Wolcott on September 4th.

On July 2, 1776, the document was sent to Congress for consideration and debate.

two days later on july fourth seventeen seventy six congress unanimously adopted the declaration of independence of the fifty-six signers of the declaration of independence eight were foreign born These included Button Gwinnett, England, Francis Lewis, Wales, Robert Morris, England, James Smith, Ireland, George Taylor, Ireland, Matthew Thornton, Ireland, James Wilson, Scotland, and John Witherspoon, Scotland.

The Declaration of Independence Action of Second Continental Congress, July 4, 1776 The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

New Jersey.

Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark.

New Hampshire, Josiah Bartlett, Matthew Thornton, William Whipple.

Rhode Island, Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery.

From Connecticut, Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott.

And from the state of New Hampshire, Matthew Thornton.

I mentioned New Hampshire earlier, but also from the state of New Hampshire.

Matthew Thornton.

So that's it, guys.

This is evergreen.