Catherine Crabill

Stand Therefore

 

painting by Y.H.Servant

 GreatSealInc.com

 

 

The story behind the painting:  Stand Therefore

 

 

 

The Fate of the 56 Signers

 

 

…the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

~ ~ ~

56 GREAT RISK-TAKERS

By Jeff Jacoby

Copyright 2000 Boston Globe

On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted 12-0 –New York abstained—in favor of Richard Henry Lee’s resolution “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”

On July 4, the Declaration of Independence drafted by Thomas Jefferson—heavily edited by Congress—was adopted without dissent. On July 8, the Declaration was publicly proclaimed in Philadelphia. On July 15, Congress learned that the New York Legislature has decided to endorse the Declaration. On August 2, a parchment copy was presented to the Congress for signature. Most of the 56 men who put their names to the document did so that day.  And then?

We tend to forget that to sign the Declaration of Independence was to commit an act of treason—and the punishment for treason was death. To publicly accuse George III of “repeated injuries and usurpations,” to announce that Americans were therefore “Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown,” was a move fraught with danger—so much so that the names of the signers were kept secret for six months.

They were risking everything and they knew it. That is the meaning of the Declaration’s soaring last sentence:  “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

Most of the signers survived the war, several went on to illustrious careers.

Two of them became presidents of the United States, and among the others were future vice presidents, senators, and governors. But not all were so fortunate.

Nine of the 56 died during the Revolution, and never tasted American independence. Five were captured by the British. Eighteen had their homes—great estates, some of them –looted or burnt by the enemy. Some lost everything they owned. Two were wounded in battle. Two others were the fathers of sons killed or captured during the war.

“Our lives, our Fortunes, and our scared Honor.” It was not just a rhetorical flourish. 

We all recognize John Hancock’s signature, but who ever notices the names beneath his? William Ellery, Thomas Nelson, Richard Stockton, Button Gwinnett, Francis Lewis—to most of us, these are names without meaning.

But each represents a real human being, some of whom paid dearly “for the support of this Declaration” and American Independence.

Lewis Morris of New York, for example, must have known when he signed the Declaration that he was signing away his fortune. Within weeks, the British ravaged his estate, destroyed his vast woodlands, butchered his cattle, and sent his family fleeing for their lives.

Another New Yorker, William Floyd, was also forced to flee when the British plundered his property. He and his family lived as refugees for seven years without income. The strain told on his wife; she died two years before the war ended.

Carter Braxton of Virginia, an aristocratic planter who had invested heavily in shipping, saw most of his vessels captured by the British navy. His estates were largely ruined, and by the end of his life he was a pauper.

The home of  William Ellery, a Rhode Island delegate, was burned to the ground during the occupation of Newport.

Thomas Heyward Jr., Edward Rutledge and Arthur Middleton, three members of the South Carolina delegation, all suffered the destruction or vandalizing of their homes at the hands of enemy troops. All three were captured when Charleston fell in 1780, and spent a year in a British prison.

Thomas Nelson Jr. of Virginia raised $2 million for the patriots’ cause on his own person credit. The government never reimbursed him, and repaying the loans wiped out his entire estate. During the battle of Yorktown, his house, which had been seized by the British, was occupied by General Cornwallis. Nelson quietly urged the gunners to fire on his own home. They did so, destroying it. He was never again a man of wealth. He died bankrupt and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Richard Stockton, a judge on New Jersey’s supreme court, was betrayed by loyalist neighbors. He was dragged from his bed and thrown in prison, where he was brutally beaten and starved. His lands were devastated, his horses stolen, his library burnt. He was freed in 1777, but his health had so deteriorated that he died within five years. His family lived on charity for the rest of their lives.

In the British assault on New York, Francis Lewis’s home and property were pillaged. His wife was captured and imprisoned; so harshly was she treated that she died soon after her release. Lewis spent the remainder of his days in relative poverty.

And then there was John Hart. The speaker of the New Jersey Assembly, he was forced to flee in the winter of 1776, at the age of 65, from his dying wife’s bedside. While he hid in forests and caves, his home was demolished, his fields and mill laid waste, and his 13 children put to flight. When it was finally safe for him to return, he found his wife dead, his children missing, and his property decimated. He never saw any of his family again and died, a shattered man, in 1779.

The men who signed that piece of parchment in 1776 were the elite of their colonies. They were men of means and social standing, but for the sake of liberty, they pledged it all—their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

We are in their debt to this day.

***

The Brilliant John Quincy Adams Said it Best...

 

 

“All societies of man must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have of stringent state government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Man, in a word, must necessarily be controlled; either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man.”

John Quincy Adams

 

George Washington's Critics

 

This was written by Professor E. Merrill Root, about those who have made their livelihood out of mocking and belittling the greatness of George Washington:

 

They are always seeking to deflect the truth and to shock men, to reverse and pull apart, to destroy by “debunking.”  They are not content with the truth, but lust for the trick; they seek fame by destroying fame…the Greeks had an image for it: There was a man of no merit, who therefore burned down the most beautiful of buildings, so that he might live in the fame of infamy. In the dawn of the twentieth century such men began to multiply in the land, raising and training a guerilla army of smilers with the knife, hero mockers, vivisectors of value, haters of life, “debunkers,” pint-sized Vandals of the mind, termites in the timbers of culture, who (having no greatness) resented all greatness…who, since they could not create, lusted to destroy. Like the fungus of decay, like the rust that eats pure metal, like the moths that devour the lustrous fabric (mere bellies with wings!), they lusted to devour and destroy and corrode and tarnish. They sought to shout “No” to life and to love. And these “debunkers” were, and always are, of the Devil’s party. They act as they do because they are little, and know it; because they are sick, and know it. They cannot endure that there should be greatness because they are not great; they cannot endure that there should be goodness, for they are not good. They cannot revere a master, for they are not artists. If they could see George Washington as [was and] is, they could not bear to see themselves as they are; [therefore] they hate him because he shames them.

 

Statements Concerning the Bible

  

 

The Bible According to Famous Judges, Educators, and Statesmen

“The Bible is a book worth more than all the other books that were ever printed”

Patrick Henry

“The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good and the best corrector of all that is evil in human society, the best book for regulating the temporal (that is secular) concerns of men.”

Noah Webster

“The Bible should be read in our schools in preference to all other books from its containing the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public happiness.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush

“To the free and universal reading of the Bible…men (are) much indebted for right views of civil liberty. The Bible is…a book which teaches man his own individual responsibility, his own dignity, and his equality with his fellow man.”

Daniel Webster

“All societies of man must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have of stringent state government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Man, in a word, must necessarily be controlled; either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man.”

John Quincy Adams

O Ship of State

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
'Tis of the wave and not the rock;
'Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee,

-are all with thee!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow