Would You Have Signed It? R. Bradford

John Hancock-he of the big, bold signature which, as legend has it, he boasted could be read by King George without glasses? A lot of baloney! Hancock was simply a rich smuggler who had it in for the British. Samuel Adams, of the eloquent speech and provocative letters? Just a broken-down Boston agitator who couldn't even afford the trip to Philadelphia or a new suit to wear until his friends passed the hat for him. Benjamin Franklin, wise counselor and witty commenMr. Bradford is a well-known writer and business organization consultant. 9 10 RALPH BRADFORD tator? Just a dabbler in pseudoscience; a successful printer with an unsavory youth; a shrewd old publicist with an eye to the main chance. Thomas Jefferson, statesman, philosopher, architect, musician? Stuff! He was a rich young aristocrat with a dilettante's relish f9r the excitements of public life. John Adams, fearless champion of unpopular causes?

Pah! An ambitious Massachusetts lawyer who had re cently defended the British soldiers in the Boston Mas sacre case and who had now switched to the other side. Their Motives Maligned And so on and on and on. Beginning around 1920, and continuing even to the present, it has been open season on the signers. What were their motives? What personal advantages did they seek? What selfish interests did they serve? Hardly anyone of them was spared derogatory questions, innuendoes, accusations. It was even pointed out that some of the signers had come into the Congress after action had been taken on the Declaration; and it was implied that there was some thing strange, and possibly reprehensible, about their desire to affix their signatures ex post facto! Some writers with the iconoclastic urge made much of the fact that among the fifty-six signers there were twenty-two lawyers, ten merchants, and fourteen wealthy land owners; and one such writer was almost tearfully indignant because the great Document bore no signature of either a laboring man or a dirt farmer. The implicaWOULD YOU .HAVE SIGNED IT? 11 tion seemed to be that there was something a little ques tionable about all those well-to-do landed proprietors, businessmen, and professional people getting together and cooking up a revolution.

This attitude, of course, ignored the fact that Lexing ton and Concord were already household words through out the -Colonies, that Bunker Hill had been fought, that Charlestown and Falmouth had been burned, that Bos ton had been besieged-in short, that the Revolution was in full and lusty progress! There is less of that sort of sniping now, but it is still to be heard, especially among those who find the Con stitution archaic and the Declaration outmoded because the principles asserted in those documents come between them and their plans for collectivization by force. Well, to all such-to all who jeer or scoff or belittle-I have one short, hard question: Would you have signed it? History Book Impressions Let us think a little about the circumstances. Most of us have a kind of copperplate impression of what went on in Philadelphia that summer of 1776. It centers in a tableau-like picture of the signing. Certain old history book illustrations form the basis of that impression.

A group of bewigged and clubbed-haired gentlemen in knee breeches, silk stockings, buckle shoes, baggy coats, and outsize waistcoats sit around a large room in com fortable chairs. They have been discussing the ills that 12 RALPH BRADFORD the American Colonies have· suffered at the hands of the British Crown. They have also been discussing what to do about the Revolution which, contrary to· the present day misconception held by many, was not started as a result of their action but was already under way. Nearly forty years later, when John Adams was eighty years old, he was to write that even the war with Britain was "no part of the Revolution." And he added: "The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people, and this was effected from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington. " It is possible that Adams, in retrospect, misjudged the minds and hearts of the people during that fifteen year period. What they really wanted, probably, was simply to be let alone. Maybe he endowed them with the senti ments of his own stout heart and flaming spirit. At any rate, it is clear that the representatives of those people, in Congress assembled, were reluctantly revolutionary and not by any means strong for independence. Most of the delegates believed it was their duty to work for "the restoration of union and harmony between Great Britain and the Colonies" -a harmony that was, by the greater number of them, "most ardently desired."

And so there had been a succession of "humble peti tions" to the Crown, with protestations of loyalty and desire for accommodation. There had even been an "ad dress to the British People." The Adamses, John and Sam, and some others, had protested that all such ges tures were in vain-and ·so it had proved. The humble WOULD YOU HAVE SIGNED IT? 13 petitions had been answered by the· dispatch of more warships and troops; the appeal to the British people had been answered not at all. By the spring of 1776 the hope of peaceful reconcilia tion had grown very dim indeed. A few stout loyalists like John Dickinson still believed the miracle would be wrought; but their ranks were thinning. Independence was in the air. Finally, goaded by the Adams cousins and others, the Congress got around to facing the question of indepen dence officially. At first there was opposition even to con sidering it. Many of the delegates still looked upon themselves as British subjects, loyal to the Crown. They were deeply shocked at the thought of separation from the Mother Country. A few-a very few-were never reconciled to the change. Most, however, recognized at last that the move was inevitable.

On June 7, Richard Henry Lee introduced a resolu tion. It contained only 47 words, but like Mercutio's wound, it was enough-enough to create a new nation; enough to change the course of British history; enough to throw the Congress into a prolonged and bitter debate. At last it was decided to postpone final decision for three weeks, until July 1. Meantime it was agreed by all that a drafted Declaration of Independence should be prepared so that, if the vote went that way, Congress would not have to throw something together at the last minute. So they appointed a committee-Jefferson, Franklin, Sherman, Livingston, and John Adams. The committee, 14 RALPH BRADFORD in turn, delegated the actual writing to a subcommittee consisting of Adams and Jefferson. Because Jefferson had already demonstrated his skill as a writer, and possibly because Adams was anxious for reasons of unity to show deference to the Virginia delegation, Adams insisted that the young Virginian do the drafting. He said, in effect, "Jefferson, you do it."

But Jefferson was not the sole author. Both Adams and Franklin made important suggestions, and Jefferson al tered his copy to meet their ideas. But the essential draft ing job, the language and spirit of the thing, are his. Finally, on Tuesday, July 2, the Lee Resolution was passed and the next step was to adopt the Declaration. It, too, was debated. Certain changes were made; things were eliminated; things were added, as was to have been expected. At last it came to the question on July 4, and the Declaration of Independence was adopted. And then-so goes our impressionistic picture of the event-the delegates filed sedately up to the front table and affixed their several signatures. And that was that. Actually, it didn't happen that way at all. The copy in use by the Chairman and Secretary during the debate was so scratched out and interlined that it would never do as a public document. It had to be printed in its final form and signed later. But we cling to our picture of the scene.

It is a kind of historic set-piece, a well-worn tableau. There is little reality in it. Indeed, to give some of the iconoclasts their due, it was partly in an effort to impart a more lively feel of reality to this scene that they began WOULD YOU HAVE SIGNED IT? 15 to "humanize" the principal actors in it. It was charac teristic of the spirit of the twenties and thirties, however, that the only way these realists could think of to human ize the signers was to subject them to a process of denigration. A much simpler and far more dramatic means was at their hand, if they had only possessed the imagination to see it. The musty little tableau could have been brought startlingly alive. All its apparent drabness and seeming placidity could have been illuminated with a shattering light of hard reality. The reality was this: If the Revolution failed, as there was at that time good reason to believe it might, everyone of those men was putting his name to something much more than a rhetorical declaration of political principles.

He was signing his own death warrant! Does that make the picture a little less drab? Do those solemn-faced men in the funny garments and queer hair cuts look a bit less funny now? Does old Doctor Franklin, who was getting quite paunchy and bald and who peered at the world through queer-shaped lenses of his own devising-does he look a little different in this sharp white light of danger? Legend has it that someone of the signers remarked that from now on there must be no dissension; that they must all hang together-and that Franklin replied jok ingly, "Yes-or we shall all hang separately." Jokingly? I doubt it. Franklin was a realist. Simply and bluntly, he was stating what might very well happen to everyone of them.

16 RALPH BRADFORD In their world, revolution was a risky business, and still is. Among some of the Latin peoples, revolution seems at times to be merely a dramatic technique to effect a change of administration. Not so with the Anglo Saxons. You'd better think not just twice but several times before you set out to overthrow one of their govern ments by force. You may turn out· to be a hero if you succeed, but you'd better succeed-for if you fail, you may very well be judged a traitor; and treason is punish able by death. British ministries of that day were not notably com passionate toward persons who sought to disrupt their empire. From their point of view, and from that of the average Englishman of 1776, that group of men in Phila delphia were the opposite of patriots. They were traitors to the ,Crown, and if caught would he dealt with accordingly. In the light of that situation, what shall we say of the "political opportunism" of John Adams? What shall we say of the thirty-three-year-old Jefferson who knew full well that he was not making an idle gesture when, with the others, he pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor? And what now of the late-comers-the ones who were not in the Congress when the vote was taken, who didn't have to sign it, but who wanted their names to stand beside the others? Or~ let's put it another way for emphasis: Would you have signed it? Would I have signed it?

While we ponder those questions, let's ask ourselves a few others.

WOULD YOU HAVE SIGNED IT? Time for Introspection 17 When there was corruption in our local government at the City Hall or in the County Court House-did we speak out against it, you and I? Or did we decide that it was a political· question, and that it would be bad busi ness for us to meddle with it? When the federal millions began to be distributed to states and communities, did we protest, you and I-or did we figure that such action would make us unpopular with the politicians and others who were profiting from the handouts? And is it possible that we even figured we might profit, ourselves, from the federal largess? When our city government decided to go after federal money for some project that was of concern only to our community-a project that ought to have been paid for locally since it was purely for local use and benefit-did we lift our voices against it, or did we "go along"?

When the congressman from your district was cam paigning on the promise to work for drastic reduction in the size and power of the federal bureaucracy; when he demanded a return to solvency in our national finances; when he stood for a balanced budget; when he refused to cater to one or more of the pressure groups in your area, but pledged himself to serve the interests of the whole country-in all this, did you support him? Or if your congressman stood for the opposite principles-did you oppose him? And in either case, did you let your support or your opposition be known? Or did you keep discreetly still because you feared your action might of18 RALPH BRADFORD fend some noisy leftist politician or some articulate "liberal" group, and thus be "bad for business"? If your answer or mine is that we did not let our voices be heard or our influence felt on such issues because we were afraid of possible business reprisals-then what do you think our attitude would have been toward signing a document that could have cost us, not just some business, not just the good or bad will of a greater or fewer num ber of people-but our lives?

What kind of men were the signers? Did they have their pecularities, their foibles, their jealousies, their vanities, their selfish interests? Of course they did-and so do all men. But that is not the point of importance. The thing to remember is that when the chips were down, they were men! The piece of paper they had signed was not a thing a signer could squirm out of or explain away later. It was not a vague and general statement of political and social principles. It left no doubt as to its meaning. It did not hint or imply or evade or mince words. In bold phrases it recited the political and economic sins of the King of England, and it declared that the Colonies were free from the rule of the British government. In the eyes of that government, such statements were treasonable; and treason was punishable by death. When a man put his name to that Document, it could have meant, and there was a very good chance that it would mean, not merely the loss of his business and his property, but his life.

Would you have signed it?