and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. 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."
LIBERTY BELL.
It was almost two o'clock in the afternoon when the final decision was announced by Secretary Thomson, to the assembled Congress in Independence Hall. It was a moment of solemn interest; and when the secretary sat down, a deep silence pervaded that august assembly. Tradition says that it was first broken by Dr. Franklin, who remarked, "Gentlemen, we must now all hang together, or we shall surely hang separately." Thousands of anxious citizens had gathered in the streets of Philadelphia, for it was known that the final vote would be taken on that day. From the hour when Congress convened in the morning, the old bell-man had been in the steeple. He had placed a boy at the door below, to give him notice when the announcement should be made. As hour succeeded hour, the graybeard shook his head, and said, "They will never do it! they will never do it!" Suddenly a loud shout came up from below, and there stood the little blue-eyed boy clapping his hands, and shouting, "Ring! Ring!" Grasping the iron tongue of the old bell, backward and forward he hurled it a hundred times, its loud voice proclaiming "Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."2 The excited multitude in the streets responded with loud acclamations, and with cannon peals, bonfires, and illuminations, the patriots held a glorious carnival that night in the quiet city of Penn.
The Declaration of Independence was signed by John Hancock, the President of Congress, only, on the day of its adoption, and thus it went forth to the world. Congress ordered it to be entered at length upon the journals; it was also ordered to be engrossed upon parchment for the delegates to sign it. This last act was performed on the second day of August ensuing, by the fifty-four delegates then present. Thomas M'Kean, of Delaware, and Dr. Thornton, of New Hampshire, subsequently signed it, making the whole number fifty-six. Upon the next two pages are their names, copied from the original parchment, which is carefully preserved in a glass case, in the rooms of the National Institute, Washington City. It is our pride and righteous boast, and it should be the pride and boast of mankind, that not one of those patriots who signed that manifesto ever fell from the high moral elevation which he then held: of all that band, not one, by word or act, tarnished his fair fame.
The great Declaration was every where applauded; and, in the camp, in cities, villages, churches, and popular assemblies, it was greeted with every demonstration of joy. Washington received it at head-quarters, in New York, on the ninth of July, and caused it to be read aloud at six o'clock that evening at the head of each brigade. It was heard with attention, and welcomed with loud huzzas by the troops. The people echoed the acclaim, and on the same evening they pulled down the leaden statue of the king, which was erected in the Bowling-Green, at the foot of Broadway, in 1770, broke it in pieces, and consigned the materials to the bullet-moulds.
SIGNATURES ON THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
At noon, on the seventeenth of July, Colonel Crafts read the Declaration to a vast assemblage gathered in and around Faneuil Hall, in Boston, and when the last paragraph fell from his lips, a loud huzza shook the old "Cradle of Liberty." It was echoed by the crowd without, and soon the batteries on Fort Hill, Dorchester, Nantasket, Long Island, the Castle, and the neighboring heights of Charlestown, Cambridge, and Roxbury boomed forth their cannon acclamations in thirteen rounds. A banquet followed, and bonfires and illuminations made glad the city of the Puritans.
SIGNATURES ON THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
On the eighth, John Nixon read it from the Walnut-street front of the State House, in Philadelphia, to a great concourse of people gathered from the city and the surrounding country. When the reading was finished, the king's arms over the seat of Justice in the courtroom, was torn down and burnt in the street; and at evening bonfires were lighted, the city was illuminated, and it was not until a thunder-storm at midnight compelled the people to retire, that the sounds of gladness were hushed. Newport, Providence, Hartford, Baltimore, Annapolis, Williamsburg, Charleston, Savannah, and other towns near the seaboard, made similar demonstrations, and loyalty to the king, hitherto open-mouthed, was silent and abashed.
From every inhabited hill and valley, town and hamlet of the old thirteen States, arose the melodies of Freedom, awakened by this great act of the people's proxies; and thousands of hearts in Europe, beating strongly with hopes for the future, were deeply impressed and comforted. Bold men caught the symphony, and prolonged its glad harmony, even beyond the Alps and the Apennines, until it wooed sleeping slaves from their slumbers in the shadows of despotism forth into the clear light, panoplied in the armor of absolute right and justice. France was aroused, and turning in its bed of submission like the giant beneath old Ætna, to look for light and liberty, an earthquake shock ensued which shook thrones, crumbled feudal altars whereon equality was daily sacrificed, and so rent the vail of the temple of despotism, that the people saw plainly the fetters and instruments of unholy rule, huge and terrible, within the inner court. They pulled down royalty, overturned distinctions, and gave the first impulse to the civil and social revolutions which have since spread from that focus, to purify the political atmosphere of Europe. Back to our glorious manifesto the struggling nations look; and when they wish to arraign their tyrants, that indictment is their text and guide. Its specific charges against the ruler of Great Britain, of course have no relevancy in other cases, but the great truths set forth in the Declaration are immutable. Always appropriate as a basis of governmental theory and practice, at all times and in all places, they can not fail to receive the hearty concurrence of the wise and good in all lands, and under all circumstances. They were early appreciated by the philosophers and statesmen of Europe, and that appreciation augments with the flight of years.
"With what grandeur, with what enthusiasm, should I not speak of those generous men who erected this grand edifice by their patience, their wisdom, and their courage!" wrote the Abbé Raynal, in 1781, when descanting upon our Declaration. "Hancock, Franklin, and the two Adamses, were the greatest actors in this affecting scene: but they were not the only ones. Posterity shall know them all. Their honored names shall be transmitted to it by a happier pen than mine. Brass and marble shall show them to remotest ages. In beholding them shall the friend of freedom feel his heart palpitate with joy; feel his eyes float in delicious tears. Under the bust of one of them has been written: he wrested thunder from heaven, and the sceptre from tyrants.3 Of the last words of this eulogy shall all of them partake. Heroic country, my advanced age permits me not to visit thee. Never shall I see myself among the respectable personages of thy Areopagus; never shall I be present at the deliberations of thy Congress. I shall die without seeing the retreat of toleration, of manners, of laws, of virtue, and of freedom. My ashes shall not be covered by a free and holy earth: but I shall have desired it; and my last breath shall bear to heaven an ejaculation for thy prosperity."
"I ask," exclaimed Mirabeau, in the tribune of the National Assembly of France, "if the powers who have formed alliances with the States have dared to read that manifesto, or to interrogate their consciences after the perusal? I ask whether there be at this day one government in Europe—the Helvetic and Batavian confederations, and the British isles excepted, which, judged after the principles of the Declaration of Congress on the fourth of July 1776, is not divested of its rights?" And Napoleon, afterward alluding to the same scene, said, "The finger of God was there!"
The fourth of July, marked by an event so momentous, is properly our great National Anniversary. For three-quarters of a century it has been commemorated by orations, firing of cannon, ringing of bells, military parades, fireworks, squibs, and bonfires;
The history of this bell, now hanging in the steeple of the State House, in Philadelphia, is interesting. In 1753, a bell for that edifice was imported from England. On the first trial ringing, after its arrival, it was cracked. It was recast by Pass and Stow, of Philadelphia, in 1753, under the direction of Isaac Norris, the then Speaker of the Colonial Assembly. Upon fillets around its crown, cast there twenty-three years before the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, are the words of Holy Writ, "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." How prophetic! Beneath that very bell the representatives of the thirteen colonies "proclaimed liberty throughout all the land," and its iron tongue echoed the annunciation! For more than two hours its glorious melody floated clear and musical as the voice of an angel above the discordant chorus of booming cannon, rolling drums, and the mingled acclamations of an excited multitude. It, too, was fractured, and for long years its voice has been silent. When I stood in the belfry and sketched this portrait of the old herald, the spirit of the Past, with all its retinue, seemed to be there, for association summoned to the audience chamber of imagination, from the lofty hills and green valleys of the Republic, that band of patriots who stood sponsors at its baptism in 1776.
This is in allusion to the line which Turgot wrote under the bust of Franklin:
