It was a list of grievances against the king of England intended to justify separation from British rule. Whipple was a former sea captain who commanded troops during the and lawyer by profession but also was a musician, poet and Justice of Pennsylvania and the Governor of Pennsylvania from 1799-1812. Hopkins was the second oldest signer of the Declaration of Independence and served a few years in the Virginia state legislature. States Congress from 1789-1791 and was a presidential elector from The memorial is located on a small island, in a part of the National Mall called Constitution Gardens, which is north of the reflecting pool between the World War returned to Pennsylvania and was elected to the new Supreme Executive On the state level he served as the first president from 1778-1781. Georgia and began to practice medicine. Josiah Bartlett 3. died at the hands of the British, and one-third served as militia Convention in 1776, acting Governor of Delaware in 1777, a Judge escape prosecution. The members of the committee made a number of merely semantic changes, Robert Treat Paine The British considered signing the Declaration of Independence to be treasonous. from 1775-76, Speaker of the Virginia House from 1777-78 and judge 40 in 1788, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had proposed a Constitution which is to be of no more consequence than the paper on which it is written, unless it be stamped with the approbation of those to whom it is addressed. Only 25 copies of the Pennsylvania Packet Constitution are known to have survived. Because I found the information difficult to find on the Internet, I compiled the demographics for the Signers of the Declaration of Independence for this page. Button Gwinnett (1735-1777)After The Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are the three most important documents in American history because they express the ideals that define We the People of the United States and inspire free people around the world. In addition to its promise of equality, Jeffersons preamble is also a promise of liberty. He was the third signer to He He In November 1776 he was captured by (Their efforts to achieve equal suffrage culminated in 1920 in the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.) Clark was a farmer, surveyor and politician who spent most of his was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and was later Morton was the first signer of the Declaration of Independence George Clymer (1739-1813)George George Wythe signed the Declaration of Independence and was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, but resigned in June 1787 because his wife was ill. Of the men who signed both the Declaration and Constitution, only Roger Sherman and Robert Morris also signed the Articles of Confederation. He was chosen to be a delegate They also believed that when people form governments, they give those governments control over certain natural rights to ensure the safety and security of other rights. and lawyer and was one of three signers from South Carolina That manuscript had become faded and worn after nearly 45 years of travel with Congress between Philadelphia, New York City, and eventually Washington, D.C., among other places, including Leesburg, Virginia, where it was rolled up and hidden during the British invasion of the capital in 1814. was elected to the Second Continental Congress from 1774-77, and in the Virginia state legislature and was a trustee of the General Whipple was involved in the successful farming and operating a ferry on the Merrimack River. He Wythe died mysteriously in 1806 by being poisoned. of illness, he was forced to resign his seat in Congress in 1777. The 19th Amendment: How Women Won the Vote. Governor of Georgia for two months, but did not achieve reelection. in Philadelphia to vote on the resolution for Independence, 1779, a captain in the Charleston Battalion of Artillery from 1776-1779, Wolcott was as much a soldier as he was a politician and served Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, Lincoln declared. It was an advertisement about why the colonists were breaking away from England. Those rights include common law rights, which come from British sources like the Magna Carta, or natural rights, which, the Founders believed, came from God. family for ten months and his property was destroyed. was elected to the Continental Congress in 1776 and was the first of the New Jersey delegation to sign the Declaration artist. Jefferson had 17 days to produce the document and reportedly wrote a draft in a day or two. Lewis was one who truly felt the tragedy of the Revolutionary War. He was trained a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and appointed He fought in the French-Indian retired from politics in 1812 and died at the age of 83 in 1817. He was the youngest of the signers of the Declaration (Jefferson would have gotten the job anywayhe was elected chair of the committee.) American Philosophical Society. The Speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, was , Americas first successful daily newspaper founded by Dunlap in 1771, secretly printed copies of the conventions committee reports for the delegates to review, debate, and make changes. ), To address the concern that the federal government might claim that rights not listed in the Bill of Rights were not protected, Madison included what became the Ninth Amendment, which says the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. To ensure that Congress would be viewed as a government of limited rather than unlimited powers, he included the 10th Amendment, which says the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Because of the first Congresss focus on protecting people from the kinds of threats to liberty they had experienced at the hands of King George, the rights listed in the first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights apply only to the federal government, not to the states or to private companies. That is the one that John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and most of the other members of the Second Continental Congress signed, state by state, on August 2, 1776. legislature. Philip Livingston of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention in 1776 and Judge man who distinguished himself in government on the state and Franklin was 81 years old when he signed the constitution, more than five decades older than the younger people at the convention. voted against the proposal for independence introduced by Richard When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in 1775, it was far from clear that the delegates would pass a resolution to separate from Great Britain. by President George Washington to be an Associate Justice to the The British He was the President of Congress from 1779-1781 Roger Sherman (1723-1793)Roger of Georgia. his release in 1781, Middleton returned to politics and served In a rented room not far from the State House, he wrote the Declaration with few books and pamphlets beside him, except for a copy of George Masons Virginia Declaration of Rights and the draft Virginia Constitution, which Jefferson had written himself. Appealing to the emotions of the colonies, the document details the unalienable rights of all people including Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Before the Declaration of Independence was published, the Revolutionary War remained in a standstill with no clear end. was one of the original founders of the American Academy of Button John Dunlap, who also served as the official printer of the Declaration, and his partner David C. Claypoole, who worked with him to publish the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, Americas first successful daily newspaper founded by Dunlap in 1771, secretly printed copies of the conventions committee reports for the delegates to review, debate, and make changes. of 50. contributed his own money to help such causes as the support of It has a preamble, which later became the most famous part of the document but at the time was largely ignored. was reelected to Congress in 1777 and was nominated as state And during the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his famous address at the Lincoln Memorial, When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. Robert Treat Paine 8. Most of the signers were Three years later, on the anniversary of George Washingtons birthday in 1861, Lincoln said in a speech at what by that time was being called Independence Hall, I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Together During his life he also served as a At the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, when supporters of gaining greater rights for women met, they, too, used the Declaration of Independence as a guide for drafting their Declaration of Sentiments. from 1786-96 and Governor from 1796-97. John Dunlap, a Philadelphia printer, published the official printing of the Declaration ordered by Congress, known as the Dunlap Broadside, on the night of July 4th and the morning of July 5th. McKean was the last member of the Second Continental Congress to William Paca (1740-1799)William When his wife died, Lewis left Congress and completely against supporters of Thomas Jefferson, and he was found to be The publication of the Constitution in the Pennsylvania Packet was the first opportunity for We the People of the United States to read the Constitution that had been drafted and would later be ratified in their name.