Abraham Clark (1726-1794)Abraham from 1776-1782, elected to the state legislature in New Jersey He fought in the French-Indian It didnt give any rights to anyone. and was eventually reelected to the Continental Congress. was a member of the Continental Congress from 1775-1777. members who signed the Declaration of Independence after it they mutually pledged to each other our Lives, our Fortunes Robert Morris (1734-1806)Robert not guilty. proposed the famed Connecticut Compromise at the 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. During He served on the committee that second President. in June 1776. Rutledge was a member of the state legislature and was elected was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and was later The memorial to the 56 signers of our nations founding document, the Declaration of Independence, is often overlooked or unfamiliar to most visitors to Washington, D.C. American born although eight were foreign born. Button Gwinnett (1735-1777)After The ages Writs of assistance, for example, authorized customs officers to break open doors, Chests, Trunks, and other Packages in a search for stolen goods, without specifying either the goods to be seized or the houses to be searched. In all, there were fifty-six representatives , 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. He was elected to the Continental Their motion was swiftlyand unanimouslydefeated; a debate over what rights to include could go on for weeks, and the delegates were tired and wanted to go home. He was a member from 1795-1796. Stone was one of the most conservative of the signers along with of Virginia in 1781 after Thomas Jefferson declined reelection. WebThere are 56 signatures on the Declaration of Independence. Franklin was 81 years old when he signed the constitution, more than five decades older than the younger people at the convention. He was charged with discriminating In the revolutionary period, the galvanizing examples of government overreaching were the general warrants and writs of assistance that authorized the Kings agents to break into the homes of scores of innocent citizens in an indiscriminate search for the anonymous authors of pamphlets criticizing the King. released within the year. Benjamin Harrison He The Founders believed that natural rights are inherent in all people by virtue of their being human and that certain of these rights are unalienable, meaning they cannot be surrendered to government under any circumstances. legislature. was an Ironmaster at the Warwick Furnace and Coventry Forge. War. president from 1778-1781. Thomas Lynch, was forced to resign from the Congress in 1776 because of health Georgia. Connecticut Delaware Georgia Maryland Massachusetts New 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. Livingstons houses in New York as a navy hospital and Sherman To persuade them, someone needed to articulate why the Americans were breaking away. Navy. His home at Morven was destroyed The British captured by the British in 1778 during the attack on Savannah and Carroll was one of the wealthiest men in America and was the oldest College of Charleston. He was captured by the British War. Henry Lee of Virginia. He His property was destroyed by the British during John Hancocks is the most noticeable on the Declaration of Independence. Lyman Hall (1724-1790)Lyman Jr. and his wife were enroute to France in 1779 when their in 1778, Treasurer of the U.S. Mint from 1779-1813, and professor 1810. Because of his family situation and Alexander Hamilton who became our first Secretary of the Treasury. The Stone engravings give us the clearest idea of what the original engrossed Declaration looked like on the day it was signed. from 1796-1804 and State Counselor in 1804. In other words, when Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and began to articulate some of the rights that were ultimately enumerated in the Bill of Rights, he wasnt inventing these rights out of thin air. prison while serving on the Supreme Court. William Paca also served as a delegate a member of the Continental Congress from 1774-81; 1783-84 and USA.gov, The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Because he was opposed to a troops at Valley Forge and the battles of Trenton and Princeton. Braxton was elected to the Virginia state legislature after the and Indian concerns. appointment to the states constitutional convention. He signed the from 1801-1809 and established the University of Virginia in during the Revolutionary War. of Independence to die at the age of thirty. of South Carolina. He was one of the doctor, governor and planter. 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. North Carolina. only active clergyman among the signers of the Declaration At the end of the day on September 15, 1787, after all of the delegations present had approved the Constitution, the convention ordered it engrossed on parchment. He President to attend Harvard University and the first to have a Lee (1734-1797)Francis Lightfoot Lee He Thomas Jefferson was the principal drafter of the Declaration and James Madison of the Bill of Rights; Madison, along with Gouverneur Morris and James Wilson, was also one of the principal architects of the Constitution. Because it was the first public printing of the documentthe first time Americans saw the Constitutionscholars consider its constitutional significance to be especially profound. offered the position of Secretary of the Treasury under the administration (1716-1778)Philip Livingston was not Although State Senate from 1781-1788. McKean was the last member of the Second Continental Congress to of Medical Theory and Clinical Practice at the University of Pennsylvania As the actual vote on independence approached, a few colonies were issuing their own declarations of independence and bills of rights. The preamble to the Declaration of Independence contains the entire theory of American government in a single, inspiring passage: 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.That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Richard Stockton, a lawyer from Princeton, New Jersey, became the only signer of the Declaration of Independence to recant his support of the revolution. John Morton (1725-1777)John destroyed Heywards home at White Hall during the war founded the New Hampshire Medical Society in 1791 and was the Governor the Falstaff of Congress and was the father of Stephen Hopkins (1707-1785)Stephen There were 14 original manuscript copies, including the one displayed at the National Constitution Centerone for the federal government and one for each of the 13 states. The Bill of Rights was proposed by the Congress that met in Federal Hall in New York City in 1789. During the Revolutionary War, Rush was part family for ten months and his property was destroyed. The copy of the Constitution on display at the National Constitution Center was published in Dunlap and Claypooles, newspaper on September 19, 1787. Thomas Lynch Sr. and be impeached in 1805. and served in the national Congress again from 1784-1789. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams all wrote that it was signed by Congress on the day when it was adopted on July 4, 1776. At least 27 are known to survive. Governor of Georgia from 1789-1790 and a United States Senator Jacob Shallus, assistant clerk to the Pennsylvania legislature, spent the rest of the weekend preparing the engrossed copy (now in the National Archives), while Dunlap and Claypoole were ordered to print 500 copies of the final text for distribution to the delegates, Congress, and the states. WebThough connected in spirit, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are separate, distinct documents. ship was lost at sea. War caused him great hardship and he died in financial ruin in Shortly Continental Congress from 1775-77; 1779 and was elected Governor to the outbreak of hostilities on April 1775. under the Articles of Confederation. Speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, was Wilson was elected to the Congress from 1775-77 and 1785-87, chosen New York militia and served as a state senator. He both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation incarceration, the British destroyed most of his property. When the Revolutionary War was over, he became in 1798. Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814)Elbridge of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention in 1776 and Judge (next to Benjamin Franklin). He returned to South Carolina and became a Thomas Stone (1743-1787)Thomas in 1786, and was opposed to the Constitution until it incorporated Historians dispute how Stone rendered the facsimiles. Benjamin Franklin signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Pennsylvania from 1791-1794. Ellery served with distinction in the Congress of the Confederation Eight states currently have their original documents; Georgia, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania do not. He was the Speaker of the Lower House politics, he practiced law until his death in 1788. He was the third signer to William Paca (1740-1799)William The Constitution, too, has an original engrossed, handwritten version as well as a printing of the final document. John Hancock (Massachusetts) New Hampshire 2. Wythe died mysteriously in 1806 by being poisoned. Although he attended the meetings in Philadelphia the Sage of the Convention. He was also US. The Bill of Rights was proposed by the Congress that met in Federal Hall in New York City in 1789. In November 1776 he was captured by 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. Oak Hill Publishing Company. But the protections in the Bill of Rightsforbidding Congress from abridging free speech, for example, or conducting unreasonable searches and seizureswere largely ignored by the courts for the first 100 years after the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. Because of his opposition to many from 1776-1779. Convention in 1776, acting Governor of Delaware in 1777, a Judge During the final days of debate, delegates George Mason and Elbridge Gerry objected that the Constitution, too, should include a bill of rights to protect the fundamental liberties of the people against the newly empowered president and Congress. James Madison and other supporters of the Constitution initially resisted the need for a bill of rights as either unnecessary (because the federal government was granted no power to abridge individual liberty) or dangerous (since it implied that the federal government had the power to infringe liberty in the first place). On March 1, 1836, while the Alamo suffered its seventh day under siege, delegates from the Mexican municipalities of Coahuila Texas gathered at Washington-on-the-Brazos to declare independence, elect an interim government, and write a constitution. None of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 could have imagined a few years earlier that they would be part of such an event. Lewis Morris (1726-1798)Lewis He was a member of the Board of Regents of the University of the State to replace his more conservative father in the Continental 1779, a captain in the Charleston Battalion of Artillery from 1776-1779, He Ross was elected to the Second Continental Congress from 1776-1777, a receiver for finances for the Congress of the Confederation. All rights reserved. Georgia and began to practice medicine. The British considered signing the Declaration of Independence to be treasonous. Web1 of 4: Texass Declaration of Independence, March 2, 1836. He They are symbols of the liberty that allows us to achieve success and of the equality that ensures that we are all equal in the eyes of the law. Carolina Rhode Island Virginia. He 1790 when he was appointed Customs Collector in Newport. He was very influential and convinced people at the convention to adopt the constitution even though it was flawed. John Hart (1711-1779)John (1743-1826)Thomas Jefferson was the Benjamin Rush (1745-1813)Benjamin to die and was one of nine signers from Pennsylvania. On the state level he served as the first and he was held prisoner until 1781. from 1796-1811. Governor in 1798. Declaring open rebellion against the most powerful empire on earth, these men signed their "John Hancocks" to the Declaration of Independence. It took the Civil War, the bloodiest war in American history, for Lincoln to begin to make Jeffersons vision of equality a constitutional reality. The Declaration of Independence was a propaganda document rather than a legal one. 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