Declaration
Read 1 Corinthians 1:26-31
The Declaration of Independence was signed by fifty-six ordinary men. Some were farmers, merchants, landowners, and physicians. There was a scientist and printer, a musician and a minister. All of them came together to represent the various colonies.
The Continental Congress on June 11 appointed Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston as a committee to draft a declaration of independence. The committee then delegated Thomas Jefferson to undertake the task. Jefferson worked diligently in private for days to compose a document. Proof of the arduous nature of the work can be seen in the fragment of the first known composition draft of the declaration.
Jefferson then made a clean or “fair” copy of the composition declaration, which became the foundation of the document, labeled by Jefferson as the “original Rough draught.” Revised first by Adams, then by Franklin, and then by the full committee, a total of forty-seven alterations including the insertion of three complete paragraphs was made on the text before it was presented to Congress on June 28. (It was Adams who added the phrase “They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”) After voting for independence on July 2, the Congress then continued to refine the document, making thirty-nine additional revisions to the committee draft before its final adoption on the morning of July 4.
Congress then ordered the Declaration of Independence printed and late on July 4, John Dunlap, a Philadelphia printer, produced the first printed text of the Declaration of Independence, now known as the “Dunlap Broadside.” The next day John Hancock, the president of the Continental Congress, began dispatching copies of the Declaration to America’s political and military leaders. On July 9, George Washington ordered that his personal copy of the “Dunlap Broadside,” sent to him by John Hancock on July 6, be read to the assembled American army at New York. In 1783 at the war’s end, General Washington brought his copy of the broadside home to Mount Vernon. This remarkable document has come down to us only partially intact.
We think of the Declaration of Independence as having been signed on July 4, 1776. In actuality it was voted on for approval on that date but the actual signing did not start until later.
On July 19, Congress ordered the production of an engrossed (officially inscribed) copy of the Declaration of Independence, which attending members of the Continental Congress, including some who had not voted for its adoption, began to sign on August 2, 1776. This is the document that is on permanent display at the National Archives in Washington, DC.
The men who signed this document knew that they were putting their lives in peril. Their act of signing was an act of treason against the King and their very lives were forfeit. There would be an order for their immediate arrest and hanging. During the war that followed they were considered fugitives from the crown. Yet God used these simple men to turn the known world upside down.
As you pray today remember it is the Lord who works through us to bring about His will for our good and the sake of others. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were willing to risk their very lives to change the world as they knew it. Are we willing to trust God to use us even in some small way?