Chapter V: Part III (3)

In 1779 Heyward was wounded during Brig. Gen. William Moultrie’s repulse of a British attack on Port Royal Island, along the South Carolina coast near Heyward’s home. The following year, the British plundered White Hall and carried off all the slaves. When they took Charleston, they captured Heyward, who was helping defend the city. He was imprisoned at St. Augustine, Fla., until July 1781. Shortly before his release, he celebrated Independence Day by setting patriotic verses to the British national anthem. “God save the King” became “God save the thirteen States,” a rendition that soon echoed from New Hampshire to Georgia.

From 1782 until 1789 Heyward resumed his position of circuit court judge, concurrently serving two terms in the State legislature (1782–84). In 1785 he helped found and became the first president of the Agricultural Society of South Carolina. The following year, his wife passed away and he remarried; apparently only one child from his two marriages reached maturity. He devoted most of his remaining days, except for attendance in 1790 at the State constitutional convention, to managing his plantation; he sold his Charleston townhouse in 1794. The last to survive among the South Carolina signers, he died in 1809 at the age of 62 and was interred in the family cemetery at Old House Plantation.

William Hooper

NORTH CAROLINA

The ambivalence of William Hooper’s convictions prevented
him from ever carving a solid niche in the field of
politics. His youthful choice of occupation and political
affiliation brought estrangement from his family and
emigration from Massachusetts to far-off North Carolina.
Motivated sometimes by self-interest and sometimes by
intense patriotism, he flourished in law and politics.
He originally supported the royal government, but became
a Whig leader during the Revolution. After the war, his
aristocratic leanings caused him to lose favor among the
electorate.

Hooper was born in Boston, Mass., in 1742, the first child of William Hooper, a Scotch immigrant and Congregationalist clergyman who 5 years later was to transfer to the Anglican Church. Groomed for the ministry in his youth, Hooper undertook 7 years of preparatory education at Boston Latin School. This qualified him in 1757 to enter Harvard College in the sophomore class. He graduated 3 years later, but much to the chagrin of his father rejected the ministry as a profession. The next year, he further alienated his Loyalist father and isolated himself from his family by taking up the study of law under James Otis, a brilliant but radical lawyer.

Partly to ameliorate family strife and partly to better his legal opportunities, about 1764 Hooper sought his fortune at Wilmington, N.C. Three years later, he married the daughter of an early settler, by whom he was to have two sons and a daughter. He resided either in Wilmington or at his nearby estate, Finian, about 8 miles away on Masonboro Sound, rode the circuit from court to court, and built up a clientele among the wealthy planters of the lower Cape Fear region. Ambitious, he harbored political aspirations and by 1770–71 had obtained the position of deputy attorney general of North Carolina.

In this capacity, protecting his own economic interests and political goals, Hooper sided with Royal Governor William Tryon in a conflict between the government and a group of North Carolina frontiersmen known as the Regulators. They were rebelling against governmental corruption and oppression and high legal and other fees. Hooper urged the use of force to quell the rebellion, and in 1771 accompanied the government forces that defeated the rebels in the Battle of Alamance.

Within a few years, Hooper’s allegiance to the royal government waned. At the time of his election to the colonial assembly (1773–75), the act providing for the colony’s court system was about to expire. The assembly attempted to attach to the new court act a clause by which the colony could confiscate American property owned by foreign debtors, including inhabitants of Great Britain. When the Royal Governor blocked the bill, a 4-year struggle for control of the colony ensued. Hooper, though deprived of a source of income as a lawyer and dependent upon his wife’s small fortune for subsistence, championed the cause of the assembly.

Hooper rose to a position of leadership among the Whigs, though he disapproved of extremism. In a letter dated April 1774 to his friend James Iredell, he prophesized the Colonies’ break with Great Britain—the earliest known prediction of independence, which won for Hooper the epithet “Prophet of Independence.” In the summer, after the Royal Governor had dissolved the colonial assembly, he helped organize and presided over an extralegal conference at Wilmington. It voted to convene a provincial assembly, which met in August at New Bern and elected Delegates, one of whom was Hooper, to the Continental Congress. Later that same year, he became a member of the committee of correspondence.

During the period 1774–77, Hooper divided his time between Congress, where he gained a reputation as an orator, and the North Carolina provincial assembly, in which he labored to set up a State government. In 1777, however, the financial difficulties with his law practice and a desire to be near his family prompted him to resign from Congress and return to Wilmington. He was immediately elected to the State legislature and served there almost continuously until 1786.

In 1780 the British invaded North Carolina. Hooper moved his family from Finian into Wilmington for safety, but in January 1781, while he was away on business, the city fell to the enemy. Separated from his loved ones for more than 10 months and often destitute, he depended upon friends in Edenton and vicinity for shelter and food. On one occasion, taken violently ill with malaria, he was nursed back to health by Iredell’s wife. Upon the British evacuation of the Wilmington area, in November, Hooper returned to find most of his property, including Finian, in ruins. Shortly thereafter he rejoined his wife and children, who had fled to Hillsborough, which he made his home for the rest of his life.

During the aftermath of the Revolution, Hooper, despite continuing political aspirations, lost favor with the public. Unable to adjust to the rise of republicanism in the State, he adopted a conservative stance. His aristocratic pretensions, forgiving attitude toward Loyalists, and lack of faith in the common people undermined his popularity. In 1788 he strenuously campaigned for State ratification of the Federal Constitution, which occurred early the next year. By this time, he was in ill health and despondent, but lingered on for nearly 2 years. He died in 1790 in his late forties. His remains, moved from the Hillsborough town cemetery in 1894, rest today at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park near Greensboro.

Stephen Hopkins

RHODE ISLAND

This signer, the second oldest next to Benjamin Franklin,
is noted for his tremulous signature. Aged 69 and afflicted
with palsy, according to tradition he declared, “My hand
trembles, but my heart does not!” Before, during, and after
a comparatively brief stretch of congressional service, he
occupied Rhode Island’s highest offices and fostered the
cultural and economic growth of Providence.

Hopkins attained success purely by his own efforts. Born in 1707 at Providence and equipped with but a modicum of basic education, he grew up in the adjacent agricultural community of Scituate, earned his living as a farmer and surveyor, and married at the age of 19. Five years later, in 1731, when Scituate Township separated from Providence, he plunged into politics. During the next decade, he held the following elective or appointive offices: moderator of the first town meeting, town clerk, president of the town council, justice of the peace, justice and clerk of the Providence County court of common pleas, legislator, and speaker of the house.

In 1742, about 2 years after he and his brother Esek founded a mercantile-shipping firm, Stephen moved back to Providence. For the next three decades, he built up his business and would probably have acquired a fortune had he not at the same time supported a variety of civic enterprises and broadened his political activities. He continued in the legislature, served as assistant and chief justice of the Superior Court and ten-time Governor, and represented Rhode Island at various intercolonial meetings. At the Albany Congress (1754), he cultivated a friendship with Franklin and assisted him in framing a plan of colonial union that the congress passed but the Colonies rejected. The next year, 2 years after the demise of his first wife, who had given birth to five sons and two daughters, he remarried.

About this time, Hopkins took over leadership of the colony’s radical faction, supported by Providence merchants. For more than a decade, it bitterly fought for political supremacy in Rhode Island with a conservative group in Newport, led by Samuel Ward, a political enemy of Hopkins.

Hopkins was a man of broad interests, including humanitarianism, education, and science, and exerted his talents in many fields. About 1754 he helped set up a public subscription library in Providence. He acted as first chancellor of Rhode Island College (later Brown University), founded in 1764 at Warren, and 6 years later was instrumental in relocating it to Providence. He also held membership in the Philosophical Society of Newport. Strongly opposing slavery, in 1774 he authored a bill enacted by the Rhode Island legislature that prohibited the importation of slaves into the colony—one of the earliest antislavery laws in the United States.

Long before, Hopkins had sided with the Revolutionaries. In 1762 he helped found the influential _Providence Gazette and Country Journal_. Two years later, he contributed to it an article entitled “The Rights of the Colonies Examined,” which criticized parliamentary taxation and recommended colonial home rule. Issued as a pamphlet the next year, it circulated widely throughout the Colonies and Great Britain and established Hopkins as one of the earliest of the patriot leaders. He also sat on the Rhode Island committee of correspondence and carried on with his duties in the legislature and Superior Court while a Member of the Continental Congress (1774–76). He served on the committees that prepared the Articles of Confederation and that created the Continental Navy and appointed Esek Hopkins as its commander in chief. Ill health compelled Stephen to retire in September 1776, a month after he signed the Declaration.

Hopkins declined subsequent reelections to Congress, but sat in the State legislature for a time and took part in several New England political conventions. He withdrew from public service about 1780 and died 5 years later in Providence at the age of 78. He was interred in the North Burial Ground.

Francis Hopkinson

NEW JERSEY

The literary and artistic talents of this versatile signer
brought him more acclaim than his political and legal
activities. Although a lawyer and judge by profession, he
achieved more eminence as an essayist, poet, artist, and
musician. His verse and satirical essays rank among the
better literary efforts of the Revolutionary and early
Federal periods, and he was one of America’s first native
composers. His eldest son, Joseph (1770–1842), wrote “Hail
Columbia” and won distinction as a lawyer, jurist, U.S.
Congressman, and patron of the arts.

Hopkinson was born at Philadelphia in 1737, the eldest of eight children. His father, who died when he was 14, was a prominent lawyer-jurist, politician, and civic leader. Upon graduation from the College of Philadelphia (later part of the University of Pennsylvania) in 1757, young Hopkinson studied law under Benjamin Chew, attorney general of the province, and 4 years later joined the bar. In 1763 he obtained the position of customs collector at Salem, N.J. Three years hence, after failing in business, he sailed to England to seek an appointment as colonial customs collector through the influence of friends and relatives. During his yearlong stay, though unsuccessful in his vocational quest, he visited Benjamin Franklin, Lord North, and other prominent people, and may have studied under artist Benjamin West.

Back in Philadelphia, Hopkinson operated a store and married in 1768. Four years later he became the customs collector at New Castle, Del. About 1774 he took up residence at the home of his father-in-law in Bordentown, N.J., practiced law, and began a 2-year tour in the legislature. As a Member of the Continental Congress for only a few months in 1776, he relieved his ennui by drawing caricatures of his colleagues. His later offices included: chairman (1777–78) of Philadelphia’s Continental Navy Board, treasurer of loans (1778–81), judge of the admiralty court of Pennsylvania (1779), and Federal circuit judge for the eastern district of the State (1789–91).

During his busy public career, the ambitious Hopkinson managed to leave his stamp on the fields of music, art, and literature. His “My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free” (1759) probably represents the first American composition of secular music; his “Temple of Minerva” (1781), the first American attempt at opera. In art, he was noted particularly for his crayon portraits and his work on heraldic emblems. But his literary attainments surpassed all his others.

Between 1757 and 1773, Hopkinson contributed numerous poems and essays, many of them in a humorous and satirical vein, to various periodicals. The following year, he began advancing the patriot cause. A profusion of widely read and influential pamphlets, essays, and letters, often presented in an allegorical style, derided and ridiculed the British and the Loyalists, outlined colonial grievances, and encouraged the colonists. _The Prophecy_, written in 1776 before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, predicted that event. After the war, Hopkinson continued to treat political and social themes, and became one of the best known writers in the United States.

While a Federal circuit judge, Hopkinson died in Philadelphia at the age of 53. He was laid to rest in Christ Church Burial Ground. Surviving him were his widow and five children.

Samuel Huntington

CONNECTICUT

Several of the signers were self-made men. One of the most
successful of them was Samuel Huntington. Reared amid
humble surroundings, he educated himself in the law and,
despite recurring health problems, climbed to the pinnacles
of the State and National Governments.

Born into a large family in 1731 at Windham (present Scotland), Conn., Huntington grew up on a farm, received a limited education, and at the age of 16 began work as a cooper. But his ambition soon pushed him onward. He independently studied borrowed legal tomes, won admittance to the bar about 1758, and set up practice. Two years later, he moved to nearby Norwich. The next year, he married; he and his wife, who were to be childless, later adopted three children. As time went on, he prospered in the law and became a community leader.

In 1764 Huntington began his public career, in the Connecticut legislature. The next year, he was appointed as King’s Attorney of the colony and won election as justice of the peace for New London County. He occupied these positions for practically the entire decade or so prior to the outbreak of the War for Independence, in 1775. Meantime, 2 years earlier, the colonial legislature had named him as a judge of the Connecticut Superior Court, an appointment renewed annually for a decade.

In 1774 Huntington, registering his growing sympathy for the Colonies in their struggle against the Crown, resigned as King’s Attorney and joined the front ranks of the Revolutionaries. The next year, he became a member of the upper house of the legislature (1775–84), and entered national politics when he became a Delegate to the Continental Congress. His committee assignments included those dealing with Indian affairs, ordnance supply, and marine matters. In the fall of 1776, fatigue and health worries caused him to return to Connecticut. Between then and 1783, plagued with spells of illness, he attended congressional sessions intermittently (1778, 1779–81, 1783), often returning home to recuperate. Despite this burden, he assumed the heavy responsibilities of President of Congress (1779–81), presiding on March 1, 1781, when the Articles of Confederation were adopted.

Huntington’s well-earned “retirement” when he returned to Connecticut in 1783, after 8 years of service to the Nation, turned out to involve 12 years of vigorous activity—despite his waning health. Even while he had been in Congress, he had served his State in various other ways, and all his legislative and other positions had been held open for him. A succession of appointive and elective offices followed: chief justice of the Superior Court (1784), Lieutenant Governor (1785), and Governor (1786–96). In the latter capacity, he led the battle for Connecticut’s ratification of the Federal Constitution and improved the educational system. As one of Connecticut’s seven first presidential electors, in 1789 he won two “favorite son” votes for the Presidency.

Ever interested in education, despite his own lack of a college degree, in the 1780’s Huntington received honorary degrees from Princeton, Yale, and Dartmouth; and was appointed one of the original trustees of Plainfield (Conn.) Academy. Before that time, he had acted as adviser to the president of Yale.

In 1796 at the age of 65, still Governor, he died at his home in Norwich and was interred in the Old Burial Ground.

Thomas Jefferson

VIRGINIA

An intellectual and political titan who ranked among
the most brilliant men of his time, Thomas Jefferson
richly contributed to his State and Nation—as statesman,
diplomat, scientist, architect, author, and educator.
Graced with a wide-ranging and probing mind, he also delved
into linguistics, law, art, geography, ethnology, music,
agriculture, paleontology, botany, meteorology, geology,
parliamentary practice, and invention.

As author of the Declaration of Independence, influential political theorist, cofounder of the Democratic-Republican Party, Virginia legislator and Governor, first U.S. Secretary of State, second Vice President, and third President, Jefferson has left an indelible impression on our political system and philosophy. Beyond that, he laid the basis for the westward expansion of the Nation; and two of his disciples, Madison and Monroe, followed him into the White House.

Like most successful politicians, however, Jefferson created his share of enemies and felt the sting of failure. Inability to reconcile his contradictory traits of idealism and pragmatism resulted in inconsistencies that rendered him vulnerable. He lacked the aggressiveness and charisma of many leaders. To compensate for his basic shyness and his deficiencies as a speaker, he mastered written expression and learned to exercise administrative power. His governorship ended ignominiously. And his vision of an agricultural America, peopled by well-educated and politically astute yeomen farmers was never to be realized. Yet none of these factors diminishes his stature or undermines his achievements.

The eldest of two sons in a family of ten, Jefferson was born in 1743 at Shadwell, a frontier plantation in Goochland (present Albemarle) County, Va. But 2 years later his father, Peter, a self-made surveyor-magistrate-planter who had married into the distinguished Randolphs, moved his family eastward to Tuckahoe Plantation, near Richmond. His reason for doing so was a promise he had made to his wife’s newly deceased first cousin, William Randolph, to act as guardian of his son, Thomas Mann Randolph. Young Jefferson passed most of his boyhood in the Randolph home, beginning his elementary education with private tutors. In 1752, when he was about 9 years old, the family returned to Shadwell. His father died 5 years later and bequeathed him almost 3,000 acres.

In 1760, at the age of 17, Jefferson matriculated at the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg. An incidental benefit was the chance to observe the operation of practical politics in the colonial capital. Jefferson graduated in 1762, studied law locally under the noted teacher George Wythe, and in 1767 was admitted to the bar.

At Shadwell, Jefferson assumed the civic responsibilities and prominence his father had enjoyed. In 1770, when fire consumed the structure, he moved to his nearby estate Monticello, where he had already begun building a home. In 1772 he married Martha Wayles Skelton, a widow. During their decade of life together, she was to bear six children, but only two daughters reached maturity.

Meanwhile, in 1769 at the age of 26, Jefferson had been elected to the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg. He was a member continuously until 1775, and alined himself with the anti-British group. Unlike his smooth-tongued confreres Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, Jefferson concentrated his efforts in committee work rather than in debate. A literary stylist, he drafted many of the Revolutionary documents adopted by the House of Burgesses. His _A Summary View of the Rights of British America_ (1774), one of the most influential essays of the era, disavowed parliamentary control of the Colonies and contended that they were tied to the King only by their own volition and recognition of mutual benefits.

Jefferson utilized the same working methods in the Continental Congress (1775–76), where his decisiveness in committee contrasted markedly with his silence on the floor. His colleagues, however, rejected several of the documents he drafted his first year because of their extreme anti-British tone. But, by the time he returned the following May, after spending the winter in Virginia, the temper of Congress had changed drastically. The very next month, though only 33 years old, he was assigned to the five-man committee chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence, a task his colleagues assigned to him. In September, not long after Congress had adopted the draft with modifications and most of the Delegates signed it, Jefferson returned to Virginia—anxious to be nearer home and feeling he could make a deeper political mark there.

A notable career in the House of Delegates (1776–79), the lower house of the legislature, followed. There Jefferson took over leadership of the “progressive” party from Patrick Henry, who relinquished it to become Governor. Highlights of this service included revision of the State laws (1776–79), in which Jefferson collaborated with George Wythe and Edmund Pendleton; and authorship of a bill for the establishment of religious freedom in Virginia, introduced in 1779 but not passed until 7 years later.

Although hampered as Governor (1779–81) by wartime conditions and constitutional limitations, Jefferson proved to be a weak executive, even in emergencies hesitating to wield his authority. When the British invaded the State in the spring of 1781, the situation became chaotic. On June 3, while the legislature was meeting in Charlottesville because the redcoats held Richmond, Jefferson recommended the combining of civil and military agencies under Gen. Thomas Nelson, Jr., and virtually abdicated office. The next day, British raiders almost captured him and a group of legislators he was entertaining at Monticello. Although later formally vindicated for his abandonment of the governorship, the action fostered a conservative takeover of the government and his reputation remained clouded for some time.

Jefferson stayed out of the limelight for 2 years, during which time his wife died. In 1783 he reentered Congress, which the next year sent him to Paris to aid Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in their attempts to negotiate commercial treaties with European nations. During his 5-year stay, Jefferson succeeded Franklin as Minister to France (1785–89), gained various commercial concessions from and strengthened relations with the French, visited England and Italy, absorbed European culture, and observed the beginnings of the French Revolution.

In the years that followed, interspersed with pleasant interludes at Monticello, Jefferson filled the highest offices in the land: Secretary of State (1790–93), Vice President (1797–1801), and two-term President (1801–9). Ever averse to political strife, he occupied these positions as much out of a sense of civic and party duty as personal ambition. Aggravating normal burdens and pressures were his bitter feuds with Alexander Hamilton on most aspects of national policy, and the vindictiveness of Federalist attacks. Jefferson took considerable satisfaction, however, from his many accomplishments. Among these was the cofounding with James Madison of the Democratic-Republican Party, which in time drove the Federalists out of power.

Physically and mentally exhausted, in 1809 Jefferson retired for the final time to Monticello. He retained his health and varied interests and corresponded with and entertained statesmen, politicians, scientists, explorers, scholars, and Indian chiefs. When the pace of life grew too hectic, he found haven at Poplar Forest, a retreat near Lynchburg he had designed and built in 1806–19. His pet project during most of his last decade was founding the University of Virginia (1819), in Charlottesville.

Painfully distressing to Jefferson, however, was the woeful state of his finances. His small salary in public office, the attendant neglect of his fortune and estate, general economic conditions, and debts he inherited from his wife had taken a heavy toll. He lived more frugally than was his custom in an attempt to stave off disaster and sold off as many of his lands and slaves as he could. But when a friend defaulted on a note for a large sum, Jefferson fell hopelessly into debt and was forced to sell his library to the Government. It became the nucleus of the Library of Congress.

Jefferson died only a few hours before John Adams at the age of 83 on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. For his tombstone at Monticello, ignoring his many high offices and multitudes of other achievements, he chose three accomplishments that he wanted to be remembered for: authorship of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and the founding of the University of Virginia.

Francis Lightfoot Lee

VIRGINIA

No less a patriot than his dynamic elder brother Richard
Henry and his gifted younger brothers Arthur and William,
Francis Lightfoot Lee preferred the uneventful life of a
country squire to the public spotlight and chose to follow
rather than to lead. Despite his shyness and weakness as
a speaker, he exercised extensive political influence,
took an active part in the Revolution, and signed both the
Declaration and the Articles of Confederation.

Lee, a member of one of the most famous families in Virginia and U.S. history and the sixth son and eighth child of planter Thomas Lee, was born in 1734 at the family estate, Stratford Hall, in Westmoreland County, Va. He was educated by a private tutor and never attended college. In 1750, upon the death of his father, he inherited Coton, an estate in Fairfax County. Seven years later, newly created Loudoun County absorbed Coton. At that time, the colonial legislature nominated him as Loudoun lieutenant. The next year, he moved to Coton and became trustee of the newly incorporated village of Leesburg, named after him or his brother Philip Ludwell, both local landowners. For the next decade, Francis Lightfoot represented the county in the House of Burgesses.

In 1769 Lee married socialite Rebecca Tayloe of Richmond County. The newlyweds resided at Mount Airy estate with Rebecca’s parents for a few months until Menokin, a new home that Colonel Tayloe was building nearby for them, was completed. From then until 1774, Lee sat again with the burgesses.

Lee had joined the Revolutionary movement at an early date. From the time of the Stamp Act (1765) until the outbreak of war a decade later, he participated in most of the Virginia protests and assemblies. He rarely debated on the floor in Congress (1775–79), but often opposed the position of his brother Richard Henry, and served on the military and marine committees as well as that charged with drafting the Articles of Confederation.

In 1779, weary of office and longing for the peace and quiet of Menokin, Lee left Congress. Except for a few years in the State legislature, he abandoned public service altogether and lived quietly. In 1797, only a few months after the death of his childless wife, at the age of 62 he succumbed. Burial took place in the Tayloe family graveyard at Mount Airy.

Richard Henry Lee

VIRGINIA

Richard Henry Lee, brilliant orator and fiery Revolutionary
leader, introduced the independence resolution in
the Continental Congress, served for awhile as its
President, and later became a U.S. Senator. Fearing undue
centralization of power, he fought against the Constitution
and led the campaign that brought inclusion of the Bill of
Rights. Throughout his life, he strenuously opposed the
institution of slavery. He and Francis Lightfoot Lee were
the only brothers among the signers.

Fifth son and seventh of 11 children, Lee was born in 1732 along the Potomac shore at Stratford Hall. His initial tutorial education was supplemented by extensive study at Wakefield Academy, in Yorkshire, England, and a tour of northern Europe. He sailed home about 1751 at the age of 19, the year after his father’s death, and resided with his eldest brother Philip Ludwell at Stratford Hall. In 1757 Richard Henry married. About this time, he began building and soon occupied Chantilly, about 3 miles to the east on land leased from his brother. In 1768 Richard Henry’s wife died, leaving four children; the next year, he remarried, a union that yielded five more offspring.

Lee meantime, following family tradition, had committed himself to politics. In 1757, at the age of 25, he became justice of the peace for Westmoreland County. The following year, he moved up to the House of Burgesses and sat there until 1775. One of the first to oppose Britain, he early allied with Patrick Henry. As a protest against the Stamp Act (1765), Lee drew up the Westmoreland Association (1766), a nonimportation agreement signed by some of the citizens of his county. The next year, he denounced the Townshend Acts. And a year later he proposed in a letter to John Dickinson of Pennsylvania that the individual colonies set up committees to correspond with each other—an idea that did not come to fruition for 5 years.

In 1769, when Lee and Henry penned an address to the King protesting several actions of Parliament, the Royal Governor disbanded the House of Burgesses. Lee thereupon met with other patriots at Raleigh’s Tavern and helped frame the Virginia Association, a nonimportation agreement. Many other colonies formed similar associations, but in 1770 Parliament repealed most of the duties and the protest spirit subsided.

In March 1773, when anti-British feeling flared once again, Lee, Henry, and Jefferson, who had entered the House of Burgesses in 1769, organized a Virginia committee of correspondence and invited the other colonies to do likewise. Learning of the British closing of Boston Harbor in May 1774, they persuaded their colleagues to declare, as a protest, a day of fasting and prayer. The Royal Governor again dissolved the burgesses. The Revolutionaries reconvened at Raleigh’s Tavern, drew up a new nonimportation agreement, and resolved to appeal to the other colonies for an intercolonial congress. But, before such action could be taken, Virginia received an invitation from Massachusetts to send representatives to a congress to be held in September at Philadelphia—the First Continental Congress. Virginia’s first provincial assembly met in August and designated seven Delegates, including Lee and Henry.

Lee’s outstanding congressional act was the introduction on June 7, 1776, of the resolution for independence from Britain, seconded by John Adams. This document, Lee’s condensed redraft of one forwarded him by a convention that had met in Williamsburg on May 15, proposed severing relations with Britain, the forming of foreign alliances, and preparation of a plan for confederation. On June 13, or 2 days after a committee was appointed to draft the Declaration, Lee journeyed back to Virginia, apparently because of illness in the family. He did not return and sign the Declaration until sometime subsequent to the formal ceremony on August 2. Like his brother Francis Lightfoot, in 1777 he also subscribed to the Articles of Confederation. After 1776, however, his influence in Congress waned, and 3 years later ill health forced his resignation.

As a State legislator (1780–84) Lee joined the conservative faction, which represented the interests of the large planters. A Member of Congress again in the period 1784–89, he served in 1784–85 as its President. In 1787, though elected to the Constitutional Convention, he refused to attend and led congressional opposition to the Constitution, especially because of the absence of a bill of rights. Although he was well aware of the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation, he and others feared a stronger Central Government. Lee’s “Letters of the Federal Farmer to the Republican,” the collective title for two pamphlets outlining his objections to the Constitution, epitomized antifederalist sentiment.

In 1789 Lee entered the U.S. Senate, but because of failing health resigned in 1792, the year after the Bill of Rights was incorporated into the Constitution. He died in 1794, aged 62, at Chantilly. His grave is in the Lee family cemetery near Hague, Virginia.

Francis Lewis

NEW YORK

Few other signers felt the tragedy of the War for
Independence more directly than Francis Lewis, whose wife
died as a result of British imprisonment. To further the
cause, he also expended a considerable portion of the
fortune he had acquired as a merchant.

Lewis was the only child of a minister. He was born in 1713 at Llandaff, Glamorganshire, Wales. Orphaned at an early age and raised by relatives, he studied at Westminster School in London and then took employment with a local firm. In 1738, deciding to go into business for himself, he set up branches in New York and Philadelphia and for a few years shuttled between those cities and northern European ports. In 1745 he married a New York girl, his partner’s sister.

During the French and Indian War, in 1756, while functioning as a clothing contractor for British troops at Fort Oswego, in present New York, Lewis was taken captive and sent to France for imprisonment. Upon his release, apparently in 1763, as a recompense the British Government awarded him a large land grant in America. He returned to New York City, reentered business, and quickly earned a fortune. In 1765 he retired to the village of Whitestone (now part of Flushing), on Long Island, but in 1771 he temporarily returned to New York City to help his son enter the business world, even probably making a voyage to England with him.

Back home, Lewis devoted most of his energies to the Revolutionary movement, which he had joined in 1765 by attending the Stamp Act Congress. He was also likely one of the leaders of the New York Sons of Liberty. In 1774 he became a member of the New York Revolutionary committees of fifty-one and sixty, the next year attended the provincial convention, and subsequently helped set up the State government.

In the Continental Congress (1775–79), Lewis rarely took the floor but served on the marine, foreign affairs, and commerce committees, as well as sitting on the Board of Admiralty and engaging in troop supply matters. He defended Gen. George Washington from the attacks of the Conway Cabal. Because of Tory dominance in New York, Lewis and the other Delegates were instructed not to vote for independence on July 1 and 2, 1776, but Lewis signed the Declaration on August 2.

That same year, when the British invaded Long Island, they destroyed Lewis’ home in Whitestone and took his wife into custody. She was eventually released in an exchange for wives of British officials, but the hardships she had endured ruined her health and brought about her death in 1779. The grief-stricken Lewis immediately left Congress, but remained on the Board of Admiralty until 1781, at which time he abandoned politics altogether. He lived in retirement with his sons, and died in 1802 at the age of 89 in New York City. He was buried there in an unmarked grave in the yard of Trinity Church.

Philip Livingston

NEW YORK

A member of the landed gentry, merchant Philip
Livingston lived a princely life and devoted much energy
to civic affairs and philanthropic enterprises. He
was a conservative in politics, and at first opposed
independence. On the other hand, despite wartime business
reverses, he contributed generously to the Revolutionary
effort and continued in public service until the day he
died.

Livingston was the fifth son of Philip Livingston, second lord of Livingston Manor, of Scotch descent, and Catherine Van Brugh, of Dutch lineage. Young Livingston was born in 1716 at his father’s townhouse in Albany and spent most of his childhood there or at the family manor at Linlithgo, about 30 miles to the south.

Upon receiving a degree from Yale in 1737, Livingston entered the import business in New York City. Three years later, he married and moved into a townhouse on Duke Street in Manhattan; he was to sire five sons and four daughters. As time went on, he built up a fortune, particularly as a trader-privateer during the French and Indian War (1754–63). In 1764, though retaining his Duke Street home, he acquired a 40-acre estate on Brooklyn Heights overlooking the East River and New York Harbor.

While prospering as a merchant, Livingston devoted many of his energies to humanitarian and philanthropic endeavors. Among the organizations he fostered, financially aided, or helped administer were King’s College (later Columbia University), the New York Society Library, St. Andrew’s Society, the New York Chamber of Commerce, and New York Hospital.

Livingston was also a proponent of political and religious freedom. As a New York City alderman (1754–63), he identified with the popular party that opposed the aristocratic ruling class of the colony. In a decade of service (1759–69) in the colonial legislature, he stood behind the Whigs in their quarrel with the Royal Governor and attended the Stamp Act Congress in 1765. But, a believer in the sort of dignified protests mounted by lawyers and merchants, he resented the riotous behavior of such groups as the Sons of Liberty.

In the 1769 elections the Tories gained control of the legislature. In his bid for reelection, Livingston, fearful of the rise of extremism among the populace, attempted to unite the moderate factions. Defeated in New York City, which from then on was Tory-dominated, he managed to obtain reelection from the Livingston Manor district. The new assembly, claiming he could not represent an area in which he did not reside, unseated him.

In 1774 Livingston became a member of the committee of fifty-one, an extralegal group that selected New York City Delegates to the Continental Congress, one of whom was Livingston. He also served on the committee of sixty, formed to enforce congressional enactments. The next year, he won election to the committee of one hundred, which governed New York City temporarily until the first provincial congress of the colony met later that year.

Between 1774 and 1778 Livingston divided his time between the Continental Congress and the New York provincial assembly/legislature. In Congress he sat on committees dealing with marine, commerce, finance, military, and Indian matters. He was absent on July 1–2, 1776, perhaps on purpose even though the New York Delegates abstained from voting on the independence issue, but on August 2 he signed the Declaration.

After their defeat in the Battle of Long Island (August 27, 1776), Washington and his officers met at Livingston’s residence in Brooklyn Heights and decided to evacuate the island. Subsequent to the ill-fated peace negotiations at Staten Island in September between Admiral Lord Richard Howe and three representatives of the Continental Congress, the British occupied New York City. They utilized Livingston’s Duke Street home as a barracks and his Brooklyn Heights residence as a Royal Navy hospital, as well as confiscating his business interests. He later sold some of his remaining property to sustain public credit. With the advance of the British, Livingston and his family had fled to Esopus (later Kingston), N.Y., where the State capital was temporarily located before moving to nearby Poughkeepsie.

Livingston passed away at the age of 62 in 1778, the third earliest signer to die (after John Morton and Button Gwinnett). At the time, though in poor health, he was still in Congress, then meeting at York, Pa. He is buried in Prospect Hill Cemetery in that city.

Thomas Lynch, Jr.

SOUTH CAROLINA

Like two of the three other South Carolina signers, Heyward
and Middleton, Thomas Lynch, Jr., was an aristocratic
planter. But, despite his wealth and social position,
he experienced one of the most tragic lives of all the
signers. He was stricken by illness in the midst of his
political and military labors for his State, never fully
recovered his health, and perished at sea in his 30th year.
He died at a younger age than any other signer, though a
couple succumbed at an earlier date. He was also the second
youngest in the group, next to fellow South Carolinian
Edward Rutledge.

The only son of Thomas Lynch, Sr., a rich rice planter, Lynch was born in 1749 at Hopsewee Plantation, located at Winyaw on the North Santee River in Prince George’s Parish (present Georgetown County), S.C. After attending the Indigo Society School at nearby Georgetown, from 1764 until 1772 he studied abroad at Eton and Cambridge and read law in London. Upon his return home, deciding not to engage in the law, he married and settled at Peach Tree Plantation. A gift from his father, it was situated in St. James Parish (present Charleston County) on the South Santee River about 4 miles south of Hopsewee.

As the heir of one of the most fervent Revolutionaries and influential men in the colony, Lynch naturally took a deep interest in politics and enjoyed strong support from the electorate. During the years 1774–76, while his father served in the Continental Congress, he labored on the home front, attending the first and second provincial congresses as well as the first State legislature and sitting on the State constitutional committee.

In 1775, however, fate dealt Lynch a cruel blow. He accepted a captaincy in the First South Carolina Regiment of Continentals—to the dismay of his father who had hoped to use his position to obtain a higher rank for him. On a recruiting trip to North Carolina, young Lynch contracted bilious fever. This ended his military days and rendered him a partial invalid for his few remaining years.

Early in 1776 at Philadelphia the elder Lynch suffered a stroke that virtually incapacitated him for further public service. In the spring, his concerned colleagues in South Carolina elected his son to the Continental Congress, probably so that he could care for his father and act officially on his behalf. Although ill himself, Lynch made the onerous trip to Philadelphia. He stayed there throughout the summer, long enough to vote for and sign, at the age of 27, the Declaration of Independence. His father was unable to take part in the ceremony. The two were the only father-son team that served concurrently in the Continental Congress.

By the end of the year, the failing health of both men compelled them to start homeward. En route, at Annapolis, Md., a second stroke took the life of the senior Lynch. His son, broken in spirit and physically unable to continue in politics, retired to Peach Tree. Late in 1779 he and his wife, heading for southern France in an attempt to regain his health, boarded a ship bound for the West Indies that foundered. The couple died childless.

Thomas McKean

DELAWARE

Lawyer-jurist Thomas McKean stands out from the other
signers in a variety of ways. He was the last to pen his
signature to the Declaration, sometime after January 18,
1777. Although many Delegates simultaneously took part in
State affairs, none did so as extensively as McKean—and he
figured prominently in not one but two States, Delaware and
Pennsylvania. He was also the only signer to be the chief
executive of and concurrent officeholder in two States.
Furthermore, he numbered among those who also subscribed to
the Articles of Confederation, and he served a long tour in
Congress.

Of Scotch-Irish ancestry, McKean was born in 1734. He was the second son of a farmer-tavernkeeper who lived in New London Township, in Chester County, Pa., near the New Jersey and Delaware boundaries. After studying for 7 years at Rev. Francis Alison’s academy at nearby New London, McKean read law with a cousin at New Castle, Del. In 1754, at the age of 20, he was admitted to the Delaware bar and soon expanded his practice into Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

During the next two and a half decades, McKean occupied an array of appointive and elective offices in Delaware, some simultaneously: high sheriff of Kent County; militia captain; trustee of the loan office of New Castle County; customs collector and judge at New Castle; deputy attorney general of Sussex County; chief notary officer for the province; and clerk (1757–59) and member (1762–79) of the legislature, including the speakership of the lower house (1772–73). In 1762, he had also helped compile the colony’s laws.

McKean’s Revolutionary tendencies had first revealed themselves during the Stamp Act (1765) controversy. He was one of the most vociferous of the delegates at the Stamp Act Congress. In 1774, a year after the death of his wife, whom he had wed in 1763, he remarried and established his home in Philadelphia. He nevertheless retained membership in the Delaware legislature, which that same year elected him to the Continental Congress. Except for the period December 1776-January 1778, when conservative opposition unseated him, he stayed there until 1783 and served as President for a few months in 1781. He played a key role in the Revolutionary program, at the same time fostering the establishment of governments in Delaware and Pennsylvania.

Furthermore, it was McKean who was responsible for breaking the Delaware tie in the congressional vote for independence. On July 1, 1776, date of the first vote, the two Delaware representatives present, McKean and George Read, deadlocked. McKean, who had balloted affirmatively, dispatched an urgent message to the third Delegate, Caesar Rodney, who was at his home near Dover, Del., on military matters, to rush to Philadelphia. Rodney, making an 80-mile horseback ride through a storm, arrived just in time to swing Delaware over to independence on July 2.

During the hiatus in his congressional career, from late 1776 until early in 1778, McKean had remained in the lower house of the Delaware legislature, of which he became speaker once again. In that capacity, in September-November 1777, he temporarily replaced the president of Delaware, whom the British had captured. In vain they also pursued McKean, who was forced to move his family several times. Meantime, in July, he had been appointed chief justice of the Pennsylvania Superior Court, a position he was to hold for 22 years.

After 1783, when his congressional service ended, McKean focused his political activities in Pennsylvania. As a Federalist, in 1787 he was instrumental in that State’s ratification of the U.S. Constitution. In the State constitutional convention of 1789–90 he demonstrated mistrust of popular government. During the 1790’s, disenchanted with Federalist foreign policy, he switched to the Democratic-Republicans.

While Governor for three terms (1799–1808), McKean was the storm center of violent partisan warfare. Although he exercised strong leadership and advanced education and internal improvements, his imperiousness infuriated the Federalists, alienated many members of his own party, and resulted in an attempt to impeach him. Especially controversial were his rigid employment of the spoils system, including the appointment of friends and relatives, and his refusal to call a convention to revise the constitution. As a result, he won reelection only with the support of members of both parties who opposed the revision.

McKean lived out his life quietly in Philadelphia. He died in 1817 at the age of 83, survived by his second wife and four of the 11 children from his two marriages. He was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery. His substantial estate consisted of stocks, bonds, and huge tracts of land in Pennsylvania.

Arthur Middleton

SOUTH CAROLINA

Despite long years of study in England, exceptional wealth,
and social eminence, Arthur Middleton evolved into an avid
Revolutionary. Because of preoccupation with State matters,
particularly military defense, his attendance in Congress
was spasmodic. The British captured him during their attack
on Charleston and ravished his estate.

Middleton was born in 1742 at Middleton Place, the family estate on the Ashley River near Charleston. His father, who owned a score of plantations comprising 50,000 acres and employing some 800 slaves, ranked among the wealthiest and most politically active men in the province. While still a young boy, Arthur sailed to England for an education. He attended Hackney School, graduated from Cambridge University, and studied law in London. In 1764, the year after his return, he wed the woman who was to bear him nine children, and embarked on a career as justice of the peace and colonial legislator. In the years 1768–71, however, he and his wife made an extended tour of Europe.

Reelected the next year to the legislature, Middleton joined the Revolutionaries in their campaign against the Royal Governor. While sitting in the first and second provincial assemblies (1775–76), Middleton aided in organizing a night raid on public arms stores at Charleston before the Governor could seize them, raised money for armed resistance, recommended defense measures for Charleston Harbor, served on the council of safety, and urged tight enforcement of the Continental Association. An extremist, he advocated the tarring and feathering of Loyalists and confiscation of the estates of those who had fled the country.

In 1776, while engaged in helping draft a State constitution, Middleton was chosen to replace his more conservative father in the Continental Congress. Two years later, when young Middleton declined reelection, he also rejected an offer of the governorship of South Carolina by the legislature, which had enacted a new constitution that he opposed. In 1779 and 1780, though reelected to the Continental Congress, Middleton failed to attend, probably because of concern over the British threat to his State. While serving in the militia during the siege of Charleston in 1780, along with fellow signers Heyward and Rutledge he was captured by the British and imprisoned at St. Augustine, Fla., until July 1781.

Two months later, Middleton returned to Congress and served throughout 1782. He then retired to Middleton Place, which had been ravaged by the British. He rehabilitated it, resumed his life as a planter, sat intermittently in the State legislature, and accepted assignment as one of the original trustees of the College of Charleston. He died in 1787 at the age of 44. His remains rest at Middleton Place.

Lewis Morris

NEW YORK

Although Lewis Morris was a wealthy landowner who enjoyed
the prestige of the social elite, he represented the
patriot element in Tory-dominated New York. The British
sacked his estate during the war, and his three eldest sons
fought under Washington.

Born in 1726, Morris was the eldest son of the second lord of the vast manor of Morrisania, in Westchester (present Bronx) County, N.Y. Upon graduating from Yale College in 1746, he helped manage the estate. Three years later, he married, siring 10 children. In 1762, when his father died, he inherited Morrisania and became its third lord. About this time, he gained an interest in local politics, and in 1769 served a term in the colonial legislature.

As time went on, though residing in a pro-Loyalist county, Morris became increasingly critical of British policy. In 1775 he helped organize a meeting at White Plains that overcame strong opposition and chose county delegates, including Morris as chairman, to New York’s first provincial convention. It elected him to the Continental Congress (1775–77), where he specialized in military and Indian affairs. For most of 1776, he was absent from Philadelphia, serving as a brigadier general in the Westchester County militia. During the British invasion of New York that year, the redcoats ravaged Morrisania, and forced Morris’ family to flee.

When his career in Congress ended, Morris rose to the rank of major general in the militia and became a county judge (1777–78) and State senator (1777–81 and 1784–88). After war’s end in 1783, when he was able to return to Morrisania, he devoted much of his time to rehabilitating it. In 1784 he sat on the first board of regents of the University of New York. And 4 years later, at the State ratifying convention in Poughkeepsie, he strongly supported Alexander Hamilton’s successful drive for approval of the U.S. Constitution.

Morris died in 1798 at Morrisania at the age of 71. His grave is in the family vault in the yard of St. Ann’s Church in the Bronx.

Robbert Morris

PENNSYLVANIA

Merchant Robert Morris was a man of many distinctions.
One of the wealthiest individuals in the Colonies and an
economic wizard, he won the accolade “Financier of the
Revolution,” yet died penniless and forgotten. He and Roger
Sherman were the only signers of all three of the Nation’s
basic documents: the Declaration of Independence, Articles
of Confederation, and Constitution. Morris, who turned down
appointment as the first Secretary of the Treasury, also
served as a Senator in the First Congress.

Morris was born in or near Liverpool, England, in 1734. At the age of 13, he emigrated to Maryland to join his father, a tobacco exporter at Oxford, Md. After brief schooling at Philadelphia, the youth obtained employment with Thomas and Charles Willing’s well-known shipping firm. In 1754 he became a partner, and for almost four decades was one of the company’s directors as well as one of Philadelphia’s most influential citizens. Marrying in 1769 at the age of 35, he fathered five sons and two daughters.

During the Stamp Act turmoil in 1765, Morris had joined other merchants in protest, but not until the outbreak of hostilities a decade hence did he fully commit himself to the Revolution. In 1775 the Continental Congress contracted with his firm to import arms and ammunition; and he was elected to the Pennsylvania council of safety (1775–76), the committee of correspondence, the provincial assembly (1775–76), the State legislature (1776–78), and the Continental Congress (1775–78). In the latter body, on July 1, 1776, he voted against independence, which he personally considered premature, but the next day purposely absented himself to facilitate an affirmative ballot by his State.