Coach4aday blog posts are ideas that are shared to help people grow and learn.
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Each year the blog takes on a different focus. In 2019 the goal is for each post to bring you the reader a lesson, quote, message, or story that can help you grow.
Declaration
I was curious about the signers of the DECLARATION of Independence and began to wonder about the names on that document. Of course I know the obvious ones John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. What I wasn’t sure of us was how many names were on the document.
I also didn’t know for sure was who actually signed it from New Jersey, South Carolina, and North Carolina the three states where I have lived. I did some research and here is what I found.
There were 56 men who signed the DECLARATION and it occurred thru a process. Eight of the 56 were from Britain and Ireland
The names who signed the Declaration from the 3 states I have lived in:
New Jersey included:
Abraham Clark, Francis Hopkinson, John Witherspoon, John Hart, and Richard Stockton
North Carolina included:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, and John Penn
South Carolina included:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Lynch Jr, Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Heyward Jr
The Process
In the spring of 1776 two colonies passed resolutions. North Carolina on April 12, 1776 and Virginia on May 15, 1776 voted to declare sovereign independence from Great Britain.
For my North Carolina friends you will clearly see April 12, 1776 on the North Carolina flag. This date marks the occurrence of a resolution commonly called the “Halifax Resolves”.
The date of May 20, 1775 on NC State Flag is the date that citizens of Mecklenburg County NC declared independence from Britain.
The process continued in Congress when on June 10, 1776 the body decided to postpone for three weeks whether to vote on North Carolina and Virginia’s resolutions.
Additionally Congress decided to appoint a “Committee of Five” to draft a broadside statement declaring to the world that America was not part of Great Britain. The five men chosen were Thomas Jefferson-Virginia, John Adams-Mass., Roger Sherman-Conn., Benjamin Franklin-Penn., and Robert Livingston-NY.
On July 1, 1776 a debate raged on all day about the virtues of independence and the document composed by the Committee of Five. Finally at the end of the day the “Committee of the Whole” voted 9–2 with two abstention to go forward with Independence presented by the Committee of Five.
The Committee of the Whole was in essence one large committee representing congress. One vote for each of the 13 colonies was included on that committee. Congress had a majority and just needed to hammer out the details with the document. The entire Congress heard the report from the Committee of the Whole and as body Congress voted for Independence on July 2.
The Committee of the Whole went thru a second reading of the Declaration on July 2nd and recessed for the day. On Wednesday, July 3, the Committee of the Whole gave the Declaration a third reading and commenced scrutiny of the precise wording of the proposed text. Two passages in the Committee of Five’s draft were rejected by the Committee of the Whole. One was a critical reference to the English people and the other was a denunciation of the slave trade and of slavery itself.
The text of the Declaration was otherwise accepted without any other major changes. As John Adams recalled many years later, this work of editing the proposed text was largely completed by the time of adjournment on July 3. However, the text’s formal adoption was deferred until the following morning, when the Congress voted its agreement during the late morning of July 4.
The draft document as adopted was then referred back to the Committee of Five in order to prepare a “fair copy,” this being the redrafted-as-corrected document prepared for delivery to the broadside printer, John Dunlap. And so the Committee of Five convened in the early evening of Thursday July 4 to complete its task.
In America we get frustrated by politics and have a tendency to romanticized the past. The truth of the matter we had 56 Americans who followed a process to make a DECLARATION. That DECLARATION has impacted the entire world.
Happy Birthday America!
coach4aday 
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