Picture in your mind, if you can:
A hot summer day, and government agents are all around the town. They're searching for basically one person. They've been given the word that if they find this person, to kill him on the spot.
But the men were determined to meet. They covered their faces with hats, they looked down, they walked through alley ways and streets and slipped into the meeting room.
There was no air conditioning and no fans and they locked the door. It was 75 degrees that day; that hot summer day; the only air was in the top of the room where there was a vent, and the horse flies were thick, and the noise you heard were the men swatting the bugs as they tried to meet.
A redhead came in and through the papers down and they had a discussion about the words that words that he had labored over long and into the night. The man that had the bounty on him talked; other men talked. They took his papers and his words and they started slashing. They made 86 corrections, they eliminated 500 words until finally there were 1,337 words.
The day was July 4th , 1776; 223 years ago.
The men didn't sign the paper that day as many people believe. But they came back and put their signatures on August the 2nd. Each man, when they took the pen, quietly looked at each other's recorded because they knew that what they were about to sign was their death warrant because the word was already out. Treason was being committed against the King and soldiers were already hunting for these men.
54 of the 56 signers had families. 3 of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were in their 20's, 15 of them were in their 30's, the rest were over 40.
John Hancock was the man that day who had a bounty on his head of £500.
He was the first, as we all remember as school kids, to sign and he signed his name extra large, and his comments were, "I hope the King can read this without his bifocals, and if he does, maybe he'll double the reward on my head."
Because, folks, what they were doing would lead to their death if they were caught.
One of the men who signed was the designer of the American Flag, not Betsy Ross as many people think.
One of the men who signed had his home destroyed; they captured his wife; they brutally beat her, and she lost her life because he signed a piece of paper.
John Hart, from New Jersey, signed the paper and left and the Hessian soldiers were looking for him. They put a stakeout on his home. After several months, word came that his wife was dying and he had to get back to his wife and his 13 kids. And as he approached the house, the soldiers were waiting. But he escaped them, and for months he lived in caves and in the forest, anxiously searching for word of his wife and his children. When finally one night he slipped back to his homestead to find, not a wife, but a grave; to find from neighbors that they had taken his 13 children and he would never see them for the rest of his life.
You see, when these men signed that piece of paper, containing 1,337 words, it wasn't a joke, it wasn't a lark. It was for freedom. They gave it all up.
Robert Morris reached into his bank account and paid for 150 ships. They were sunk at sea and he was never paid back.
Because, you see, they pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.
Thomas Nelson had a beautiful home, the British soldiers arrived and he had to flee for his life. He took to the seas in the ships.
Cornwallace took over his home and used it as Headquarters.
The men were firing on the property, but no one would fire at the house. He said, "Why won't you shoot at the house?"
They said, "Sir, out of respect for you. That's your homestead."
He said, "Give me the guns."
He fired the cannon that destroyed his home because they pledged everything for freedom for me and you.
Abraham Clark had two sons who fought for the Revolution; two sons who were captured by the British. When the British recognized their last names, they figured out quickly who their father was and they took them to the ship in the New York harbor called the Jersey. This ship was no ordinary ship. 11,000 Americans died on that boat. When the Revolutionary War was almost over, the Americans were winning; it was all over and the British tried one last thing.
They said, "Mr. Abraham Clark, if you will renounce America and claim your allegiance to the King, we will let your two sons live. But, if you don't renounce America, we'll kill your boys."
Well the war was over, we were winning, it was a matter of a couple of months, it was over, but Abraham Clark would not renounce this country and they took his boys.You see, the 56 people who signed the 1,337 words were men of honor who risked it all.