The 2 documents that changed the world — and the men who signed them
Published at | Updated at
IDAHO FALLS – There was a “pensive and awful silence” as John Hancock took pen in hand and became the first of 56 delegates to sign the document Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the committee had drafted.
It was Aug. 2, 1776 and after months of debate, the Second Continental Congress now felt the magnitude of what they were doing.
The final draft of the document now known as the Declaration of Independence had been approved on July 4 after the written text had passed with a 12-0 vote two days earlier.
The words expressed what the colonists had been fighting for nearly a year and a half after the start of the Revolutionary War.
“We, therefore … solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved,” the document said. “With a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
Each delegate approached the table to sign the document in large, bold ink, knowing full well it was an act of treason against the British Crown.
It “was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants,” Benjamin Rush, a delegate from Pennsylvania, wrote of that historic moment.
Two hundred and fifty years later, the Declaration now sits in the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. Americans gather every July 4 to celebrate its existence and the accomplishments of the nation’s founding fathers.
RELATED | Remembering Idaho’s founding fathers and the controversial debate in the road to statehood
It would be another 11 years before the Constitution was ratified and the United States of America, with its system of laws and democratic republic form of government, was born.
Ratification of the Constitution
On Sept. 17, 1787, thirty-nine delegates, each with different backgrounds and beliefs, were preparing to sign a document they’d worked tirelessly to design.
It had been four long, intensive months of deliberation for the 55 delegates at Independence Hall for the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
Somehow, through an act of Providence, they were able to reach a compromise in establishing fundamental laws, the roles of America’s national government, and guarantee certain basic rights for its citizens.
On the final day of the convention, James Madison, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin and 35 others signed what we now know as the U.S. Constitution.
Franklin, the oldest and most respected delegate, had been responsible for quelling much of the opposition towards the document and helped the men to recognize it as the best compromise possible.
As the last of the delegates finished signing it, he looked at the image of the sun on George Washington’s chair.
“I have often … looked at that sun behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting,” Franklin is reported to have said. “At length, I have the happiness to know it is a rising and not a setting sun.”
As the convention came to a close and Franklin was leaving, someone shouted at him,
“Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?”
To which Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”