assigned its reasons. Had this great proclamation turned out to be a confused or ill-written document, it would never have eclipsed in fame the original Resolution, which certainly had no such weak side. But this danger was well averted, for the Declaration was to be drawn up by Jefferson, unsurpassed in his time for power of expression. He accordingly framed it; Franklin and Adams suggested a few verbal amendments;

Sherman and Livingston had none to offer; and the document stood ready to be reported to the Congress.

Some of those who visit Philadelphia may feel an interest in knowing that the "title-deed of our liberties," as Webster called it, was written in "a new brick house out in the fields" -a house still standing, at the south-west corner of Market and Seventh streets, less than a quarter of a mile from Independence Square. Jefferson had there rented a parlor and

bedroom, ready furnished, on the second floor, for thirty-five shillings a week; and he wrote the Declaration in this parlor, upon a little writing-desk, three inches high, which still exists. In that modest room we may fancy Franklin and Adams listening critically, Sherman and Livingston approvingly, to what was for them simply the report of a committee. Jefferson had written it, we are told, without the aid of a single book; he was merely putting into more systematic form a series of points long familiar; and Parton may be right in the opinion that the writer was not conscious of any very strenuous exercise of his faculties, or of any very eminent service done.

We

Nothing is so difficult as to transport ourselves to the actual mood of mind in which great historic acts were performed, or in which their actors habitually dwelt. Thus, on the seventh day of that July, John Adams wrote to his wife a description of the condition of our army, so thrilling and harrowing that it was, as he says, enough to fill one with horror. fancy him spending that day in sackcloth and ashes; but there follows on the same page another letter, written to the same wife on the same day-a long letter devoted solely to a discourse on the varieties of English style, in which he urges upon her a careful reading of Rollin's "Belles-lettres" and the Epistles of Pliny the Younger. Yet any one who has ever taken part in difficult or dangerous actions can understand the immense relief derived from that half hour's relapse into "the still air of delightful studies." And it is probable that Jefferson and his companions, even while discussing the title-deed of our liberties, may have let their talk stray over a hundred collateral themes as remote from the immediate task as were Pliny and Rollin.

During three days-the second, third, and fourth of Julythe Declaration was debated in the Congress. The most vivid historic glimpse of that debate is in Franklin's consolatory anecdote, told to Jefferson, touching John Thompson, the hatter.

The amendments adopted by Congress have always been accounted as improvements, because tending in the direction of conciseness and simplicity, though the loss of that stern condemnation of the slave-trade-"a piratical warfare against human

nature itself "-has always been regretted. The amended document was finally adopted, like the Virginia resolution, by the vote of twelve colonies, New York still abstaining. If Thomas McKean's reminiscences at eighty can be trusted, it cost another effort to secure this strong vote, and Cæsar Rodney had again

McKean

to be sent for to secure the Delaware delegation. says, in a letter written in 1814 to John Adams, "I sent an express for Cæsar Rodney to Dover, in the county of Kent, in Delaware, at my private expense, whom I met at the Statehouse door on the 4th of July, in his boots; he resided eighty miles from the city, and just arrived as Congress met." Jefferson has, however, thrown much doubt over these octogenarian recollections by McKean, and thinks that he confounded the different votes together. There is little doubt that this hurried night-ride by Rodney was in preparation for the Second of July, not the Fourth, and that the vote on the Fourth went quietly through.

But the Declaration, being adopted, was next to be signed; and here again we come upon an equally great contradiction in testimony. This same Thomas McKean wrote in 1814 to exPresident Adams, speaking of the Declaration of Independence, "No man signed it on that day"-namely, July 4, 1776. Jefferson, on the other hand, writing some years later, thought that Mr. McKean's memory had deceived him, Jefferson himself asserting, from his early notes, that "the Declaration was reported by the Committee, agreed to by the House, and signed by every member present except Mr. Dickinson." But Jefferson, who was also an octogenarian, seems to have forgotten the subsequent signing of the Declaration on parchment, until it was recalled to his memory, as he states, a few years later. If there was a previous signing of a written document, the manuscript itself has long since disappeared, and the accepted historic opinion is that both these venerable witnesses were mistaken; that the original Declaration was signed only by the president and secretary, John Hancock and Charles Thomson, and that the general signing of the parchment copy took place on August 2d. It is probable, at least, that fifty-four of the fifty-. six names were appended on that day, and that it was afterwards signed by Thornton, of New Hampshire, who was not

then a member, and by McKean, who was then temporarily

absent.

Jefferson used to relate, "with much merriment," says Parton, that the final signing of the Declaration was hastened by a very trivial circumstance. Near the hall was a large stable, whence the flies issued in legions. Gentlemen were in those days peculiarly sensitive to such discomforts by reason of silk

stockings; and when this annoyance, superadded to the summer heat of Philadelphia, had become intolerable, they hastened to bring the business to a conclusion. This may equally well refer, however, to the original vote; flies are flies, whether in July or August.

American tradition has clung to the phrases assigned to the