Our Sacred Honor

Be it a theme, motif, or reoccurring nightmare that I can’t escape from - I write often of people who did not have to do what they did, but did anyway. The world was built and progressed by such men, who personally accepted responsibility for preventing evil, rising to defeat the challenges that their times demanded of them. The world is better as a result of their courage and sacrifice.

When discussing history, it is important to remind ourselves that each event need not have ended how it did. Living in the future, we have the luxury of knowing each outcome - that everything turned out fine or better than fine - but the people of each present hour did not know this. In the same way that we, today, cannot predict with full confidence that America will weather our storms - the people of each past could not say the same. When times were getting tough, the heroes of the past did, thankfully, do something about it, to tilt the odds in their favor and in favor of a more prosperous future for their children and the yet unborn.

The time will come when we will have to do something about it, to seize the steering wheel and fight the storms to get our ship back on course. We must realize that these moments will not occur in grand, dramatic fashion. The angel Gabriel will not appear to you and reveal that you are the Chosen One, that Providence has a responsibility for you to accept. The moment will occur within yourself as an internally-made decision, after painstakingly thorough thought has ceaselessly antagonized your conscience - like Huckleberry Finn refusing to return Jim to slavery despite the world’s wishes, and deciding for himself “all right, then, I’ll go to hell.”

Freedom is not an endless paradise of boundless comfort and ease. Freedom is a choice such as this. Freedom is man deciding what he will and won’t allow. Each July 4th, we celebrate the first 56 men - and many more - who made this decision, forever stamping the great American air with their presence, signing the sky with their lifeblood, and ensuring us all the privileges and liberties that we presently enjoy.

There was a man named Paul Harvey who served as the voice of America. From 1951 to 2008, Harvey was a radio broadcaster for ABC News Radio, hosting weekly segments where he tells The Rest of The Story. Among his most-renowned broadcasts was an answer to the question of what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence. I recommend listening to the 8-minute speech here - an obscure YouTuber’s version that highlights both Harvey’s sprawling trans-Atlantic all-American oratory, as well as includes liberty bells and fiddles and marching music to dramatically direct the storyline.

These were rich men who had everything to lose and nothing to gain from a war for independence, except for just that - independence. These were men who could have lived the rest of life in physical ease and abundance and never have been judged or reprimanded for pursuing their own enjoyment. These were men who took an idea and built it into a country, and knew that preserving their own sacred honor was more lasting and meaningful than preserving their earthly comforts.

I transcribed the story here whether you read or follow along. Below are Harvey’s words:

You may not be able to quote one line from the Declaration of Independence at this moment. Henceforth, you’ll always be able to quote at least one line. It’s in the last paragraph where you will recall when I remind you it says ‘we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.’

In the Pennsylvania State House that’s now called Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the best men from each of the colonies got down together. This was a very fortunate hour in our nation’s history - one of those rare occasions in the lives of men when we had greatness to spare. These were men of means - well-educated - twenty-four of ‘em were lawyers and jurists. Nine were farmers, owners of large plantations. On June 11th, a committee sat down to draw up a Declaration of Independence, we were gonna tell the British fatherland ‘no more rule by redcoats.’ Below the dam of ruthless foreign rule, a stream of freedom was running shallow and muddy, and we were gonna light the fuse to dynamite that dam. This pact, as Burke later put it, was a partnership between the living and the dead, and the yet unborn.

There was no bigotry, there was no demagoguery in this group. All had shared hardship. Jefferson finished the draft of the document in seventeen days. Congress adopted it in July and so much is familiar history, but now, King George III had denounced all rebels in America as traitors - punishment for treason was hanging. The names now so familiar to you from the several signatures on that Declaration of Independence, the names were kept secret for six months, for each knew the full meaning of that magnificent last paragraph in which his signature pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor.

56 men placed their names beneath that pledge; 56 men knew when they signed that they were risking everything. They knew if they won the fight, the best they could expect would be years of hardship in a struggling nation, and if they lost, they’d face a hangman’s rope. But they signed the pledge. And here is the documented faith of that gallant 56.

Carter Braxton of Virginia, wealthy planter, trader saw his ships swept from the seas. To pay his debt, he lost his home and all his properties, and died in rags.

Thomas Lynch Jr. who signed that pledge was a third-generation rice-grower, aristocrat, large plantation owner. After he signed, his health failed; his wife and he set out for France to regain his failing health. Their ship never got to France, was never heard from again.

Thomas McKean of Delaware was so harassed by the enemy that he was forced to move his family five times in five months. He served in Congress without pay, his family in poverty and in hiding.

Vandals looted the properties of Ellery and Clymer and Hall and Gwinnett and Walton and Heyward and Rutledge and Middleton.

Thomas Nelson Jr. of Virginia raised two million dollars on his own signature to provision our allies, the French fleet. After the war he personally paid back the loan, wiped out his entire estate, and he was never reimbursed by his government. In the final battle for Yorktown, he - Nelson - urged General Washington to fire on his - Nelson’s - own home, which was occupied by Cornwallis. It was destroyed. Thomas Nelson Jr. had pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor.

The Hessians seized the home of Francis Hopkinson of New Jersey. Francis Lewis had his home and everything destroyed, his wife imprisoned. He died within a few months. Fred Stockton who signed that Declaration was captured, mistreated, his health broken to the extent that he died at 51. His estate was pillaged. Thomas Heyward Jr. was captured when Charleston fell.

John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside while she was dying. Their 13 children fled in all directions for their lives. His fields and gristmill were laid waste. For more than a year, he lived in forests and caves and returned home after the war to find his wife dead, his children gone, his properties gone, and he died a few weeks later of exhaustion and a broken heart.

Lewis Morris saw his land destroyed, his family scattered. Philip Livingston died within a few months from the hardship of the war. John Hancock history remembers best due to a quirk of fate rather than anything he stood for - that great, sweeping signature attesting to his vanity towers over the others, one of the wealthiest men in New England. And yet, he stood outside Boston one terrible night of the war, and he said ‘burn Boston, though it makes John Hancock a beggar, if the public good requires it.’ So he, too, lived up to the pledge.

Of the 56, few were long to survive. Five were captured by the British and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes from Rhode Island to Charleston sacked, looted, occupied by the enemy, or burned. Two lost their sons in the army; one had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 died in the war from hardship or from its more merciful bullet.

I don’t know what impression you had had of the men who met that summer in Philadelphia, but I think it’s important that we remember this about them. They were not poor men. They were not wild-eyed pirates. These were men of means, they were rich men most of them, and had enjoyed much ease and luxury in their personal living. Not hungry men, certainly not terrorists, not irresponsible malcontents, not fanatical incendiaries. These men were prosperous men, wealthy landowners, they were substantially secure in their prosperity, they had everything to lose. But they considered liberty - and this is as much as I should say of it - they had liberty is so much more important than security, that they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

And they fulfilled their pledge. They paid the price. And freedom was born.

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