Signing Their Lives Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the Declaration of Independence

by Denise Kiernan, Joseph D'Agnese

Overview

An entertaining and essential collection of stories about the surprising and strange fates of the fifty-six Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence.

In the summer of 1776, a group of 56 men risked their lives and livelihood to defy King George III and sign the Declaration of Independence—yet how many of them do we remember? Signing Their Lives Away introduces readers to the eclectic group of statesmen, soldiers, slaveholders, and scoundrels who signed this historic document—and the many strange fates that awaited them. To wit:

• The Signer Who Was Poisoned By His Nephew
• The Signer Who Was Killed In a Duel
• The Signer Who Went to Prison
• The Signer Who Was Lost at Sea
• The Signer Who Achieved Fame as a Brewer

Complete with portraits of every signatory, Signing Their Lives Away provides an entertaining and enlightening narrative for students, history buffs, politicos, and Hamilton fans alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683691266
Publisher:	Quirk Publishing
Publication date:	04/30/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	54,995
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	11 - 17 Years

About the Author

Denise Kiernan is a journalist, producer, and the New York Times best-selling author of the narrative nonfiction books, The Last Castle and The Girls of Atomic City. Joseph D’Agnese is a journalist, author and ghostwriter who has written for both adults and children. With his wife, Denise Kiernan, he has authored several books on U.S. history, including Signing Their Lives Away, Signing Their Rights Away, and Stuff Every American Should Know. They live in North Carolina.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction:

In 1776, fifty-six men risked their lives to defy the British and sign their names to the Declaration of Independence, but most Americans can’t name more than a handful.
     There’s John Hancock, of course. And most people will correctly identify Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams. But then the guessing begins: George Washington? Paul Revere? Thomas Paine?
     The Declaration of Independence is America’s birth certificate, its most celebrated document, and a model for later declarations crafted by struggling peoples the world over. Its signers were men who drew upon the best within themselves in the face of horrifyingly difficult circumstances.
     They also lived remarkably interesting lives. True, most of them were privileged members of the elite upper classes, but quite a few were just the opposite. And all these men were impacted by death, suffering, and adversity. Many were orphaned; even more lost children and wives for no other reason than that, in those days, the flu was deadly. So was asthma. So was a bad bout of diarrhea. Yet all these men carried on.
     Over the years, we’ve read newspaper articles and junk e-mails seeking to quantify and magnify the sufferings of the signers. Every July, their miseries are dusted off and trotted out along with barbecues and flags. It’s a shame that this is the only time of year Americans think about these men. But it’s even more disheartening to discover that most of the stories are just plain false.
     In the end, it doesn’t matter that none of the signers were killed for affixing their name to the Declaration of Independence or that none died in battle. What does matter is that they came together one sweltering summer under distressing circumstances and, despite huge differences in opinion, backgrounds, and values, decided to band together and form a new nation. Doing so was, without a doubt, an enormous, life-threatening risk, and if the colonies had not been triumphan—and honestly, it’s astounding that they were—these men would have surely been, as they used to say back in the day, fitted with a “halter.”
     As the Declaration of Independence so eloquently states in its last line, they risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
     We think they are worth knowing.

A Clarification: The Real Independence Day

Happy Fourth of July! Wait, scratch that. We mean: Happy Second of July! Hold on, that’s still not right: Happy Second of August!
     John Adams thought that future generations of Americans should celebrate Independence Day “with Pomp and Parade, with Shows, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.” Adams omitted the burgers, hot dogs, and beer kegs, but his heart was in the right place. Oddly, when he wrote these words to his wife, Abigail, on July 3, 1776, he wasn’t talking about the Fourth of July. He was speaking of what he considered to be the nation’s true birthday: July 2, 1776.
     The events leading up to that date were as follows: On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed that the colonies break with England. Though the citizenry had debated this point for years, the thought of finally doing the deed shook the delegates. To calm themselves, they did what any political body would do: they postponed the vote for a month. During that time, a committee of five congressmen—Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman—was appointed to write the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson ended up doing most of the heavy lifting, with some editorial suggestions from Adams and Franklin.
     Tensions were running high by July 1, the day of an “unofficial” vote. Only nine colonies supported the break. South Carolina and Pennsylvania voted no, Delaware was deadlocked, and New York abstained. But when the official vote came on July 2, twelve of the thirteen colonies voted in favor. New York abstained again; they were waiting for permission that was held up in Ye Olde Trafficke but promised they would likely vote yea in a few days. It wasn’t exactly unanimous, but Congress went with it anyway. The motion carried. A new nation was born.
     For the next two days, Congress polished the language of the Declaration, and the document was officially adopted on July 4. But only two men—President of Congress John Hancock and his secretary, Charles Thomson—actually signed the document on that day. Shortly after, a local printer named John Dunlap set the words into type, and about 200 copies were distributed throughout the new thirteen states. When Americans saw the July 4 date emblazoned at the top of Dunlap’s broadside, they mistook the date of adoption for the day of the momentous vote. In fact, it wasn’t until August 2, 1776, that the majority of the signers affixed their signatures to a fancier version of the “unanimous” Declaration—the one displayed today at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
     By August 1776, thousands of colonists were already regarding July 4 as the most important date in their fledgling nation’s history. To avoid upsetting this pleasant fiction, Congress sneakily backdated some official records to show that all fifty-six men had signed on July 4, 1776. Of course, this introduced a bizarre anachronism into the final record: the men who were present in Philadelphia and who voted for independence on July 2 were not the same group of men who signed on August 2! By the time August 2 rolled around, some of the original voters were out of town, fighting in the war, helping their states write new constitutions—or they had been replaced by entirely new delegates. Moreover, not all the delegates could make it to the big affair on August 2, and so they signed when they could get around to it—one as late as 1781.
     But that doesn’t make for a tidy story, does it? No wonder Americans have wished one another a Happy Fourth of July ever since.

Table of Contents

Introduction 9

A Clarification: The Real Independence Day 11

I New Hampshire

Josiah Bartlett: The Signer Immortalized on The West Wing 16

William Whipple: The Signer Who Fought for Freedom-with His Slave 19

Matthew Thornton: The Signer Who Led "The Nation of New Hampshire" 23

II Massachusetts

John Adams: The Signer Everyone Loved to Hate 28

Samuel Adams: The Signer Whose Brewery Went Bust 33

Elbridge Gerry: The Signer Who Gave Us Gerrymandering 38

John Hancock: The Signer Who Signed First 42

Robert Treat Paine: The Signer Who Objected to, Well Everything 47

III Rhode Island

William Ellery: The Signer Who Is Two Degrees from Kevin Bacon 52

Stephen Hopkins: The Signer with the Worst Penmanship 56

IV Connecticut

Samuel Huntington: The Signer Who Became the First U.S. President-Sort Of 61

Roger Sherman: The Signer Who Signed Everything 65

William Williams: The Signer Who Was Certain He Would Hang 69

Oliver Wolcott: The Signer Who Melted King George's Heart (and Then Some) 73

V New York

Philip Livingston: The Prince of New York 78

William Floyd: The Signer Whose Home Was Turned into a Stable 82

Francis Lewis: The Signer Whose Wife Was Imprisoned 86

Lewis Morris: The Signer Buried in One of America's Poorest Neighborhoods 90

VI New Jersey

Abraham Clark: The Signer Whose Sons Were Imprisoned 95

John Hart: The Signer Who Slept in Caves 99

Francis Hopkinson: The Signer Who Designed, the U.S. Flag 103

Richard Stockton: The Only Signer Who Recanted the Declaration 109

John Witherspoon: The Signer Who Was Also a Minister 113

VII Pennsylvania

John Morton: The First Signer to Die 118

Benjamin Franklin: The Signer Known throughout the World 122

James Wilson: The Signer Who Went Broke on Shady Land Deals 131

Robert Morris: The Signer Who Financed the War-and Ended Up in Debtors' Prison 137

George Clymer: The Signer Whose Homes Were Targeted by the British 142

George Ross: The Signer Related to America's Most Famous Seamstress 146

Benjamin Rush: The Signer Who Loved to Gossip About Other Signers 150

George Taylor: The Signer Who Started Out as an Indentured Servant 155

James Smith: The Signer Who Was Coy About His Age 158

VIII Delaware

Caesar Rodney: Delaware's Famous Midnight Rider 163

George Read: The Only Signer Who Voted Against Independence 167

Thomas McKean: The Signer Who Waited Five Years to Sign 171

IX Maryland

Charles Carroll of Carrollton: The Last Signer to Die 177

Samuel Chase: The Signer Better Remembered as "Old Bacon Face" 183

William Paca: The Signer Who Dared to Acknowledge His Illegitimate Child 188

Thomas Stone: The Signer Who Died of a Broken Heart 192

X Virginia

Carter Braxton: The Signer Who Had Eighteen Children 196

Benjamin Harrison: The Signer Who Played Falstaff to Congress 201

Thomas Jefferson: The Signer Who Wrote the Declaration 206

Richard Henry Lee: The Six-Fingered Signer 213

Francis Lightfoot Lee: The Signer Who Lived in His Brother's Shadow 218

Thomas Nelson Jr.: The Signer Who Ordered Troops to Fire on His Own Home 222

George Wythe: The Signer Who Was Poisoned by His Nephew 227

XI North Carolina

Joseph Hewes: The Signer Who Worked Himself to Death 233

William Hooper: The Signer Who Feared Democracy 237

John Penn: The Signer Who Taught Himself How to Read and Write 241

XII South Carolina

Thomas Lynch Jr.: The Signer Buried at the Bottom of the Sea 246

Arthur Middleton: The Signer Also Known as Andrew Marvell 250

Edward Rutledge: The Signer Who Delayed Independence by a Month 254

Thomas Heyward Jr.: The Signer-Songwriter 258

XIII Georgia

Lyman Hall: The Signer Who Dragged Georgia into the Union 263

George Walton; The Signer Who Was Orphaned, Impoverished, Abused, Shot, and Imprisoned 267

Button Gwinnett: The Signer with the $700,000 Autograph 271

Appendixes

Text of the Declaration of Independence 277

Timeline 282

The Miscellany of Independence 285

Selected Bibliography 295

Index 301

Acknowledgments 304

Editorial Reviews

Featured history title in Reader’s Digest’s “Best of America” issue, 2009

“Kiernan and D’Agnese . . . succeed in stripping away preconceived notions of the more famous signers, and bringing out something of interest about the other, less well known ones.”—Library Journal

“Astonishing individual portraits of all the signers.”—School Library Journal, starred review

“Signing Their Lives Away is told in a brisk entertaining fashion.”—McClatchy Newspapers

From the Publisher

Kiernan and D'Agnese (coauthors, The Indiana Jones Handbook: The Complete Adventurers Guide) use a light and breezy tone to portray the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence. Using decidedly contemporary language, they succeed in stripping away preconceived notions of the more famous signers and bringing out something of interest about the other, less well known ones. The signers are grouped by state and presented in short profiles, none more than five pages long. The authors manage, nonetheless, to present a fairly complete picture of each man, focusing on a fact that seems to be the most interesting or unusual, often conveyed in the chapter's title, e.g., James Wilson of Pennsylvania is "The Signer Who Went Broke on Shady Land Deals." Each chapter is adorned with a facsimile of the signer's signature as well as a cameo portrait. In what can only be called a gimmick, the inside of the dust jacket has a replica of the Declaration. An appendix with the full text of the document, a time line, and "The Miscellany of Independence" follows the main text. VERDICT Although this book is entertaining, the tone and somewhat superficial treatment of each signer might make this work more suitable for YA readers, as well as for general readers new to the topic.—Jane B. Marino, Great Neck Lib., NY

—Jane B. Marino

Library Journal

Gr 5 Up—On that immortal "Second of July," in 1776, 56 men described by King George III as daring and desperate affixed their names to the most celebrated document in American history. Or did they? With this work, Kiernan and D'Agnese present readers with astonishing individual portraits of all the signers in an attempt both to dispel some of the mythology surrounding the document as well as to establish a place in the historical discourse for those men not named Jefferson, Hancock, Franklin, or Adams. The marvelously arranged work lends itself to either straightforward reading or skipping around. The table of contents, divided by state, sparks readers' interest from the very beginning with its "the Signer who…" format, a feature that also allows great accessibility for reports and assignments. An entertaining and effective narrative of about three to five pages per individual is presented, and the full text of the document, a brief time line, and a section on the "Miscellany of Independence" are appended. Readers will delight as they discover just which signer "was the first to die," "slept in caves," "had the worst penmanship," and "went broke on shady land deals."—Brian Odom, Pelham Public Library, AL

School Library Journal