John
Hancock was in the chairman's seat. In the room overhead the legislature
of Pennsylvania was in session. Out of doors, in the public squares and
grounds adjacent, troops were drilling, as they had been every day for
months past, and a great force of men was at work fortifying the
Delaware below the city.
This day had been set apart for the final and decisive consideration of
Independence. The draft of the Declaration, as written by Mr. Jefferson,
had been handed in three days before, and lay upon the table--perhaps
visibly so, as well as in a parliamentary sense.
The question had been discussed, and discussed again, and again
discussed, until it seemed to the more ardent minds a waste of breath to
argue it further; but it requires time, much time, as well as great
patience, to bring a representative body to the point of deciding
irrevocably a matter so momentous, involving their own and their
country's destiny.
_Ought_ we to sever the tie which binds us to the mother country?
That was not so very difficult to answer; but there was another
question: _Can_ we? Britain is mighty, and what are we? Thirteen
colonies of farmers, with little money, no allies, no saltpetre even,
and all the Indians open to British gold and British rum.
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