** The delegates represented the several states as follows: New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton. Massachusetts: John Hancock, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Robert Treat Paine. Rhode Island: Elbridge Gerry, Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery. Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott. New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris. New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkin-son, John Hart, Abraham Clark. Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson. George Ross. Delaware: Cæsar Rodney, George Read, Thomas M'Kean. Maryland: Samuel Chase, Thomas Stone, William Paca, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton. Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton. North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn. South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Hayward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton. Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton.
*** On the same day, the Provincial Assembly of New York, then in session at White Plains, adopted a resolution expressive of their approbation of the measure, at the same time pledging their lives and fortunes in support of it. They also, by resolution, gave their delegates in Congress liberty to act in future, upon all public measures, in accordance with their best judgments. See Journals of Congress, ii., 250.
Walnut Street front of the State House, by Rittenhouse, many years before, for the purpose of observing a transit of Venus, John Nixon read the Declaration to a vast concourse of people gathered from the city and surrounding country. When the reading was finished, the king's arms over the seat of justice in the court room * were torn down and burned in the street; and at evening bonfires were lighted, the houses were illuminated, and it was not until a thunder-shower at midnight compelled the people to retire, that the sounds of gladness were hushed. Newport, New London, Williamsburgh, Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah, and other large towns, manifested their great joy; and from every inhabited hill and valley, town and hamlet of the old Thirteen States, arose the melodies of freedom, awakened by this great act of the people's proxies. Thousands of hearts in Europe, beating strongly with hope for the future, were deeply impressed. Bold men caught the symphony, and prolonged its glad harmony, even until it wooed sleeping slaves from their slumbers in the shadows of despot-