“Now, gentlemen, we must all hang together, or we shall hang separately.”
The Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776; but not all the members of the Continental Congress signed it on that day. A great many signed at later dates.
The old bell that rang out this message of liberty is now kept as an almost sacred relic in Independence Hall. When the Pennsylvanians were building their State edifice they ordered a bell from England. But when it arrived they found that it had lost its voice and had to be recast. A quotation was inscribed on the new bell, which, though chosen a quarter of a century in advance of the Declaration of Independence, showed the direction in which the thoughts of all the people of America were even then turning—“Proclaim Liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” This quotation was taken from the tenth verse of the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus.
The bell was afterward used on various occasions of national importance; but was cracked in 1835 in tolling for the funeral of Chief Justice Marshall, and since 1843 has never been sounded.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 32, SERIAL No. 32
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
THE ALAMO
HISTORIC SPOTS OF AMERICA
The Alamo
FIVE