Young Joe Nixon, had he dared, would have tossed his little three-cornered hat in the air with a loud hurrah, but the gentlemen of the Congress he thought seemed strangely quiet about it all. He did not see what their wiser heads comprehended, that the vote of the Congress on that second of July meant years of struggle against a mighty power—sorrow and privation and, perhaps, after all, only defeat and, to the leaders, the disgraceful death of traitors. He saw only the glowing colors of victory and excitement as young folks are apt to, and as it is right they should.
And yet that very night, as the Congress adjourned, portly Mr. John Adams, with whom the lad was quite a favorite, noticed the ill-concealed exultation of the boy and laying a hand upon his head said to him: “A great day this, my young friend; a great day, is it not?�
“Oh, yes, sir,� replied young Joe with energy, “I’m so glad it passed, sir.�
“And so am I, my lad,� said Mr. Adams, with almost equal enthusiasm; “you are a bright and seemly little lad and will not soon forget this day, I’ll be bound. So mark my words, my lad. The second of July, 1776, will be the most memorable day in all the history of America. It will be celebrated ere you grow to manhood, and by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary festival, commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty, from one end of the continent to the other, from this time forward for evermore.�
“Yes, sir,� said Joe most respectfully. He did not comprehend all the meaning of Mr. Adams’s solemn words, but he was quite as confident as was that gentleman that it was a day the anniversaries of which would mean in future plenty of fun and jubilee.
Good Mother Nixon could get but little work from her Joe on the following morning. And though, in her peaceful Quaker way, she bade him beware of too much glorying in all the strife and warfare that seemed afoot, I rather suspect that even her placid face flushed with quiet enthusiasm as she besought her boy to remember that right was always right, and that it was nobler and manlier to boldly face whatever might betide than to be as were some men in their Quaker town who, so she said, “loved too much their money and their ease, and did but make conscience a convenience, instead of being sincerely and religiously scrupulous of bearing arms.� All of which meant that there were some craven folk in that day of manly protest against tyranny who, to save themselves from annoyance, pretended to be Quakers and “non-combatants,� when they were only skulking cowards. And all such every honest Quaker utterly detested.
But young Joe Nixon, too full of the excitement of the moment, paid but little regard to his good mother’s words, inasmuch as they did not apply to his case; and, hot and panting, fearful lest he should miss something new, dashed up to the State House and slipped in beside his friend the doorkeeper.
The Congress was already in session. Mr. Jefferson’s paper called the “Declaration respecting Independence� had been again taken up for consideration, and was being soberly debated, paragraph by paragraph.
Frequent repetitions had made Joe familiar with some of the phrases in this remarkable paper. Even his young heart beat high as he heard some of those ringing sentences—about all men being created equal and being “endowed with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness�; how that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it�; that “the history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations,� that “a prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people�; that “we must, therefore, hold the British people, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends�; that “we, the representatives of the United States of America in general Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent States�; and, lastly, that “for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.�
Joe, as I have said, had felt his young heart glow and his young pulse beat under the enthusiasm of these ringing declarations and all this debating and questioning appeared to him as fearfully slow and faint-hearted; he wondered why, since the Congress had already passed Mr. Lee’s resolution of Independence, they should so hesitate over Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence; and, quite frequently, he felt compelled to dash out into the hot and sunny street and work off his impatience in a wild and purposeless “go-as-you-please� around what was called “Mr. Rittenhouse’s Observatory� in the centre of the square.