Many minutes passed. The old bell-keeper was alone. “Ah!” groaned the old man, “he has forgotten me.” As the word was upon his lips a merry, ringing laugh broke on his ear. And there, among the crowd on the pavement, stood the blue-eyed boy, clapping his tiny hands while the breeze blew his flaxen hair all about his face, and, swelling his little chest, he raised himself on tiptoe, and shouted the single word, “Ring!”
Do you see that old man’s eye fire? Do you see that arm so suddenly bared to the shoulder? Do you see that withered hand grasping the iron tongue of the bell? That old man is young again. His veins are filling with a new life. Backward and forward, with sturdy strokes, he swings the tongue. The bell peals out; the crowds in the street hear it, and burst forth in one long shout. Old Delaware hears it, and gives it back on the cheers of her thousand sailors. The city hears it, and starts up from desk and workshop, as if an earthquake had spoken.
Under that very bell, pealing out at noonday, in an old hall, fifty-six traders, farmers and mechanics had assembled to break the shackles of the world. The committee, who had been out all night, are about to appear. At last the door opens, and they advance to the front. The parchment is laid on the table. Shall it be signed or not? Then ensues a high and stormy debate. Then the faint-hearted cringe in corners. Then Thomas Jefferson speaks his few bold words, and John Adams pours out his whole soul.
Still there is a doubt; and that pale-faced man, rising in one corner, speaks out something about “axes, scaffolds, and a gibbet.” A tall, slender man rises, and his dark eye burns, while his words ring through the halls: “Gibbets! They may stretch our necks on every scaffold in the land. They may turn every rock into a gibbet, every tree into a gallows; and yet the words written on that parchment can never die. They may pour out our blood on a thousand altars, and yet, from every drop that dyes the axe, or drips on the sawdust of the block, a new martyr to freedom will spring into existence. What! are there shrinking hearts and faltering voices here, when the very dead upon our battle-fields arise and call upon us to sign that parchment, or be accursed forever?
“Sign! if the next moment the gibbet’s rope is around your neck. Sign! if the next moment this hall rings with the echo of the falling axe. Sign! by all your hopes in life or death, as husbands, as fathers, as men! Sign your names to that parchment.
“Yes! were my soul trembling on the verge of eternity; were this voice choking in the last struggle, I would still, with the last impulse of that soul, with the last gasp of that voice, implore you to remember this truth: God has given America to the free. Yes! as I sink down in the gloomy shadow of the grave, with my last breath I would beg of you sign that parchment.”
SUPPOSED SPEECH OF JOHN ADAMS
BY DANIEL WEBSTER
Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we aimed not at independence. But there is a Divinity which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us to arms; and, blinded to her own interest and our good she has obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why, then, should we defer the Declaration? Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with England, which shall leave neither safety to the country and its liberties, nor safety to his life and his own honor? Are you not, sir, who sit in that chair, is not he, our venerable colleague near you, are you not both already the proscribed and predestined objects of punishment and of vengeance? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are you, what can you be, while the power of England remains, but outlaws?
If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry on or give up the war? Do we mean to submit to the measures of Parliament, Boston Port-Bill and all? Do we mean to submit, and consent that we ourselves shall be ground to powder, and our country and its rights, trodden down in the dust? I know we do not mean to submit. We never shall submit. Do we mean to violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into by men, that plighting before God, of our sacred honor to Washington, when, putting him forth to incur the dangers of war, as well as the political hazards of the times, we promised to adhere to him, in every extremity, with our fortunes and our lives? I know there is not a man here, who would not rather see a general conflagration sweep over the land, or an earthquake sink it, than one jot or tittle of that plighted faith fall to the ground. For myself, having, twelve months ago, in this place, moved you, that George Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised, or to be raised, for defense of American liberty, may my right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I hesitate or waver in the support I give him.