by Owen J. Hurd
After the Declaration of Independence
Based on some of the stories that have been passed down through the generations, it’s not difficult to imagine the signing of the Declaration of Independence as a jovial, backslapping affair, complete with good-natured jibes at the expense of King George III. Too bad the most commonly repeated anecdotes are most likely apocryphal. John Hancock probably didn’t pen an especially large signature so that King George could read it without his spectacles, and Ben Franklin probably didn’t remark, “We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
This second quote, though it has since taken on an air of jaunty defiance, hints at the underlying anxiety that must have been weighing on the minds of the men who signed their names to this printed attack on English authority. Another signer, William Williams of Connecticut, did in fact predict—if less poetically—that if the Americans lost the War of Independence all the signers would most likely be executed.
Despite the potential dangers, the initial public reactions to the signing were joyous and raucous. Two hundred copies of the declaration were printed and distributed throughout the colonies. John Hancock delivered one copy to General Washington in New York, where he read it aloud to his troops, inciting a riotous celebration. The unruly colonists upended a gilded, lead statue of George III, cutting off its head and placing it on a wooden pike. A mere month later, however, the realities of warfare quickly squelched any rejoicing. The British attacked with a force of thirty-two thousand Redcoats, trouncing Washington at the Battle of Long Island.
Many of the signers continued their service to the country as members of the Continental Congress, but several of them also actively participated in the war effort. The grandiose John Hancock thought he—not George Washington—should be in charge of the Continental Army. In recognition of Hancock’s lack of military experience, Congress overruled him, and Hancock instead served as president of Congress through 1777.
Connecticut signer Oliver Wolcott led several militias in the Battle of Saratoga, a pivotal victory for the Americans. His troops were well supplied with ammunition, as Wolcott brought with him some of the forty thousand bullets his enterprising family had fashioned from the remains of King George’s fallen statue.
Three signers from South Carolina, Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward Jr., and Arthur Middleton, were captured by British troops advancing into Charleston. They spent a year imprisoned at Fort St. Marks in St. Augustine, Florida, before being released as part of a prisoner swap in July 1781.
George Walton, a signer from Georgia, fought in several battles as a colonel in the militia. During the siege of Savannah, a gunshot felled him from his horse, and he was captured. The British eventually exchanged him for a naval captain held prisoner by the Americans.
The military career of Walton’s colleague from Georgia, Button Gwinnett, was disastrous by comparison. It was bad enough that he was passed over for the position of general in charge of the Continental Army’s Georgia brigades. Even worse, the honor went to his longstanding political rival, Lachlan McIntosh. From that point on, Gwinnett did everything in his power to undermine McIntosh’s authority. Later, as governor of Georgia, which also carried with it the title of commander in chief of Georgia, Gwinnett performed an end-around on McIntosh and organized his own invasion of British strongholds in Florida. The poorly planned expedition self-destructed, leading to formal charges, but Gwinnett was found not guilty of any wrongdoing.
His problems were not over, however. McIntosh publicly insulted Gwinnett for the fiasco, calling him a “scoundrel and a lying rascal.” Following the antiquated customs of the day, Gwinnett challenged McIntosh to a duel: pistols at twelve feet. The two pistols fired almost simultaneously, each man sustaining a wound to the leg. McIntosh would recover, but three days later Gwinnett died of gangrene, on May 19, 1777.
At least one signer enjoyed an illustrious military career. Thomas Nelson Jr. of Virginia led troops in several battles, most notably at Yorktown where British general Charles Cornwallis finally surrendered to the American forces.
Not all of the signers were itching to get into the thick of the battle, but danger still found some of them. Two future presidents, John Adams and his son John Quincy, were sailing for France in 1778, when their ship was attacked by the British navy. Fortunately for them—and the nation—father and son both managed to dodge the cannonballs lobbed their way.
New Jersey signer John Stockton was home helping his family escape approaching British regiments when he was captured and imprisoned. He was released, allegedly after signing a declaration of allegiance to the king, and returned home, where he died of cancer in 1781. Stockton’s colleague from New Jersey, John Hart, was also hounded by the advancing British forces. On the lam for about a month, the sixty-five-year-old recent widower sought shelter in caves, other times spending winter nights in open fields.
Many of the signers also suffered crippling financial losses. Hancock came out of the war relatively unscathed, but other wealthy signers lost their fortunes. One of the most generous benefactors to the revolutionary cause was Robert Morris from Pennsylvania. He donated an estimated $1 million to the fledgling American government and worked hard to drum up donations from wealthy friends and business associates. It paid off for the nation, but not for Morris. The government never paid him back. In fact, years later, when Morris’s land speculation went bust, he was thrown in debtors’ prison.
Virginia signer and mentor to Thomas Jefferson, George Wythe survived the Revolutionary War but would later fall victim to a devious plot. The aged lawyer was living in Virginia, along with two former slaves that he had not only freed but also designated as heirs to his estate. He later added his nineteen-year-old grandnephew George Wythe Sweeney to his list of heirs and stipulated that Sweeney would stand to inherit the entire estate should he survive the two former slaves. Shortly thereafter, Wythe and his two housemates fell simultaneously ill. One of Wythe’s former slaves died, the other recovered and claimed she saw Sweeney tampering with the household coffee-pot on the morning everyone became ill. Wythe lived just long enough to change his last will and testament, stripping Sweeney of any inheritance. Sweeney went free, however, because the law at that time prohibited the testimony of a black witness against a white defendant. As a principal author of Virginia’s constitution, Wythe ironically wrote the laws that liberated his own murderer.
In the years after the war, many of the signers went on to serve as governors or as representatives in house and federal legislatures. Several also played leading roles in developing the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution. Roger Sherman of Connecticut is the only one to also sign the Articles of Association, Articles of Confederation, and the U.S. Constitution.
The three signers who served their countries in the most significant ways were of course Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. Franklin’s contribution to the war effort may have been equal to even George Washington’s in that without him the French may have never sided with the Americans, providing much needed money, arms, and troops.
Adams and Jefferson, who had cooperated so gracefully in the process of drafting and revising the Declaration of Independence, later became bitter political rivals. The two signers faced off in the first presidential election after George Washington’s two terms. Adams won, making Jefferson, the runner-up, vice president. (This was before the modern system of political parties and presidential tickets.) The two differed drastically in their notions of governmental powers—Adams the Federalist believing in a stronger federal government and Jefferson the Republican in favor of states’ rights.
By 1800 the election rules had changed, and Adams ran alongside his vice presidential candidate, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. The Federalists lost to Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr. Adams skipped the inauguration, and the two signers fell out of contact for years, until a détente was brokered in 1812 by fellow signer Benjamin Rush (Pennsylva
nia). For the next fourteen years, Adams and Jefferson conducted a warm and collegial correspondence. Avoiding politics for the most part, they discussed religion, government, and philosophy. One of the last letters Jefferson wrote Adams was to congratulate him for the election of John Quincy Adams as the sixth president of the United States of America.
Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after the Continental Congress voted to affirm a revised Declaration of Independence. Adams died several hours later on the same day. Ignorant of Jefferson’s death, his last words were, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”
LOOSE ENDS
One of President Thomas Jefferson’s most significant post-Declaration accomplishments was his stewardship of the Louisiana Purchase and the subsequent voyage of discovery led by Lewis and Clark. To prepare his former secretary Meriwether Lewis for his exploratory expedition of the newly acquired western lands and beyond, Jefferson sent him to a number of experts in botany, cartography, and stellar navigation. Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer from Pennsylvania, was called on to train Lewis in medical matters, providing advice on how to treat common ailments and injuries. Rush also supplied Lewis with thousands of his patented constipation relief pills, sometimes called Dr. Rush’s Thunderbolts for the speed and strength of their effectiveness.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE WESTERN FRONTIER
THE story of America’s western frontier is studded with adventure and peril, with riches found and lost. But the lives lived after the well-known exploits were sometimes more treacherous—at least for several members of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery and for those contemporaries of George Armstrong Custer who managed to avoid the fate of his last stand.
Lewis and Clark Adjust to Domestic Life
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark are revered for their exploration of North America’s western regions. As well they should be, for it was in many ways a miraculous accomplishment, a nearly eight-thousand-mile journey from St. Louis, then civilization’s westernmost outpost, through uncharted lands and across astoundingly rugged mountain terrain, to the Pacific Ocean. Though they failed to achieve their primary mission—to find that ever-elusive all-water route to the Pacific—it was of course through no fault of their own. The existence of a fabled Northwest Passage was finally debunked, at least as far as the North American interior was concerned.
They did, however, manage to establish relations with Native Americans, mostly friendly, setting the stage for a burgeoning fur trade. They discovered and recorded many unknown animal and plant species. They also succeeded in coming back alive and well. Only one man died during the expedition, and the cause of death was a burst appendix, a condition that would have killed Charles Floyd even with the best medical care available in 1804. Almost to a man, the members of the Corps of Discovery acted bravely and nobly, enduring harsh conditions, hunger, and uncertainty.
The mission’s success can largely be attributed to the leadership provided by the captain duo of Lewis and Clark, who ably maintained discipline, navigated dangers, and negotiated safe passage through different Indian lands. But soon after Lewis and Clark landed their pirogues back on the riverbanks of St. Louis, things took a turn for the worse. On the surface, everything seemed fine, as the members of the expedition were feted by enthusiastic well-wishers on each stop of their trip back to Washington. They celebrated late into the night, sometimes tipping some twenty toasts—a novelty for men whose lips had not entertained intoxicating spirits for many months. Clark headed to Virginia to court his fiancée, Julia Hancock, while Lewis rode a wave of adulation to Philadelphia and finally Monticello, where he and Jefferson got down on the floor, like a couple of kids with a new toy, to examine the expedition’s new maps of the West.
Now that the mission was over, it was time for the men of the Corps of Discovery to move on to the next phases of their lives. Lewis’s primary objective at this point was to see to the publication of the journals he and Clark kept while on the trail—thousands of pages containing their observations on the country’s geography, fauna, flora, native peoples, and commercial opportunities—not to mention a stirring tale of adventure. But Lewis early on showed signs of erratic, defeatist behavior. He stayed out too late and drank too much. He showed little interest in working on the journals.
Lewis’s indifference toward the journals dates back to the tail end of the expedition. He recorded his final entry on August 12, 1806. Earlier that day, the buckskin-clad Lewis had been mistaken for a deer by a nearsighted hunter in his party, who accidentally shot him in the buttocks. Lewis recovered, but from this point the journal writing duties were handled exclusively by Clark. Although Lewis eventually met with a printer and made arrangements for engravings to be made of maps and illustrations, he completely neglected the text of the journals. Toted from city to city, they went unread and unedited.
Writer’s block was just one indication of a deeper problem—a perverse tendency toward self-sabotage. In the months after the successful completion of the expedition, Lewis descended into a shapeless, aimless existence in which he accomplished little and seemed uncertain of what to do next. As he had years earlier, Jefferson tried to provide his former secretary with a sense of purpose, naming him governor of Louisiana. This was of course a great honor to Lewis, but perhaps also an overly daunting challenge. It turned out that Lewis was poorly equipped for the job, dragging his feet on important initiatives and other times making questionable policy decisions.
For one thing, Governor Lewis exercised his powers in ways that created conflicts of interest. During the expedition, an Indian chief named Sheheke had accepted Lewis and Clark’s offer to travel with them to Washington to meet the “great father,” President Thomas Jefferson. In 1809 Lewis hired a group of men to escort Sheheke back to his Mandan Indian village in present-day North Dakota. It’s not surprising that many of the backwoodsmen hired were associates of Lewis as well as Clark (who had recently been appointed an agent in charge of Indian affairs in the Louisiana territory). Some had even been members of the Corps of Discovery. However, in this latest enterprise they would also be acting as representatives of the St. Louis Missouri River Fur Company, to which Lewis had granted an exclusive license to trade furs in the Louisiana territory. Once they returned Sheheke, they were authorized to engage in a trading expedition. Because Lewis and Clark each had a financial stake in the company, and because Lewis, as governor, requisitioned supplies needed for the round-trip journey, it amounted to a government-funded commercial boondoggle. At least that’s the way many of Lewis’s detractors saw it, including the new administration under James Madison.
Meanwhile, Lewis’s personal life and finances were also on the rocks. Lewis had engaged in risky land speculation and generally spent more than he earned. It wasn’t long before his debts greatly exceeded his assets. On top of it all, he failed time and again in his attempts to court a wife. And then there were the journals—those damn journals. Paradoxically, not a lick of work had been done on them, even though their publication would likely provide a solution to many of Lewis’s problems, as they were sure to bring him a substantial income and buttress his rapidly degrading reputation.
His depression grew along with his list of problems. Lewis was drinking more than ever and had even acquired an opium habit. The last straw came in July 1809, when Lewis received a letter from the secretary of war, informing him that it would not honor the charges Lewis authorized for many of the supplies acquired for the Sheheke expedition. If Lewis were to be held personally responsible for the outlays, it would ruin him financially. Gathering up his papers, Lewis headed to Washington to explain himself. He never made it. After making two unsuccessful attempts at suicide, Lewis succeeded on the third, shooting himself twice—in the head and in the chest—at a small inn near Nashville.
The news staggered Clark but did not surprise him. He and others had often noticed Lewis’s melancholy nature, especially when his comrade was not fully engaged in an all-consuming activity
, like the expedition.
One of the first things Clark did was find someone to edit and publish the journals, which finally hit the shelves in 1814. He then returned to St. Louis, where he continued to help shape American Indian policies and pursue his interests in land speculation and fur trading. Clark was appointed governor of the newly named Missouri territory in 1813. Where Lewis had floundered in the role, Clark excelled. His military skills and familiarity with “the Indian character” came in handy in negotiating numerous treaties, opening up more land for trade and settlement.
Clark’s post-expedition relationship with his slave York highlights a less savory aspect of Clark’s character. It was of course not unusual for a son of pre–Civil War Virginia to grow up owning slaves. Clark, however, had seen firsthand how the character and mettle of a black man could equal that of any white. During the expedition, York had been an integral member of the Corps of Discovery, performing many of the same duties and enjoying some of the same rights as the others. On at least one occasion, he was permitted to cast a vote on an appropriate wintering spot. However, as Clark’s chattel, York received no pay for his services, and upon their return to St. Louis, he found his status as a common slave unchanged.
Clark, who was capable of great sympathy for Native Americans, showed a puzzling disregard for York’s humanity. In 1809, Clark wrote to his brother about a “severe trouncing” he delivered to York for being “insolent and sulky.” York had been pleading for his freedom, or at least to be hired out to another master closer to his wife in Louisville. Clark eventually gave in, mostly because the disgruntled York was growing increasingly useless to him. Out of spite, he hired York for a time to a “severe master.”