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COLUMBUS, Ga. — “The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” — Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787.

The printing press was unquestionably the single-most decisive invention in the history of mankind. It freed the control of information by enabling the user to determine what was printed instead of a hegemony who purposefully censored the public.

The role of early colonialist newspapers was absolutely vital to the forging of our nation and the freedoms we all enjoy today. Without those early American newspapers, there would have never been an American revolution, a Declaration of Independence, nor a United States of America.

Here’s a look at how small, local, citizen-ran newspapers, pamphlets, and other printed media brought news of independence to the populace throughout the road to revolution, building unity against the Crown that ultimately led to the  Declaration of Independence itself.

THE INTOLERABLE BACKSTORY

The conflict of the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years’ War, was fought to bring new territories north and west of the thirteen British colonies under the control of the British Crown. As it turned out, the monetary cost of fighting that war was very expensive for the British government.

In true tyrannical fashion, good old King George III painted a maddening narrative that the colonists were somehow the ultimate beneficiaries of the war (they were not, the Crown was) and should thus pay for its costs through extreme levels of taxation made payable to England.

You’ve probably heard of these taxes before. 

THE STAMP ACT

The first and most widely-known of the Crown's tyrannical taxes against the colonies was The Stamp Act of 1765, which required the paying of a tax on anything made of paper within the colonies. The paper was then stamped to show the tax had been paid.

The image below from the Smithsonian Institute shows an example of a 1p (one-penny) taxation stamp affixed to a paper document in colonial America, 1765.

Because of the very nature of the tax — a tax on paper — publishing businesses suffered greatly under the Stamp Act. Naturally, resentment grew.

The tax was also heavily-abused by British government agents who refused to provide stamps for newspapers they deemed critical of the British Crown; the tax was used to censor the press and silence public opinion in hopes of squashing any resistance to the Crown.

That would turn out to heavily backfire.

Before the Stamp Act, publishers generally refrained from printing partisan political dialogue in hopes of simply keeping their readers — and the Crown — happy. Ironically, the enactment of the Stamp Act drove publishers to begin printing the sentiments they held all along. That in turn spread those sentiments throughout the colonies, which built an initial base of  unity and resistance against the Crown in ways that would not have been possible without the speed and reach of the printing press.

One such example was The Halifax Gazette, operated by Isaiah Thomas. The paper began to protest the Stamp Act openly by outright publishing articles against it, printing the tax stamp upside down, and printing other morbidly-warning images in place of the stamp. 

The first example above from American Antiquarian shows the front page of the Halifax Gazette from December 12, 1765. Thomas had printed a  skull and crossbones in the lower right-hand corner of the front page, taking the place of the required tax stamp. The page also features thick black horizontal lines known as “mourning bars,” used to normally symbolize the mourning of a death of a public figure. Thomas used the mourning bars to reflect that the newspaper itself was in mourning due to the censorship and heavy taxation of the Stamp Act in open protest.

Another example from the Halifax Gazette shown below displays the second page of the paper’s issue from February 6, 1766. Thomas had placed the tax stamp (shown in red) upside-down on the page, signifying subversion of the Stamp Act. He then overlaid a black woodcut stamp of the devil attacking the red tax stamp.

Thomas had also gone so far as to sell the papers with the stamp completely removed from the document, leaving a blank square cutout in its place.

Many newspapers and pamphlets throughout the colonies performed similar printed protests, with one inspiring another, until it became commonplace as a norm of society.

The openness of protests by printers in this way served two purposes.

First, it legitimized public sentiments of protest against the Stamp Act. It communicated to the public that their individually-held private sentiments were shared by many — and it did so openly for all to see. Because of the nature of the printed material, it allowed those sentiments of resistance to spread across the colonies. People who lived hundreds of miles away were able to share in the sentiments of those where the printed material originated, thus setting a firm base of unity in thought and sentiment throughout the colonies.

Second, and perhaps most effectively, the nature of the protests and the strength of its communal base served as a stern warning to the Crown and its agents. After all, printing a skull and crossbones on the cover of your newspaper to protest a tyrannical tax — along with just about every other of the continent’s three-dozen newspapers — tends to send a fairly clear message of morbid seriousness.

These two key effects would prove vital as the spark of one publication would subsequently inspire three more, and so on. 

In addition to newspapers, pamphlets played a pivotal role in sharing long-form works of constitutional dialogue, protest, and political argument. Like newspapers, the ease of the printing press allowed the common man to read ideas from across the colonies. Even if a colonist could not read, he or she was able to listen to public readings of pamphlets at local taverns, inns, and other establishments.

News of liberty, independence, and the natural rights of man in opposition to tyranny spread like wildfire throughout the colonies at a pace with which the taxation and tyranny it opposed could simply not keep up.

The Stamp Act was ultimately repealed by the British Parliament in March of 1766.

THE TOWNSHEND ACTS

Following the Stamp Act were the The Townshend Acts of 1767, which imposed duties on essential British goods imported into the colonies, such as china, glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. Those particular items were selected to most harm the colonies, as they were thought to be difficult to manufacture locally and would thus have to be imported and subject to taxation. 

The Townshend Acts led to the publication of two widely-circulated pamphlets: Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, by legislator John Dickinson, and the Massachusetts Circular Letter, by Samuel Adams and James Otis Jr. The two pamphlets successfully united colonists against the British. Led by Adams and his Sons of Liberty under the motto of “No taxation without representation,” colonists began to successfully boycott all British imported goods. 

The Crown — and its purse — was not a fan of the pamphlets, to say the least. 

In a direct response to the boycotts stirred by Dickinson’s, Adams’, and Otis’ publications, the British Crown dispatched four full regiments of troops — more than 2,000 soldiers — to occupy Boston, which was a city of just 16,000 people at the time. 

Fights and general unrest continued to increase between the British troops and Boston residents. Shops that sold British wares and refused to boycott were frequently vandalized by patriot locals. The boycotts continue to stifle British business enough for Parliament to rescind the Townshend Acts in early March of 1770 — though word of the revocation would not cross the Atlantic and reach Boston before a serious tipping point.

THE BLOODY MASSACRE

On the evening of March 5, 1770, a lone British soldier by the name of Private Hugh White was left by himself to guard the King’s Money (taxes collected from the Boston populace) inside the Custom’s House on King Street. After a passer-by shouted insults at White, other local Bostonians began joining in by threatening White with violence. 

White, in response, slashed at one of the colonists with his bayonet. The colonists, in turn, hammered White with chunks of ice, snowballs, and rocks.

In the midst of it all, someone rang the local fire alarm bell throughout the streets which naturally drew every able-bodied Bostonian man into the arena. White was quickly overpowered and screamed for British support.

Answering White’s screams for help was Captain Thomas Preston along with a handful of British soldiers who all took up defensive positions. 

The mob dared the British formation to fire on them.

One of them did.

That opening shot caused others in the formation to also open fire on the crowd. The volley left five American colonists dead in the street  and another six wounded.

As Preston and his men were promptly arrested, local writers, printers, and artists quickly went to work.

Paul Revere, a local silversmith and man of means, created an engraving of the event that we now know as the Boston Massacre. The engraving, titled The Bloody Massacre, was used by Revere to print copies of the image on paper along with a poetic description of the events. An original copy of Revere’s engraved print can be seen below in full color from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

With newspapers still in open-printed revolt against the British Crown due to the effects of the Stamp Act just a few years earlier, Revere’s engraved print was hastily copied and distributed throughout the colonies by means of the press. The image of the massacre burned its way into the minds of Americans, further emboldening public sentiments by showing — not only telling — what horrors the Crown had inflicted upon the residents of Boston.

Revere’s engraving is largely acclaimed as a tremendous catalyst for inspiring both further Bostonian resistance against British occupation and its tyrannical actions, as well as for unifying thought throughout the colonies in support of Boston. 

Word of Britain's repeal of the Townshend Acts — which was repealed in England just days before the massacre occurred — finally reached Boston in April of 1770.

THE TEA ACT

The tax on tea, however, remained in full effect, causing many American colonists to continue to boycott British tea. Many turned to drinking Dutch tea smuggled in from the Netherlands while some gave it up altogether. 

Throughout the stifling taxation on the colonies, the British government had granted a monopoly to the East India Company to transport all tea into the colonies on the company’s ships. 

As a result of the continued boycotts, the pockets of the East India Company quickly became increasingly light as their tea literally rotted away in its warehouses unsold. 

Since the East India Company was vital to the British Crown and its growing empire throughout the world, the Crown took it upon itself to use taxation to bail out the company.

The Tea Act of 1773 followed, granting the East India Company the exclusive right to sell tea in the colonies, undercutting local merchants and enraging them against the Crown.

The average colonial layman was equally as incensed.

While the cost of tea in the colonies did not increase from the taxes already in place through the Townshend Acts, the Tea Act of 1773 forced colonists to only buy from the lot of the 544,000 pounds of old rotting tea from the East India Company. No other tea was allowed to be sold, forcing American colonists to purchase the sub-par British tea while also being forced to pay the import tax — all so their own money could bail out the seller for the Crown.

Needless to say, this was not popular among Bostonians, who quickly decided to fix the problem themselves.

INTO THE HARBOR

In response to the Tea Act, crowds of colonists in many seaport towns gathered in mobs to drive away ships of the East India Company before they could even dock to unload. 

One of the most famous of these incidents happened at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston on December 16, 1773. The reason it became so well-known wasn’t necessarily because of its events, but because those events were memorialized and spread throughout the colonies in print and image. 

The Boston Tea Party, as it would come to be known, became immortalized.

Earlier in the day on December 16, 1773, a group of merchants put out of business by the repressive acts of the British Crown gathered at the Old South Meeting House. During the meeting, the colonists voted to refuse to pay the Crown’s taxes on tea, as well as to refuse to allow the tea to even be unloaded, stored, or sold in Boston. 

Governor Thomas Hutchinson in turn ignored the colonists’ vote, ordering the ships of the East India Company to dock, unload their tea, and for the taxes to be paid.

Just a few hours later, those same colonists — who were members of a local resistance movement known as the Sons of Liberty — dressed themselves in clothing and warpaint to disguise themselves as Native Americans. The formidable force stealthily boarded the now-docked ships that their Governor refused to send back, and threw all of its 343 chests full of the East India Company’s British tea into the harbor.

The resistance force was led by Samuel Adams, who had sustained impeccable influence among the people of Boston from his years of resistance against the Townshend Acts. As a result, even though his force was surrounded by armed British ships full of soldiers standing ready with muskets, no British commander dared to make a martyr out of Adams out of fear of the repercussions from the people of Boston.

For three hours, Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty remained unharassed in full view of British forces. Redcoats watched on in political fear as the Sons of Liberty dumped 45 tons of British tea worth about $1 million into the ocean in front of them. The Sons of Liberty literally found brooms on board and swept the ship’s deck before disembarking. 

The tale was quickly immortalized by newspapers throughout the colonies. The first and most prominent of which was the Boston Gazette operated by Benjamin Edes. It is said that Edes had in fact lent out his home to the Sons of Liberty as an initial meeting place on that fateful night, later sheltering them in the Gazette’s offices while they donned their warpaint and Native American garb.

Below is an original copy of the front page of the Boston Gazette from December 20, 1773, as published by Benjamin Edes. The full issue is available for public viewing courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

As news of the Boston Tea Party continued to penetrate the minds of the colonial public, the Crown responded in kind with what would become known as the Coercive Acts. The acts — which truly lived up to their name — were intended to quell the colonial uprisings by doing the very thing that caused them in the first place: enacting tyranny. The acts included:

• The complete closure of Boston Harbor until the tea looted in the Boston Tea Party was paid for in full;
• A discontinuance of the Constitution of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which ended the free election of local officials;
• A transfer of all judicial authority away from previously-elected local judicial positions and placed all judicial power in the hands of the Crown through British judges, which in effect established martial law throughout Boston;
• A requirement for Bostonians to house British troops in their private homes on demand.

Boston residents despised the Coercive Acts so much that they threw a second Boston Tea Party in March of 1774, dumping an additional 30 chests of British tea into the Boston Harbor purely out of spite — because they could.

HERE COMES THE PAINE

Shortly before the Battles of Lexington and Concord, a man named Thomas Paine landed in the American Colonies in November of 1774. Paine, a native of Norfolk, England, emigrated to the colonies after a London meeting with Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, of course, just-so-happened to be the owner of the Pennsylvania Gazette: the single-largest newspaper in the American colonies. Franklin’s notice of Paine’s writing ability allowed him to use his strong influence to land Paine a writing job in Philadelphia.

Upon arriving in Philadelphia with Franklin’s letter of recommendation in hand, Paine was hired by printer Robert Aitken as the editor of the newly-founded Pennsylvania Magazine.

According to Aitken’s plan, the magazine was not supposed to contain politically-charged content given the danger of doing so in the colonies at the time. Much like today, the so-called tyrannical “wrongthink” could land a publisher out of business. 

Nonetheless, Paine famously published the following in the very first issue of the magazine, despite Aitken’s instruction:

“Every heart and hand seem to be engaged in the interesting struggle for American Liberty.”

The public loved it.

LEXINGTON & CONCORD

At much the same time as Paine arrived in Philadelphia in late 1774, local colonial leaders had organized themselves in Massachusetts to take action against the Coercive Acts. Those political actions  became known as the Suffolk Resolves, which included the following actions against the Crown:

• A complete boycott of all British imports, a cease on exports to Britain, and a total refusal to use British products;
• To completely disobey the Crown’s Massachusetts Government Act and the Boston Port Bill;
• A demand for the immediate resignation of agents of the Crown appointed to positions under the Massachusetts Government Act;
• A total refusal to pay any taxes to the Crown until the Massachusetts Government Act was rescinded;
• The reestablishment of a Colonial Government in Massachusetts devoid of any Royal authority until the Coercive Acts were repealed;
• The urging of colonists to raise their own local militias of their own people in preparation for hostilities against the Crown.

Towns throughout Massachusetts began to raise and train standing militias, with relatively large stores of weapons and ammunition being cached in the town of Concord.

That final fact caught the attention of the British government, which in turn brought it to the immediate attention of the King himself. In February 1775, the British Parliament announced to King George III that it considered the Massachusetts Colony to be in an open state of rebellion.

British Secretary of State William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth, ordered General Thomas Gage to disarm the colonists and arrest their military leaders. When Gage received the order on April 14, 1775, he in turn ordered a force of 700 British soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith to covertly locate and destroy the militia’s stockpiles of arms and munitions at Concord.

The battles of Lexington and Concord inflicted a total of 273 British casualties to the American’s 93 after a force of 4,000 Massachusetts Militiamen fired upon the British in a rolling ambush for 17 miles all the way back to Boston.

A local journalist and newspaper owner who we mentioned earlier, Isaiah Thomas, was himself present at the battle. 

After leaving the Halifax area and relocating to Boston the year prior, Thomas took control of a newspaper called the Massachusetts Spy. The events leading up to the battle caused Thomas to very quickly smuggle his printing equipment out of Boston and into Worcester just a few days prior on April 16, 1775.

When his shop finally received paper upon which to print, Thomas published the very first newspaper ever printed in Worcester.

On May 5, 1775, Thomas published his eyewitness accounts of the Battles of Lexington and Concord  in the Massachusetts Spy. The publication made him the first American war correspondent in journalistic history.

Though page one of the issue is shown below, the correspondence of the battle was printed on page 3. You can view the entire issue in large PDF format from Teach US History.

As Thomas’ account was the only eyewitness account of the battle, the story published in the Massachusetts Spy quickly spread throughout the colonies.

A total of 27 local colonial newspapers would then come to publish about the battle, setting fires in the hearts of colonists against the Crown’s military action.

The Siege of Boston would follow, leading to John Adams’ call to raise a standing army against the British.

Thanks to the spread of information through journalists like Thomas and his Massachusetts Spy, delegates from the several colonies felt more comfortable in casting their votes to do so; the voices of their constituents were behind them, as they already heard the news from the Battles of Lexington and Concord themselves.

John Adams knew at the time that a formidable military force against the British would only have the capacity to succeed if  the British believed the Colonies were truly united.

Newspapers like the Massachusetts Spy quite literally made that happen.

A COMMON SENSE IDEA

While working as the editor of Pennsylvania Magazine, Thomas Paine moonlit his time writing what would become the single-most iconic piece of political argumentative literature of the period.

In a 47-page pamphlet titled Common Sense, Paine purposefully spoke of the need for American independence and the tyrannical rule of King George over the Colonies. The beauty of Paine’s work, however, was not merely in the truth of his arguments alone, but in his purposeful wordsmithing which intentionally used simple terms he knew every layman could understand.

Paine’s work went, as we would call it today, absolutely viral. It sold an estimated 500,000 copies by the end of the war in 1783.

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong,” wrote Paine, “gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”

Those words, and others like them, formed simple and relatable political arguments for the everyman that quite literally raised an army against the British Crown.

You can — and should — read the 47-page pamphlet in full at your first opportunity. It is available absolutely free in digital format from Project Gutenberg.

Many of Paine’s ideas from Common Sense would go on to be subsequently included in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. 

Moreover, the sentiments expressed within Paine’s work inspired the actions of the Second Continental Congress to draft the founding document of an entirely new nation, throwing the yoke of tyranny of the British Crown.

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Note: The following text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum.) The spelling and punctuation reflects the original.

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. 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.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, 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 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; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And 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.

Georgia

Button Gwinnett

Lyman Hall

George Walton

North Carolina

William Hooper

Joseph Hewes

John Penn

South Carolina

Edward Rutledge

Thomas Heyward, Jr.

Thomas Lynch, Jr.

Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts

John Hancock

Maryland

Samuel Chase

William Paca

Thomas Stone

Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia

George Wythe

Richard Henry Lee

Thomas Jefferson

Benjamin Harrison

Thomas Nelson, Jr.

Francis Lightfoot Lee

Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania

Robert Morris

Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Franklin

John Morton

George Clymer

James Smith

George Taylor

James Wilson

George Ross

Delaware

Caesar Rodney

George Read

Thomas McKean

New York

William Floyd

Philip Livingston

Francis Lewis

Lewis Morris

New Jersey

Richard Stockton

John Witherspoon

Francis Hopkinson

John Hart

Abraham Clark

New Hampshire

Josiah Bartlett

William Whipple

Massachusetts

Samuel Adams

John Adams

Robert Treat Paine

Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island

Stephen Hopkins

William Ellery

Connecticut

Roger Sherman

Samuel Huntington

William Williams

Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire

Matthew Thornton

//—End of Transcription—//

E PLURIBUS UNUM

Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.

-30-

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