The Hammock Papers: Signed.

02 August 2020

Signed.

On this date in 1776, the Delegates of the Second Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence.

On August 2, 1776, Congress members signed the declaration. Not every man who had been present on July 4 signed the declaration on August 2. Two important officials passed up the chance to sign and others were added later. The first and largest signature was that of the president of the Congress, John Hancock.

The mood in the room was far from celebratory. Everyone was aware of what they were undertaking. It was an act of high treason against the British Crown that could cost each man his life. Recalling the day many years later, Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a leader in Philadelphia, wrote about how awful and silent the house was as each member was "called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress."

CONNECT

From Harvard University's Declaration Resources Project ...

The engrossed parchment is what most people think of as "the" Declaration of Independence: the document on display in the National Archives, alongside the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights. It is a parchment sheet measuring 29 3/4 inches high by 24 1/4 inches wide. Unlike paper, parchment was a sturdier, longer-lasting material, and was also used for the Articles of Confederation, United States Constitution, and Bill of Rights.

To "fairly engross" means to copy in large, legible script, to create an official copy of a document. The person tasked with engrossing the Declaration of Independence was most likely Timothy Matlack. No official record exists, so historians rely on comparisons of Matlack's handwriting and his position as an assistant to Secretary of Congress Charles Thomson as evidence. Matlack used an English Roundhand script, and neatly wrote with a quill pen, making only two errors. He also engrossed the 1774 Petition to the King and George Washington's Commission as Commander-in-Chief.

CONNECT

The National Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings, Vol. XVIII: SIGNERS of the DECLARATION, Historic Places Commemorating the Signing of the Declaration of Independence is HERE.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL