250 Years of the Declaration of Independence: How a 1,337-Word Document Changed the World

The Price of the Signature

Despite the absence of session minutes, the altogether 86 meticulous corrections to the text attest to the intense debate in Congress. The majority for independence was by no means narrow: twelve of the 13 colonies had already set in motion the separation from the British Crown by resolution; only New York abstained. For the signatories, the step carried the gravest personal risk: under British law, the signature counted as high treason, which could be punished by hanging, quartering, and disembowelment.

The signatories had to fear for their lives, their property, and their reputations. Five signatories were taken into British captivity and were brutally tortured aboard prison ships and in cells. More than a dozen lost their homes, plantations, and possessions, which were plundered or burned down by British troops. Nine of the 56 signatories died during the War of Independence. Francis Lewis of New York saw his home on Long Island destroyed by the British; his wife was taken hostage, held for months without a bed or clothing, and died shortly after her release. Richard Stockton of New Jersey was captured by the British, tortured, forced to swear an oath of allegiance to the king in order to be released, and died in 1781 destitute and broken.

The oldest signatory was the 70-year-old Benjamin Franklin, publisher and inventor, who developed the lightning rod through his kite experiment. The youngest was the 26-year-old Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, who was captured by the British and tortured in prison for a year. Most of the signatories affixed their signatures on August 2, 1776; the last, Thomas McKean of Delaware, signed one year later. The governor of Rhode Island, the 69-year-old, Parkinson's-afflicted Stephen Hopkins, signed with trembling hand and said: "My hand trembles, but my heart does not."

Personal Fates of the Signatories

Regarding the origins of the 56 signatories: 41 came from English families, eight from Scottish, four from Irish, and some were of Welsh or French descent. Caesar Rodney rode 80 miles through a thunderstorm from Dover to Philadelphia in order to cast his vote; without him, Delaware's delegation would have been split 1:1. Benjamin Franklin commented on the decision to sign with the words: "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

Yet the situation of the Americans in the summer of 1776 was precarious. King George III had declared late in 1775 that an "open rebellion" was under way in the colonies and dispatched an armada across the ocean—more than 300 ships carrying 32,000 soldiers, with New York as their objective. Anarchy threatened to break out in the colonies. Nonetheless, George Washington, the general of the beleaguered American Continental Army, had the Declaration of Independence read out at the orders issuance on July 9.

The Reaction of the Habsburg Monarchy

In Europe, the news was initially received hesitantly. The predecessor of the "Wiener Zeitung," the "Wienerisches Diarium," reported on the independence for the first time six weeks later only in passing, without initially printing the text. On August 17, it read: "Wir haben Nachricht aus Amerika, welche melden, daß der Generalkongreß … sich endlich mit einer kleinen Mehrheit von Stimmen für die Unabhängigkeit erklärt habe." In August, the paper published the closing passages of the document; in September, the preamble followed: "Wir halten an und für sich selbst diese Wahrheiten genugsam bewiesen, daß alle Menschen gleich erschaffen sind, daß sie von dem Schöpfer mit gewissen, ihnen nicht zu nehmenden Rechten begabt worden, unter welchen das Leben, die Freyheit und das Recht, ihr Glück zu befördern, befindlich ist."

The restraint had political reasons. State Chancellor Prince Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz-Rietberg expressed concern that the Declaration of Independence contained "außergewöhnliche Passagen, die den Geist der Rebellion wie die Pest verbreiten könnten." Empress Maria Theresa, according to the Welsh historian Stacy Singerton, who researches at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and is the author of "The American Revolution and the Habsburg Monarchy," feared the destabilizing effects of the American Revolution in Europe. On the imperial throne in Vienna sat the absolutist monarch; from 1765 onward, her reform-minded son Joseph II was co-regent. When Benjamin Franklin tried in 1778 to meet the Austrian ruler, according to Singerton's account the meeting failed because the British deliberately detained the emperor at another appointment with reference to a cup of hot chocolate: "Letztendlich erfuhren die Briten in Paris von den Plänen für ein Treffen bei einer Tasse heißer Schokolade und hielten den Kaiser an diesem Morgen absichtlich so lange auf, dass er seinen Termin mit Franklin verpasste."

A first envoy from overseas, William Lee, the court in 1778 did not even admit in the first place, on British prompting; he was dismissed out of hand as a rebel. Trade relations between Austria and the USA were indeed soon taken up, but it was not until 1783 that talks on diplomatic contacts began—unsuccessfully. The mutual establishment of legations finally occurred in 1838, by which time the Declaration of Independence was already 65 years old. The War of Independence of the 13 American colonies against the Kingdom of Great Britain lasted eight years and ended on September 3, 1783, with the Peace of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States.

Two signatories later became President of the United States: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. George Washington, who had had the declaration read out to the troops, served from 1789 to 1797 as the first president and signed the Constitution in 1787, which introduced a time-limited term of office. The final sentence of the Declaration of Independence reads: "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."