* * * * *
                                        
                              The Price They Paid
                                        
Spring [1], the Kidlets and I went to a friend's house for the 4^th.
Throughout the house my friend had the following taped up on the walls:

> THE PRICE THEY PAID
> 
> Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the
> Declaration of Independence?
> 
> Five signers were captured by the British as traitors and tortured before
> they died.
> 
> Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.
> 
> Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army, another had two sons
> captured.
> 
> Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the
> Revolutionary War.
> 
> They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred
> honor.
> 
> What kind of men were they?
> 
> Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were
> farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated. But they
> signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty
> would be death if they were captured.
> 
> Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships
> swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to
> pay his debts, and died in rags.
> 
> Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his
> family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his
> family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty
> was his reward.
> 
> Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton,
> Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.
> 
> At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British
> General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He
> quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was
> destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.
> 
> Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his
> wife, and she died within a few months.
> 
> John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. Their 13
> children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to
> waste. For more than a year, he lived in forests and caves, returning home
> to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later, he died
> from exhaustion and a broken heart.
> 
> Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.
> 
> Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution. These were
> not wild-eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means
> and education. They had security, but they valued liberty more.
> 
> Standing talk straight, and unwavering, they pledged: “For the support of
> this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of the divine
> providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and
> our sacred honor.”
> 
> They gave you and me a free and independent America. The history books
> never told you a lot about what happened in the Revolutionary War. We
> didn't fight just the British. We were British subjects at that time and we
> fought our own government!
> 
> Some of us take these liberties so much for granted, but we shouldn't.
> 
> So, take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July Holiday and silently
> thank these patriots. It's not much to ask for the price they paid.
> Remember: Freedom is never free!
> 
> I hope you will show your support by please sending this to as many people
> as you can. It's time we get the word out that patriotism is NOT a sin, and
> the Fourth of July has more to it than beer, picnics, and baseball games.
> 

Quite a stirring tale there. But like all things found on the Internet (where
my friend found this) I wondered if there wasn't more to this. And the one
place I know that regularly [DELETED-discredits-DELETED] discusses such
Internet tales is Snopes (Urban Legends Reference Pages) [2]. Poked around
some and:

> The main point of this glurge is to impress upon us that the men who signed
> the Declaration of Independence were relatively well-educated and wealthy
> men who were also well aware they had much to lose by putting their names
> to that document, yet after much careful consideration and thought they
> signed it anyway, “knowing full well that the penalty would be death if
> they were captured” (although the article omits mentioning that support for
> independence was far from unanimous, that some of the colonies voted
> against adopting the Declaration of Independence, and some of the delegates
> didn't affix their signatures to the document until several years later).
> The signers were courageous men who risked everything in the service of
> what they perceived to be a common good, and for that they are genuinely
> worthy of honor, respect, and admiration. Unfortunately, this article
> attempts to commemorate them with a train of glurge that jumps the track of
> truth at the very beginning and finally pulls into station bearing a
> simplified version of history in which all the incongruities that get in
> the way of a good story are glossed over. (We're still puzzling over
> exactly which history books “never told us a lot about what happened in the
> Revolutionary War,” and if any history books failed to stress the obvious
> point that “we were British subjects at that time and we fought our own
> government,” it was probably because they reasonably assumed their readers
> could infer as much from the constant repetition of words such as
> “revolution” and “independence.”)
> 

“Glurge Gallery—Would July to Me? [3]”

[1] http://www.springdew.com/
[2] http://www.snopes.com/
[3] http://www.snopes.com/glurge/declare.htm

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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