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The Mentor: Historic Spots of America, Vol. 1, Num. 32, Serial No. 32 cover

The Mentor: Historic Spots of America, Vol. 1, Num. 32, Serial No. 32

Chapter 14: HISTORIC SPOTS OF AMERICA Independence Hall
By Robert McNutt McElroy
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About This Book

A concise historical tour of several early American landmarks that connects their origins to larger European political and religious shifts, explaining how naval victory over Spain enabled Protestant colonization, how English charters and colonizing ventures led to settlements, and how those settlements endured hardship, sickness, and difficult relations with Indigenous peoples. The piece recounts the founding and survival of Jamestown and the Pilgrim settlement at Plymouth, notes remaining ruins and commemorative monuments, and considers settlers' motives, including desires for self-government and conflicts over religious practice, while surveying the remembered significance of these sites.

HISTORIC SPOTS OF AMERICA
Independence Hall

FOUR

Of the sixty American gentlemen in frosted wigs and silk stockings, who sat in what is now Independence Hall in Philadelphia and composed the Continental Congress, there was none more aristocratic by birth, more democratic by nature, than Thomas Jefferson. Perhaps that was one reason why they selected him to pen the Declaration of Independence, adopted on July 4, 1776, which remains today America’s most sacred historical document. He was sufficiently modest, however, to insist that in writing the Declaration he simply put down the ideas prevalent at the time.

This Continental Congress was the first body of men at that time sitting in any of the parliaments of the world. These statesmen had the courage to break an old order, the valor to maintain a new one, and the wisdom to fortify it with laws and a constitution. The first and second Congress of our nation comprised the flower of the character of that age. As a whole body they ruled higher for talents, firmness, and good judgment than any national assembly known to history.

So when it came to a division between allegiance to England and a complete separation from the mother country, these men chose wisely, bravely, and confidently. It was a big step to take, and a dangerous one also. Hitherto the colonies had been merely fighting for “no taxation without representation”; but now they would be fighting for liberty. And, if conquered, the leaders could hope for no better fate than execution as traitors.

It is related that when Benjamin Franklin lifted his pen, after signing the Declaration of Independence, he turned to the assembly and said with a grim smile:

“Now, gentlemen, we must all hang together, or we shall hang separately.”

The Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776; but not all the members of the Continental Congress signed it on that day. A great many signed at later dates.

The old bell that rang out this message of liberty is now kept as an almost sacred relic in Independence Hall. When the Pennsylvanians were building their State edifice they ordered a bell from England. But when it arrived they found that it had lost its voice and had to be recast. A quotation was inscribed on the new bell, which, though chosen a quarter of a century in advance of the Declaration of Independence, showed the direction in which the thoughts of all the people of America were even then turning—“Proclaim Liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” This quotation was taken from the tenth verse of the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus.

The bell was afterward used on various occasions of national importance; but was cracked in 1835 in tolling for the funeral of Chief Justice Marshall, and since 1843 has never been sounded.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 32, SERIAL No. 32
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

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