7/5/2006

Independence declared
Serving the heroes of the Declaration  
By Tom Range, Sr.

“Why, Jemmy.  What are your plans for the summer now that college is out?” queried Doctor Benjamin Franklin, who was visiting my brother’s house to celebrate his wedding anniversary.

“Well, er, I don’t have anything planned, Doctor Franklin.  Maybe I’ll work at my father’s counting house as I did last summer,” I replied.

“I have something in mind that will peak the interest of a smart young man such as yourself,” the statesman went on.  “You know the Congress is involved in some very important work.  We’ve been meeting practically around the clock and we need some youngsters to serve as pages to keep things running smoothly.  Would you be interested?”

“Oh, I would indeed, Doctor Franklin,” I blurted out.

“Ah, good,” he replied.  “Dick, Sally, come over here and meet the newest page of the Congress, Master Jeremy Bache.  And bring another noggin of cider while you’re at it.  We’ve yet to toast your anniversary, you know.”

My brother Dick and sister-in-law Sally, the Doctor’s daughter, joined the two of us at the bow window looking out onto Chestnut Street in Philadelphia.  The Doctor busied himself in writing a note of introduction for me on one of his calling cards, as he quaffed a mouthful of cider liberally laced with rum.

“Here, Jemmy.  Give this card to Mister John Hancock tomorrow at the State House.  He’ll have someone outline your duties,” said the Doctor, with a gleam in his eyes behind the rectangular lenses of his spectacles.

On June 12 I reported to the President of the Congress, Mr. Hancock, as instructed, and was assigned to keep tidy the meeting room in which the 50-odd delegates deliberated.  I sharpened the pens, filled the ink wells, made sure that the shakers holding the blotting sand were full and emptied the spittoons favored by the tobacco-chewing delegates from the Southern colonies, now being called states.  After a few days of these menial chores, Doctor Franklin took me aside to join a group of four delegates that, along with him, had been assigned as a committee to the task of drafting a document enumerating the grievances the states have against the British parliament and particularly His Majesty.  I was introduced to delegates John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston and Thomas Jefferson.  They all nodded their greetings.  I was told that I would be specifically assigned to assist them in producing this document.  Mr. Jefferson of Virginia would do the actual writing.  His draft would then be reviewed by the committee and submitted to Congress for acceptance.  I was to be at the beck and call of each committeeman but would generally work through Doctor Franklin.

As June progressed, little was seen of Mr. Jefferson on the floor of Congress.  It was assumed that he was busily “scribbling away,” as the Doctor described it, in his rented rooms at the home of Jacob Graff on Market Street a few squares away from the State House and near my brother’s home.  The four had become anxious that Mr. Jefferson’s draft would not be completed on a timely basis (Mr. Hancock wanted it before month end) and that it might contain some articles that would be too extreme, offending delegates from other states and indeed the American people as a whole.

Doctor Franklin took me aside and, accompanied by Mr. Adams, we went out into the gardens surrounding the State House for some relief from the oppressive summer heat in the building.  The doctor, balding and paunchy, still towered over his colleague from Massachusetts, Mr. Adams.  But what Mr. Adams lacked in stature he made up for in cantankerousness.  His Boston accent made conversation difficult.  The Doctor would repeatedly ask, “What was that, John?” which added to the Massachusetts lawyer’s exasperation.  The two, along with the other two delegates making up the committee, were afraid of any surprises that might come from the pen of the Virginia lawyer.

“Jemmy, the Graff family, Jefferson’s landlord, has a 16-year-old daughter, quite pretty as I recall,” the Doctor stated, accompanied with a wink.  “You might want to strike up an acquaintance.”  I immediately realized what the Doctor wanted.  I should work through the daughter to find out what her family’s lodger was up to.

Meg Graff was indeed quite pretty.  In short order, I asked that, while cleaning Mr. Jefferson’s rooms, she pass on to me all pieces of scrap paper which the delegate had discarded.  She did so and I passed them on to the Doctor.  He and Mr. Adams would scan the crumpled up pages and take turns exclaiming, “Look here, Franklin.  He’s talking about ‘life, liberty and property.’  Why, the workies and the dirt farmers making up much of the country have no concept of property.  We’ll try some other wording.”  Evidently the drafter must have had the same notion.  Later drafts substituted “the pursuit of happiness” for “property.”

And on another occasion, “Demme, Adams.  Look at this.  He’s taking Parliament to task for our troubles.  I spent years in London cozying up to those politicians.  We have some sympathetic supporters in England.  John Wilkes, Isaac Barre and even William Pitt himself.  These indictments will have to be stricken.”  All four committeemen were amazed at the Virginian’s remarks about abolishing the slave trade.  Almost in unison they opined that these articles would never be accepted by the states of the Deep South, nor would they be looked upon with favor by the Northern states whose citizens profit from the transporting of “black gold” from Africa.

One day toward the end of the month, I was taking a break from my State House duties by accompanying Meg back to her house.  Mr. Jefferson was just coming out.  Meg had been running errands for him, mostly doing some shopping for clothes and shoes for his wife back in Virginia.

“Oho, you two young people know each other.  How go your chores at the State House, young Master Bache?” asked the red-haired Virginian in his soft drawl.

“Very well, sir,” I replied.  “We don’t see much of you in the Congress chamber.”

“I’ve been busy writing, as you might realize,” giving a sidelong glance at Meg, who blushed as she realized that the lodger suspected that his discarded papers might have been passed on rather than winding up in the dust bin.  “But I’ve completed my chores and am off to meet with my fellow committee members.”  I bowed and Meg curtseyed as the tall Virginian strode toward the State House.  The date was June 29.

The next six days are but a blur.  No one who was not a delegate was allowed in the State House.  I learned afterward that the document was reviewed by the committee and then, on July 2 submitted to the whole Congress that debated its contents article by article.  As predicted, any mention of curtailing the slave trade was struck.  By July 4 the whole city was anticipating news.  Hundreds, if not thousands, milled around the State House, Meg and I included.  Food hawkers were everywhere, selling crullers, hot corn and lemonade to the crowds.

“Look, Jemmy.  There’s my ma and pa,” Meg blurted, pointing toward a curb.  I noticed my brother and sister-in-law grouped under a shade tree with Captain Decatur and his wife.  I remarked to Meg that my family had invested in the captain's various seafaring ventures, including privateering against British shipping.  A young man approached me, a notebook in hand.

“I say, Bache.  You work for the Congress.  What news have you?” asked George Perrin, a reporter for the Evening Post and a fellow crewman on my sculling team.

“Not a thing, Perrin.  We slavies have been locked out like everybody else.  Why, a mouse couldn’t get into the State House,” I replied.

Just then the Secretary of the Congress made an appearance on the balcony of the building.  A thousand pairs of eyes followed his every movement.  He rang a town crier’s bell and the crowd fell silent.  “The Declaration has been signed,” he intoned and a thousand voices broke into cheers. 

Perrin began slapping me on the back in his enthusiasm.  “Hurrah!  Hurrah!” he shouted.  Meg was jumping up and down, waving her kerchief, too carried away to be able to utter a sound.  The bells of the State House and the surrounding churches began their ear splitting peals.  Celebratory shots were fired into the air, soon to be echoed by cannon fire from the naval ships at anchor in the Schuylkill River.

Doctor Franklin, now also on the balcony, noticed me in the crowd and motioned me toward the building.  Meg held on to my arm, fearing she’d be trampled in the crowd’s outpouring of emotion.  At the Doctor’s signal a door opened.  I met him as he was coming down the inside stairs, holding folded sheets of foolscap paper.

“Jemmy, get these to John Dunlap’s print shop.  He’s been waiting for days to get this Declaration of Independence in print.”  The Doctor was beaming in smiles, together with Mr. Jefferson whose freckles were even more pronounced as he accepted the praise and plaudits of his fellow delegates.  Even the dour Mr. Adams was all smiles.

Meg and I raced the few squares to the print shop, going through back alleys to avoid the crowds that were streaming through the streets toward the State House.  The printer was waiting at the door of the shop.  He seized the folded pages in his ink stained hands.  I saw the prominent signature of John Hancock on the bottom of the last page, his being the only one needed to make the Declaration official.

It wasn't until the sixth that the entire Declaration appeared in the Post.  I noticed that all the corrections, additions and deletions suggested by Messrs. Franklin, Adams, Sherman and Livingston were incorporated in the wording.  On the eighth the first public reading was held at the State House to a crowd that was, if possible, even greater than that on Fourth of July.

Four years later, as it became evident that the new United States of America would prevail in the Revolutionary War, Meg Graff and I were married.  We named our first son Benjamin.  We named our second boy Thomas.

###

 The young people, Jeremy and Meg, and their interplay with the historical personages are entirely fictional.  But then again, it could have happened this way.  TR, Sr.

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