July 5th, August 3rd and Beyond for the Declaration Signers
True, the focus over the past few days has been on Donald Trump Jr. and his shady meeting with a Russian lawyer , but I prefer to look at a happier moment from the past week. Independence Day! The holiday is a time to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence and all the fun times (hot dogs! beer! parades! fireworks! NPR tweets! ) that resulted because of it. Sort of. The adoption of the DOI remains in most people's brains - if they think about it at all - as an inevitable, patriotic event. However, for the men in the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776 who approved the DOI, and the men on August 2, 1776 who signed it, theirs was a dangerous act that amounted to treason. They may look calm, but the men who approved the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 were well aware of the gravity of their actions. So did anything actually happen to those signers after they put pen to paper? One popular essay , written by a man named Gary Hildrith, ...