Connecticut western news., 1918-07-04

] The delegates rom PennSyivanla, New York and one or two other colonies ob- 1 jected on the ground that the middle ] colonies were not yet ready for so radi- cal step, although personally express ing friendly attitude.
 i Delegates Hesitated.
 Unanimous action by all the colonies on so momentous a question was re- garded by congress as of paramount ! importance. Some of the delegates had not been instructed to go so far as vot- i ing for independence, New York and New Jersey being among them. The ! majority had been authorized to tnSe any action that might be deemed wise, ! Virginia having gone so far as actual ly to instruct her delegates to propose a declaration of independence to con | gross, and Richard Henry Lee was simply obeying the legislative voice of his colony when he presented his reso- lutions.
 June 10 congress postponed, final consideration for three weeks, ana oa the following day appointed n comm,t. tee of five to draw up the declaration. Richard Henry Lee, as the proposer of ] the plan, would surely have been on the committee and, possibly, it's chairman; had he not in the meantime been hur- riedly summoned home by the illness of his wife. But for that Lee might have been the author of the declara- tion instead of his younger Virginia colleague, Thomas Jefferson, then but ! thirty-three years old. ".- Jefferson had brought to congress the reputation for yielding a facile pen, and in the balloting for the con- mittee he received n majority of votes and became its chairman. The others were John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert R. Livingston of New York.
 Honor Given Jefferson.
 How did Jefferson come to be se- lected to write the Declaration, "the one American state paper, as has been said, that has reached to supreme dis tinction in the world and that seems likely to last as long as American civil lization lasts"?
 The most interesting account is giv- en by John Adams, who says that he and Thomas Jefferson were designated by the committee to prepare the rough minutes in a proper form. MT. Jeffer- son first proposed that Adams prepare the draft of the Declaration. Adams declined, giving, as he says In his au- tobiography, the following reasons:
 CD That he was a Virginian and a Massachusettensian. CD That he was n Southern man and Northern one. C0 That I had been so obnoxious for my early and constant zeal in promoting the measure that every draft of mine would undergo a more severe scrutiny and Icritt- cism in congress than one of his compost tion. O And lastly and that would be req son enough if there were no other, had a great opinion of the elegance of his pen and none at all of my own. l therefore insisted that no hesitation should be made on his part. He accordingly took the minutes and in a day or two produced to me his, draft.
 As Jefferson Wrote it. E#'
 Jefferson says that the entire com mittee urged him to make the draft. He showed it first to Franklin and Adams because they were the two members of whose Judgments and amendments I wished most to have the benefit" They made a few minor al- terations in their handwriting. This original draft was given by Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee, the dean of the Virginia delegation, and in 1925 his grandson presented 1t to the Amer ican Philosophical society of Philadel- phia.
 Jefferson, having made another copy, with the changes suggested, presented 1t to the committee, which reported it unaltered to congress. July l Phila- delphia was on the qui vive of expecta- tion, and contemporary accounts have left us a stirring picture of the eager ness with which the citizens awaited definite news of the most important act which the colonists had been called upon to decide in the long chain of disputes with the mother country. On the following day, when the formal vote of congress was taken, the reso- lutions were approved by twelve col l onies-all except New York. The orig inal colonies, therefore, became the . United States of America on July 2, 1776. The next two days were spent in discussing the draft of the Declara- ton as drawn by Jefferson. The debate was animated, but when it was all , over the draft was adopted with sur prisingly few changes, tribute to the ability with which the author had eS' pressed to the world the causes which had made it necessary for "onc people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another"
 Unanimously Adopted.
 The Declaration of Indep2nGC9cc was then unanimously adopted by tn twelve colonies, whose delegates wey,