A LEADER IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
ONE OF THE FRAMERS OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.
LIKE WASHINGTON, "FIRST IN WAR, FIRST IN PEACE, AND FIRST IN THE
HEARTS OF HIS COUNTRYMEN."
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston
were associated with Franklin in drafting the Declaration of
Independence, which Congress adopted, July 4, 1776. The original draft
was by Jefferson, but it contained many interlineations in the
hand-writing of Franklin. When they were signing the memorable
document, after its passage by Congress, John Hancock remarked:
"We must be unanimous,--we must all hang together."
"Yes, if we would not hang separately," replied Franklin.
Jefferson was viewing, with evident disappointment, the mutilation of
his draft of the Declaration in Franklin's hand-writing, when the
latter remarked:
"I have made it a rule, whenever in my power, to avoid becoming the
draftsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body. I took my lesson
from an incident which I will relate to you. When I was a
journeyman-printer, one of my companions, an apprentice-hatter, having
served out his time, was about to open shop for himself. His first
concern was to have a handsome sign-board, with a proper inscription.
He composed it in these words: _John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells
hats for ready money_, with a figure of a hat subjoined.
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