2122. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, Signers of.—[continued].
The subsequent signatures
of members who were not then present,
and some of them not yet in office, is easily
explained, if we observe who they were; to
wit, that they were of New York and Pennsylvania.
New York did not sign till the
15th, because if was not till the 9th (five
days after the general signature), that their
convention authorized them to do so. The
Convention of Pennsylvania, learning that it
had been signed by a minority only of their
delegates, named a new delegation on the
20th, leaving out Mr. Dickinson, who had
refused to sign. Willing and Humphreys who
had withdrawn, reappointing the three members
who had signed, Morris, who had not
been present, and five new ones, to wit, Rush,
Clymer, Smith, Taylor and Ross; and Morris,
and the five new members were permitted to
sign, because it manifested the assent of their
full delegation and the express will of their
Convention, which might have been doubted
on the former signature of a minority only.
Why the signature of Thornton, of New
Hampshire, was permitted so late as the 4th
of November, I cannot now say; but undoubtedly
for some particular reason which
we should find to have been good had it been
expressed. These were the only post-signers,
and you see that there were solid reasons for
receiving those of New York and Pennsylvania,
and that this circumstance in no wise
affects the faith of this Declaratory Charter
of our rights, and of the rights of man.—
To Samuel A. Wells. Washington ed. i, 120.
Ford ed., x, 130.
(M.
1819)
