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The Importance Of The Founding Fathers

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The how and why of our beloved republic, are so much better known and understood, than the who. The United States of America was born in 1776, but it was conceived 169 years before that. The earliest settlers had watered the new world with sweat, and they had built substantial holdings for themselves and their families. When the time came, however, to separate them from the tyranny an ocean away; at the best it meant starting all over again after the ravages of war. This paper gave me a whole new outlook on what the Founding Fathers of our great nation endured and sacrificed in order to bring to us the United States as we know it today. All other of the world’s revolutions were initiated by men who had nothing to lose. Our ancestors had everything …show more content…

24 were judges and lawyers, nine were farmers and large plantation owners, eleven were merchants, and the remaining twelve were doctors, ministers and politicians. Well-educated men of means who put everything they owned and their lives and the lives of their families on the line for this cause they so strongly believed in, knowing full well that signing such a document would mean certain death if they were captured. King George III had denounced all rebels in America, as traitors. The punishment for treason was hanging. With this in mind, the names on this document were kept secret for 6 months. These 56 men sacrificed everything to ensure our freedom. Five were tortured and subsequently died, 12 had their homes ransacked and burned, 9 died fighting in the Revolutionary War. They soon realized just how significant the last paragraph of the Declaration was to become; signing that “we pledge our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honour.” They knew that if they won this fight, the best they could expect would be years of hardship in a struggling nation, and if they lost, there would most assuredly be a hangman’s noose awaiting. Despite their fears, they still signed their names, and below is the fates of many of those brave men who changed the course of world history …show more content…

Signer Richard Stockton, was captured by the redcoats, tortured, and his health soon deteriorated to the point that he reached his demise by age 51, and his estate was pillaged and then burned. Signer Thomas Heyward Jr. was captured when Charleston fell, and Signer John Hancock became well-known in history due to a quirk of fate, letting England know just what he stood for…that large, sweeping signature towering over the others. He was one of the wealthiest men in New England, yet he stood outside Boston, one terrible night of the War, and he said, “Burn Boston, though it makes John Hancock a beggar, if the public good requires

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