Interesting history of what the Founding Fathers actually pledged and suffered for liberty.

Compare this to the weak-kneed so-called patriots of the Republican Party today.


[link:https://www.americanheritage.com/we-mutually-pledge-each-other-our-lives-our-fortunes-and-our-sacred-honor|

snip

Nine of the signers, all of whom had pledged their lives to the support of the Declaration, died during the Revolution—all but three as a direct or indirect result of it. The first to die was John Morton, a Pennsylvania farmer, who had been severely criticized for favoring independence. On his deathbed eight months after signing, he said of his critics, “…they will live to see the hour when they shall acknowledge it to have been the most glorious service that I ever rendered my country.” Button Gwinnett, a cantankerous merchantlandowner who had served as governor of Georgia, died a month after Morton. Gwinnett challenged a brigadier general of a Georgia Continental brigade to a duel over a military dispute. The two fired pistols simultaneously at four paces (about twelve feet), shooting low and wounding each other in the thigh. The general recovered, but Gwinnett died three days later of a gangrenous infection.

Another signer, John Penn of North Carolina, was challenged to a duel by Henry Laurens, who succeeded Hancock as President of the Congress in 1777. On the morning of the duel, Penn, who was thirty-eight, had breakfast with his fifty-three-year-old opponent; then the two set out together for the dueling ground. Laurens stumbled as they crossed a street, and Penn rescued him from falling. His sense of etiquette apparently disturbed by rescuing from slight injury an older man whom he was about to try to injure severely, Penn proposed that they call off the duel, and Laurens agreed