sh of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the
field. Why stand we here idle? What is it the gentlemen wish? What would
they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the
price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what
course others may take, but as for me, GIVE ME LIBERTY, Or GIVE ME
DEATH!"

Within the following month occurred the battle of Lexington.

Washington, Jefferson and Patrick Henry were members of the committee
appointed to arrange a plan for preparing Virginia to act her part in
the struggle. When Washington, June, 20, 1775, received his commission
as commander-in-chief of the American army, Jefferson succeeded to the
vacancy thus created, and the next day took his seat in congress.

A few hours later came the news of the battle of Bunker Hill.

Jefferson was an influential member of the body from the first. John
Adams said of him: "he was so prompt, frank, explicit and decisive upon
committees that he soon seized upon every heart." Virginia promptly
re-elected him and the part he took in draughting the Declaration of
Independence is known to every school boy.

His associates on the committee were Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman
and Robert R. Livingston. It was by their request that he prepared the
document (see fac-simile, page 49,) done on the second floor of a small
building, on the corner of Market and Seventh Streets. The house and the
little desk, constructed by Jefferson himself, are carefully preserved.

The paper was warmly debated and revised in congress on the 2nd, 3rd and
4th of July, 1776. The weather was oppressively hot, and on the last
day an exasperating but providential invasion of the hall by a swarm
of flies hurried the signing of the document. Some days afterward, the
committee of which Jefferson was a member provided as a motto of the new
seal, that perfect legend,--E Pluribus Unum.

The facts connected with the adoption of the Declaration of Independence
must always be of profound interest. The public are inclined to think
that our Magna Charta was accepted and signed with unbounded enthusiasm
and that scarcely any opposition to it appeared, but the contrary was
the fact.

While Jefferson was the author of the instrument, John Adams, more than
any one man or half a dozen men brought about its adoption. When the
question was afterward asked him, whether every member of congress
cordially approved it, he replied, "Majorities