The fearless champions on the side of Right;
Men at whose Declaration empires trembled,
Moved by the Truth's clear and eternal light.

"This is the hallowed spot where first, unfurling,
Fair Freedom spread her blazing scroll of light;
Here, from Oppression's throne the tyrant hurling,
She stood supreme in majesty and might."

[Illustration: JOHN HANCOCK.]

[Illustration: ROBERT MORRIS.]

Stimulated by affirmative action in the various colonies, the desire for
independence became a living principle in the hall of the Continental
Congress, and that principle found utterance, albeit with timorous
voice. John Hancock, an opulent merchant of Boston, and from the
commencement of difficulties in 1765, a bold, uncompromising, zealous,
and self-sacrificing patriot, was seated in the presidential chair, to
which he had been called a year previously, when Peyton Randolph, the
first incumbent, was summoned to the bedside of his dying wife in
Virginia. The equally bold and uncompromising Adamses were his
colleagues, from Massachusetts Bay. On his right sat Franklin of
Pennsylvania, Sherman of Connecticut, Rutledge of South Carolina, and
young Jefferson of Virginia. On his left was the eloquent Dickenson of
Pennsylvania, and his colleague, Robert Morris, the financier of the
Revolution, whose capital and credit, controlled by untiring energy and
love of country, sustained the cause of freedom in the darkest hours of
its struggles with tyranny. Near him was the lovely and refined Arthur
Middleton of South Carolina, with a heart full of philanthropy, and a
mind at ease while he saw his immense fortune melting away before the
fire of revolution. In front was Richard Henry Lee, the Cicero of that
august assembly, and by his side sat the venerable John Witherspoon of
Princeton College, the equally impressive and earnest preacher of the
gospel of Christ and the gospel of civil liberty. Near the President's
chair sat the attenuated, white-haired secretary, Charles Thomson, who
for fifteen years held the pen of the old Congress, and arranged, with
masterly hand, its daily business. On every side were men, less
conspicuous but equally zealous, bearing upon their shoulders a
responsibility unparalleled in the history of the world in importance,
whether considered in the aspect of immediate effects or prospective
results.

On the 10th of May, the initial step toward indepe