made clerk to the committee of foreign affairs,
while he was consulted by all members of government and congress as an
oracle.

The recommendation of congress to the various assemblies and conventions
in the United States of America met with all due attention, and many
prepared for the organization of a new government. Thus the convention
of New York appointed a committee to take the resolution into
consideration, and on the 27th of May this committee presented a report,
replete with democratic principle, and going the whole length which
the recommendation involved. The men of the hot south, however, the
Virginians, went to work in a less round-about manner than those of the
other states. The convention of that colony, which met at Williamsburg
on the 6th of May, instructed their delegates at congress to propose to
that body an immediate declaration of independence. Accordingly, on the
7th of June, Richard Henry Lee, one of their delegates, moved that the
congress should forthwith declare:--"That these united colonies are,
and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they
are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all
political connexion between them and the state of Great Britain is and
ought to be totally dissolved; and that measures should immediately
be taken for procuring the assistance of foreign powers, and a
confederation be formed for binding the colonies more closely together."
Vehement debates followed this proposition, its principal supporter
being John Adams, and its chief opposer John Dickenson. On the question
being put, six delegates voted in the affirmative, and an equal number
in the negative; the delegates from Pennsylvania being equally divided.
The debate, therefore, was resumed on the following day, when Dickenson
relinquished his opposition, and by his vote decided the contest.
Congress now assumed the title of "Representatives of the United
States of America," and on the 4th of July they published a definite
declaration, or act of independence. This declaration was drawn up
by Jefferson, and slightly altered first by Franklin and Adams, and
afterwards by the whole committee to whom it was submitted. As passed by
congress it commenced with asserting that all men were originally
equal, and that all people have an unalienable right to choose their own
government. It then set forth that the history of the present King of
Great Britain had been a history of injuries