Debra Burlingame e-mails:

I am currently reading A Patriot’s History of the United States by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen. See this, regarding the signers of the Declaration of Independence, p. 81:
Each of the 56 signers knew that the act of signing the Declaration made them traitors to the Crown, and therefore the line in which the delegates “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor” literally exposed these heroes to execution. By the end of the war, almost every one had lost his property; many had lost wives and families to British guns or prisons; and several died penniless, having given all the the Revolution.
John Hancock signed his name so large because he wanted to make sure George III saw it.
Remember them. It wasn’t that long ago. What they created had never before existed in human history: consent of the governed.
Happy INDEPENDENCE DAY!