Happy 4th of July

 “We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” – Benjamin Franklin

We picture it all wrong, you know.

That famous painting—the one with all the powdered wigs looking stoic and serene, a little too clean, a little too calm. Everyone huddled around a parchment, quills in hand, like it’s just another Tuesday at the office. That’s the myth.

The reality?

The summer of 1776 was chaos wrapped in humidity. Philadelphia wasn’t a birthplace of liberty—it was a pressure cooker. British soldiers loomed, Loyalists whispered, spies leaned against tavern walls, and everyone’s nerves were shot. And in the middle of all that noise, in a room not nearly as grand as you’re imagining, a group of very real men did something almost unspeakably bold.

They signed their names.

Not just names—targets. Not just ink—ammunition.

See, when you signed the Declaration of Independence, you weren’t writing a letter to the king. You were declaring treason—with a flourish. You were essentially saying, “If this doesn’t work, hang me high and hang me proud.”

And no one said it louder than John Hancock. The man didn’t just sign his name. He roared it across the page like a thunderclap. Legend says he made it so big the king wouldn’t need spectacles to read it. That’s not a flex. That’s a man standing in the middle of a battlefield, drawing a chalk circle around himself, and saying, “Try me.”

But here’s the thing—they didn’t all sign that day. The big event we love to imagine? Yeah, never happened. The Declaration was adopted on July 4, but the actual signing trickled in like nervous rainfall over the weeks and months that followed. Some delegates weren’t even there. Some waited. Some didn’t sleep the night before. They weren’t pretending to be brave. They were brave—and terrified.

And the cost? It came quickly.

Richard Stockton? Captured. Starved. Beaten.

Francis Lewis? His wife was kidnapped and died from mistreatment.

John Hart? Fled into the forest while his farm was torn to shreds.

Thomas Nelson Jr.? Told Washington to bomb his own house when the British used it as a base.

Robert Morris? Funded the war. Died in debtor’s prison.

Carter Braxton? Lost his entire fortune at sea. Never recovered.

Not one of them was hanged for signing—but many lost everything else. And they knew that was a possibility from the moment they put pen to paper. The idea that they all walked in with puffed chests and poetic grins is nonsense. They walked in knowing the noose was a real thing. That if caught, there wouldn’t be a trial. There’d be a rope.

Yet still… they signed.

Because that’s what courage looks like. Not cinematic bravado, but quiet, resolute, stomach-twisting conviction.

We think of freedom like a gift, but back then it was more like a gamble with deadly odds. The men who declared it were betting their lives, their land, their legacies—just for a chance that their children wouldn’t have to kneel.

So this Fourth of July, light the fireworks, yes. Grill the meat, wave the flags, wear the red-white-and-blue socks with little eagles on them.

But also… remember what this actually was.

Not a festival of comfort. A moment of enormous risk.

It was 56 people saying, “I believe in this enough to lose everything.”

And one guy—John Hancock—saying, “And I want to make sure everyone knows it.”

That’s not just history.

That’s guts in ink