{"id":683,"date":"2011-07-01T16:36:09","date_gmt":"2011-07-01T20:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thequicksliver.wordpress.com\/?p=683"},"modified":"2011-07-01T16:36:09","modified_gmt":"2011-07-01T20:36:09","slug":"7-4-1776-daddy-of-the-founding-fathers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/7-4-1776-daddy-of-the-founding-fathers\/","title":{"rendered":"7.4.1776 Daddy of the Founding Fathers"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/a>When you go to the National Archives and look at the document today, you won’t find his signature on it.\u00a0 But without him, the Declaration of Independence may never have been written at all.<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/a>Charles Thomson was born in County Londonderry, Ireland, in 1729.\u00a0 When he was ten years old, his mother died.\u00a0 His father took him and his brothers and set sail for America.\u00a0 But within sight of land, his father died, leaving the boys orphaned and penniless.\u00a0 He was raised by a blacksmith in Delaware, and then sent to the Philadelphia Academy (the forerunner of UPenn).\u00a0 He was a fine student, particularly good at languages, and became a tutor in Latin.\u00a0 He was one of America’s earliest and most noteworthy revolutionaries.\u00a0 He was friends with Ben Franklin; he was a leader of the Sons of Liberty; John Adams called him the “Sam Adams of Philadelphia.”<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>All of which prepared him for the role of his life: Secretary of the Continental Congress.\u00a0 When the founding fathers arrived in Philadelphia – hot, grumpy and squabbling – Charles Thomson was their daddy.\u00a0 He was responsible for holding order, and for fairly recording what was said and done.\u00a0 (A pretty stressful job, considering the topic at hand was the commitment of treason against the most powerful empire on earth.)\u00a0 On several occasions, brawls broke out between the delegates; Thomson himself got into a cane-fight with another delegate over the accuracy of the minutes that drew blood from both men.\u00a0 But through it all, Thomson’s steadiness, accuracy and diplomacy helped hold them together.<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/a>When the Declaration of Independence was completed, 200 broadside copies were quickly printed and distributed.\u00a0 It was read aloud in at least 4 places.\u00a0 But on that day, July 4, 1776, only two Americans officially laid their necks on the line.\u00a0 Those earliest copies – known as the Dunlap Broadsides – were signed only by John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress, and attested by Charles Thomson, Secretary.\u00a0 It wasn’t until a month later that all the founding fathers signed the larger, official version; Charles Thomson was not one of the signers.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>For the next 13 years, Charles Thomson was the glue that held Congress together.\u00a0 He designed the Great Seal of the United States.\u00a0 He provided a steady hand during the difficult negotiations over the new Constitution.\u00a0 Once that was approved and adopted, the new government of the United States began.\u00a0 Charles Thomson resigned as Secretary, and the Continental Congress was officially disbanded.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>In the end, perhaps Charles Thomson’s greatest contribution as an American was what he did NOT do.\u00a0 When pressed later in life to write a book and “spill the dirt” on the founding fathers, he refused.\u00a0 He said, “We are wholly indebted to the agency of providence…Let the world admire the supposed wisdom and valor of our great men. Perhaps they may adopt the qualities that have been ascribed to them, and thus good may be done.”<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>Amen to that.\u00a0 To Charles Thomson, patriot:\u00a0 Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you go to the National Archives and look at the document today, you won’t find his signature on it.\u00a0 But without him, the Declaration of Independence may never have been written at all. Charles Thomson was born in County Londonderry, Ireland, in 1729.\u00a0 When he was ten years old,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[231,288,291,332,395,451,1273],"class_list":["post-683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-6","tag-charles-thomson","tag-constitution","tag-continental-congress","tag-declaration-of-independence","tag-england","tag-fourth-of-july","tag-united-states"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}