al
elements were moving too fast. Radicalism, however, was in the saddle,
and on the 2d of July the "resolution respecting independency" was
adopted. On July 4, 1776, Congress debated and finally adopted
the formal Declaration of Independence. The members did not vote
individually. The delegates from each colony cast the vote of the
colony. Twelve colonies voted for the Declaration. New York alone was
silent because its delegates had not been instructed as to their vote,
but New York, too, soon fell into line. It was a momentous occasion and
was understood to be such. The vote seems to have been reached in the
late afternoon. Anxious citizens were waiting in the streets. There
was a bell in the State House, and an old ringer waited there for the
signal. When there was long delay he is said to have muttered: "They
will never do it! they will never do it!" Then came the word, "Ring!
Ring!" It is an odd fact that the inscription on the bell, placed there
long before the days of the trouble, was from Leviticus: "Proclaim
liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." The
bells of Philadelphia rang and cannon boomed. As the news spread there
were bonfires and illuminations in all the colonies. On the day after
the Declaration the Virginia Convention struck out "O Lord, save the
King" from the church service. On the 10th of July Washington, who
by this time had moved to New York, paraded the army and had the
Declaration read at the head of each brigade. That evening the statue
of King George in New York was laid in the dust. It is a comment on the
changes in human fortune that within little more than a year the British
had taken Philadelphia, that the clamorous bell had been hid away for
safety, and that colonial wiseacres were urging the rescinding of the
ill-timed Declaration and the reunion of the British Empire.

CHAPTER IV. THE LOSS OF NEW YORK

Washington's success at Boston had one good effect. It destroyed Tory
influence in that Puritan stronghold. New England was henceforth of a
temper wholly revolutionary; and New England tradition holds that what
its people think today other Americans think tomorrow. But, in the
summer of this year 1776, though no serious foe was visible at any
point in the revolted colonies, a menace haunted every one of them. The
British had gone away by sea; by sea they would return. On land armies
move slowly and visibly; but on the sea a great force may pass out of
si