Members of Congress took that vow seriously. The initial signing of the document, on July 4, 1776, was a moment of “Silence and Gloom,” Benjamin Rush would recall to John Adams. Decades later, he asked Adams in a letter, Do you recollect the pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress, to subscribe what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants?
