Epoch Times - What Many Don’t Realize About America’s Founding | Matthew Spalding
Aired: 2026-02-06
Duration: 02:16


=== Signers Sacrifice Fortunes (02:16) ===

[00:00:00]  We have this sense today that somehow they are just, you know, these dainty individuals who are sitting around debating and wearing tricolor-enhanced wigs and writing with quill pens.
[00:00:10]  These were, I mean, mainly figures who were literally giving up their lives, their fortunes, but not their sacred honor.
[00:00:20]  So last year tells a lot of their stories.
[00:00:25]  John Witherspoon, who was the chaplain, his son is killed by a cannonball at Germantown.
[00:00:30]  Richard Stockton, also of New Jersey, he's captured and he's tortured, but he wouldn't recant the Declaration.
[00:00:40]  He's let go, but he's essentially destroyed, and they've destroyed all of his property, and he dies very soon thereafter.
[00:00:47]  The signers in New York, all the signers are tracked down by the British.
[00:00:52]  Twice they try to capture Jefferson.
[00:00:56]  The signers from New York, they're all, they search, try to find them.
[00:00:59]  Francis Lewis, they go to his house.
[00:01:02]  He's not there, but his wife is, wife Elizabeth.
[00:01:06]  House is surrounded by cavalry.
[00:01:08]  She won't give up.
[00:01:09]  They send ships up Long Island Sound and bombard the house until she gives up.
[00:01:15]  She's captured.
[00:01:16]  She's only released because George Washington forces a prisoner exchange.
[00:01:20]  Robert Morris, probably one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest man at the time, is the financier.
[00:01:26]  He's the superintendent of finance of the whole revolution.
[00:01:29]  At one point, he's giving, signing what are called Morris notes.
[00:01:33]  He's on his own personal credit buying supplies for the Revolutionary Army, for the Continental Army.
[00:01:40]  He, in today's dollars, gives the equivalent of $32 million to support the cause.
[00:01:48]  He dies in a pauper's prison because his other investments and his real estate investments go bad at a certain point.
[00:01:56]  So he dies completely broke.
[00:02:00]  It's a phenomenal story.
[00:02:01]  So the beginning, how we got there, discussion of the document itself, but then what happened?
[00:02:06]  What happened to them?
[00:02:08]  You know, if we're thinking today, these are kind of these delicate just ideas and not really out, getting down in the middle of things.