250 years ago, fifty-six men signed their names to a death warrant.
If the Revolution failed, that document was a hanging list. They knew it and they signed nonetheless. Pledging their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to an idea that did not yet have an army strong enough to defend it.
N.C. Wyeth painted the gap between the promise and the price.
Above, in the light and clouds, the signers commit their names.
Below them, the farmers, tradesmen and frontiersmen, are the ones who had to make those words real. In the smoke and the fight.
It took seven more years of war. Trenton. Valley Forge. Saratoga. Yorktown.
Most of the men in the struggle never signed the Declaration.
But they paid for it.
America 250 🇺🇸