[Sidenote: Consequences of the Declaration.]

Now the colonies were the United States, with a flag common to all, the
symbol of a united nationality. Seldom has a written paper so moved the
world. In our own history, the only document that can compare with
it, in its momentous results, was the emancipation charter of Abraham
Lincoln. Both required a courage that was nothing less than heroic: but
the proclaimers of the Declaration of Independence risked life, family,
property; engaged in an irreconcilable conflict against enormous odds;
defied the greatest naval power in the world, and the richest nation, in
pursuit, not of the material gain to be derived from the abrogation of a
tax, but of national liberties which they were determined to secure at
every hazard. The Declaration, indeed, was needed to combine the action
of the patriots, and to give them a definite and certain purpose. It was
the bond that pledged them to harmony, and which confined them to the
alternative of "liberty or death."




VI.


SOCIETY IN 1776.

[Sidenote: American Society.]

Despite the numerous biographies, histories, narratives, diaries, and
volumes of correspondence concerning the revolutionary epoch, which fill