%138.  Independence declared.%—­Independence having thus been decreed, the next step was to announce the fact to the world.  As Jefferson says in the opening of his declaration, “When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another ... a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”  It was this “decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” therefore, which now led Congress, on July 4, 1776, to adopt the Declaration of Independence, and to send copies to the states.  Pennsylvania got her copy first, and at noon on July 8 it was read to a vast crowd of citizens in the Statehouse yard.[1] When the reading was finished, the people went off to pull down the royal arms in the court room, while the great bell in the tower, the bell which had been cast twenty-four years before with the prophetic words upon its side, “Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof,” rang out a joyful peal, for then were announced to the world the new political truths, “that all men are created equal,” and “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,” and “that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

[Footnote 1:  The declaration was read from a wooden platform put up there in 1769 to enable David Rittenhouse to observe a transit of Venus.]

[Illustration:  The royal arms]

%139.  The Retreat up the Hudson.%—­A few days later the Declaration was read to the army at New York.  The wisdom of Washington in going to New York was soon manifest, for in July General Howe, with a British army of 25,000 men, encamped on Staten Island.  In August he crossed to Long Island, and was making ready to besiege the army on Brooklyn Heights, when, one dark and foggy night, Washington, leaving his camp fires burning, crossed with his army to New York.

Howe followed, drove him foot by foot up the Hudson from New York to White Plains; carried Fort Washington, on the New York shore, by storm (November 16, 1776); and sent a force across the Hudson under cover of darkness and storm to capture Fort Lee.  But the British were detected in the very nick of time, and the Americans, leaving their fires burning and their tents standing, fled towards Newark, N. J.

%140.  The Retreat across the Jerseys.%—­Washington, meanwhile, had gone from White Plains to Hackensack in New Jersey, leaving 7000 men under Charles Lee in New York state at North Castle.  These men he now ordered Lee to bring over to Hackensack, but the jealous and mutinous Lee refused to obey.  This forced Washington to begin his famous retreat across the Jerseys, going first to Newark, then to New Brunswick, then to Trenton, and then over the Delaware into Pennsylvania, with the British under Cornwallis in hot pursuit.

[Illustration]